SGOTM 9 - Smurkz

[CommandoBob]

(Again, I'm not picking on you, I'm trying to instruct you. It's not easy to give powerful techs away. You need to learn not to shoot yourself in the foot being greedy about tech trades. What good are two government techs going to be for the Ottomans. And what good will Mono be for us ?

Iron sharpens iron,
So one man sharpens another. Proverbs 27:17

Faithful are the wounds of a friend Proverbs 27:6

To point out mistakes is not to 'pick on' someone.

Now that the turn is over, I see that my first turns I focused on tweaking cities and moving galleys. Once the Eastern Way was found safe, I concentrated on getting units to the Celtic shores. And lastly I focused on terrain improvements.

On techs, it is obvious I put them on the back burner. Since we could get techs in 4 turns, I thought that any tech would do. By the time I was really aware that the Tech Race was not going as I expected, it was on Turn 10. I was not willing to make a big tech trade (for me) on my last turn and have it be the wrong thing to do. In this case I thought it better to do nothing, and let the team decide the best course, than for me do something a bit hasty and force the team to recover from that decision.

However, the team had already decided and I overlooked that decision.

 

[CommandoBob]

Wow! 18 hours! My wife would kill me if I did something like that! I had to make sure she was okay with me playing the majority of yesterday so I could finish CivIV GOTM 1, and that was only about 6 to 8 hours!

I was upset that it took so long. My wife was not happy but I did get some shopping done for her during these turns. And I watched some movies with my son and her also. I would play, save, go do something, come back and load the save. So it was not 18 hours straight. I just could not believe I was spending so much time on the turns.

Next turn set I am considering playing five turns, post the save, get feedback and finish the next five turns. This will break up the turns for me and allow the team to tell me where to improve before the turns are done.

 

[ControlFreak]

Next turn set I am considering playing five turns, post the save, get feedback and finish the next five turns. This will break up the turns for me and allow the team to tell me where to improve before the turns are done.

I you want to do that, that's fine by me. Sometimes, when you're learning, you don't know when you need help so it's hard to "ask a question if you need help". Getting advice mid turn when we see where your emphasis is and understand which assumptions you have made that may need to be redirected could help you improve your play.

I just don't want you to feel like you're not playing anymore, your just executing line-by-line orders like a computer program. Your turns are exactly that, your turns. And it's not hard for me to believe that something you do of your own accord will be something I never thought of and could learn from you.

 

[WarDance]

So at this point should we abandon the beakers we've spent researching invention and switch immediately to theology (after trading for monotheism of course)? We need to hold on to Feudalism and Engineering for the time being because if we get it into the hands of Spain and America they will be to gunpowder that much faster, requiring us to go to chivalry to take them on.

 

[Niklas]

Looking good! (yes, honestly )

The one turn spend with no research was a blooper of course, and the missed research path was another. But neither is a disaster IMO.

We could abandon Invention and lose the one turn spent, and hope that in the end we save three by having Spain research Invention for us while we do Theo, Edu, Astro and Banking. But I sincerely doubt that Spain has the research capacity to get Invention for us in 16 turns, just like I argued that they wouldn't get us Feudalism in time (in particular since we're draining them for 44 gpt). Also like WD says, that will bring them that much closer to Gunpowder, making our life much more difficult.

No, I say stick with Invention for now, then go for Theo in 3 turns from now, every turn of research can be crucial in the end. We'll be 3 turns later to Education, but right now we have enough bpt to get all but the most expensive MA techs at 90% research, even without a single uni! We'd get Edu in 11 turns, so we'd need to delay HotB for one turn, but that's the only thing it will matter to us. So there's IMO no reason whatsoever to scrap the one turn invested in Invention.


Much more interesting is the fact that the Eastern Way exists, I didn't really think it would. And Celts are not building GLib anymore, which suggests that we'll get it. So things are indeed looking good.

 

[Niklas]

Roster:

• WarDance
• CommandoBob - Just Played
• Methos - UP!
• zyxy - away until Jan 4th (will go after CF)
• ControlFreak - On Deck!
• Niklas

 

[ControlFreak]

Roster:

• WarDance
• CommandoBob - Just Played
• Methos - UP!
• zyxy - away until Jan 4th (will go after CF)
• ControlFreak - On Deck!
• Niklas

I should be able to keep checking in but I'm not sure I can actually play my turns this week. I'll let you know more when Methos has played. Take your time Methos!

I agree that we're just going to research on our own which means CB's change of direction affects us little (we don't need uni's yet).

I think we're going to take advantage of what CB did well and start hurting the Celts. They should be a push over, but America will take the lion's share of the earnings. We're going to need a lot more boats if we're going to bring enough troops to capture cities.

 

[Niklas]

Aye, we should do some discussion before Methos plays. In particular we should be clear on the plan for the other continent, if we're planning an immediate full-scale invasion we should start planning it right away.

There are also quite a few MMing things to be done. Our nothern core is really picking up speed and I love it ! But that also means we have lots of chances for MMing, the more shields we have to shuffle around the bigger the MM gain.

At a glance, Karakorum and LMin could both get their settlers in 3, Zentral the library in 3, Cabana switch to market in 4. Lots more to find I reckon.

 

[Methos]

Definitely do some discussing before I play. Hmm, need to look at the game.

 

[CommandoBob]

Settlers
When we grew a settler in Kazan and then abandoned the city, we created a Mongol settler. The Military Advisor counts this settler, SettlerOfKazan, as a captured settler, as you can see below.


So when we build a city with SettlerOfKazan, is the city Mongol or Smurkz? My guess is Mongol. We could add workers to dilute the Mongol influence, but the first citizen would be non-Smurkz.

If we plan to occupy the land of the Celts, it would be a good use of resources to use the settlers of cities we abandon to make any new cities we want in our new lands. But since these will be Mongol, Ottoman and Carthage settlers do we hurt our cause by creating oversea cities with these units? My guess in most likely not; it is the likely part that worries me.

City Flips

We have some cities that could possibly flip in the near future, as shown below:


We can prevent SteinSmurkz and Istanbul from flipping by rushing libraries, so they are not real threats.

I am concerned about Oy Deer! and Indianaposmurkz flipping to India. While this is unlikely (1 chance in 400 and 1 chance in 800, respectively), if a city were to flip, how does this change our plans?

India's Gifted City
Which city are we going to gift to India in 750 AD? I have just assumed it would be Grad, but we can only let India capture that city. As AlanH said in the maintenace thread, Post #37:

If you reach the Modern Era and India has not made any attempts to leave their island you may then make peace with India once only, give them one city and declare war on them again in the same turn. The city you give must not contain any Great Wonders, and should be near to the Indian lake. Between making peace and redeclaring war you must not carry out any other diplomatic actions, including trades with any civ, building embassies or investigating cities.

And later modified, in Post #45:

In order to try to level their playing field, the Classic teams may time their peace/gift/redeclaration for any turn from 750 AD onwards. Only the timing changes. All other conditions of the deal remain as described previously.

We could gift Oy Deer or Indianaposmurkz and then pull our troops out of our southern core, which would let India walk in unopposed.

 

[Methos]

Unless I'm reading your chart wrong every one of those cities have less than a 1% chance of flipping. The two cities you indicate both have less than a quarter of a percent of flipping. IMO that isn't much of a flip risk at all.

 

[WarDance]

Settlers
When we grew a settler in Kazan and then abandoned the city, we created a Mongol settler. The Military Advisor counts this settler, SettlerOfKazan, as a captured settler, as you can see below.
So when we build a city with SettlerOfKazan, is the city Mongol or Smurkz? My guess is Mongol. We could add workers to dilute the Mongol influence, but the first citizen would be non-Smurkz.

You are correct, the first citizen will be Mongol. However the Mongols only have one town at this point and their culture is practically non-existent so it really won't matter how we use the settler. It's not going to flip or anything like that. Sure that one citizen might get irritated when we are once again at war with the Mongols, but it's really not going to be an issue.

As for the next turns I think 2 of the important goals are to gear up our 2 wonder towns for Copernicus and Sistine Chapel. 3rd... plan our overseas invasion.

 

[Niklas]

As WD brought up some time ago, when Gandhi captures our towns all improvements that he doesn't have the required techs for will be destroyed (as well as the cultural ones of course). This means that if we want to help him as much as possible with improvement building, we want him to have all those techs up to Industrialization before he captures our core. In other words, we want him to take the Great Library the first thing he does.

We cannot give him Grad itself as CB pointed out. My vote for the gifted town would be Indianaposmurkz, for two reasons. First, it is a town with small potential, so it's not a big deal if we don't build any improvements there. Second, Grad is close by, with a strong garrison in Albu we should be able to lure Gandhi towards Grad before letting him loose completely, to make sure he has the techs he needs.

I doubt any town would flip, but if that was to happen then no big deal. The worst thing that could happen is that we'll need to do some fighting to keep Gandhi back until we're ready to give him the Great Library.


WD is right, I'd almost forgotten about those wonders. The most important things to consider for the upcoming turnset(s) is wonder building and the off-shore invasion. I'll try to have a look at these things later during the day.

 

[ControlFreak]

Holy Cow the Celts have caved fast! Maybe bringing Spain in against them wasn't the best idea. We're actually going to struggle to keep them alive long enough to settle for peace!

I think we need to capture Entremont with the current invasion force. The we get to keep the extra luxury anyway and keep it out of the AI hands. We may not have enough forces to muster an attack on the remaining towns until America and Spain have claimed them. With Spain claiming Mohacs the best unit we could rush in Entremont would be a warrior until the iron gets connected. It still might be worth it to have flip suppressors while the healed attack group tries to get to Augustodurum.

Once we take Entremont, their capitol should go to Richborough and they will not be able to make anything but archers and spears. Getting troops to Augustodurm would be more of an effort to protect it from elimination than to capture it. We are not in a position to continue a war. We're building infrastructure in all but 1 town (Nan). We won't build units until markets and possibly universities are built.

We'd get Edu in 11 turns, so we'd need to delay HotB for one turn, but that's the only thing it will matter to us.

No need to slow it down. We can trade for Monothesism anytime and the cathedral will be 3-4 extra turns of prebuild.

Education is in 11 turns but Astronomy is in 15 and Copernicus' Observatory is 20 turns for Sages if it starts right now. I think we should go for it now and then rush the university right after. That way we can start the prebuild for Newtons. Sages doesn't need a harbor because it has plenty of tiles on the river that it can work for now. It still needs to be sheild heavy until Newtons is finished.

At a glance, Karakorum and LMin could both get their settlers in 3, Zentral the library in 3, Cabana switch to market in 4. Lots more to find I reckon.

Zentral should go for library in 3 but set it to grow in two using a plains instead of a hill (6fpt,13spt x 3 = 39/40sheilds) and the shields on growth will get the library in 3.

Others:

• Missismurki doesn't need an entertainer
• Ismurkz could possibly rush the aquaduct since it's wasting food including the cow and needs to grow to use all the incense tiles.
• Switching Kalmurkz to a jungle dye will stop it from growing further (no more usable tiles. That lets River give a tile to Food. Food should be working the coastlins and needs to give a FP to Albu. Albu needs to use the FPs and not the forests to get back to 2-turn workers without losing pop points
• There's more but I'm out of time for now...

5-Year old daughter wants to add a smilie

 

[Niklas]

Holy Cow the Celts have caved fast! Maybe bringing Spain in against them wasn't the best idea. We're actually going to struggle to keep them alive long enough to settle for peace!

This is true enough . I guess we should plan to gift them a town on our home continent once we can sign peace, to get them out of harm's way if Spain and/or America doesn't want peace as well. If worst comes to worst, we may have to break our MA's to keep the Celts alive. Not very nice, but better than the alternative.

We won't build units until markets and possibly universities are built.

Markets yes, but I don't think we can wait for unis. We want to be ready to move the FP to the other side come early IA, so I feel we must start invading now. In particular considering that the only way to get the FP over there is with a leader, so we may have to fight a slow war in order to do some leader fishing.

I agree we should capture and hold Entremont as fast as we can. But I also think we should have units waiting to board back home when the ships return. My thought is that we should leave the Celts be after taking Entremont, wait until the MA's run out and we have more troops around, and then attack America. We will want Maces to do this job, and we will want a barracks with iron in Entremont to upgrade the troops that are already there. I'm thinking we could build/rush a worker in Entremont and have it build a colony on the iron.

Education is in 11 turns but Astronomy is in 15 and Copernicus' Observatory is 20 turns for Sages if it starts right now. I think we should go for it now and then rush the university right after. That way we can start the prebuild for Newtons. Sages doesn't need a harbor because it has plenty of tiles on the river that it can work for now. It still needs to be sheild heavy until Newtons is finished.

I agree with all the strategies you outline here, but how do you make it 20 turns? With some rapid growth, I reckon Sages could have Copernicus in 30 at the very earliest (~10 turns at ~10 spt, ~20 turns at ~15 spt).

Missi has lots of building potential, but there's still far too many irrigated tiles around there. We should mine practically all the plains around there.

 

[ControlFreak]

I agree with all the strategies you outline here, but how do you make it 20 turns? With some rapid growth, I reckon Sages could have Copernicus in 30 at the very earliest (~10 turns at ~10 spt, ~20 turns at ~15 spt).

Typo! I meant 30. Although, I think it's possible in less than 30 if we want to join some workers. We really need two or even three worker farms going right now.

 

[ControlFreak]

Markets yes, but I don't think we can wait for unis. We want to be ready to move the FP to the other side come early IA, so I feel we must start invading now. In particular considering that the only way to get the FP over there is with a leader, so we may have to fight a slow war in order to do some leader fishing.

We have a lot of towns so we can handle doing a little of both. We should prioritize Unis in the >16bpt towns. All of these 5 towns are making >10spt and >19bpt. One of them is Sages which will of course do Cop's first and then the Uni.

Sorting by BPT in decending order:

• Olive is at 16spt, building an aquaduct. I think a harbor would be better since it's destined to be a fishing village, giving all of it's mined grassland to the inland towns. An since that's not necessary right now either, it should go on unit or galley production.
• Cabana and Food are next. When their library finishes, they will be making way more than 16spt but their sheild production is poor and will take a while to finish their market. When their market is done, we will assess if they are needed for units or not and then build unis if units are not needed.
• Grad is actually a >16spt but hasn't had time to build it's library yet because of the GL build. I think it should build the market first and then the library so it can grow a little more and maybe make it to 20spt. Since we're going to give it away, it might be better to just build units after the market instead of library/uni.
• Ismurkz is next and as state before does need the aquaduct ASAP. It then needs a market and can be a unit builder after that for a while (barracks first).
• Smurkzadelphia is at max size without an aquaduct and doesn't need the market for happiness yet. I think it should go on unit building immediately since it already has a barrack.
• Vlad could finish an aquaduct since it has so much surplus food and space to grow. It will need a market right after but is not the best science city and can build units first before the uni again, barrack first.
• Albus is a 2 turn worker factory.
• The next 5 cities are building librarys and markets. You could chose to bag the librarys in all of the southern cities go switch to barracks/units since India will probably destroy the southern libraries soon. If you prefer markets first, that's fine because they should stay when india takes over BUT it's going to take these towns a while to build markets and they may not get to anything else.
• Oy Deer can grow every two turns but needs help to get 10s every two turns now that it's corrupt. I would settle for workers every three turns here wasting a turn's growth. Make sure the town uses enough coastal tiles to minimize the wasted food.
• Nan's last earned shield is corrupt and can switch one of it's BG for a regular mined grass to move the shield to Heim.
• Indianapol' library falls into the catagory of bad timing and should probably just help with unit production. The others in this part of the list are needed for culture not beakers.
• Cape smurkz should probably just do workers every ten turns until the jungle clears. I think this will be an Indian city as well.
• Tromsmurkz can also make workers after it's harbor since it can do it every 5 turns until the jungle clears a bit, then a library would be called for.

The rest of the list except Sabratha seems OK. Sabratha could build a galley or a library unless we were planning on moving it. Since it's not important to move it now, I would vote for the galley.

Speaking of which, there is a western, southern route from Smurkastle, that would help in a two pronged attack on America.

The red dots are ocean squares. The purple dots are safe squares along the galley route. I missed two red dots on the west, but to jump from green dot to green dot, the galley would need to go through the oceans between western purple dots.

I think we would need four more galleys on the western ocean and then we can send units via both routes, 10 at a time. America is looking to be a roll over without iron hooked up. Send a horse from Entremont immediately to prevent America from connecting the iron.

Five more galleys via the northern route mapped earlier would crush America quickly and help start on Spain. That's a longer timeframe though.

I also noticed some potential prisons in the fog. We would need to settle them of course. It should be done soon to give the Celts an exit strategy.

Tundra South of America:


One tile island West of America:

 

[Methos]

I’d like to be honest with you all, and that is I’m really having trouble staying interested in any of my CivIII games. I can’t seem to stay focused on any of them and tend to either ask for skips when my turn comes around or put them off until the last minute. Other than this SG I’m only in two other CivIII games. I do not feel this way towards my CivIV games, just CivIII.

Currently I can’t even bring myself to makes plans for my turn set. I would like to see this game through but feel that to do so would hinder the team. This game requires focus and planning and I can’t get myself to do either. If you all don’t mind I think I’m going to withdraw from the team rather than hinder it. My sincerest apologies to everyone.

I just don't want you to feel like you're not playing anymore, your just executing line-by-line orders like a computer program.

When I read this it really hit me hard, as this is how I am currently playing. Please note that it is due to my part, not by you all. In all honesty I have been waiting and hoping that someone would post a detailed list of what I should do during my turn set. This isn’t playing at all, nor would I even be involving myself as a team member.

I believe it was ControlFreak’s above statement that finally made me realize just how inactive I have become. Don’t take that wrong CF, this is something I probably should have done a month or two ago. You just merely helped me see it.

Again, my apologies. I feel it would be best for the team for me to withdraw than continue by forcing myself. Good luck everyone, and I’ll continue lurking to see how it turns out.

When/If you all ever start playing CivIV and they start up a SGOTM competition there, I'd be happy to play. It was fun, and good luck!

 

[Niklas]

Too bad to see you go Methos, but I admire your courage to stand up and speak your mind. I know the feeling (though not regarding CivIII games, never ), so while I certainly do mind seeing you go, I have no problem respecting your decision.

I'm not ready to see you off completely though. While I realize it's probably to no avail, with cIV pulling your mind elsewhere , I'll ask you to stick around and join the discussion now and then. No pressure, no turns to play, but neither "just lurking". After all, if we manage to grab another laurel, your name will be on it.

@WD: You didn't get CivIV for Xmas I hope...?

Roster:

• WarDance
• CommandoBob - Just Played
• zyxy - away until Jan 4th
• ControlFreak - UP!
• Niklas - On Deck!
• Methos - ghosting

CF, how does it look, will you be able to play?

 

[Methos]

Thanks, and I'd be glad to join the discussion on occaision.