SGOTM3 Rome - Team Smackster

[Tarkeel]

Well, what can I say? Nice game from all of us

In hindsight I see one thing that could have sped t up for us: Instead of landing in just one spot, we should have had several beachheads, that would have made us harder to counter attack, but also longer for us to implement... As DH said, lack of rails slowed us down most, and lack of captured workers/cities for frontline healing and roading.

Good score, and a reasonable finish date given the variant, in my eyes atleast

 

[mad-bax]

Congratulations guys. A spectacular game. Well done.

You certainly set the bar high for the rest of us.

 

[Wotan]

Great game! Well played by everyone. We have had some differences of opinion along the road but nothing that really impaired the game. My prediction re. 1000AD, was obviously too optimistic. I had not taken the fact to heart, that we needed to rebuild the territories we conquered with our own cities. With our Jason at 8800 something I am still convince the score is hurt by this fact, the need to repopulate and the lack of captured workers do prolong the game and I am quite sure Jason is based on a normal game. So the 34 turns we were delayed must be attributed to the variant.

The Conquest VC is probably less impaired by the Variant and with hindsight I guess we should have pursued this instead. Hopefully our luck in the opening stages of the game will be enough to put us in front of the teams going after Conquest.

As DH said, lack of rails slowed us down most, and lack of captured workers/cities for frontline healing and roading.

Rails is really not a tech you go after in a Domination/Conquest game. It is way too far into the future. The game should be over and done with before that, besides the cost to research it is rarely worth doing so. I am myself trying hard to go from Domination with Navigation/MT to Domination after Chivalry only. It is a hard journey but some of the best players in this community are able to so it is feasible. Researching rail would really have slowed us down!

All games however do not play out well with this strategy but they are rather the exception to the normal game. Eg. I am now in a prolonged Gotm33, well into the industrial age, the tech pace in this game is frantic. In 790AD I have all of my territory railroaded.

So, the only thing left now is to pray our game will stay in the lead. And prepare for the next SGOTM, were we will show them this game was no lucky break. We will improve our game next time and be even more focused on the mission. Always asking the question: Do we need this to achieve our goals? Every time we start building something. Right?

Oh, BTW, one thing remains, the named units. Was it possible to extract the letters from the names as intended in PTW?

 

[mad-bax]

The difficulty with solving the puzzle using PTW, and particularly when playing the variant is that the barbarian "island" is much more likely to have been settled by the time AI by the time you get there, and so some of the named barbs may have been dead already.

As I said before, I didn't expect the puzzle to be solved, and I didn't really want it solved. The answer is a spoiler for the next game. So, I'm not going to help you out. Sorry.

If you list the named barbs you saw then I will tell you whether or not you have any chance of soving it. That's as far as I will go.

 

[Tarkeel]

@Wotan: I totally agree with you that rails are not something you'd normally go for in a fast domination/conquest game, but nevertheless, movement was our most limiting factor in the end

 

[Wotan]

OK, I have been lurking in the other teams and was a bit surprised Dmanakho had not only lurked but dropped so much info on our game in X-teams thread. NOT HAPPY WITH THIS!!! I guess the post from Smackster re. lurking went unread. Please do not post in other teams threads. The game is still open so we should not damage our own chances by helping others. And re. Dmanakho's "paranoia" re anonymous lurkers being froim other teams, if they do it is really their loss, if they get advantages from cheating that is just something that will damage their rep in the future. I hope I am correct in assuming that this is not something that happens.

 

[Tarkeel]

I've been lurking through a few so far, and must say I'm shocked how few have had a fully operative 4-turn settler factory...

Edit: Fun fact: When I was replaying some turns to get a picture of Northern Pike for M-B, Athens completed the lighthouse... I think we burned it a turn or two before it would have completed. Too bad really, as that would have put off our contacts with other continent till we were ready.

 

[dmanakho]

Oh, Come on guys,
All i said in X-Team forum is that we finished game in 1300, everyone can see it in submission form. Have i really revealed to much of info?

 

[smackster]

Well you said we finished domination, it helps them to know we did that, but hinders them if they too try it I think. So I don't it makes any difference, but we should not say anything apart from the date.

 

[dmanakho]

Well you said we finished domination, it helps them to know we did that, but hinders them if they too try it I think. So I don't it makes any difference, but we should not say anything apart from the date.

Oops, did i say that??? Oh sure I did... ok ok ok.. that was a blinder....
I guess i was just way too excited we finished our saga....
Smackster, where is that leash you said you will find for me???

 

[smackster]

Can't find the leash icon so this will have to do

 

[smackster]

I've been lurking through a few so far, and must say I'm shocked how few have had a fully operative 4-turn settler factory...

Edit: Fun fact: When I was replaying some turns to get a picture of Northern Pike for M-B, Athens completed the lighthouse... I think we burned it a turn or two before it would have completed. Too bad really, as that would have put off our contacts with other continent till we were ready.

Yes that would have helped for sure. I'm looking at other threads where they are only declaring war with some of the other continent around the time we finished. Now it would have been a lot easier to fight India if the Aztecs were not sending their Cavalry hords.

 

[smackster]

Just looking at some other threads and they seemed to declare war on the last one on our continent very late. This is why

Russia 1750 BC, war declaration due 330BC
America 1500BC, war declaration due 130BC (10 turns from 330BC)
France 1500BC, war declaration due 70AD (10 turns from 130BC)


All my fault, but I'll blame you guys for not counting

 

[dmanakho]

Hey, if we had such a good game this time, i believe next time we will not give them a chance...
But i am afraid Mad-Bax won't let us to play together, he will say our team is too strong.... Didn't he do that in a past with Kuningas team??? i hope it won't happen to us though and we can play together again.

 

[Wotan]

Kuningas had to skip SGOTM3 for RL reasons. Teams were allowed to be formed by 4 players with the fifth allocated by MB in SGOTM3 IIRC. But for every played SGOTM I guess the teams will be more established so I would not be surprised if teams are allowed to stay together if desired soon if not now.

 

[smackster]

Here is another of my mistakes as leader, failing to understand the victory conditions.

Start off I just thought it was best Jason score for the variant, duh!

Worse then I read it as this:

"The Golden Laurels are awarded to the team with the fastest Sponsored Variant finish
(or the highest variant score in SGOTM 01)."

which just means the earliest date

But now I read this from Mad-Bax in the first page of the staff thread

"The variant award is for the fastest finsish relative to Jason best date. Which victory condition do you think we will pursue?"

Generally you can complete Conquest 200 years (or so) after Domination and get a better Jason score. This means that a team completing a Conquest in 1490 will beat us.

 

[dmanakho]

@Smackster: Is it that way or the opposite way (i mean domination ahead of conquest or conquest ahead of domination?)
and if you were wrong in so many cases then should we you, or would you prefer :suicide: instead?

 

[smackster]

@Smackster: Is it that way or the opposite way (i mean domination ahead of conquest or conquest ahead of domination?)
and if you were wrong in so many cases then should we you, or would you prefer :suicide: instead?

I'm pretty sure that a 1300AD dom, is equal to a 1500AD conq in terms of Jason bonus, just need to look at a previous GOTM to see

Here are the fastest dates from a certain GOTM, the closer you get the better. And in that GOTM there is 250 years between conq and dom. I often find Conquest so much harder that is why I chose domination. But think it might not have been the best choice in this game.

Conquest 800AD
Cultural 20k 1625AD
Cultural 100k 1430AD
Diplomatic 870AD
Domination 550AD
Space Race 1280AD
Max Score 10365

I've already tendered my resignation to Mad-bax and asked to be banned from the forum for my incompetance, only kidding. At least AlanH will stop calling us lucky when he sees how difficult I made it for us. We probably would have broken 10k Jason score if I had not messed this up.

 

[Wotan]

As discussed above Conquest is probably the easiest VC in this game. Unfortunately Jason does not take the fact we need to raise everything before rebuilding into account so Dom is considered easier than Conq. When in fact it is probably the other way around.

I am sorry I was a bit vague when I tried to discuss this in the early stages of this game. We probably never really "connected" when discussing the VCs and what each of them implied.

@Smackster: We are a team and it was as a team we screwed up. I find it a bit odd though if Jason is not adjusted for the fact that variant players cannot keep "spoils of war".

In your example the difference between Dom/Conq is 25 turns, if it is so in SGOTM too we need the other teams to go beyond 1425AD. Also, getting a Jason above 10k in the variant should be next to impossible, we have a Jason at 88% of this so I guess anyone beating that will really deserve to win. But I do agree with you 10k should have been possible with a better mid-game focus and a slightly more focused end-game. No one is even close to our opening game in my opinion.

Just to make everything clear here and avoid misunderstandings: The Jason score per se is irrelevant but the ratio we have in comparison with a 10k game indicate a well played game with a slight dent in the score due to the variant rules. (I am not sure I understand what I am trying to say but...)

 

[smackster]

Yes I'm with you, I did forget the 5 yr turns, so I think you have it at 1425AD. Of course in the main page that Mad-Bax wrote it just says the quickest win, nothing to do with type of victory. So based on that they need to win by our date 1300ad, however they win.

Just winning this variant should make us happy. To crush the AI like we did should make us proud.

I don't take any of my mistakes personally, I can't believe I made them, but know to take more care next time. And best of all you all know to double check everything I say

I looked back at one of my messages where I said we should think about Dom/Conq when we see how much space we need on the other continent. And play it like a Dom up to that point. Once I say the amount of space needed and the size of that continent, Conq seemed like a mamoth task.

So, somebody has to play our save before we invaded the other continent and see if we can do a conquest. Maybe we can we can play 10 turns each. Just build Cavalry, turn on the governor and automate workers, to speed it up and see what year we can finish.

smackster