SGOTM 9 - Smurkz

[zyxy]

Now I've read it. nice play CF!

I do not know how to check for India's progress on Apollo except by checking all cities. I'm also not sure how this rule is supposed to be interpreted. E.g., is it ok if we check let's say every 10 turns, but keep a save for every turn, and then go back to see which turn India actually built Apollo? Otherwise we'll need to keep track of how fast these cities build, and when we checked them last time.

We may want to trigger India's GA soon. We cannot build weak units anymore, but we still have a few MDI to sacrifice against an Elephant.

This might be a good turn to transfer money to India, as they are poised to take 2 cities, and so they'll get half of the cash. I agree about accepting SignSing as soon as it flips, but please gift it away asap so that our RCP stays intact. Also, it might be good to upgrade/build a few Modern Armor on Tadpole so that we can reach Gergovia from our land in one turn.

Research has become rather irrelevant now. What do we need/want besides SDI? Nothing I guess. So just this one tech, and then shut it off.

 

[ControlFreak]

I never saw any elephants.

Hospitals might be nice if war weariness isn't too bad.

Have fun, I'm off to pack.

 

[AlanH]

I had to attach the file to this post. There's an error on the submissions page that says I can't log in to the FTP server. AlanH Help!?!?
View attachment 117263

I've fixed it, so you can upload CF's save any time you want. See the Maintenance thread. Apologies for the inconvenience.

 

[ControlFreak]

Thanks AlanH!

I've uploaded the game to the Submission page.

I also woke up with the answer to a nagging question.

On the last turn, I tried to use the ship chain to bring some workers back to Smurkz to finish some pollution control. The boat fell 1 tile short. Since I had rearranged the shipchain I miscalculated and just not used the chain until then.

What actually happened is that we lost Magellans. Transports went from move 13 to move 12. I had enough unit movement to shift the Transfer cover destroyer and the two unused Transfer transports to a new spot closer to Point. Please check that the new transfer point reaches both Verulumium and Point, then return the labeled transports to their home ports. Veru-Transfer goes to Veralumium. Point-Transfer goes to Point. Transfer goes to Transfer Cover Destroyer in the sea.

I leave for the airport in 5 min. Enjoy your weekend, I will.

EDIT: The culture graph is impressive. Looks like we're the first to start giving away cities too, but it's a close race.

 

[Niklas]

Alright, time to get back down from the clouds and get our hands dirty again.

Roster:

• WarDance - On Deck!
• zyxy
• Niklas
• CommandoBob - UP!
• ControlFreak - Just Played
• Methos - ghosting

On a different note, I will be going on vacation from March 7th to March 21st inclusive, with no internet access. That's a bit less than two weeks until I leave, could we get India to build Apollo before then?

 

[CommandoBob]

I do not know how to check for India's progress on Apollo except by checking all cities. I'm also not sure how this rule is supposed to be interpreted. E.g., is it ok if we check let's say every 10 turns, but keep a save for every turn, and then go back to see which turn India actually built Apollo? Otherwise we'll need to keep track of how fast these cities build, and when we checked them last time.

I've not used spies very much. Would we need a spy in each city for Apollo checking? I remember that they cost gold to place them, but do we pay gold when we want to use them? As I said, this is not something I have done a lot of.

If we knew which city had the AP, I think we would want to check it each turn. And screenshot it. I feel strange about examining save games looking for a Victory Condition.

Now in CivAssistII, IIRC, on the city tab, it will tell when an improvement was built, so it seems that something in the save keeps track of this. If it (the save) does that for us, it could do it for the other civs as well. CivAssist is designed to be spoiler-free, so this does not help us directly. MapStat can reveal spoiler information (somehow, I haven't tried yet), but I don't think it tracks this kind of detail in the same way CAII does.

So while we can rely on AlanH to tell us if and when Gandhi builds the Apollo Program, it would be much better if we could tell him.

 

[zyxy]

I've not used spies very much. Would we need a spy in each city for Apollo checking? I remember that they cost gold to place them, but do we pay gold when we want to use them? As I said, this is not something I have done a lot of.

Yes, we would have to check every town, and each investigation will cost money. But we do not have to do this every turn of course. In fact, we could keep track of the production speeds of the towns, and that should tell us how often to check.

If we knew which city had the AP, I think we would want to check it each turn. And screenshot it. I feel strange about examining save games looking for a Victory Condition.

Now in CivAssistII, IIRC, on the city tab, it will tell when an improvement was built, so it seems that something in the save keeps track of this. If it (the save) does that for us, it could do it for the other civs as well. CivAssist is designed to be spoiler-free, so this does not help us directly. MapStat can reveal spoiler information (somehow, I haven't tried yet), but I don't think it tracks this kind of detail in the same way CAII does.

So while we can rely on AlanH to tell us if and when Gandhi builds the Apollo Program, it would be much better if we could tell him.

The save will surely have information on where the Apollo is being built, but I am pretty certain that the spoiler info of MapStat or any other program is off limits, so please don't try it for this game. I'll PM AlanH for clarification on checking saves in retrospect.

 

[Niklas]

I've not used spies very much. Would we need a spy in each city for Apollo checking? I remember that they cost gold to place them, but do we pay gold when we want to use them? As I said, this is not something I have done a lot of.

We don't need a separate spy in each town, no. CF placed a spy with India on his turns, that's all we need.

We don't even need to check towns each turn. As CF hinted, checking the cost of sabotaging production should be enough to tell us if a town could possibly be building something that expensive. When you find a town that has a high cost for sabotage, then check it.

I had a quick look at my saves from my 20k GotM, possibly the only game I've ever built the CIA (or researched Espionage for that matter). It seems to me that sabotaging production costs 10 gp/shield for an immediate sabotage, plus a few extras (sabotaging an empty build costs 4 gp). So looking at our save, I would suspect Delhi (cost 418 gp) to have 41 shields in the bin, and Ville (cost 744) to have 74 shields. When the cost starts exceeding 2200 gp, that's when I would start being interested. Apollo costs 450 shields for India at their 10% discount, the second most expensive thing they could build is a factory or power plant at 216 shields.

 

[CommandoBob]

Long term

1. Send India to the stars.
2. Stay under the Domination Limit, now 47 tiles away.

Short term

• Learn Smart Weapons in 4, learn SDI in 4 or 5 and then stop learning and make money.
  
• Beef up Hold’em, Smurkzala and Smurkzland with Barracks, Civil Defense and SAM. Do the same for Smuez Canal, SmurkzAtroid and Tromsmurkz.
  
• Allow India to capture Oy Deer! directly from us.
  
• Watch India capture New Smurkzheim and Nansmurkzet from the Celts.
• Give Celts some money so that India can have some of it, say about 10,000 gold or so?
  
• Gift Albusmurkze (and oil) to Celts or Spain, possibly as early as the first turn.
• Gift Smurkzadelphia to Celts or Spain, after the city builds a Police Station (1 turn).
• Gift Smurkzcapulco to someone after it finishes its Stock Exchange in three turns.
• Gift House of the Beard to someone around turn five.
• Gift away about one city per turn (as long as India captures one city per turn) until all the land south of the Hold’em-Smuez Canal line is Indian Gray.
  
• Accept Sing-Sing if it flips. If it flips, keep it and eliminate the Celts, but not until all of our cities are gifted. Then declare war on Spain, forcing the Celts to declare war on us. Gift Sing-sing to someone else.
  
• Upgrade some Tanks to MA on Tadpole for a faster strike on the Celts. Currently have one MA near Gergovia. It would use two MPs to get into place to attack. And Gergovia is defended by an rSpear , so no telling how many tanks we will lose to that spear.
  
• If House of the Beard is gifted away, build new FP in Chicago with our Great Leader.
  
• Gift Alcatraz to America, capture St. Louis and force the new capital to be in Thunderfall ? It is size 6 and Alcatraz is size 4.
  
• Feed bombers and modern armor to cities to rush improvements. Build up the cities around Chicago.
  
• If we see Indian Elephants, let some unit allow India to begin her Golden Age.
  
• Keep pollution in check.
  
• Tweak the transports, since the Celts now own Magellan’s Voyage.
  
• Keep tabs on where India might be building the Apollo Program.

Playing Plans
I might be able to start my turns Friday night. I do plan to play on Saturday.
This looks to be a quick turnset. The real action will be watching India expand northward.

 

[zyxy]

Hi AlanH,

I have a question about the victory condition in SGOTM 9: Does the turn that Ghandi completes Apollo count as the final turn, or the turn that we discover that he completed it? IOW, what happens if we didn't check for a few turns and then it turns out he finished it? Are we then allowed to check old saves for the turn of completion, or will your software perhaps extract the correct turn from the final save we submit?

It's just that the spying gets so tedious over time. I don't think the gold cost would be a problem really.

Regards,
zyxy
Team Smurkz

cc Gyathaar

We'll extract the actual date for the purposes of awarding the laurels. I don't have an automated way to do it, but I think we should be able to work it out if you can give us the date of a save where you know it has previously been built by Gandhi, and the name of the city where he built it.

Here's my PM exchange with AlanH (I hope he doesn't mind that I make it public). It sounds like we should be ok if we monitor any Apollo builds reasonably well. E.g., if each player spies on all cities at the start of his set, and then more frequently once the Apollo build is found we probably should be fine.

EDIT: of course what Niklas says sounds like a reasonable plan as well.

 

[zyxy]

[*]Learn Smart Weapons in 4, learn SDI in 4 or 5 and then stop learning and make money.

Isn't that the same tech? Smart Weapons gives access to the SDI Small Wonder IIRC.

[*]Allow India to capture Oy Deer! directly from us.

Why not use a proxy?

[*]Watch India capture New Smurkzheim and Nansmurkzet from the Celts.

[*]Give Celts some money so that India can have some of it, say about 10,000 gold or so?

I suppose you meant first give Celts some money, then watch India capture stuff. The amount looks good to me, it should help India to rushbuild some stuff, perhaps even a War Elephant or 2.

[*]Gift Albusmurkze (and oil) to Celts or Spain, possibly as early as the first turn.

[*]Gift Smurkzadelphia to Celts or Spain, after the city builds a Police Station (1 turn).

[*]Gift Smurkzcapulco to someone after it finishes its Stock Exchange in three turns.

[*]Gift House of the Beard to someone around turn five.

[*]Gift away about one city per turn (as long as India captures one city per turn) until all the land south of the Hold’em-Smuez Canal line is Indian Gray.

I don't quite agree. First, I would keep using one proxy at the time. When Celts make peace with India, there are two options: 1. re-sign an alliance with them, or 2. destroy Celts and go for a new proxy. It will depend on the circumstances what to do I think.
Second, I would gift cities as soon as India has troops next to them, but not sooner, to prevent the proxy from rushing defenders and doing other nasty things. Meaning that the timing you listed should depend on when Indian troops show up.
Third, we may have to start worrying a bit about Elephants, and also Cavalry once India gets the necessary resources (or do they have them already?). These animals are able to strike from a distance. Meaning that ideally you would make sure that India cannot reach empty towns without spending a turn in our lands (to give us time to gift the city to the proxy). At the same time, those troops have to be baited to our towns, either by leaving them open, or by leaving towns behind them open. This will be tricky to pull off...

[*]Accept Sing-Sing if it flips. If it flips, keep it and eliminate the Celts, but not until all of our cities are gifted. Then declare war on Spain, forcing the Celts to declare war on us. Gift Sing-sing to someone else.

With Modern Armor, we can easily eliminate the Celts starting from outside their borders, so the Spanish trick isn't needed. I agree that Celts should be eliminated as soon as we have gifted all cities south of the two chokes, but the flipping of SingSing has nothing to do with it IMO. I agree that we can accept SingSing if it flips to us, and give it to someone else.

[*]Gift Alcatraz to America, capture St. Louis and force the new capital to be in Thunderfall ? It is size 6 and Alcatraz is size 4.

Why?

I agree with all your other points.

 

[Niklas]

Learn Smart Weapons in 4, learn SDI in 4 or 5 and then stop learning and make money.

SDI needs Smart Weapons and Integrated Defense, so CB is on the mark here.

Allow India to capture Oy Deer! directly from us.

No way. Like zyxy said, gift it to a proxy as soon as India has a unit just beside it.

Give Celts some money so that India can have some of it, say about 10,000 gold or so?

Sounds about right. But wait until they no longer have Sing-Sing so that a larger deal of the money goes to India. If they capture 2 of 3 Celt towns they will get 2/3 of the money, if they capture 2/4 they will only get half.

Gift Albusmurkze (and oil) to Celts or Spain, possibly as early as the first turn.

Gift it when India has a unit next to it. We haven't discussed yet what to do with the rubber near Kalmurkz. What to do with it?

Gift Smurkzadelphia to Celts or Spain, after the city builds a Police Station (1 turn).
Gift Smurkzcapulco to someone after it finishes its Stock Exchange in three turns.
Gift House of the Beard to someone around turn five.
Gift away about one city per turn (as long as India captures one city per turn) until all the land south of the Hold’em-Smuez Canal line is Indian Gray.

Celts unless anything out of the ordinary happens. And again, don't gift any town before we know that India can capture it right away. If the Celts get a whole turn in between then they will rush a defender making it harder on India.

Accept Sing-Sing if it flips. If it flips, keep it and eliminate the Celts, but not until all of our cities are gifted. Then declare war on Spain, forcing the Celts to declare war on us. Gift Sing-sing to someone else.

Like zyxy said, no need to bring in Spain. And give away Sing-Sing to someone else right away. And don't give India any money via Celts until we hold Sing-Sing.

Upgrade some Tanks to MA on Tadpole for a faster strike on the Celts. Currently have one MA near Gergovia. It would use two MPs to get into place to attack. And Gergovia is defended by an rSpear , so no telling how many tanks we will lose to that spear.

If House of the Beard is gifted away, build new FP in Chicago with our Great Leader.

Yep. And spend a good while afterwards playing around with citizen placement on tiles for the best yield.

Gift Alcatraz to America, capture St. Louis and force the new capital to be in Thunderfall ? It is size 6 and Alcatraz is size 4.

I assume this is to make sure that America has a capitol with a harbor. Let's just hope he doesn't sell that harbor right away then. I'm a bit unsure about this, I would prefer to wait.

If we see Indian Elephants, let some unit allow India to begin her Golden Age.

And remember that if you see any fast units, be it jumbos, cavs or tanks, you must be faster giving towns away since India can then take two steps to capture.

I cut out a few points in the list, those are just fine.

 

[CommandoBob]

Oy Deer!
I missed or overlooked the discussion on the details of gifting cities. My bad. Oy Deer will go Green on the turn before it goes Gray.

Thunderfall
ControlFreak had mentioned gifting Alcatraz to America and then capturing St. Louis, which would make Alcatraz the new capital. But wouldn't the capital go to Thunderfall, since it is the larger city?

Sing-sing
No cash to the Celts until Sing-sing is ours to give away (again).

Indian dudes on roller skates
Elephants, calvary and tanks mean that India can move more than one tile per turn while in enemy territory. Can make city gifting more interesting.

We haven't discussed yet what to do with the rubber near Kalmurkz.

What do I need to know?

 

[zyxy]

SDI needs Smart Weapons and Integrated Defense, so CB is on the mark here.

Sorry, my bad.

Btw, I think it would be good to research Sanitation before these two. It is cheap, and once we have 5 hospitals built we can build Battlefield Med which will help to keep our troops in India healthy (see below).

Sounds about right. But wait until they no longer have Sing-Sing so that a larger deal of the money goes to India. If they capture 2 of 3 Celt towns they will get 2/3 of the money, if they capture 2/4 they will only get half.
[...] And give away Sing-Sing to someone else right away. And don't give India any money via Celts until we hold Sing-Sing.

I don't quite agree with this. There is no guarantee that SingSing will flip anytime soon. And we cannot take it by force without destroying the alliance and the opportunity to use Celts as a proxy. Also, it is quite difficult to get India to take two or more towns in 1 turn, so getting better rates that the current 2/4 = 1/2 is very uncertain, at least.
Moreover, India getting money now is worth a lot more than India getting money in some distant future. We want them to get the cash so that they can quickly build all improvements and run out of other things to build than units and the Apollo Program. And hope they don't use the cash to build a load of cruise missiles...
Btw, there is very little we can do with this money anyway. Perhaps we should even gift more to Celts (20K?). But then of course they might spend some buying techs . [Or gift the Celts up to prevent that?]
Well it's a bit of on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand, but if it were my game I would give the Celts about 15K or so, in the hope that India gets at least some of it. If Celts buy techs, we can probably get that back by selling techs to the civs that have money.

Resource denial: I would deny India the rubber and oil resources. It will not be funny if India starts bombers or Modern Armor, and I would prevent Indian Infantry while we can. To deny the resources, first move 4 native workers or 8 slaves and some MechInf's (perhaps 6 MechInf, optionally with 1-2 arty as well) on the tile, use the MechInfs to pillage the improvements so that the square no longer has roads, and use the workers to build a fort. Next turn, move out the workers, but keep the MechInfs there to hold the fort. Do all this before the tile is Indian, so that the workers can escape.

At the least I would denial the Oil and Rubber near Albu and Beard. Preferably also the salt near capulco, to prevent cavs (it makes it a lot easier to control the Indian takeover if their fastest unit is the 2-move elephant).

We will start getting WW once the tiles we occupy become Indian, so watch out for unhappiness. Also, Battlefield Med would be nice to let these troops heal. Otherwise we periodically have to move them out and replace by fresh ones.

Once India has the Apollo Program built, we will have to release the rubber briefly to allow them the Exterior Casing part. But that's not for the coming set probably.

 

[CommandoBob]

Strategy changes in red.

Long term

1. Send India to the stars.
2. Stay under the Domination Limit, now 47 tiles away.

Short term

• Learn Smart Weapons in 4, learn SDI in 4 or 5 and then stop learning and make money.After SDI will start Sanitation, which allows Hospital. We need five hospitals to build Battlefield Medicine, which will allow our resource denial troops to heal while in enemy territory.
  
• Beef up Hold’em, Smurkzala and Smurkzland with Barracks, Civil Defense and SAM. Do the same for Smuez Canal, SmurkzAtroid and Tromsmurkz.
  
• Allow India to capture Oy Deer! directly from us. Will proxy to Celts instead.
  
• Give Celts some money so that India can have some of it, say about 10,000 gold or so? Will gift 16,000 on IBT. When India takes one city, she gets 1/4 of this, or 4K gold, leaving the Celts with 12K. When she takes the second city she gets 1/3 of 12K and that is another 4K gold. India gets 8K gold this way. So do the Celts.
  
• Watch India capture New Smurkzheim and Nansmurkzet from the Celts.
  
• Gift Albusmurkze (and oil) to Celts or Spain, possibly as early as the first turn. Will deny oil, rubber and saltpeter to India. Will pillage roads, build fort, move workers out and leave a short stack of defenders in place.
• Gift Smurkzadelphia to Celts or Spain, after the city builds a Police Station (1 turn).
• Gift Smurkzcapulco to someone after it finishes its Stock Exchange in three turns.
• Gift House of the Beard to someone around turn five.
• Gift away about one city per turn (as long as India captures one city per turn) until all the land south of the Hold’em-Smuez Canal line is Indian Gray.
  
• Accept Sing-Sing if it flips. If it flips, keep it and eliminate the Celts, but not until all of our cities are gifted. Then declare war on Spain, forcing the Celts to declare war on us. Gift Sing-sing to someone else.
  
• Upgrade some Tanks to MA on Tadpole for a faster strike on the Celts. Currently have one MA near Gergovia. It would use two MPs to get into place to attack. And Gergovia is defended by an rSpear, so no telling how many tanks we will lose to that spear.
  
• If House of the Beard is gifted away, build new FP in Chicago with our Great Leader.
  
• Gift Alcatraz to America, capture St. Louis and force the new capital to be in Thunderfall ? It is size 6 and Alcatraz is size 4.
  
• Feed bombers and modern armor to cities to rush improvements. Build up the cities around Chicago.
  
• If we see Indian Elephants, let some unit allow India to begin her Golden Age.
  
• Keep pollution in check.
  
• Tweak the transports, since the Celts now own Magellan’s Voyage.
  
• Keep tabs on where India might be building the Apollo Program.

Will be playing shortly.

 

[CommandoBob]

I am going to have to ask for a skip. I'm sorry. And angry. I was looking forward to these turns.

I had planned to do two major things this Saturday: taxes and turns. I have not been able to do either, though I have tried. So I will do my taxes and pass on my turns. Work before pleasure.

If I did my taxes and then my turns, it would be Tuesday before I got done. Too long.

(The tax story is not all bad; we are getting a refund. But my wife has pointed out some deductions today that we have not used in the past and I need to research them and see if we qualify. I expect the research to take up the rest of the day. And my son, away in college, has some unexpected financial needs. So the refund check will be a great boost to my cash flow.)

Again, I am sorry for the late notice. My plan was to play, but need of the moment is to deal with the taxes.

 

[zyxy]

CB, Sorry to hear that you cannot play. But at least you have your priorities straight . And finding extra deductions is always nice.

I guess this means WD is up.

 

[Niklas]

Alright, too bad. Then we'll move on.

Roster:

• WarDance - UP!
• zyxy - On Deck!
• Niklas
• CommandoBob
• ControlFreak - Just Played
• Methos - ghosting

 

[WarDance]

Got it. Will catch up tonight and tomorrow... maybe play tomorrow or following day.

 

[ControlFreak]

• ControlFreak - Just Played

I'm back, and a little surprized the wasn't more catching up to do. (And pleasantly delighted to still be on top of our posting. )

For the most part, it looked like zyxy and Niklas caught and commented on everything I had concerns about.

Cash Donations
I am questioning the cash donation to India. They really just need enough to maintain their economy and do SOME rush building. Why do we need to lump sum so much cash? For a child that doesn't know the value of money, it is better to give a weekly allowance so you know they will have their needs met for the long term rather than giving them a year's supply up front and watch them blow it on bubble gum and video games in the first week.

India does not need to buy techs so it doesn't need a lump sum of many thousands. The only think that we want them to build that we haven't built for them already are SS things which can't be rushed with gold. We don't want them to rush a bunch of items with empty bins because it's twice as expensive, but if they have enough cash, they would do it anyway. If we're only concerned with getting their need for units satisfied, a single lump some does that poorly. A nice, medium stream of cash would work better. That way they would select the towns that have some sheilds in the bin because they can't afford to do it the otherway.

Another problem with a lot of cash at their disposal is that if they are constantly rushing things, then when a space ship part becomes available to build, they can't switch the rushed shields so we rob them of the potential 1-3 turn prebuid effect. (Not sure if the AI does switch builds, but it would seem that they do.)

If we give our proxy 1-2K with each city, they will not be that tempted to buy expensive techs and we can keep them backwards. With only the OCC or 2CC, our proxy will be unlikely to be able to spend much of the money before India takes it. If India is only capturing one town every 5 turns, then we need to make larger gifts, if they are getting 2-3 towns every turn, then we can reduce the gifts.

Techs
I like the idea of Hospitals as I said before. I also agree that Battlefield Med would be a good wonder. However, since my mission was StarWars, I think we might as well finish that first. I think we already have or will soon have enough SAM's to enable SDI. A prebuild should be started for SDI so that it can finish close to the learning Integrated Defense. In the meantime, start planning prebuilds for hospitals/Battlefied Med for 9 turns from now so that the minute Sanitation comes in, we have >5 Hospital built and can build Battlefield Med the next turn.

Another reason to do ID before Sanitation is our research potential is going to start dropping as we lose core cities to India. Sanitation is much cheaper and will be easier to do than ID later on.

Alcatraz
I thought I had mentioned about recapturing Thunderfall as part of the effort to Move America to Alcatraz. My thought process is that they need a harbor capitol to trade with India and if we needed to declare war to make that happen, I wanted enough time to remake peace after we jump their capitol before we need them to trade Uranium to India. I don't think they are going to sell the harbor. We could gift them money if we think they are too poor to keep the harbor.

Once America is in a harbor capitol, we could give them some extra luxuries by gifting them surplus luxury towns with harbors (e.g. NE Ostrich has furs). It seems like we could build trading cities to give the furs and possibly some other luxuries to any civ with a harbor capitol. Even better would be to rush airports in the towns before they become are gifted so that borders are not a limitation to trade with India. If we do that now they can develop a nice trade coalition with India before we need it for Uranium.

Sing Sing
I don't think it's that critical at this point. We don't need the kind of efficiency we once did. Unless it affects the timing of our prebuilds, the added corruption from keeping Sing Sing for a few turns is inconsequential.

Sing Sing really serves no purpose at this point. We don't need it to keep an AI alive. It doesn't work as the capitol of our traders because India' can't trade through our territory. It doesn't work well for our city proxy because it reduces the percentage of gold India captures with the city. I would be tempted to raze it and reallocate all those units surrounding it to something more important like surrounding border cities to prevent surprise capture by cavs:


Confirmation Of Others
The other comments I agree with:

• All city gifting is done by proxy.
• Don't gift towns unless an Indian unit is in striking distance.
• Don't let India (or anyone else for that matter) control Oil (bombers/tanks/boats) or Saltpeter (Cavs). Rubber (infantry/big bad units) will have to be given at some point for the casing but should be delayed at least until Apollo is built. Not only does it reduce the number of tough units we face but it also reduces the shield cost of building units as well as reduces the cash output to rush/upgrade.
  
  
  If someone can figure out a way to do this without incurring WW, all the better. The AI usually doesn't send workers into the field when enemy units are around, so what if we patrol the resource with a fighter from a nearby city or carrier and then move an MA into range possibly by boat from Canal. That way we could stay out of Indian territory most of the time. If India moves a worker on the resource, we can see it and move an MA in on the next turn and the worker would stop roading and run for cover again.​
• Capture Gergovia from outside Celtic territory. There is no need to attack Spain to provoke the Celts. But don't forget that Spain will declare on us so make sure they don't owe us any per turn deals or it will spoil their rep. Also make sure that if we want to move Spain, or gift them anything, get it done before attacking the Celts.
• FP should be rebuild in Chicago as soon as HotB changes hands. Much MM will be needed the turn the FP is built. (Much rushing is needed around Chicago before and after the FP is built.)
• Spearmen scare the bejezus out of our tank drivers.