SGOTM3 Rome - Team microbe

[scoutsout]

Well... the way I figure it... MB's rule was to prevent sandbaggin' ... there's nothing that says we have to wait 20 turns to declare... I think we could just go Xenophobic AWE and still be within the rules of the variant. The wars have come so quickly that the the non-oscillating part is long gone from our game.

 

[microbe]

I didn't mean to play as AWE now. I don't want to take advantage but since this is a competition anyway (though I am not playing for competition), I don't want to make our life unnecessarily harder either.

I think we can go with Barbslinger's understanding if no one jumps out and says he is wrong.

 

[gozpel]

So you call me chicken now, huh?

Fine, I declare on everyone as soon I start up the game and I mean everyone. That means the other teams too

Nah, I rather believe Slinger in this case as I feel a bit rusty and I think I will have my handful anyways. I start this tonight if I have time....that's Aussie time, so it will be ready for next player in good time, I hope.

 

[barbslinger]

Sorry, never got a chance last night. I opened up GOTM33-Greece and after the Indian-Korean war it was too late. I' have the utmost confidence in Gozpel though.

 

[gozpel]

Pre-turn - Golden Age and only trouble as far as the eye can see

MM cities and get us from 11gpt to 17gpt. Work river-tiles and grassland when new builds are almost done. Make worker in Pompeii to build in 1t instead of 2.

That's it, now on to the war.

530bc - IT - Reg english horse attack our elite spear in Cumae and dies, taking 3hp.

Rome settler -> legion. Move settler to the cow, where I wanted it all the time. A town like this can provide with very important workers.

Veii legion > legion. I see the problem and have to take citizens off the commerce tiles for a couple of turns.

Pompeii worker -> warrior. With the cow settled this town would've been roaded and fully functioning already. But I'm not the guy that say I told you so We all have plans.

Kill a couple of warriors, elite legion looks for that leader in vain, horse promotes to elite.

Kill 2 greek units, an elite archer does his job but can't find the holy grail.

I have to move on to Greece.

Change a couple of builds to horses.

Pillage the 2 tiles as requested and have to hire a clown in Neapolis.

510bc - IT - Another english horse dies against our valiant elite spear in Cumae, no dice.

Pisae barracks -> warrior.

Elite horse and legion try their luck, they win but still no luck.

Move 6 legions towards Greece.

Move other troops around. Greece have founded a town in the fog S.

490bc - Cumae legion -> warrior. (the N towns aren't connected anymore, remember)

Kill a couple of units, yet again an elite fails.

Our 6 legions are in Greece territory and they answer with 2 settler pairs?

470bc - 2 french swords come to play. (I counter that with 2 elite spears and 1 vet spear and a vet legion on a hill, to make them move to flat ground)

Rome horse -> settler.

Hispalis founded -> warrior.

I ignore the greece settlers and move 6 legions next to Athens. I will attack from a mountain next turn. Ohh, the suspense

450bc - IT - Haha, Russia demands TM and 22g, why not? I don't want their roaming spears to pillage. Also IT, Greece move out a horse and an archer out of Athens, how nice.

Antium horse -> horse.
Neapolis horse -> warrior (road the missing tile and switch to horse)

Whack american settler pair with elite horse, disband workers.

Our suicide force give Athens a whack: 6 legions attack 3 hoplites, 3 dies and we raze the city.

430bc - Germany finish the Lighthouse

Greece move what they have against our territory and ignore our wounded legions.

Veii legion -> legion.

Remove 4 units from our territory, including a Babs settler pair, all taken out by elites.
We are in great need of a leader, but noone seems to want to lead us.

410bc - Rome settler -> horse.
Cumae warrior -> legion.
Pisae warrior -> warrior.

Upgrade warrior to legion.

Healing troops and move defense around. We are getting swarmed.

390bc - We defend against french warrior attack in Neapolis.

Ravenna barracks -> legion.
Hispalis warrior -> worker.

Kill 3 greece units.

370bc - Kill Greece archer.
Kill Babs bowman, lose elite archer
Kill american sword.

350bc - England and Russia sign alliance against us

Rome horse -> horse.
Antium horse -> horse.
Neapolis horse -> horse.

Kill 8 offending units, lose a vet legion.

I managed to get rid of a horde of enemies, but they keep coming. I remember now why I never liked AW, there's hardly time to breathe.

I also build horses to increase our chances to get a very wanted leader, horses retreat and make some impact on the foes, but it seems we lose more than we want anyways in this game.
Ratio should stay at 1:10 or we're toast. An army would make us so good right now, but I wasn't too lucky with that.

Use horses before elite legions, they can pick a hp or two, then the legion finish the job. This is our best chance.

And yeah, retreat troops from Greece, we need them at home right now.

There's a settler E of Veii, he should settle where the Greece units stand, next to the iron.

I didn't care to trade, we probably need to increase research to get into Monarchy.

 

[barbslinger]

Well now we have another opponent. Grand! This is AW. Who is MB fooling!

 

[gozpel]

I forgot to mention that the AI's are building Sun Tzu, so we're in deep water techwise.

A couple of thoughts: We could try to get Monarchy from Germany before they declare on us, by zero research and gpt deal. We can always play rotten and declare on them instead?

We should use one of our W towns as bait to lure the AI over there. They almost always bypass defended cities for an undefended town and we can kill them off as they walk by.

 

[microbe]

I'm already lost in when we need to declare next. Hopefully we don't need to worry about that as we'll be declared on instead.

The best news is that we FINALLY go on offense. It would be good to free up the east.

Do you guys think we need another player? I can PM some people to see if they are interested.

Barbslinger - up
microbe - on deck
gozpel
scout

 

[gozpel]

"The best news is that we FINALLY go on offense. It would be good to free up the east."

Well, someone had to take the risk and we lost 3 legions because I did it. But we whacked Athens and that should be worth something. The other Greek cities S of us is a mere cleaning up process, when we get to that.

Another player would be great, a 4-player roster is too busy.

 

[gozpel]

Thinking makes my head hurt, I went to the pub yesterday and I am so hangover...I should go back to bed.

But, we need to squeeze out a few more settlers ASAP to move our frontlines. The current horsebuilds can be switched for that. We have a few troops that can protect them for now and with my other advise "lure-town" we can expand.

 

[scoutsout]

@Gozpel: Have a look at Antium before you scrap the horse builds. I MM'd 2 citizens to forest because so little is improved at Antium. It is not growing from size 4. I started horse builds there to give us something to skirmish with at Cumae. There are units of just about every nationality flowing towards Cumae....

You should be able to get a settler out of Antium in... 4-5 turns... but it may take a little while for Antium to bounce back. One of the French workers I disbanded was 1 turn from finishing a mine under the Spear N of the city.

Oh yeah - and I'm not calling you chicken.

 

[mad-bax]

OK, I'll add a player to this team.

 

[microbe]

We need a good player. As good as TedJackson.

 

[ForTheEmpire]

We need a good player. As good as TedJackson.

*Looks at himself up and down the mirror*

Such high standards already required for the new guy... But whatever. Hi guys, I've been looking around for sgs to join to get some sg experience, but was redirected to try filling up a spot on a SGOTM. M-B was gracious enough to fill me in, and you guys were equally gracious to chance on an unknown such as myself. I had vanilla civ for the longest time imaginable, but never amounted to much skill wise because I simply didn't like the game for the longest time. Well, maybe it was because I came from the Starcraft mold where I was so used to precision in build order, that I couldn't understand how to start my civ games. Then about a 2-3 months ago, I started to actually give the game some effort, using CFC as a resource to figure out a lot of gameplay.

So at the present, you're seeing before you an PTW emperor (maybe deity? non-variant emperor is TOO easy for me ) level player who LOVES to go and hack the AI to death with extreme prejudice. Some indication of my actual skill level could be seen in a German 5CCC emperor game which I've been doing for the past two weeks that I posted in a thread for some advice and criticism. In case if your interested here's the thread.
German 5CCC (I'm up to 1922 in it, with me and Rome left... just waiting for the panzers...)

I'm gonna carefully examine the thread for the next hour or so, and I'll give you my thoughts of the current situation. I won't focus on the past sets and instead will try to find a way to slaughter all the AIs for the glory of Rome in the most efficient manner possible. Could somebody tell me if there is anything I need to d/l specifically for the SGOTM? BTW, I'm on 1.27f PTW. One last thing... please be kind to the sg noob

EDIT: Also, I'm an AW noob The only AW game I played was a take on sirian's epic14 with the pillaging Greek hoplite, which I can win provided the rng god's are sufficiently honored.

 

[microbe]

ForTheEmpire, don't get intimated by my previous comment. I knew it was unlikely to be accomplished.

But from your description I think you can do fine with this game. I myself didn't have much AW experience either.

 

[ForTheEmpire]

Thanks for the words of encouragement. I'm still reading the thread, but I'm having trouble doing an analysis without a save to work with. Is there one available for me to look at? Btw, my schedule for availability is a definite no-can-do from Aug. 11-Aug. 14. Maybe Aug. 10 as well... In the meantime, I'm in Cal, so PST. Best available online during the day for chatting, for playing the game best at night, but lacks internet then (please don't ask...)

EDIT: Never mind, I found the save, analyzing now...

 

[ForTheEmpire]

I hate to bring an old problem back up front, but there are two AMERICAN workers doing group mining with 2 native workers right next to Neapolis, which also has a Bab spear on the adjacent hill. I've checked gozpel's turnlog, and he said he whacked an American settler pair back in 450 bc and disbanded the workers in the last set. So either he forgot to do it, or these workers have been around for awhile from an even more previous set of turns. Btw, we can force that spear off the hill by sending over a spear from Ravenna to cover the workers for one turn. Ravenna won't be attacked during that one turn and we can bring the spear back to the town after the Bab spear moves somewhere else and finish it off with a horse (or two if RNG is most displeased with us) Image is at the end of post.

In the east, where we have a settler/horse/leg trio next to a Bab warrior/settler pair and a Greek archer/horse pair. The leg is fortified, obviously to protect against the Greeks, but I think the odds are much better to attack with the leg against the archer, which is showing and would be the defender. 1 def on forest is only 1.25 if you attack with our leg. 3 def on forest + fortified would be 4.5 if we defend vs. 2 attack twice. So 2.25 to 1 odds each time we score a blow on defense while 2.4 to 1 to land a hit on offense. I would attack and just get it over with.

The two legs in the east right next to Sparta, in my opinion, should wait for the third leg to back them up. 3 attacking legs are better than 2 and 2 extra turns for that group is fine.

There are 10 turns left of GA, right? If so, then I would MM Cumae and Ravenna to slow/stop their growth by placing their 1 food citizen to a forest, so both towns can have 5 turn legion. This will give 4 more legions at the end of the GA, at the cost of inhibited growth. I like more legions to do battle with since this is now essentially AWE.

EDIT: I didn't realize that both cities had 9 shields already invested in the current leg build. So in 5 turns we get 2 legs, then 5 turns with 25 shields invested, our GA will end leaving 5 to go. Two more turns would be needed to get the next 2 legs, so I was off... sorry...

I'm very encouraged by the power graph. Aside from that little negative dip from losing 3 legs, we are essentially on par with everyone!!! And one more encouraging news, which I haven't seen mentioned yet, but we are stronger than ALL of the AIs on our continent!!! Now watch all my enthusiasm get thrown out the window once I start playing

We are playing domination right? Then we not only need to focus on death and destruction, but we need to fill up our land as well. I know, it's tough to find a balance with settlers and soldiers, but this is the way I normally do fast doms. Have your core focused exclusively on military, as well as the FP core. Any outlying city should be building workers and settlers, and nothing else. Border towns of course should get walls and barracks if it's really a hot zone. Now, this can wait after our GA, so we don't waste production.

I'm almost tempted to just declare on Germany so we can just swallow up their VERY remoted outpost (there must be salt or oil there... groucho ) But that's just my emotions talking, and not my brain... Realistically, we need an army, BAD. Leaders are too much of a factor in this game, and that is probably the most decisive reason why team smackster is ahead of everyone. The army will be our pillager and battering ram, and the heroic epic is valuable here. We could either focus on normal military tactics and get leaders as we go, or we could set up a leader fishing kill zone. I vote for the first because the latter is difficult due to our border terrain.

Research wise, are we going to neglect libraries? No Pointy stick research and no trading partners means self research meaning libraries. We just need to squeeze them into our core cities and any city that makes enough cash to justify a library. BTW, when is Otto supposed to be declared on? If not within the next 20, he has lit for sale at 3gpt, 73 gold, and our very worthless wm worth 1 gold or construction for 16gpt, 73gold, and wm.

So summary of what I foresee for the next 50-60 turns: 1) Destroy the greeks, get that over with, and build settlers and workers fast to fill the open land once GA is expired ~15-20 turns since he does have a few more cities north of Sparta 2) Destroy the French, and head towards the west and the English. Liz and Joan have some key wonders that need to be razed, especially if either one gets Sun Tzu's ~ 10-20 turns till we can start a serious campaign against the French, and we may have knights (wishful thinking) by the time we strike at the English towns. Again we must be filling up the land, monarchy will help with this with it's cash rushing.

 

[gozpel]

I forgot to disband an other couple of workers? Geez, I told you I was hungover. Unbelievable! Looks like we have to pillage that darn road again. I never even remebered it after disbanded the new captured workers and probably just played on. It's so deep in my roots to never disband workers.

What other teams are doing, keep that for yourself as we are not supposed to read their threads Welcome btw ForTheEmpire! Great summary of what we've done so far and what we should do. You'll do fine

 

[ForTheEmpire]

Thanks gozpel, and yes, I'm trying my best to wipe my memory clean about the other teams progress Anyhow, where is everybody? And who's up next? And when is this game due? I imagine soon, for it's already August

 

[microbe]

Barbslinger - up
ForTheEmpire - on deck
microbe
gozpel
scout

I put you after Barbslinger.