SGOTM2 Germany - Xteam

[leif erikson]

We have 82 tiles until we trigger domination.

There is no problem giving some cities to Japan, but we would like the majority to go to China in the hope that, with greater pop, they may try for a vote upon completion of the U.N.

Leaders, that is an interesting question. I would have to think about it some more but the easy answer is to use them for anything that will incease our score. Cure for Cancer makes one unhappy citizen content in all our cities, once we get Genetics researched. I can think of no more noble cause than that!!

Good luck, it shouldn't take long...

 

[AlanH]

This is a got it.

What is our map stat situation? How many tiles away from domination are we?

Conquered Indian cities get donated to China after we loot them. I might give a few away to Japan too.

What do we want to do with any leaders?

Having looked at the save, I don't think India will last more than a couple of turns once our modern armour engines fire up, but we might as well get it over and done with. As we are still quite a few tiles away from domination, we could keep six or seven cities before handing them on to China. Help to accelerate our score. I don't think we can catch Kuningas now, but we ought to try to maximise it and get as high as possible on the leader board.

I'm not sure what we can use leaders for right now. Maybe build a Mass Transit system in our highest pollution city to ease the clearance work load?
The AI have been useless at research, I see, they've not even managed Sanitation yet, so we can't build hospitals to boost pop.

 

[leif erikson]

The AI have been useless at research, I see, they've not even managed Sanitation yet, so we can't build hospitals to boost pop.

If it will help us to boost our score some, why don't we research Sanitation and get some hospitals built? We are free to research whatever we need now that the U.N. build is underway.

 

[AlanH]

If we have. or can grab, the lux we need to keep them happy - yes. I'm not sure how much pop increase we can achieve in the remaining turns, but we ought to try.

 

[Capt Buttkick]

Re: Roster
It all depends on how long the next turns take.
I'm hoping to be done with the budgeting process in a week's time. Anyway, if Alan only need three turns til we win, I'm all for letting our Great Leader (yes, the capitalization is intentional ) doing the honour

 

[AlanH]

@Capt Buttkick: I'm guessing Adrian will play this weekend. He'll destroy India in a couple of turns and then build score for eight turns. Then I'll play ten peaceful builder turns trying to maximise score rate, during which China won't call the vote, probably finishing by Monday or Tuesday. There will then be a further four turns during which we capture Tsingtao and call the next vote. Four extra turns sounds a bit greedy for me to play, so if you are still going to be in budget hell for the rest of the week I'll pass it on for Leif to finish off.

A reminder: Adrian suggested a multiple win target for extra style marks and bragging rights. It's a great suggestion, I'm all for it, and it should be a piece of cake. We could set up for conquest by positioning our troops to be capable of capturing all remaining Chinese and Japanese cities, or to take all but one for domination. The vote's 13 turns from now if the Chinese call it, or 24 turns from now if we call it, and we only need three more techs and four builds for a spaceship. So if we have to wait the 24 turns space should be possible as well, even if we research Sanitation and Genetics first for extra score.

 

[leif erikson]

@Capt Buttkick: I'm guessing Adrian will play this weekend. He'll destroy India in a couple of turns and then build score for eight turns. Then I'll play ten peaceful builder turns trying to maximise score rate, during which China won't call the vote, probably finishing by Monday or Tuesday. There will then be a further four turns during which we capture Tsingtao and call the next vote. Four extra turns sounds a bit greedy for me to play, so if you are still going to be in budget hell for the rest of the week I'll pass it on for Leif to finish off.

Thanks Alan, but, as with the Capt, I have no objection to you finishing if you would like.

A reminder: Adrian suggested a multiple win target for extra style marks and bragging rights. It's a great suggestion, I'm all for it, and it should be a piece of cake. We could set up for conquest by positioning our troops to be capable of capturing all remaining Chinese and Japanese cities, or to take all but one for domination. The vote's 13 turns from now if the Chinese call it, or 24 turns from now if we call it, and we only need three more techs and four builds for a spaceship. So if we have to wait the 24 turns space should be possible as well, even if we research Sanitation and Genetics first for extra score.

The other advantage here is that, with multiple finishes, I think I heard M-B say that the Jason score we would earn would be the highest one of the victory conditions we could achieve. I would think that best date for Spaceship would be later than Diplo, so a better Jason? So, it could be more than style points for us.

edit - just visited the Jason calculator and, to my surprise, Diplo score was higher?? So much for my theories!?

 

[AdrianE]

Brief report

I played for 4.5 hours this morning - and got 1 turn done.

India is a shadow of its former self. Alan 4 turns was a wildly pessimistic estimate.
India had cavalry, riflemen and spearmen. No I didn't lose any tanks to spearmen.
Total losses were about 5 panzers.

The only reason I didn't conquer India in 1 turn is that Bengal has a ring of hills and jungle around it.

These are the cities I'm going to keep:
Punjab for the wines
Chittagong for the dyes
Dehli for the silks, Sun Tsu's and its in bomber range of Tsingtao
and may keep the town with magellans.

I might keep Bengal too as it has iron and coal - strictly to deny coal to China.

A couple of points: why did we build regular panzers and MI? They will be disbanded to help pay for improvements.
Why are we selling China Uranium and Rubber?

I teleported a large number of workers home by placing them in cities I gifted to China. Pollution should be easier to control at home.

 

[AlanH]

An intensive turn. Good work

Check my latest posts. My recent estimates, after looking at the save, was two turns to close out India

The regular panzers were probably built without checking that the cities building them had barracks. The regular MI may have been upgraded rifles, rushed to protect the islands, then mass upgrades did the rest. Is it really a big issue in our current position? Put it all down to me, if you're looking for someone to point fingers at.

I don't take credit for selling rubber and Uranium to China, but we want them to feel strong and secure so I don't think it's a problem. If we do a good job of that they'll call the vote in 12 turns time, saving us the trouble and delay of taking Tsingtao and calling the vote 11 turns later. If we do have to take Tsingtao, surely we have enough hardware on station to do the job several times over, regardless of what resources they have? if you were worried about our ability to hold Tsingtao you probably wouldn't be disbanding regular MI

Neat trick with the workers

 

[leif erikson]

Brief report

I played for 4.5 hours this morning - and got 1 turn done.

Lots to do!! Sounds like it was done well too. Thanks for the short report.

A couple of points: why did we build regular panzers and MI? They will be disbanded to help pay for improvements.
Why are we selling China Uranium and Rubber?

I teleported a large number of workers home by placing them in cities I gifted to China. Pollution should be easier to control at home.

I noticed there were a number of regular units as well, and I am sure I built few of them. I didn't question it because I figured we were saving gold on barracks maintenance, we weren't fishing for leaders and that, given our strength and superiority in tech, that it didn't really make much difference. Besides, it looks like you found a good use for them, saving Gold for bribes.

I think the Rubber and Uranium were traded to China for lux and as a hedge against India invading them. To build nukes requires aluminium, to have aluminium requires that you have researched Rocketry. Don't give China Rocketry and we have nothing to worry about!

 

[AdrianE]

I played a bit more and did some re-organizing. In Delhi area we have 10 elite panzers (kept because they are elite), 10 elite MA, 20 regular MA, 20 MI and about 30 artillery backed up by 10 bombers. Should be enough to take and hold the UN. I'll send over more MI just to be sure.

I decided to get sanitation so we can really boost score. That will mean every big city will need a market, temple and cathedral. Most already have that but some don't.

 

[AlanH]

Sounds good. I assume you meant 20 vet MA, not regular.

 

[AdrianE]

Alan yes they are all veteran units. I have purged our army of the regular units.

Score is 4847 @1500AD

We are very close to the domination limit.

1455 - destroy India except for 1 city. Get a leader and build an MA army with it. Army wins a battle and we can build Heroic epic and military academy. Berlin gets the academy.

I give the Japanese back some of their cities. They are small and weak. I give China the biggest and best cities in the south. Most cities have nothing of value to sell. No wonder these are backwards AI.

1460 - Eliminate India. Start sanitation.

From here on, its a lot of worker actions and micromanaging cities to maximize happiness. I'll spare you the details.

1490 - Sell China sanitation to get their pop up. A couple of cities are due to expand. Settle on dyes to keep them. Give away Edo, Bombay and Bengal to China to make sure we stay under the limit.

1500 - score is 4847. Tsingtao has the UN due in 2 turns but gremlins ate the screen shot.

The fields around Delhi are a massive military base. We have 2 combat settlers there as well. That will let us take Tsingtao in 1 turn. We could probably take China and Japan in 1 turn. We have a large naval taskforce SE of Tsingtao with a transport loaded with troops as well.

We have to carefully optimize our core cities. Some mined grassland should be irrigated for growth. The mountains should be mined. After the hospitals complete some of the core cities can go back to wealth. I retired large numbers of cavalry and replaced them with MI.

We could easily rush some libraries to get some cultural expansion to claim more tiles if we need to get closer to the domination limit. We might want a library in Bonn 3 as it is under culture pressure from Bombay

 

[leif erikson]

@Adrian - The turn log sounds great. U.N. in 2 is very, very good news!!

I downloaded the save from the submissions page and tried to load it to look and received the message from Civ3 that the file was an invalid save file. Hope that Alan can get it to come up. If not, you may have to attach the save to the thread so we can get it to load up!! I'm not sure how the submission page extracted the data if it was an invalid file?

Good luck Alan, two turns until we know. Please post a quickie to let us know if the vote doesn't happen.

 

[AlanH]

Thanks, Adrian. Lots of heavy lifting in those turns

I've GOT IT, and it's opened fine here. Looking good.

@Leif: The uploaded file still has its MacBinary header, so you'd have to hex edit it. My Mac knows how to strip that off. My submission code detects it and deals with it as well. I've resaved it and uploaded it using a decent browser , so it ought to be OK now.

Our scoring rate seems to sit doggedly at 315-320 per ten turns, not even as high as our previous best of 330, and nowhere near the rate we would need to catch Kuningas Jason score. We're still 24 tiles from domination - plenty of margin. I'll try to cut it finer than that, and I'll focus on population growth where we have hospitals.

I'll try to play at least the first few turns in the next 24 hours and keep you posted.

The cast of characters

AdrianE - just played
AlanH UP
Capt Buttkick - on deck but may have to skip
Leif Erikson - reserve on deck
zamint3 - shouldn't have to play

 

[zamint3]

Looks good Adrian.

Originally Posted by AdrianE
We have 2 combat settlers there as well

Nice


I couldn't load it either, thanks for fixing it Alan, because I have no idea what you are talking about when you say :

...you'd have to hex edit it

My MapStat says 24 tiles to limit, and I don't think we need to go much closer. Watch out for Shantung flipping!

If I read the flip-calculator right, Bonn3 will need at least 7 garrisoned units to make sure it won't flip.

Are we sure Japan will vote for us?

Originally Posted by AlanH
zamint3 - shouldn't have to play

Let's hope not!

 

[leif erikson]

@Leif: The uploaded file still has its MacBinary header, so you'd have to hex edit it. My Mac knows how to strip that off. My submission code detects it and deals with it as well. I've resaved it and uploaded it using a decent browser , so it ought to be OK now.

Thanks Alan, got a good look!! Nice job Adrian, seems things have changed a little since I left it with you. Hope you had a nice time at the

Our scoring rate seems to sit doggedly at 315-320 per ten turns, not even as high as our previous best of 330, and nowhere near the rate we would need to catch Kuningas Jason score. We're still 24 tiles from domination - plenty of margin. I'll try to cut it finer than that, and I'll focus on population growth where we have hospitals.

It goes to show how important an early finish is! You can clearly see from the graph who is trying for the variant and who is trying for top score. We did a pretty good job of getting close to the domination limit quickly. Then factors beyond our immediate control visited havoc on us.

I'll try to play at least the first few turns in the next 24 hours and keep you posted.

I played in the diplomacy screen for a while and was a little bit surprised that neither of the emperors are gracious towards us, considering our freeing them from Indian bondage and returning to them what was rightfully ours! I tired giving Japan all the resources that they didn't yet have and some bribes and couldn't seem to get them to gracious, beware the vote!! The big advantage here is China's aggression, at our behest, towards Japan. It is going to be interesting to see what happens, and tests, to some degree, Bamspeedy's ideas in his article on AI Attitude.

I'll keep my fingers, toes and whatever else it is possible to do, crossed! I wish it would help?? May the RNG God be with you Alan.

 

[AdrianE]

China was gracious to us for most of my turns.

Both Japan and China are already at the maximum +10 from gifts and should be that way for some time. Cities are worth a lot. There is no reason to give them anything more than 100G. It must be a government penalty we see with Japan. Note that since we have the power lead all the positives are halved so its difficult to do better than polite.

I don't think there is anything we can do to Japan short of alliance against China to get them to gracious. Hopefully with the war Japan and China fought, Japan is still furious with China.

24 tiles - maybe I should have kept Bombay and Bengal but that would have put us at 6 tiles short. Now there is no reason for Bonn 3 not to get a library. We need to reserve 12 tiles of space for Tsingtao as the border squares between Tsingtao and Delhi will likely become ours as well.

You might want to us one of our prebuilds for Battlefield Medicine in stead of where I started it..

We have 2.5 techs to go for space flight. So if we don't win the election in 2 turns we will be able to claim a triple crown in 13 turns of space/domination/diplomacy. We are probably within reach of conquest and 100K as well. Although 100K would take a bit longer. At the start of my turns we had 46K culture.

We could peel workers off the corrupt towns and get them to join the cities with recent hospitals. Many are due to complete this turn. That will help boost the number of happy faces quickly. Be careful to make sure that they are happy faces though. Some of our recently expanded cities didn't even have marketplaces. I think I fixed those cases.

With 8 luxes and a market place we get 11 happy and 1 unhappy citizens in a size 12 city at 0% entertainment
Add a temple and it is 11 happy and 1 content
Add a cathedral and its 12 happy. It could support 15 happy people. Most of our big productive cities have this set up and are working on hospitals.
Add a colliseum and we could have 16 happy people before we have to spend anything on entertainment.

It will be interesting to see what happens in 2 turns.

Also note I left a significant force on the choke point of the Asian continent. Some of those guys are in Chinese territory.

 

[AlanH]

Thanks for the extra notes Adrian.

China was gracious to us for most of my turns.

Both Japan and China are already at the maximum +10 from gifts and should be that way for some time. Cities are worth a lot. There is no reason to give them anything more than 100G. It must be a government penalty we see with Japan. Note that since we have the power lead all the positives are halved so its difficult to do better than polite.

Right, China is Polite right now, but we don't really care about their attitude, it's Japan we would need to be gracious. But I doubt we can do more than we have already. I'll give them 100g on the turn before the UN is built just in case.

I don't think there is anything we can do to Japan short of alliance against China to get them to gracious. Hopefully with the war Japan and China fought, Japan is still furious with China.

All my fingers are crossed. I think our worst case scenario (apart from a 2:1 vote against us ) is a Japanese abstention first time round. If we allied against China now then I think there'd be no chance of China calling the vote. If they do call it and Japan abstain then we'll have to ally with them for the next vote.

24 tiles - maybe I should have kept Bombay and Bengal but that would have put us at 6 tiles short.

Maybe, but I don't think it would make a lot of difference at this stage.

Now there is no reason for Bonn 3 not to get a library. We need to reserve 12 tiles of space for Tsingtao as the border squares between Tsingtao and Delhi will likely become ours as well.

We can run it right up to the wire, and then abandon one or two towns back home before we take Tsingtao.

You might want to us one of our prebuilds for Battlefield Medicine in stead of where I started it..

Would that buy us anything? We're too far from 100K to grab that as an extra victory condition on turn 13, and there won't be time for battlefield healing after our final battle.

We have 2.5 techs to go for space flight. So if we don't win the election in 2 turns we will be able to claim a triple crown in 13 turns of space/domination/diplomacy. We are probably within reach of conquest and 100K as well.

If we don't get the vote in 2 turns I'll try to position for the space victory on turn 13.

Although 100K would take a bit longer. At the start of my turns we had 46K culture.

No chance of that victory option on turn 13, I'm afraid.

We could peel workers off the corrupt towns and get them to join the cities with recent hospitals. Many are due to complete this turn. That will help boost the number of happy faces quickly. Be careful to make sure that they are happy faces though.

Will do.

Also note I left a significant force on the choke point of the Asian continent. Some of those guys are in Chinese territory.

Noted

Here goes nothin'

 

[AlanH]

The penny dropped - if I complete Battlefield medicine in Frankfurt I can build Hospitals there and in New Munich