SGOTM5 - Team Smackster

[smackster]

Played a few turns, 1080AD now. France is gone, Arabia too, but for a Settler moving that will be captured in two turns. Scandinavia are almost gone, will make peace for small cities before crushing them. At War with Egypt they will be gone too next turn. And yes, before I forget it, Nagasaki is ours and we have restarted war on Japan. Will continue tonight.

Good news on Nagasaki. Interested to know when they gave it, did we get it to size 2. Similar plans required for Zulu/England. Really now this game is a matter of how quickly we can get our Knights to the front lines. Need to clear up the centre location. Clear any settler galleys that are left.

 

[dmanakho]

Wow!!!!!
Good turns Wotan!!!
I was anxious to hear about Nagasaki, give us some details later please

 

[Wotan]

Turn log

0 – 1050AD Pre-flight
Moving units, Galley to Whale among them. Moved out of Osaka. Sold Theology to Spain for 55 gold. Sold WM to anyone willing to pay for it.

1 – 1060AD
Nagasaki shrinks to size 2 and Japan offer it and 51 gold for Peace. We take it. Moving a lot of things towards frontlines. Oslo and Dijon will fall next turn.

2 – 1070AD
Dijon falls and France is no more. Oslo falls. DoW Japan again.

IBT: We make peace with Iroquois for Tyendenaga and 20 gold. Osaka flips.

3 – 1080AD
Osaka retaken, Edo falls. DoW Arabia, Aden and Muscat falls. A Settler will take a couple of turns to track down. DoW Egypt.

4 – 1090AD
Nidaros and Stockholm falls. We get Jönköping, Norrköping and 11 gold in a Peace agreement, Linköping last city. Nara and Nagoya falls. Satsuma new Capital, unfortunately they will not talk to us. 2 size 1 cities and Satsuma left.

IBT: Oil Springs flips…

5 – 1100AD
Last Egyptian Settler captured, they are now gone.

6 – 1110AD
Last Arabian Settler captured. DoW Iroquois. Caughnawaga falls. Peace with Japan, we get Yokohama, Shimonoseki and 31 gold. We immediately re-declare war but fail to capture Satsuma.

IBT: Edo flips…

7 – 1120AD
Satsuma and Edo falls, Japan out! Linköping falls but there is a Scandinavian Settler out there!!!! DoW Spain, Zaragoza falls. DoW Celts, Lugdunum falls.

8 – 1130AD
Richborough falls. Oil springs re-taken. Valencia falls, Spain is out!. Trotsky appears!

IBT: Zulu kill the final Scandinavian Settler. Education received from GL.

9 – 1140AD
Khanawake falls, Iroquois is out! 6 tribes to go… Burdigala and Entremont falls.

IBT: Zulu DoW on us!

10 – 850AD
Mohacs falls.

After action report:
We are at war with Zulu and Celts.

All set up for DoW on Aztecs next turn. A few warnings: Two settlers “on the road”, one outside Marseilles and one between Satsuma and Osaka. Kill them! Two Galleys with Knights at sea ready to land the knights on the jungle outside Texcoco. Two Armies and a few knights in the Osaka area will reach first jungle tile north of Tlatelolco.

Zulu have two galleys in the west, both visible this turn.

A leader outside Lugdunum.

One turn for a galley between Valencia/Göteborg. Have started to send Knights that way, probably should send all Knights built in “India” there in the future. We have a total of 98 Knights now all but a dozen in the east…

We need to get galleys to the southern and eastern sides of the central island in case of landings there. In the south this is a reality with a Chinese city on the small island.

MMing done, just press return…

Firaxis: 884

EDIT: We need to bring the war to England as well. And get a few more Knights onto the central island maybe land them near Chinese cities. The most southern city will take us more than 10 turns to reach with a galley from the north. Maybe we can get to it faster from the south? after capturing the Lighthouse.

 

[smackster]

Wow looks like a great set of turns. I'm going to play it this weekend, but probably not before Saturday, I'll want to do some serious analysis on our final moves.

 

[dmanakho]

Most of the central islands Chinese cities can probably be taken in peace deal...
Macao and Chinan are the only 2 cities that can grow above size 2 withouth expanding or building harbors.
If we only had more knights in Scandinavia to hit China with all the force.
We have horses there but won't be able to upgrade them soon, since iron is disconnected.
Other than that everything looks great. Celts are almost out.
Monty is a joke.
All those knights coming south should strike England and Liz doesn't really have big cities, neither she has salpenter.
China also doesn't have salpenter and the only nation who can give us more or less of a hard time would be Zulus.... But by that time i hope we will double the number of knights we have.

Can I officially announce that most difficult part of this game is over and we are entering the finish line?

BTW. I am at home today and loaded the save... looks nice, everything looks nice.

 

[Wotan]

Wow looks like a great set of turns. I'm going to play it this weekend, but probably not before Saturday, I'll want to do some serious analysis on our final moves.

That would be great. I had some worries I had sent too many Knight/HMs east. There is a long and steady straem of them from former Arabia and towards the front but too few in the west. The road is just one tile short of Valencia and I have been sending loads of Workers there so the roading should pick up speed south of Valencia. Maybe we should start to rush regular HMs in the cities we have in the exteme SW?

And, Nagasaki shrunk to 2 the turn after I put the galley on the Whale. The same thing should happen to the Zulu and English cities on 1-tile islands.

EDIT: @Dman, the camels back is broken! Now it is just a question of finishing in so few turns as possible. We have 98 Knights! Actually more than needed in my opinion but to few of them are in the west. So we need to speed up to begin the war with England so our forces start moving west from the eastern front.

If Smacksters planning session can find a way for us to win this in 20 turns I would be sooo happy! More than that and I am less sure we have a good finish date. And if there is a possibility to do it in that time frame I suggest Smackster finish this baby on his watch!

I had no problem getting two consecutive peace offers from Japan, first for Nagasaki and then for their remaining 1 size cities. I would guess we can do the same with China if needed. Rushing Galleys in the south to send suicide galles towards the southern part of "central isles" could be an option to to get those annoying chinese cities.

 

[tomasjj]

Guys,

Looks like you are back on track!
I am really glad it you got us out of that quagmire I put you in.
Thats it you see, I would really hate it if I messed it all up for the team. That would be almost the only thing I know of that could make me feel real, real bad about myself.

Good job!

jj

 

[smackster]

Guys,

Looks like you are back on track!
I am really glad it you got us out of that quagmire I put you in.
Thats it you see, I would really hate it if I messed it all up for the team. That would be almost the only thing I know of that could make me feel real, real bad about myself.

Actually you didn't put us in a bad position at all. Reputation breaking has made no difference to the end result. As the others have said, we should have this wrapped up in the next 20 turns, which should be completed in the next 24 hours

As we are about to finish this SG, how about us guys playing a self made SG while we wait for the next one. A bad start Conquests Deity game or something like that.

 

[tomasjj]

Glad to hear it!

I wouldnt mind a Deity Conquest, if it isnt as intense as this one, that is
Since not being a competition game I guess there is a more lax approach.
Not to say that one shouldnt put in the effort...

jj

 

[smackster]

If Smacksters planning session can find a way for us to win this in 20 turns I would be sooo happy! More than that and I am less sure we have a good finish date. And if there is a possibility to do it in that time frame I suggest Smackster finish this baby on his watch!

Yes I'll finish it. I'm sure this can be done in less than 20, if every effort is put into finishing quickly, and I try to pull every last trick I know.

I had no problem getting two consecutive peace offers from Japan, first for Nagasaki and then for their remaining 1 size cities. I would guess we can do the same with China if needed. Rushing Galleys in the south to send suicide galles towards the southern part of "central isles" could be an option to to get those annoying chinese cities.

My experience is that reputation does not affect what you get in peace deals, and I think this has proved that. The only random factor is how long before they will talk to you, they key part is how much damage you do to them.

I'm going to implement more city gifting (although this time I might not suggest gifting Thebes which has the Pyramids, did anyone notice that little mistake), to maximise damage and in theory give us more of their cities in peace.

 

[smackster]

Glad to hear it!

I wouldnt mind a Deity Conquest, if it isnt as intense as this one, that is
Since not being a competition game I guess there is a more lax approach.
Not to say that one shouldnt put in the effort...

jj

Yes this would be relaxed, and would be good preparation for the next SGOTM.

 

[tomasjj]

Good.
Because I would really like the opportunity to cooperate and learn more from you guys.

 

[Wotan]

Guys,

Looks like you are back on track!
I am really glad it you got us out of that quagmire I put you in.
Thats it you see, I would really hate it if I messed it all up for the team. That would be almost the only thing I know of that could make me feel real, real bad about myself.

Good job!

jj

You probably had the most difficult turn set of them all. I felt a bit on the edge during the first few of my turns but now the game is easy to wrap up. The difficult part is doing it in as few turns as possible. The only thing in your turns that might have cost us a few turns was the loss of a really good RoP rape in the final stages but since you did not know about how reputation works in the game we can't really hold it against you. And in my turn set I probably regained a few of those turns by being able to disregard our reputation and Zulu DoW also made it less important sinc ewe cannot use it against them. So on the whole I guess we are on track again. And I hope you have reconsidered and stay on the team. Not that you will get to play any more turns until the next SGOTM

Now all that remains is to finish this off in a better way than we did in SGOTM3. We lost that game by one turn and actually squandered a few turns in the final stages of the game by bad planning. With Smackster MMing this final turn set I look forward to not having to experience that again.

@Smackster: OK on the private game, with the holidays coming up there will be plenty of time for some gaming.

 

[smackster]

Now all that remains is to finish this off in a better way than we did in SGOTM3. We lost that game by one turn and actually squandered a few turns in the final stages of the game by bad planning. With Smackster MMing this final turn set I look forward to not having to experience that again.

Klarius only managed that as he knew our date, which he will not this time. Actually I was thinking of posting a save the turn before our finish date. They will assume that is the last save before finish, and that our real finish is 5-10 turns after that. I don't want to give them an accurate target. With the rank corruption exploiting in the non-jump games, they may well generate hundreds of units and still beat us.

@Smackster: OK on the private game, with the holidays coming up there will be plenty of time for some gaming.

Any suggestions for something different. Or shall we just play a totally random game, I'll randomise everything, generate the map, and post that. C3C.

Edit: We can post it in the forums and ask for 1-2 other players. It would be a good chance to start a Team Smackster training school so that we have enough players for our SGOTM.

 

[dmanakho]

Klarius only managed that as he knew our date, which he will not this time. Actually I was thinking of posting a save the turn before our finish date. They will assume that is the last save before finish, and that our real finish is 5-10 turns after that. I don't want to give them an accurate target. With the rank corruption exploiting in the non-jump games, they may well generate hundreds of units and still beat us.

Call me paranoid, but every time i look at who is in this forum i see quite few "GUESTS". Are those guests or are those spies i don't know .
But i have slight feeling that information is getting leaked from the team's threads.
Ok, Ok... i admit i am the paranoid

Edit: We can post it in the forums and ask for 1-2 other players. It would be a good chance to start a Team Smackster training school so that we have enough players for our SGOTM.

So is it going to be a diety conquests game???
Are we going to train and be trained for the fastest conquest or come sort of non-military victory? I think next SG Mad-Bax will do something opposite from conquest/domination...
If we want to have really lousy start we probably should ask Doc. T. to give us some map numbers... He was collecting those ugly start location.


EDIT: How about a little competition within the team..
Smackster plays official turns but everybody else will play as well and we will see who can pull the victory in a fastest possible win...
Loser will pay for food and drinks next time we gather together somewhere in London... (I randomly picked up that city as a middle location between all of us)

 

[smackster]

EDIT: How about a little competition within the team..
Smackster plays official turns but everybody else will play as well and we will see who can pull the victory in a fastest possible win...
Loser will pay for food and drinks next time we gather together somewhere in London... (I randomly picked up that city as a middle location between all of us)

Interesting idea, we could each play 10 turns of the same save and then post what we did and compare. Start again with the worst save (take a vote) each play it and post again.

Why don't I just pick a totally random C3C diety map (even the number of opponents), and we take what we get.

 

[smackster]

Still haven't looked at the save, still at work, and going out tonight.

Well MapStat tells me that our friends China need Education, and I think our price is an alliance against Zulu. It would be good to get those two fighting while we take them from both sides

 

[MjM]

Wow I finnaly get off school and you guys are almost done , I guess I'll look at the save still.

 

[smackster]

Yes, this will be over in less than 20 I'm sure of that.

I've looked at the save and did find something to MM, I gained one gold with a manipulation in Bombay so now I'm really happy

But seriously I've seen a way to use all our home forces in the final battle. Simple really, as we approach Zulu (assuming they are the last opponent), I'll jump the palace to the front lines (where ever our troops are, so the jump works), then move all our troops in the core into a few cities, gift those cities to Zulu, and they will all teleport to the front. We declare war retake the cities and plow through Zulu.

 

[dmanakho]

Interesting idea...
Make sure palace jumps where you want it rather than to one of those one tile islands.

But seriously do it... I'd love to read last detailed report, hopefully tomorrow it will all be over.