SGOTM6 - Team Bede

[Bede]

The Save

Rushed a few more libraries, cathedrals and colusseums. Culture per turn now greater than 2000. Babylon at 395, down 50 in five turns.

Made peace with Carthage and sailed the galleon with the army up into Babylon's waters just to see what was going on. Watched half a dozen Viking guerrillas approach a Bab city, then retreat without firing a shot.

Built a new town in a northern salient (Babylon Hills).

Planted a spy in Babylon:

Not a tank in sight.....

Interesting he only has 9 cavalrymen left, but a ton of infantry.

If we keep on keeping on we should finish before this gets back to me. There are a bunch of granaries in the queue right now. I've been using them as markers for cathedrals, so check the granaries in F1 and when the time to copmlete gets to <20, rush the granary then switch and rush the cathedral.

Minute Man - up
Mab - on deck
Tubby Rower
Pied Piper
eldar
Bede

 

[eldar]

We could probably launch an offensive against southern Babylon now. He has no fast forces worth mentioning Just away one city at a time.

 

[Minute Man]

Got it.

Is it really worth trying to take on Babylon anymore? Capturing some of his southern cities might speed up the win by a couple of turns, but by the time we can do any serious damage, the game will be over anyway. I'm not sure it's worth the effort.

 

[Bede]

Whacking Hammi would have amusement or revenge value only. His border towns are not contirbuting culture anyway so taking them won't help his decline.

 

[eldar]

Whilst it's clear we'll be getting the wooden spoon for this game, do we get a special prize for having to get nearly 200K culture to win instead of 100K?

 

[Tubby Rower]

Whilst it's clear we'll be getting the wooden spoon for this game, do we get a special prize for having to get nearly 200K culture to win instead of 100K?

Yes, we get 2 wooden spoons.

Like our benevolent brother Bede said before there might be a team out there that will lose in the late game due to space launch, UN vote, or even reaching domination inadvertantly. So wooden spoons might not be in our future. :crossfingers:

 

[mabellino]

Wow I'm away for one weekend and there's 2 turnsets played! Nice work guys.
If Mapstat isn't calculating culture correctly (wouldn't know, don't use it myself) then there's a chance that it might also miscalculate a few other things leading the other teams down the dark path... Mwah ha ha !
The end is in sight and not a moment too soon as I was gonna let you know my next turns will be my last as I'm getting married on May 14th and have a million and one wedding related things to do. The wars sure do help with venting mother-in-law related stress though!
I think we should petition for a special reward for highest culture though. Don't want to see all that effort go to waste

 

[Tubby Rower]

May I propose a tilted halo for the graphic symbol for the moral victory? It need not be a gold ring, perhaps a circle of stars? Any gifted graphic artist want to take a stab at this?

Maybe we could get the first of these awards for the most culture out of everyone!!

Is it really worth trying to take on Babylon anymore? Capturing some of his southern cities might speed up the win by a couple of turns, but by the time we can do any serious damage, the game will be over anyway. I'm not sure it's worth the effort

I did a quick calculation and we only have 19 more turns until we double Hammi's culture. France & England are capturing a lot of Hammi's core cities. I expect Babylon to fall during the next 10 turns. If this happens, a few of those turns will come off. So NO war with Hammi. Let's wait it out. We could almost take off Always wait at end of turn and hit shift-enter and get through this thing.


BTW, Is anyone working on the final spoiler thread submission?? I can if no one else wants to.

 

[Bede]

@TR, you volunteered so it is yours. Have fun writing!!

 

[Tubby Rower]

It might take a day or three but I hope to have it done by the time we end the game. I'll have to pour over the past 42 pages. and extrapolate where necessary.

I really appreciate you having fun with us Bede. You probably could have been on a top notch team but decided to help us along and I really appreciate it. Thanks.

BTW. I think that barbslinger will give us a run for the wooden spoon.

 

[Minute Man]

Not much to report. Sent our workers on various random errands. Convinced many of our citizens to devote their lives to the glorious cause of Celtic culture.

In foreign news, America and England declared war on France. Lincoln also pulled out of the dogpile vs. Babylon. Hammurabi didn't lose much (if any) territory over the course of my turns.

I noticed that the French have some airports, and somebody (I forget who) started Hoover Dam, so the overall tech level is nearly to the Modern Age. But I don't think we'll have any trouble winning this before the UN comes into play.

And The Save.

BTW. I think that barbslinger will give us a run for the wooden spoon.

I doubt it. Their Jason score is low at the moment, but if you look at the graph, their scoring curve is well ahead of ours. I think we've got the wooden spoon pretty well locked up. We're leaving everybody else in the dust on the culture graph, though.

 

[Bede]

Roster check:


Mab - up, and all the best to you
Tubby Rower - on deck
Pied Piper
eldar
Bede
Minute Man

It might take a day or three but I hope to have it done by the time we end the game. I'll have to pour over the past 42 pages. and extrapolate where necessary.

Thanks, TR.

I really appreciate you having fun with us Bede. You probably could have been on a top notch team but decided to help us along and I really appreciate it. Thanks.

The pleasure is all mine. I enjoyed this game as much as I did the "Green Laurel" SGOTM2, or the "Wooden Spoon" SGOTM1. You are all good company.

I said the outcome was never in doubt and that the game would be won, and it will be.

 

[Tubby Rower]

8 more turns by my calcs. Since mine is the next turnset, I'll give the official last turn up to Mab as a wedding present if she wants it.

 

[mabellino]

8 more turns by my calcs. Since mine is the next turnset, I'll give the official last turn up to Mab as a wedding present if she wants it.

Awww thanks tubby!
I don't mind playing 5 turns though if anyone else wants to take the final step. Must admit I've never won by 100k (ahem 200k ) before but since it's a modded game it doesn't enter your hof, right?
I wonder if the other civs know how close we are to winning? They seem to know everything else about the human player. I'm surprised nobody's dow'ed us and tried to curb our culture
I might play this afternoon.

 

[Tubby Rower]

Spoiler up to Gunpowder

When we last left our underdog heros, hints of a Babylonian invasion in old Japan were rampant. As most rumors, this was true. Hammi sneak attacked us and due to our trashed rep, we weren't able to sign any alliances against the Bearded Backstabber. We managed to stem this Red Tide by only losing 3 cities. After bickering over a few cities and WWI style trench warfare peace was signed with Babylon after the entire world (except Iroquois) were at war with us. Hammi entering IA was a great incentive too.

Meanwhile, the Mongols got a little break from the Celtic conversion. But then Carthage brought a stack of Numidian Mercenaries.

Brother Bede reduced this down to

We had signed a MA with the Mongols to help with the Carthaginian threat and gave them some fur for Ugly's hat.
Carthage was pushed back, and our gallic swordsmen army pillaged the heck out of their land.

In 1300 AD, Hammi came with a stack of cavs and blood in his eye. Within the span of 2 turns we had lost 7 cities to Hammi. To stop the bleeding some of the towns most in threat of being captured was donated to Joan. An MA with Joan was signed with us giving her WM, 106gpt & 924G!! When Hammi took the new french cities, It triggered a French MPP with Abe to join the dogpile vs. Hammi. A MPP between Abe & the Viking horde allowed the blonde devils to join as well. The Mongols join Hammi and sign against us. So now we have 3 fronts (Babylon, Mongol, and Carthage). The Plan is to push Carthage, hold Babylon, and swat the Mongols that pop their head up.

Carthage was pushed to an island OCC, then the Ugly was relieved of his land and joined the big ugly tree in the sky.
Joan and Abe are tying up Hammi in the north. Peace was signed with Hammi in 1365 after infantry started showing up.

The rest of the game was a waiting game. Many Celtic citizens gave up their lives for the greater Celtic culture. Slowly, one at a time, the Babylonian cities in old Japan flipped back to us. France made inroads into the Babylonian core.

In 1580AD we became a Communist government. Culture passed 100k (+1379) on mab's turns at 1670AD but Hammi had 68k (+517). So we had the advantage but just had to wait. Hammi's culture was declining indicating that the French & Americans were getting to him. We were debating at this point to try to help take out Hammi but we didn't have the techs, or numbers to even make a dent. So we waited...and waited....and waited. in 1760 we had passed the +2k culture per turn threshold. In xxxx we finally doubled Babylon's culture with a total of xxxxxx culture points accumulating +xxxx per turn.

<<<Place holder for win screen>>>

<<<Place holder for score graph>>>

<<<Place holder for culture graph>>>

 

[Tubby Rower]

@ Mab, if you play the game out, get screen shots of everything at the end. Some of them could be useful in the above write up. Or you could post a save of the turn before the win as well as the winning save.

 

[Tubby Rower]

FYI::::
I realized last night that I'm spending way too much time playing civ and not enough time with my family. I'm becoming obsessed with Civ every waking moment I either want to play it or talkto someone about it. I'm going to tell my wife to hide the CD (but not break it which is what she'd rather do). I'm sorry to do this to you but I have to. I'll be lurking around because I really don't think that I can quit cold turkey.

Thanks for all of the help that you guys have given me.

PS. I might need someone to get screenshots of the graphs from the final save for the spoiler.

 

[mabellino]

Sorry guys didn't get chance to play just yet. I will play tomorrow... promise!
If I haven't posted the final save in 24 hrs from now feel free to autoskip... (that's how sure I am that I will play!)

 

[mabellino]

just finishing up... I'm at 1784 AD and no sign of a victory yet.. we still have only 1.93x the culture of the babs. I have railroaded every possible tile and now have 70 odd workers sat waiting to clear up pollution. We just got our first nasty blot on the landscape near Alesia.
I'm hoping to get this finished before 8pm GMT

EDIT:
Finished the game... here's the >>>SAVE<<< and a quick summary with pics

1774 Calcutta flips to us
Lots of MA's signed between AI civs. Diplomacy looks messy!
1782 Pollution appears near Alesia
1784 Loads of WLTKD for some unexplained reason
1788 Jungle Boogie flips back to us from the English
Swap a load of city builds and the victory screen pops up unexpectedly I was expecting it in another couple of turns

I can't be bothered uploading all the pics to the file server so I'll just post them here:

 

[mad-bax]

Congratulations everyone. The Babylonians were always going to be trouble.