SGOTM3 Rome - Team Bugsy

[mad-bax]

Yes I can see the ambiguity now. I should have said "after 20 turns of war have elapsed".

Apologies. Commiserations. etc.

 

[RowAndLive]

Here's an updated map with some color dots, and an orange box to indicate D=4/4.5. Veii is now on the pink dot.

At D=4, our options are very limited on the E to S quadrant. Is the archer in the green ring on a mountain (I'm thinking yes.), or a forest? If a forest, then that is the best city site for that area.

In the S, either the yellow dot or ring, depending on the adjacent area. E of the dot may also work, if we use the yellow ring instead of the dot. Going for the lake shore would put us on a BG - not ideal.

In the N, I like the blue dot best. The blue ring is on a hill, but adjacent to too many mountains for attackers to defend on. The same for the blue X.

Is the red dot feasible, given pink and blue, or is it too crowded?

Talk it up, people!

 

[grahamiam]

blue should be immediately accessible due to road so it looks fine to me. yellow circle is better than the yellow dot due to river.

 

[RowAndLive]

I'm suggesting that the blue dot should be next.

For yellow, we'll really need to see the shape of the shoreline. perhaps the dot will get river credit (I doubt it), and then another city could be 1 or 2 NW of the ring.

 

[grahamiam]

I'm suggesting that the blue dot should be next.

For yellow, we'll really need to see the shape of the shoreline. perhaps the dot will get river credit (I doubt it), and then another city could be 1 or 2 NW of the ring.

yep, i was agreeing with your suggestion. gets another BG too

i forgot to answer your question regarding mountain/forest: it's a mountain.

 

[RowAndLive]

Turn 8 (2230BC)
Go to the Diplo screen and see France. They're up all techs, INCLUDING writing. There went and chance of brokering.

@M-B: Another clarification please. On the rules page, you give an example of where the AI attempts to extort you, and say that if the player does not succumb to the demand, then contact is judged to not have been made.

Above, where Alerum went to the diplo screen, and checked their techs, but made no deals, is it still considered contact because he chose to go to the diplo screen?

@TEAM: If so, then we will have to discuss checking the folks who appear on the diplo list, even though we haven't seen them yet (contact traded by AI) before calling them up. (This is how I understood this anyway.)

Also, given the clarified 20 turn rule, we now have ~17 turns with which to make a gpt deal(s) with France, since we won't have to declare on them until 20 turns after we begin war with England. The sooner, the better chance we will have of getting some deals completed without making the rep worse, and still being able to make them at all. I know that they don't currently need anything from us, but we should keep it in mind.

IIRC, Bede is UP, R&L is On Deck.

 

[RowAndLive]

yep, i was agreeing with your suggestion.

Understood. Just clarifying for everyone else.

 

[alerum68]

Guys since our rep is trashed, why don't we just turn this into a true AWE game? This will cause the AI to go into military production mode, and should benfit us in the long run...

As for Masonary the AI wouldn't give it up for everything we had... I was going to go for it on turn 7, but instead was forced to do the BW + Cerm Burial deal... Trust me, I tried to snag it.

I would have waited Grahm, but that would have caused the game to have been delayed another 3 days or so.

 

[grahamiam]

As for Masonary the AI wouldn't give it up for everything we had... I was going to go for it on turn 7, but instead was forced to do the BW + Cerm Burial deal... Trust me, I tried to snag it.

now that we have writing, are we up on that with England or did France already sell it to them?

 

[alerum68]

I don't remember... I try not to look at the trade screen on the turn I hand it off... just to tempting to make so deals. Turn 9 still had only France with Writing though...


Edit: I just pulled up MapStat. It appears we can now meet America and Russia now too. Russia is the only civ that doesn't have writing. If we could call them up, I'm sure we could trade Writing for Masonary. Also most civs now have Mysticism... all but us and Greece in fact.

 

[grahamiam]

we might as well meet everyone we can and just start the clock ticking for each civ. glad to hear we can get mas. brother bede has some interesting turns ahead

edit: it's ok to look at the trade screen and note the trades available, just bad form to pull them off on the last turn.

 

[RowAndLive]

Alerum,

I have no problem with how you traded, and understand that you couldn't get Masonry. (Please remember - no haggling. No reply needed.)

Also, our rep is NOT yet trashed. That won't happen for 17 more turns! Also, the NOW variant gives us some flexibility that AWE does not. Personally, I'd rather use a little bit of it anyway, because AWE also forces US into military production mode, and bogs the game down quite a bit. Another example is similar to the gambit used by Team Scout in SGOTM2: If we lose a city to flip, and the AI builds a wonder in it, then when we re-take it, we get to keep the wonder as long as no non-Roman citz's are in it.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

Well, I apologize for not reading the rules right. It certainly changes the way I'm approaching this game. Here are my thoughts:

1. Let's go find everyone.
2. Make as many gpt deals as possible in the next couple of turns.
3. I like blue dot next and yellow ring after that.
4. We are essentially going to be at AW within 100 turns. We might want to consider really packing in our 4 RCP ring with cities. Red dot will work, 2NW of yellow ring, 1 E of yellow dot, green circle. You get the picture.
5. When we played a 3CC AW, you will have a lot of casualities if you don't use artillery. We need to go for math right after we get lit. =>catapults
6. Blue dot might make a great location for the Great Library. Palace pre-build right away?

@ Alerum - sorry if I sounded bossy in that last post.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

OK I have updated the contact list both here and on the one I posted earlier. I think it would behoove us to put the pedal to the metal in our war machine.

Order of civ contact:(currently at 2150 BC)
Greeks - at war - started in 2750 BC
England - declare war in 1950 BC
France - declare war in 1375 BC

Roster
Denyd
G-man
Alerum - just played
Bede - Up
R&L - On deck
Bugs

 

[denyd]

Let's start with the good news:

The only ancient UU that's nearby is the Hoplite, which is not an attacker.

And now on to the bad news:
as I was under the same impression that you had 20 turns from contact to declare if you were already at war, I would have done the same thing as Alerun68 with those trades.

We're facing Hoplites with archers, so we need to use a stack (4+) when attacking them in cities. Since we don't expect them Hoplites to attack, wait until they get to favorable terrain to attack them.

We don't know Iron Working and will soon be at war with 2 more AI.

I'm thinking we need to place our cities on hills (red circle) for the added defense bonus. I like the red dot for production, but not for defense and it might be our farthest north city for a while.

I disagree with Bugsy on Mathematics. While catapults would be quite helpful, having Legionaires would be better.

I agree that the Great Library is probably our only chance to stay current on techs.

If we happen to get a GL, I'd propose an army (of legions if possible) and if we get a second GL save him for the Great Library.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

@ Denyd - That's a good point. Having legions would be better than cats. Then we go literature=>IW=>math. Hopefully we can trade for one of those two. I think we can plan on writing off a GA.

A better location would be 1 SE of red dot, but that wrecks our RCP.

Edit - If something comes up during your turns that you aren't sure of, let's stop and talk about it. Only one team has played more turns than us and three teams haven't even started yet. This is not a race.

 

[RowAndLive]

We're also going to have to do a lot of catching up. The lack of clarity on the rule has cost us 30 turns of exploring, and will have an exponential impact on the "culture" / growth component of the base score for those teams who interpreted the rule as we did. For those who understood M-B right off, they'll be ahead in terms of planning ahead, and how they've maximized growth.

 

[RowAndLive]

Here's another map. I've adjusted the dots per some of the discussion. This still leaves us with serious gaps from blue to green and green to white. I've marked a few at 6 that would work in those areas. We could also bite the bullet, and build on the BG E of the white ring.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

We're also going to have to do a lot of catching up. The lack of clarity on the rule has cost us 30 turns of exploring, and will have an exponential impact on the "culture" / growth component of the base score for those teams who interpreted the rule as we did. For those who understood M-B right off, they'll be ahead in terms of planning ahead, and how they've maximized growth.

The whole thing has got me a bit ticked off, I have to say. 40 turns into a game your vision of reality is suddenly different, and everything you based your strategy and thinking around is suddenly different. Here it isn't even 2000 BC yet, and we're at a disadvantage. Ticks me off.

 

[grahamiam]

The whole thing has got me a bit ticked off, I have to say. 40 turns into a game your vision of reality is suddenly different, and everything you based your strategy and thinking around is suddenly different. Here it isn't even 2000 BC yet, and we're at a disadvantage. Ticks me off.

while i understand and share your sentiments, changing stratagy on the fly should be nothing new as we constantly have to reassess where were at in every game. winning this coming out of this hole will be really satifying, even if we get spooned

but really, not much has changed. build units, buy whatever we can as soon as we can, make babies... I think turtling is the way to go for now unless we decide we have enough units to take on the english. imho, the greeks are out of our league until we get legions. maybe we need to get a spear or 2 on the hills/mountains to the west to chew up their archers as they come at us.

the other thing we should do with england, now that we know our rep is toast, is to buy everything we can from her for gpt just before declaring. even all her cash, just take everything. do the same to France and Russia as well if logical. like I stated earlier, Bede will have some interesting turns and will need to visit his local clergy for all the sins about to be commited