SGOTM3 Rome - Team Bugsy

[Bede]

0-1585
Caesearea falls and is garrisoned by infantry.(English)

1-1590
Cripple French cav at Curia and elite knight spawns Maximus.

Bombard English infantry at Caesaearea and kill citizens instead and then the barracks....

Max's Blue Bolts kill two wounded infantry and die to the third. Defender of Rome fails miserably and collapses in a heap. Cover the cats with two legions.

Pull back to Teurnia and abandon Arretium. It is too exposed and defending pulls units out of the north.

Cripple a Cossack at Gramstad.

Manuver around to protect the core.

Tarrentum is going to take it on the gates now...six cavs of various nationality in range...and it fall to the Americans.

Lose three legions and a bunch of workers to the Babs and a road is pillaged from Curia to The Gate.

2-1595

Hold our own. Lose a few, kill a few. Ratio about 1:1

A whole pile of cats is exposed at Tarrentum covered by a single wounded legion who fought off two American cav. No way to save them or protect them.

Verona falls to three American cavalry.

Russian Cossack kills a legion and takes Cumae.




3-1600

Retake Cumae at the cost of a single legion.

Abandon Tuernia. It is surrounded by cavs of all nations.

Aztecs have snuck a cavalryman and infantry ashore at Pisae. Scrape up four defenders for the town.

Kill a few lose a few. This is not good. The Gate and Gramstad are surrounded by cavalry of all nations. Most are wounded by cat fire. A few are not.

Legion at Antium defeats attacking American cavalry and Germanicus is spawned.

The Gate holds off twqo Russians and four Bab cavalry and Jerusalem successfully defends against American cavalry. Defense at Pisae kills infantry and retreats cavalryman. The bad news is Neapolis is taken by French cavlary from Rheims and we lose a legion defender and more workers at The Gate.

4-1605

Trade a few more units. Try to distribute defense to hold off expected attacks.

Metalurgy comes in and upgrade the cats I can afford at The Gate and in Curia.

No significant battles.

Japanese build ToE

5-1610
Kill a few, lose one.

Sorry for the pull back, guys, but it was just stretched too thin. The baddies kept moving onto the core and I couldn't move units around fast enought to keep them out. More than once Antium and Rome were threatened and trying to keep the outlying cities was costing units and cats.

The big push in is now in the NE

 

[Bede]

To Team Bugs:
How about a straight SG with you guys, instead of SGOTM4. Maybe C3C Demi-god as the Zulus on a small pan' map?

 

[alerum68]

Harsh harsh turns. I knew at least 1 city would fall on your turn, there was no way to avoid it, but that was still harsh. Well, I think if we're going to do the Battle of the Bulge, and break out, I guess now is the time. Like Bede said, going up the Northeast is a sound option... probably our only one. The English and their infs are stopping us on the west, but the french are weaker on the east coast.

Where did you get the graphic mod for your mountains? I like them alot.

I'm always willing to play an SG with you Bede. But as for demi-god... wow, that may be a bit much for me... and the Zulu?

 

[grahamiam]

bloody turns, bede, very bloody. looks like the big crunch has begun as we're 12T from MT but swamped with enemy. nothing to save for now so let's just let it rip

next player should be aware that there are cats available in Curia to ding the nearby enemies. we could just abandon curia, send the 2 relatively healthy army's + cats + nearby knight north into france to see if we can extract some pain.

re: sgotm4 i'd like to play but i'll be away from the 24th till oct 9th, visiting my wife's family in taiwan. no civ and probably not much internet access, though, at the pace we play, that's probably only 1 loop thru the rotation i really liked that gotm as well... indians, locked in an early struggle with the persians, with them having the only iron. had to hit them hard and early if i remember correctly. i think i lost 16cav in 1 city flip at the end of the game to babylon, last time i ever lost that many in one flip. conquest would definitely be out as there were quite a few 1 tile islands on that map. iirc, there were 3 major landmasses, with our starting landmass being fairly crappy for a 5cc.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

R&L - Up
Bugs - On Deck

Well I think we're on the ropes. The next few turns will tell the tale. If Row and I can take back the iniative we might be able to pull through. If not we're toast.

I was trying to remember the GOTM28 homeland mass. IIRC, there is a river at the starting point, one north of the Mutton Valley and one south of the Mutton Valley. A 5CC would be very difficult, especially sharing the home land mass with Persia. The good thing is that you can broker techs until the late MA.

 

[alerum68]

How about this... make as many units as we can... disband all our cities but, and put an army in that city... then send everyone else out to kill...

 

[grahamiam]

team microbe just bailed on this as well. i have a feeling they had the same stagnent front that we had 20 turns ago.

@bugs -> yes, that's right, mutton valley! that was the scene of a great archer rush during my game. god i hate those, but you gotta take out persia cause that's the only iron available on that continent, iirc. otherwise, your running around with garbage units till someone finally hooks up a second iron and you've researched nav. that's not an easy way to survive

@ alerum -> fall back ala the alamo? imho, not a bad idea, but instead of disbanding the cities, just keep the ones far off as long as possible for unit support, selling off improvements and abandoning them as soon as a cav comes within 3 tiles. maybe disband ones that are too close together to prevent rapid pillaging?

 

[Sir Bugsy]

Looking at Microbe's scoring curve, it looks like the end came fairly quickly. I think once your cities and and infrastructure start to crumble, things go down quickly. I would try to hold onto every city we can. Everyone one of those cities represent income and unit support, not to mention production.

 

[grahamiam]

team microbe conceded. they didn't even play it out, as i understand from microbe's post.

 

[denyd]

Did MB set a completion date for this one yet?

I somehow remember it being about Sept 20th. If that's the case then, let's just try to hold on to as much as possible until the clock runs out. If this didn't have and end date we'd probably lose by Dip/Space before getting conquered anyway.

 

[RowAndLive]

Ackk! I'm not ready yet! (Only thru turn 4 on DD01 due to illness & shopping for a new car). OK, got it, and will start tonight, along with a pledge not to let it finish on my watch. Let's see what we'll get.

I'm in for SGOTM4, pref the same team. I also will be out of town, 10/2-10/11, but also expected it to be only 1 turn. I too remember the game, and was able to take out Persia, but unable to finish due to time constraints (that's what's nice about SG). Perhaps we just see about setting up a city on the iron early? I know it's exploitive - if he left the iron in the same place - he probably won't.

I'm also up for a shot at DG. I'm told that my level of play counts as much higher in a SG than as a solo, so why not try. It would be fun.

EDIT: X-post. Ending with as many points as possible, and no confirmed loss suits me. Again, I'll see what I can do.

 

[denyd]

I'm planning on playing SGOTM4, if everybody is interested in playing.

This'll be the first one that I actually won on the first time around. (20K Cultural). I think I only had about 15 cities for most of the game. I never really got a chance to use the War Elephants. I got to Mutton Valley first and set up a defensive city (walls & barracks), then used my spearmen & catapults to continually chop up the Immortals before any damage could be done. I finally managed to use infantry & artillery to take over Persia and then expanded west until the game ended in 1906.

Like the rest of the team it seems, I've got a vacation in October (10/6-10/11), but with luck I won't even miss a turn.

 

[RowAndLive]

A question: In a 5CC, how important is it that the 5 cities have continuous territory? Could we afford a slight drift SW before founding, then grab Mutton Valley, irontown, etc.? We'd obviously need a port or 2.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

SGOTM4 results... so far

Wants to Play...variant
Denyd (Yes...Doesn't care)
G-man (Yes...yes)
Alerum (No, too much school)
Bede (No, but wants to play regular SG)
R&L (Yes...Yes)
Bugs (Yes... Doesn't care either)

So it looks like its four of us playing the variant. I'll PM mad-bax.

 

[grahamiam]

yes and yes, though i've never done a 5cc. i know bugs has but not sure about the rest. maybe we need to petition mb to give us a 5cc ringer so we can have fun with this one

 

[denyd]

I think the hardest part about a 5CC on this map is having to put one of those cities in Mutton Valley. There were 3 or 4 great city locations on this map on the northern half of the island, then a horizontal mountain range with a valley for a single city then a donut of good land where Xerxes lives. There are no horses and only a single iron source in the SW (where X-Man lives).

From my recollections there are 3 ways to win this.

1. Get to the iron first, then use swords to kill of X-Man
2. Get to Mutton Valley and hold him off until you get to War Elephants
3. Get to Mutton Valley and play a defensive game going for a non-military win.

Back to the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It looks like this is going to be a let's just hold on till the bell riings kind of finish (unless we go Kamikaze on France), so we should concentrate on defensive features (cannons, muskets & walls) in all cities and keep researching to cavalry for some counterattacking units. Try to hang on to Antium at all costs. I think that's where the Heroic Epic & Pentagon are located. That'll keep our MGL's coming and let them hold 4 units each (more and stronger armies).

Since I really hate losing, one last time I'll ask if anyone is interested in dropping the variant and trying to steal a UN victory?

 

[Tarkeel]

I wouldn't bet the farm on the map staying exactly the same as the GOTM... Just have a look at how much was changed for this one M-b basically swapped the 2 continents around, then made the start look almost like it used to..

IIRC, I think it's usually allowed to drop war the last turn of AW to get diplomatic victory... But not sure how it would be counted here, with the xenophobic and all.

 

[microbe]

team microbe conceded. they didn't even play it out, as i understand from microbe's post.

Right. Two people had to leave due to RL, and we got a replacement, then rumor said scout was also struggling with the flood in Florida, so we had only 3 people left.

I don't think we were going to win anyway with such a big tech gap, but we had cavs and had been VERY slowly making progress, so we would't lose fast either.

All things considered we decided to give up. The good thing is that I can now post in others' threads.

One of the most annoying things is those mountains.

 

[grahamiam]

Right. Two people had to leave due to RL, and we got a replacement, then rumor said scout was also struggling with the flood in Florida, so we had only 3 people left.

I would probably have done the exact same

 

[alerum68]

Sorry guys, but I'm going to have to sit the SGOTMs for a while. Work is to much for all the SGs I'm in... going to have to cut down to about 2.