SGOTM 9 - Smurkz

[ControlFreak]

I would rather use Barcelona as this single city. Or raze Barcelona, found a new town and put colonies on the resources. We are very close to the domination limit, and there is a small culture expansion next turn I believe.

I think Barcelona is too far from the ocean to use the ship chain strategy I suggested. As Niklas states, as we give territory to India, we can slowly add Ostrich to our territory.

The slaves can go to Ostrich to rail for accessiblity. The spanish will be gone in 5 turns. They they should move to Tad to do as Niklas stated, prepare for the FP.

I would rather prevent having to switch Proxies in midstream. The more proxies, the more civs that India is at war with which I think makes peace more expensive for them. Plus, we're going to want to eliminate most proxies once they've donated enough cities to reduce India's war weariness. Try to prevent landings where ever possible. I would think most of our cities could make privateers in a couple of turns, or in one turn with a shortrush.

On an administrative note, I am travelling (vacation to San Juan!) next Thursday through Sunday. If Niklas and CB take until Thursday, I'll need a skip or swap.

 

[zyxy]

[*]What have been the general level of defense in Spanish towns? Two rifles or more? Any outdated units still in play?

About 2-3 rifles and 1-2 older units I guess. The stacks at Barca and Salamanca should really be big enough to take those cities. Spain launched a counter attack last turn: longbows, MDI, rifles. They are mostly dead now...

Like CF asked, what to do with the slaves in the ships? I see no reason to ship them to Smurkz, should I take them to Tadpole instead? That's where I think they could be useful, to quickly mine lots of tiles after we've moved the FP.

There was no plan, but your plan sounds good . In addition, you may want to shred some tanks and perhaps other stuff (arty? we don't really need a lot of it) to get some market/library builds going. When to move the FP is the big question. Will India reach Beard within 16 turns? Probably yes. Then moving during the GA may be an option, because we'll have some spare gpt then. Cashrush libs and make sure we have enough pop in Tadpole to make it pay off. I don't know what is best here, really.

Any Spanish ships I should be aware of?

Some in Barca I think. Some sailed east after dropping units near Istanbul, they will probably be healing in western spain.

AFAICT the next cultural expansion that would bring in more tiles in our area is Entremont in 25 turns. There are no other towns on Tadpole that have any culture, and on Smurkz the only domination-sensitive tiles are in the icy north (with no culture), near Carthage (2 that will come in 62 turns) and near towns that will be Indian before we need to worry. Please tell me if I've missed anything here.

Hold'em? Mapstat warns you about culture expansions, and lists them in turn order.

 

[Niklas]

Not So Long term

Get India to build Apollo and a spaceship asap:

• Tech Elevator: Keep India backward. Let India take the GLib city when we have all techs necessary for the space ship. On the same turn, gift all techs to (some AI) Ottomans. ETA 17 turns.
• Indian Empire: Gift India our southern core. This will be done partly before, and partly after the Tech Elevator, and will start right away.
  In this process, all cultural improvements and ~half of the other city improvements will be destroyed. ETA now.
• Rivals: Ottomans will stay alive as tech proxy with the GLib. All other civs are to stay alive to act as proxies if needed, and possibly to do some research (of optional Middle Age techs). (One AI) Carthage should be gifted up to Rocketry and given two sources of Alu in order to trade them to India. ETA 17 turns.

Short term

• Gift India Ville, Kastle, Oe-hah, Mo and Kristiansund via proxy. In my turnset I'll probably not reach Kristiansund, but the other four should be doable. I will use Mongols for the purpose.
• Research: Ecology (1), Synthetic Fibres (4), Nuclear Power (4), The Laser (1). The last 3 of these are expensive while the other remaining SS tech (Satellites) is cheap, and we should get the expensive ones with the help of the GA.
• Remove Spanish presence on Ostrich. Keep Barcelona, raze everything else. Resettle slowly to stay below domination limit.
• Rule the seas. Build a few more pirate ships and destroyers.
• Possibly block the outer coastline of Ostrich, primarily with slaves.
• Start improving Tadpole. Send workers there to be ready to mine tiles after the FP goes there (Chicago? Squeeze?). When Spain is on the run, start disbanding artillery and tanks and cash rush libs, markets, possibly also courts and aqueducts in some places.

Did I miss anything?

 

[ControlFreak]

You covered everything I can think of.

And you made it sound so easy! Good luck!

 

[zyxy]

Looks good to me. Just some details/thinking points:

(One AI) Carthage should be gifted up to Rocketry and given two sources of Alu in order to trade them to India. ETA 17 turns.

Could also use Otto's or Spain for this, as they are the most advanced already. Doesn't really matter anyway.

We'll probably get Communism from Spain in peace. Are we prepared to let India have Nationalism and Communism? If not, then we would have to kill Spain and Otto's before India gets the GLib, and gift up another civ than Otto's for the GLib to work.
We are not going to keep India from these techs for long anyway, so again it probably matters little. I just don't like them to start drafting rifles and switching to Commie.

Btw, maybe upgrade some infantry?

 

[ControlFreak]

Btw, maybe upgrade some infantry?

Too bad SOMEBODY razed Leos.

 

[zyxy]

Too bad SOMEBODY razed Leos.

I know nothing.

 

[Niklas]

I've played all of one turn today. I probably added about 15 hours of playtime though, I had the game running on the computer all day hoping I would get the time to do something...

Oh well, be on it tomorrow. Nothing out of the ordinary to report so far.

 

[Niklas]

I'll continue playing later today, but first a few quick notes to answer some comments:

• I would not upgrade any infantry at this point. There is no threat against us, and we have a bunch of towns on Smurkz that have nothing useful to build. I would rather build MInfs there, and ship the outdated Infs to Tadpole for disbanding.
• The reason I chose Carthage for trading duty is that they have a trade route to their capitol already, through us. Spain will possibly be reduced to a capitol with no harbor, and Ottos have no harbor or airport at this point.
• I think the costs outweigh the gains of keeping India from Communism and Nationalism.
• Barcelona had Sun Tzu. Good to know that we'll have barracks on Ostrich.

 

[zyxy]

The reason I chose Carthage for trading duty is that they have a trade route to their capitol already, through us. Spain will possibly be reduced to a capitol with no harbor, and Ottos have no harbor or airport at this point.

You can always knock out the old capitol of the Alu Trader... Anyway, it all matters very little.

 

[ControlFreak]

The reason I chose Carthage for trading duty is that they have a trade route to their capitol already, through us. Spain will possibly be reduced to a capitol with no harbor, and Ottos have no harbor or airport at this point.

I agree this is a good reason, plus they have silks that we want India to buy.

Don't forget we're going to greatly increase the wall once Deer/Nan start becoming India. That's going to take a little preparation.

 

[Niklas]

I've only managed to play 5 turns so far, but things are speeding up a bit so I should be able to do 5 more tomorrow. Here's the deal so far:

• Spain is off Ostrich. What to do now, settle for peace? They will give their two remaining non-capitol towns for peace, but not Communism.
• Mongols backstabbed us as CF predicted. I used them as proxy for two towns first, then had to switch. I chose Celts since they are probably the easiest to kill off when we need to do that.
• India is up to Mo already, Kristiansund seems certain in my turnset and I could let them approach Nan and Oy as well, should I?
• I need some help with the ships, I realize I have a week spot here. What to do with them all?

Save attached.

 

[ControlFreak]

Silly Mongols. Do they still serve a purpose, or can we eliminate them and start trading resources/luxuries with the Ottomans by building a harbor in the Mongol Capitol. (Can the domination limit handle that?)

I think the American's are the next AI to get uppity. I expect a back stab from them anytime.

As far as the boats:

• Chains are still important to move units from Smurkz to Tad for disbanding.
• Slaves to Ostrich once Tad is improved for railing/landing prevention. If you rail the perimeter, you can move a group of units to block landings until all tiles are filled.
• The three destroyers and carrier can block the NW entrance to the Channel. Two destroyers can block the SE entrance. That covers one side of Ostrich. The others will need to be covered by units until the other AI are eliminated or land locked. (like whoever we leave emprisoned in Sing Sing).
• Some support to our island towns are warranted to prevent backstabs in the future. (The Mongol Backstab is relatively painless, but I don't want our Aluminum trader to lose his rep by attacking us in some false sense of opportunity.)
• Battleships are good for disbanding in coastal towns to speed improvements.

 

[Niklas]

Alright, here's what I'll do.
I'm going to kill off the Mongols to help Gandhi with riot control and to get a hold on the MO island. I will capture Ulaanbataar and build a harbor, we can possibly gift it to Osman later on.

I'm also going to make peace with Spain right away, taking their two remaining towns in the deal. We are currenty 73 tiles below domination, so we have some slack to work with. Later in the game we can consider razing them or giving them away.

I'm going to let India keep taking towns from us/Brennus, up to the new wall near Heim. After all we're very close to the point where we should give up the Great Library so I see no reason to hold anything back.

 

[ControlFreak]

I've only managed to play 5 turns so far, but things are speeding up a bit so I should be able to do 5 more tomorrow. Here's the deal so far:

• Spain is off Ostrich. What to do now, settle for peace? They will give their two remaining non-capitol towns for peace, but not Communism.
• Mongols backstabbed us as CF predicted. I used them as proxy for two towns first, then had to switch. I chose Celts since they are probably the easiest to kill off when we need to do that.
• India is up to Mo already, Kristiansund seems certain in my turnset and I could let them approach Nan and Oy as well, should I?
• I need some help with the ships, I realize I have a week spot here. What to do with them all?

Looks like I will definitely need a swap or skip at this rate, unless people are OK waiting for me to play until next Tuesday. I don't want to rush CB through his turnset again.

Comments on the other questions.
Will sPain give us Communism without the two towns? I don't really feel strongly one way or the other about peace or war. If it's not hurting us to stay at war, I would work to capture her remaining towns leaving her on one of the islands, probably Vitoria or Sandander(? the one W of ostrich). At that point, if she still won't give up communism, we can wait for the GL handoff. The price should go down when India gets it too. Not that we need it for anything except maybe police stations.

I would like India to get at least one more city, preferably Deer, so they can start their Forbidden Palace. If the OCN is higher than 8, or the Dehli doesn't count toward the cities needed for the FP, then I would give them Nan as well. If our research can handle the loss, I would give them Heim too so they can increase their happiness. Like I said before though, we're going to need enough troops to continue the wall across the continent. Don't let them past Kristiansund (out of the 1 tile wide Atoll) until we're ready for that level of containment.

EDIT cross posted. I agree with the strategy and didn't look to see the extent of the new wall near Heim. I'll check out the save later today. (after checkout, Nice Job on the wall. Those MI are a thing of beauty!)

EDIT 2: (Trying to avoid the double post.)
I started looking at the spaceship parts and their required resources. Appearantly only the fuel cells require uranium, and they don't require aluminum. Only the exterior casing requires rubber, and requires aluminum as well. All other 8 parts require only Aluminum.

The tactical and ICBM nukes require both uranium AND aluminum. So we can guarentee that we don't face nukes by making sure that Aluminum and Uranium are never available at the same time. To do this, I think we need TWO traders, one for Uranium and one for Aluminum. We would setup the Uranium trader to trade with India as soon as the Apollo is built. Then when the Fuel Cells are complete, we destroy that trader so India no longer gets Uranium. The additional trader would be required for Aluminum because we'd probably trash the Uranium Trader's rep once we cutoff the Uranium supply to India. Better to just get rid of them and startup the Aluminum trade separately. Destroying the Uranium trader would ensure that the Uranium trader didn't trade with the Aluminum trader and they could both make nukes. Since Carthage is currently setup to trade with India, I would let them be the uranium trader. We need to get the Ottomans ready to be the Aluminum trader. The celts, america and spain will all act as city proxies and act as potential backup traders (unless they have a broken rep?).

With the nukes off the table, the only annoying bombard unit available for India will be the Cruise missle. I've never used those before so I had to do some play testing. They work the same way artillery works, bombard any tile within 4 squares in any direction (a 9x9 square). The increased rate of fire means they can take up to 4 HP from the top unit. They have lethal bombard so it can eliminate any unit within 4 tiles. That means we need to increase our wall strength to cover the number of Cruise missles that India can produce in a turn. We also want that many units in cities within the bombard range to protect the city improvements if it works like that. Otherwise, I don't think crusie missles pose much of a threat. I don't know if Radar Towers/Civil Defense help prevent or limit Cruise Missle damage.

 

[zyxy]

In case you haven't continued yet: we can use a prebuild for CIA maybe?

CF: nice idea on the Uranium trade. But there seems to be a period that India will have both resources. That is still no problem if India at least starts the Fuel Cells before finishing Manhattan.

Btw, why do you want to do the Uranium trade early? Why not at the end?

 

[ControlFreak]

CF: nice idea on the Uranium trade. But there seems to be a period that India will have both resources. That is still no problem if India at least starts the Fuel Cells before finishing Manhattan.

Btw, why do you want to do the Uranium trade early? Why not at the end?

I was thinking that if we do the Uranium first, the only SS part India can build is the fuel cells. We would wait for them to finish that one part, then destroy their uranium supply and THEN give them aluminum. That way 1) there would be no overlap 2) We would only wait for 1 part to finish before switching to the next phase, EDIT: 3) Delays their building of Cruise Missles.


Doing it the other way, we would have to wait for 8 parts which if India only uses one city to build it, would delay the time we would need to keep the extra trader alive.

There would be a problem with this strategy if Aluminum is required to build the Apollo. I didn't think it was required. EDIT: I see now that Apollo does require aluminum. I guess we hold off on Uranium until later, and deal with the Cruise Missles.

You bring up a good point with the phrase "at least starts the Fuel Cells". If we want to take the risk of cutting the uranium supply as soon as the Fuel cells are started, we could give them aluminium earlier. The risk is that they switch builds and can't go back to the Fuel Cells after uranium is removed. How are we going to know when and where they start the Fuel Cell? (I don't space race very often.) If no one knows espionage in 12 turns, I'm guessing that's our next research after the Laser, so the CIA Prebuild should finish 16 turns from now at the latest.

EDIT: OMT - Since Cruise Missles are Flight units, I think building SAM's in the cities within range does help limit the impact that Cruise Missles have. Building these improvements won't take too long, and we don't care if India inherits them.

 

[Niklas]

Preflight (0):
Switch Cherry and Orange Popsicles to harbor. The first to give to Carthage, the second simply as a backup in case something goes sour.

Sign MA vs India with Mongols. Gift Ville to the Khan.

Hire loads of taxmen, Ecology well inside the limits of 1 turn (81 beakers).

IBT:
Lincoln wants us to move out from St Louis.

Indians pillage a mountain tile. Twice. Then they capture Ville, retaining the harbor, and move on towards Oe-hah.

We research Ecology, start SF.

1345 AD (1):
Capture Barcelona with Sun Tzu. Stupidly raze Salamanca, sure I got five slaves but if I had kept it I could have hit Santiago this turn. Oh well, we're in no hurry I guess.

Keep science at 50% with lots of scientists, need 1867 bpt and I now have 1842 reported by CAII, but that count seems a tad optimistic. No room for commerce MMing, so science to 60% and set all the specialists to taxmen again.

IBT:
Mongols are indeed getting frisky, they unload a spear and an archer near Istanbul.
India moves where we want them to.

1350 AD (2):
Raze Santiago. Kill two Spanish frigates and sink an ironclad healing in Santiago. Advance on Valencia.
Purple Pirates sink an American galley.

Gift Kastle to the Khan. Join a Mongol worker to Oe-hah to make sure it will be pop 7+ when captured. We are now 43 tiles from domination.
Wall in the mongol troops by Istanbul. Don't want to throw them out since I want the ROP for our sake. Don't want them to go messing with India either.

Rush harbor in Barcelona to get coal and iron to Ostrich, and gems and furs to the rest of our empire.

Stay at 60% science one more turn, will go down to 50% on the next.

IBT:
Celts and Spain, then America and Spain, sign trade embargo against us. Scary.
Lincoln wants to talk. He wants ROP and MPP and 28 gpt. I accept.

Not.

An Ottoman galley tries to kill some purple pirates and fails.

Mongols declare on us.
Archer actually takes a hp from an inf, spear is predictable and pillages rail.
So much for that proxy, guess they didn't want to play our game any more.

India doesn't care, they still capture Kastle from the Khan.

Barcelona builds harbor and our empire celebrates!

1355 AD (3):
Kill Mongol interlopers and bomb a few ships.
Hmm, need a new proxy. Celts or America, America or Celts. Settle for Celts, they are easier to get rid of afterwards.
MA vs India with Celts for 113 gp. Gift Oe-hah to Brennus. Sign ROP as well, and lo and behold, he actually goes up to Annoyed!

Sci to 50%, hire scientists up to exactly 2 turns. Will cover for pollution later.

IBT:
India captures Oe-hah from Celts.
Gah, a barbie warrior(!) shows up and kills 5 spanish slaves on Ostrich.

Rebuff Sing-Sing.

1360 AD (4):
Raze Santiago. Advance on the last Ostrich town, Zaragoza.
Make sure there are no foggy tiles for barbies to appear in.
Gift Mo to Brennus.

IBT:
India captures Mo from Celts. Harbor is spared, so now India can trade with the outside.
We learn Synthetic Fibres, start Nuclear Power.

1365 AD (5):
Raze Zaragoza, Spain is off Ostrich. Spanish capitol jumps to Vitoria, which does have a harbor. Might reconsider Alu trading partner after all.

Peace with Spain for Logorno and Santander and some gp.

Start disbanding stuff on Tadpole.

Sci to 60% again.

IBT:
Rebuff Sing-Sing. Sigh.

1370 AD (6):
Capture Ulaanbataar, Mongols are out. Rush harbor by disbanding.

India has gotten Feudalism. Certainly no worries for Education. Ottos have Communism, which means India will get that via GLib.

IBT:
India advances on Kristiansund.

1375 AD (7):
Kastle or Ville has a working factory, since there is pollution between them. Move in workers to help out.

Keep rushing stuff on Tadpole.
Gift Kristiansund to Brennus.

Sci to 50%.

IBT:
India captures Kristiansund from Brennus.

1380 AD (8):
Keep rushing stuff, build a few towns on Ostrich.

IBT:
Indian archer advances towards Oy.
We learn Nuclear Power, continue on The Laser.

1385 AD (9):
Don't have time to play more, so I'll have to hand off here. Clear some pollution to spare the next player.

Some hand off notes:

• I've been building bombers in Smurkz, they are easy to move to Tadpole and disband (just rebase). It's not quite as shield-efficient as ship-chaining troops over, but much more RL-efficient...
• Mind the Indian archer advancing on Oy and Nan. We should choose which of these we want him to capture and block off the path to the other.
• GA will not last much longer. I would suggest running one turn research at a higher rate than necessary, maybe 90%, to get a slack when the GA runs out.
• We are 33 tiles below domination, and I've built a few libraries on Tadpole. They should not bring in more than a few tiles, but be wary.

EDIT: Oh, and you might be interested in >>The Save<<

EDIT2: CB is up next. Unless you want to let CF go first since he's off travelling. Your choice.

 

[Niklas]

I think CF misses the fact that Apollo requires Aluminum. If that was not the case I would agree on Uranium before Alu, but as it is we should get the Alu first. The idea with two different traders is a good one though, I would sure like to avoid ICBMs...

 

[CommandoBob]

EDIT2: CB is up next. Unless you want to let CF go first since he's off travelling. Your choice.

Mid-week is a busy time for me, Wednesday's being a very long day (leave the house at 5am and get home after 9pm), so swapping is OK with me.

ControlFreak, are you ready for turns?