SGOTM 9 - Smurkz

Alright, we have a first finish date! [party]
It feels really good to have a 17th-century end date, it's only a turn but it's a big psycological difference. :D

Now I guess we just have to play the waiting game again, until Gandhi decides to go to space for real. Maybe it could be worth it to speed him along by building a few parts of our own? Though maybe not all 10...

ControlFreak said:
Hope you're feeling better. And don't get me sick! I'm heading to Florida on vacation in a few weeks.
A bit better, thank you. Fever is down a bit, though I'm still coughing a lot. And I'm glad I got this after my vacation. (I actually had another trip to go on that I've had to cancel, was going to Vienna for a conference (with full internet access and lots of spare time). Now I have to stay at home instead (with full internet access and lots of spare time ;))).

OMT, watch the border ...
I gotta ask, I've looked all over but can't find an answer, and I can't for the world figure it out on my own. What does OMT stand for? :blush:
EDIT: Hey, wait, I think I got it, it's "One More Thing" right? :) Me stoopid. :wallbash:
EDIT again: Or maybe it's the CivAnon nightmare - just "One More Turn" ;)
 
zyxy said:
Don't know what I'm supposed to do with Odda. It's building a settler at size 2. What good is a settler? Auto-disband? I'll switch to arty for now, next player can choose.
Sorry, this would have been in the hand-off notes that I didn't write. My intention was to set us up to lose another 9 useless territory, that's why I shipped in the units to fill the land, and that's why I had Odda building settlers to auto-disband. We don't need to do it right away though, or maybe ever, but my clear feeling was that those 9 tiles could be spend better on Ostrich (where we have RRs).
 
I've got it. My daughter started throwing up so I am staying awake a bit longer to make sure she's OK. Oh and I looked over the save and did the preflight check out too.

I will correct Odda to disband. We're 44 tiles from Domination, but the MicroManager in me wants to settle some towns on Ostrich to use the food tiles to better our score. Who knows, maybe some day I'll have the guts to stick out a Cow attempt for GOTM.

I found another little thing. When Barcelona was abandoned, it took Sun Tsu's with it. Now I have to build barracks to be able to give horses but no rubber the Civil Defense it's going to want.

All the boats surrounding the indian galleon were nice. I've tried to redirect it to Seattle. If they don't land there I'm going to drive him towards Ostrich. I see the destroyers are still blocking the Channel. I'm hoping to have more luck than zyxy if I move the destroyers out of the way towards Gem City.

I rushed some aquaducts and will order a few more on Ostrich in preparation for the size increases. I also moved us back to just 1 scientist instead of 6. Any reason for the surplus?

Some builds were changed including ordering Longevity in Ismurkz and Ageis rather than regular destroyer for the same price in Entremont.

My plan is to do some MM as time permits but the primary goals are:
  • Keep India out of Anarchy.
  • Get India to build SS parts. :hmm:
  • Get India luxuries
  • Don't win by Domination or any other means
  • Set up the Uranium/Rubber trades or take overs

America has an MPP with India. I don't know how to break that. With America's rep trashed, they are not the best candidate for the uranium trade. Spain and Ottos are also MPP so I won't attack the Ottos in this war. But it might be nice to move them somewhere where they could trade uranium to India if necessary.

OMT - "OMT" stands for One More Thing. I deny that "One More Turn" exists. That's what addicts do, they go into denial.
 
ControlFreak said:
I also moved us back to just 1 scientist instead of 6. Any reason for the surplus?

No, just laziness on my part. I'm amazed you still have the drive to MM at this stage. Me, I try to click end of turn asap.

I've PM-ed AlanH regarding our victory, btw.
 
zyxy said:
No, just laziness on my part. I'm amazed you still have the drive to MM at this stage. Me, I try to click end of turn asap.

I've PM-ed AlanH regarding our victory, btw.
I dropped all my other civ games to be able to participate in this. When I play, I'm playing all out.:scan:

With that said, I realize much of the MM has no effect on our end date and will try to let go of the reins a little.

I'm stacked up at work today. I may not start until tomorrow.
 
OK, I've played to 1750AD. I'm going to push on but a little midturn quiz...

What Happened?
  • India has Gems and Furs.
  • India started a spaceship part
  • India started two spaceship parts
  • India declared against Carthage destroying their chance at building anymore spaceship parts
  • We won, er lost, by Domination. (Too easy...I just told you I'm playing on.)

I'll post an abbreviated turn log tomorrow.

Spoiler The Answer :

EDIT: <<The Save>>
A is the closest. Since this save, I played a bit more and two guerilla's take control of Gem City. The connection to Dehli is proving more difficult.
 
My guess: India declared on Carthage. I hope that's not what happened though.
 
The glass is generally half-full for me, so I will go with

C: India started two spaceship parts :D :eek:

yet because I hope for the best but expect the worst (it hurts less this way)
then I will prepare myself for

D: India declared against Carthage destroying their chance at building anymore spaceship parts :cry: :eek:
 
I'll show my confidence in you again and guess A. India's SS parts is nothing you could influence, but the gems and furs is, so A would be the one you could be most proud of. :)

Of course A and C together would be nice...
 
Two comments after having looked at the save more in detail.

India is experiencing a lot of pollution, to the point where it is obviously crippling. Could we think of a good way to remedy this? This is really two issues, current polluted squares and future generated pollution.
Two alternatives immediately stand out:
  • Give India workers to clear up pollution. The benefit is that we don't have to do anything other than building lots of workers. I suspect though that losing workers would incur WW, which isn't very nice. Also we can't really trust Gandhi to use the workers in a good way.
  • Go in and clear up the pollution. This has the benefit of us being in control of the workers, and we'd do a much better job at cleaning up than the AI would. The obvious drawbacks are that we'd need to place units in India, incurring WW, plus we'd have to keep this up since Gandhi will keep pollution our beloved planet (what does he care though, he's leaving anyway ;)).
I'm not really sure that either of the alternatives is viable. Anyone have any other good ideas?

The other thing is Gandhi's obvious non-affection for SS parts. I would propose that we start building a few of those, hoping he will see the danger and follow suit. Not too many though...
 
I don't know what triggers spaceship construction. Coincidence perhaps? It might be worthwhile to do a round of espionage to see what India is building, and which improvements she needs. In any case, most of our former cities have obviously suffered terribly from the takeover - they are small and probably unproductive.

I have had AI's build spaceship parts in games where I had no spaceship or apollo (but perhaps some of the other rivals had).

We could gift more cities to India so that she has more production centers (perhaps spaceship production is tied to number of cities?), but the problem is that corruption will increase empire-wide under communism IIRC.

EDIT: amazing that India is producing so much pollution, as many of the cities are very small.

On another note, I'll be away again, until Monday this time.
 
Quick and Dirty Turnlog
First Block (1725-1750AD)
Primarily focused on getting the indian galleon back up to Ostrich. I first made a U-channel that forced it toward the coastal tiles of Tadpole. I also bombarded the ironclad and galleon to red. On their turn, they decided that the galleon wasn't going to wait around for a 1hp ironclad escort so they got separated. I sealed them off from each other and blocked all the tiles in an L shape which forced it to go north in an attempt to go around. Finally, they were close enough to the Channel that I could enclose the galleon and force it up into the channel. I left the channel unblocked so it would think that was it's only escape path. Once in the channel, I closed both ends as the game sits in 1750AD.

Other game focuses involved:
The Moat - I found it easiest to move the entire stack of artillery, radar artillery and the MA Army covering them. (With any one of them selected, press "J" and then choose the other gate tile, the whole stack moves.) Then bombard until units are red. I found that sometimes I didn't have enough to fully bombard their stack so I started building more Radar Art.

The Ironclads - I used the fighters first to illuminate the coast. Then moved destroyers and AEGIS in range to bombard them. As long as I took one HP off them, they would return to port. On several occations, a lot of bombards missed and I would suffer an attack that resulted in a sunk ironclad. I started working toward having carriers with some stealth bombers aboard to hit the ironclads. I ordered more carriers and more stealth bombers.

Second Block (1750-1760AD)
India gets two more luxuries - In 1752AD, India lands two guerillas next to the Gem city. I decided not to use a proxy because I didn't want to drag Spain into an MA and I figured we could handle the war weariness. Gem City and Safe Passage were left exposed. They took Gem City and it kept the airport and harbor! At the time, I thought that they still needed the other two cities to trade, but it turns out that they get the luxuries through the airport.:goodjob: The airport allowed them to Transport some more troops to Gem city which freed the second guerilla to capture Safe Passage. Now that I've realized my mistake, I've decided not to give them Legs.

Our Second Moat
I set up another Moat System on Ostrich. The moat tiles are the rubber tile in Safe Passage and the neutral territory Aluminum Hill north of Gem City. I think we can get their units to alternate between the two moats by moving units between the Iron Mountain in Second Chance and the irrigated grass N of Aluminum Hill. The guerilla that is one tile past the Rubber got there because I was going to let him take legs and then changed my mind. Please note that while I think it will work, I haven't actually played any turns with Moat2 established.

Operation Cleanup
As Niklas stated, India's pollution is really bad. I actually don't think it's affecting them yet because they've whipped their towns so badly that they don't need that many tiles. Nevertheless, they can't keep up with pollution and it will eventually become a problem.

My plan is to go in and clean it up for them. The problem is that every turn we end with at least one unit in there territory, we get war weariness. That would be much less war weariness than losing a bunch of workers to India. To minimize the WW, we need to do as many tiles of cleanup in one turn as possible. That means a coordinated assault on the orange blobs.

The Plan:
  1. Build lots of workers.
  2. Test that the workers can be protected with a single Modern Armor. (They can as long as the Moats are running.)
  3. Get the workers in position to enter Indian Territory all on one turn.
  4. Move workers to the Indian polluted tile. Cover with MA or MA army. (1 turn WW)
  5. Clean up tile (1 turn WW)
  6. Move to secondary objective or withdraw.

The Results:
I tested a single MA in indian territory and he was left unmolested.
I built 65workers.:hammer: (We had none)
I moved a stack of 6 workers under a two unit MA army and they were left unmolested. The workers cleaned up the tile on the following turn.
I got two transports filled with workers into position by Olive.
I began the assault and moved 12workers to a hill pollution, four more stacks of 6 workers to flatland pollution. So we should clear five tiles next turn. Another transport is loaded and on its way to a secondary objective. The Olive workers can reboard their transports and head down south by Deer. I've already used the Oh-Hah strikeforce to land on the Mountain Ring. That should scare the silly indian workers that are trying to clean pollution by themselves. That will make room for our workers when the transports arrive.
The 12 hill workers should split (I sent two covering armies) and hit the adjacent pollution tiles on the flatlands when they're done cleaning the hill.

I stopped the worker building on Tadpole but left one more round on Smurkz. There are transports due in Trom, Canal and Holdem that could all be filled with workers. They can either be sent to the south near Deer, or hang out incase of future pollution.

The remaining transports are to beef up our shipchain (which was broken by the way).

I uploaded <<The Save>> but was thinking about playing up to 1770AD. I would finish tomorrow. No biggy if CB wants in now though. Just post a got it.
 
Great work with the luxuries and the pollution! :goodjob:

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

If CB can't play tomorrow, then by all means go ahead and play a few more turns. In this stage of the game we don't need to enforce the 10 turns limit that badly. It's mostly a matter of waiting for Gandhi to make a move (except this last turnset was really full of stuff to do :eek: ), so if someone should feel like playing more than 10 turns I say do so. We've hit the primary objective already, so officially we have already won. We're just playing on for the sake of winning again. :cool:
 
Niklas said:
Great work with the luxuries and the pollution! :goodjob:

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

If CB can't play tomorrow
Couldn't play tomorrow (Wednesday) but could on Thursday.

Have fun ControlFreak!
 
Niklas said:
Great work with the luxuries and the pollution! :goodjob:

...

It's mostly a matter of waiting for Gandhi to make a move (except this last turnset was really full of stuff to do :eek: )
Thanks, and I think there will still be lots to do.

I'm starting to think that Ghandi would be more inclined to build SS parts if he had more cities. Of course more cities means more corruption in Communism.

For what I've played so far, I've been redlining every unit I could. But I really think that I could not redline anything and still wouldn't face any attacks. The Moats work really well. The Ironclads go back home with any loss of HP. I think we could get away with doing no WW to India. The biggest risk is radar or stealth bombers taking 3HP from a 4 HP unit. If the Moats still work without bombardment, and we only use AEGIS (usually max of 2HP) or better yet destroyers (usually only do 1HP) we could nick the ironclads without having them redlined. They go back home without attacking.

I'm going to:
  • Try to let India get happier about the war and see if we can keep them in Democracy.
  • Set up a wall in the northern hemisphere of Smurkz to give them a few more cities. My theory is that if India already has 20 cities building Guerillas, and 10 building ironclads, they may be willing to let one city build a spaceship part.

Roster:

  • ...
  • ControlFreak - Still Playing. :twitch:
  • CommandoBob - On Deck!
  • ...

EDIT: BTW I left out a few important details. India pulled Spain into an MA against us so we're at war with the whole world (as it should be). Also we completed our first SS part! (The Party Lounge, what else would I chose?) I plan to build one or two more but I don't think it's convincing Ghandi he needs to build any of his own. Maybe he misread the terms of our agreement and thinks he's riding on OUR Spaceship.:rotfl:
 
ControlFreak said:
I'm going to:
  • Try to let India get happier about the war and see if we can keep them in Democracy.
  • Set up a wall in the northern hemisphere of Smurkz to give them a few more cities. My theory is that if India already has 20 cities building Guerillas, and 10 building ironclads, they may be willing to let one city build a spaceship part.
Hmm, I'm not so sure I like the sounds of that.
War Academy Article said:
Subtract 1 wwp if level >= 1, no enemy inside your territory and no units in enemy territory.
Subtract 1/20 of current wwp each turn in peace (round up)
We know that their WW is to high to stick with Democracy, and was so even before we started redlining guerillas and ironclads. Their WW will go down 1 per turn only, which means a loooong time until it goes down to a reasonable level.

I could agree that we could try to reduce their WW again, but we should not give up any more towns until they have shown themselves capable of sustaining Democracy for several turns. I agree that the more cities India has, the more likely it will be for them to use at least one of them for a SS part, but those towns will be useless unless he can stay above revolting level (although we already know that it would be impossible for Gandhi not to be revolting... ;)).
I also hope that the much-reduced pollution in India will speed up his production so that at some point he feels he has enough troops (Deity support :sad:, IMO that was a mistake by the creators for this game, though (another) one that couldn't be anticipated).

A comment about giving up towns - always use a proxy! It's not the matter of us getting WW that is bothersome, the real problem is that the citizens will be resisting indefinitely since our cultural pressure is really devastating. I pretty sure if we were to give India towns on Smurkz directly he would simply raze them. :rolleyes:
 
You're comments make sense. I just want to make sure we're doing everything that we can to win.

As far as giving up the luxury towns directly (no proxy) that may have been a mistake. I won't do that again, but we're at war with everyone so I'm not sure we have a proxy at the moment. If we do want one, Spain would be the best canditate to make peace with and then backstab india since Izzy's rep is already soiled.

I said I would setup our ability to pull back on smurkz, but do not plan to until Ghandi is back in a reasonable government. I've got a plan. The fence is in place, but it would work better if we found 4 additional towns before we give the territory up. Two we would keep to maintain a 4 tile buffer between India and Carthage. The other two would fill in a rather sparcely settled area so that India could have decent cities with smaller sizes. The two new cities would need a bunch of improvements build for Ghandi before handing over. But as Niklas indicates, it will be a while before we're ready to give him any more cities.

I've been trying to avoid causing war weariness but have found a new source while clearing polution. Anyone care to guess how I, without bombarding units or sinking ironclads, "accidentally" cause India WW?

I made it to 1770AD and will be uploading save and turnlog soon.
 
ControlFreak said:
Anyone care to guess how I, without bombarding units or sinking ironclads, "accidentally" cause India WW?
Ah right, for their WW to decrease there cannot be any hostile units in their territory. I didn't note that even though I quoted the article. :wallbash:

I'm of a mind to keep them in Communism then, since the production loss from that is surely less than that from pollution...
 
Do you think Ghandi would still raze our towns if they were very small? Like size 2? They would lose 1 pop of course when captured and it should be easy for him to quell one resistor.
 
Niklas said:
Ah right, for their WW to decrease there cannot be any hostile units in their territory. I didn't note that even though I quoted the article. :wallbash:
Actually, that prevents the decrease of WW. But I was actually still INCREASING their WW, but not on my turn. On the IBT they would move all of their units from one moat to the other. Because of the placement of our Sanitation Armies (MA covering worker stack), and the AI's inane path choosing algorithm, their guerilla's were getting redlined by the Zone of Control feature of our MA's in their walk from one moat to the other.:crazyeye:

Since there's nothing I could do about it, I just figured we'd try the NO War Weariness approach after Operation Cleanup was concluded. If you want to stick with Communism, that's fine too, but I'm afraid Ghandi will never build SS parts.

WarDance said:
Do you think Ghandi would still raze our towns if they were very small? Like size 2? They would lose 1 pop of course when captured and it should be easy for him to quell one resistor.
I think Ghandi will not raze towns. Niklas had stated that before when we were preparing to give up all of the southern cities. Ghandi never razed a single town, not even the ones that had lots of population, or were impossibly corrupt, or shared too many tiles with an adjacent town. I think he will keep towns until he has more towns than we do. It seems his choices are based solely on our relative power positions. He continues to build guerilla and ironclads because we have more than power than he does.

I'm half wondering if we reduced ourselves to a very small force that just controlled the worlds oil, rubber, uranium and horses, if he would start building things besides millitary. It would be a painful withdrawl and would be irreversable if it failed. It would definitely be a drain on our cash reserves (which I depleted some on my turn).
 
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