SGOTM 9 - klarius

[ThERat]

Pre-Turn
check Instanbul and yes, India has all resources

a tiring IT follows where I admire all those useless aegis cruiser actions

1. 1772AD
some minor errands are run

2. 1774AD
zzz, maybe India is still mainly building military since we appear strong compared to them?

3. 1776AD
argh, what is India doing????

4. 1778AD
Tatu wanted to join us, no thanks, build a SS part instead, ok
fail to carefully steal integrated defense, bummer

5.1780AD
India finally manages to land at Southern Pike
we need to rebuff 2 cities this time round

6.1782AD
Southern pike is Indian now

7. 1784AD
the highlight of every turn is to press F10 just to see that India is totally incapable of building a SS

8. 1786AD

9. 1788AD
I cannot believe tha India is so incapable
waste 3000gold on another failed safe steal, heck who cares anyway

10. 1790AD
volunteer to do 5 more turns since this is super boring anyway
the minute long waits for the aegis cruisers really freak me out

turn 11-15
something fishy is coing since India has a convoy very close to our core
out an army into Entremont just in case
then I spot an open tile near Entremont we didnt cover and mighty India drop 1 MA, scary really
then on turn 13 Spain declares on India, stupid fools
I also find out that our military rating has dropped to average maybe that will make them build SS parts

due to the fact that India has it's own alu, they can still build space parts, not all that is
opne up the bloackade at Bodo so India might be able to take Spanish uranium
but a Spanish worker occupies it immediately

well India is a complete desaster, can't even build 1 SS part
next player, good luck, get a coffee and plenty of patience for your turns
finally manage to steal ID and start missile defense done in 3 turns

 

[AlanH]

Please read this post for discussion and comment.

 

[killercane]

Well Im all for voting for ranking by who gets him to build Apollo first, whether or not that means win or lose for us. The whole waiting for India thing is a crap shoot for everyone whether they build parts or Apollo. My interest is waning, and with Ronald and Obormot not interested in this one any longer, lets just go ahead and go with that or have someone play out the rest of the way.

 

[ThERat]

this would mean that we would have finished th game during Klarius turnset last round since India built Apollo.
Do we want to accept this as a win or go on.

I vote for stopping and accept that condition.

 

[klarius]

Well, obviously even I cannot find any cause for continuing this game (as can be seen from the lack of posts with exciting new strategies to adopt ).

So, yes, let's put this baby to rest.

 

[ThERat]

klarius, which of your turns was the turn India acquired Apoolo, since that would be our win date

 

[klarius]

Well, it was turn 2 1735 as written in the log.

 

[ThERat]

It just occured to me that we might have been at a big disadvantage to be one of the fast teams.

Building Apollo only doesn't require uranium. The whole exchange with Spain would be eaier for those teams that merely aim for Apollo now. Alu is at a small Island there.

In fact all the effort to build up a bunch of very porductive cities wasn't really necessary.

In fact we have suffered some setbacks before already (the whole gifting a city to India issue as well as the can't build SS parts while mobilized)

Everytime our team hit a dead end a solution was offered but for all teams ta the same time, putting the rest in a much better position. If we lose this game, we know what is a part of the reason.

 

[klarius]

Well, it doesn't really matter. The competition doesn't make much sense whether it is spaceship or Apollo.
The variant was doomed from the beginning (sorry Gyathaar , hindsight is always the easy part).

And BTW we got them to build Apollo by cascading from Manhattan, so it isn't even clear that it would have been faster, if we denied them Uranium, thinking they don't need it. We tried to give them the southern island for quite some time but Gandhi wasn't interested until recently, so the spanish madness was necessary.

 

[Obormot]

Great news!
So we can now start reading other teams' threads?

 

[klarius]

Up to now it's only a suggestion in the maintenance thread, not a final ruling.
I think we should wait for all team members to chime in before we state our team position, though it looks like there is an overwhelming majority for quitting now .

 

[Northern Pike]

It just occured to me that we might have been at a big disadvantage to be one of the fast teams.

Building Apollo only doesn't require uranium. The whole exchange with Spain would be eaier for those teams that merely aim for Apollo now. Alu is at a small Island there.

In fact all the effort to build up a bunch of very porductive cities wasn't really necessary.

In fact we have suffered some setbacks before already (the whole gifting a city to India issue as well as the can't build SS parts while mobilized)

Everytime our team hit a dead end a solution was offered but for all teams ta the same time, putting the rest in a much better position. If we lose this game, we know what is a part of the reason.

I agree absolutely. We've been disadvantaged all game by ad hoc changes to the scenario which were made too late to be properly reflected in our strategy. The altered victory condition is the final and extreme example of this.

All the same, Klarius is right that defeat and victory won't mean anything in this one; and I have no more desire to play on than the rest of you. So it's unanimous except that we haven't heard from Ronald, whose position is easy to surmise.

Alan and Gyathaar, none of this diminishes my appreciation for the unpaid service you provide for other gamers. These things happen.

 

[ThERat]

I also want to add that by no means do I want to criticize Alan or Gyathaar for providing us this interesting challenge. It's a great idea, but unfortunately India didn't play along well.

 

[Gyathaar]

I also want to add that by no means do I want to criticize Alan or Gyathaar for providing us this interesting challenge. It's a great idea, but unfortunately India didn't play along well.

It probably would have worked a lot better in .. where the AIs love space victories..

It was unfortunate that due to vacation this setup didnt get tested as much as it should have been... thou.. not sure about you, but I have learned alot about AI behavior from following all the team threads

 

[killercane]

Who wants to write our first spoiler?

 

[klarius]

Well, I just did over 3 hours of clicking shift-enter (after eliminating Spain in the preturn).
Gandhi wasn't able to score a victory even though I did nothing to defend and emptied the shore. He just took a few cities, razed a few cities, but never got over 60% territory.
No parts built and result is a humilating time victory for Scandinavia. .

The final save

 

[Obormot]

So it is actually pretty difficult to make an AI win even if you try very hard I wonder how people actually manage to loose to AI . Good luck to the teams going for the space jumbo .

BTW, i had a look at other teams' threads and we seem to have learnt all the space techs the fastest despite the obvious mistake with monarchy . Team Wacken was just one turn behind us learning the last space tech in 1410. But they managed to make Gandhi capture the GL a bit earlier then us. As for the final result i guess it'll be determined by pure luck

I think the best solution would have been giving the laurel to the team which learns the last space tech fastest (then we would win ) or to the team which makes Gandhi learn the last space tech fastest (then team Wacken wins), Apollo still depends on luck too much. But its too late i guess.

I haven't looked at teams other then Wacken very carefully yet, but they appear to be slightly behind. Team Smurkz has an interesting plan to gift the GL before learning all the techs so that Ganhi can learn the remaining techs while building Apollo. This may proove to be the right decision and may get them the laurels. OK, lets just wait, the impact of luck is too great to say anything now...

Edit: Just realized that c3c and vanilla teams get separate laurels, so we don't have to worry about team Smurkz.

 

[AlanH]

Thanks for playing it through, Team Klarius. I'm sorry we didn't give you a more interesting game, but the AI's failure to take advantage of your best efforts speaks volumes for its stupidity. Let's hope the next game will give you more excitement.

What did you decide was India's Apollo+techs date?

 

[klarius]

Eh, Obormot, we learned the final space tech in 1425.
Now if we take into account the detour to sanitation, which the Wacken's didn't take it's about the same.

And I still don't see the big mistake in monarchy. We were a little bit late to the IA, but that was more a question of suboptimal play IMO, than the government.
Through ancient and medieval we would have payed a lot more unit support cost and lux tax (we did pay even in monarchy).
We did all IA techs except 2 and all MA techs in 4 turns each. Now, sure republic would have given more money in that time, but for what ?

 

[klarius]

@Alanh: India cascaded from Manhattan to Apollo IBT 1730-1735. They had all techs since ages.

IBT:
Not much. We build Manhattan.

Turn 2 1735:
Move a few troops. Investigate Carthage. Hurray Apollo is in the city (1 down - 10 to go) . But as usual he now started an ICBM.
Revolt for 6 turn anarchy.