SGOTM6 - Team jeffelammar

[Whomp]

Thanks for the pick me up CKS!!! Sounds like a resounding success and I think we need to press the mongols before they get their keshiks.

 

[Whomp]

I'm wondering if Wanderer's internet issues are not allowing him to play till Tuesday?
It's been 24 hours and no got it. Should we ?
Wanderer --up
jeffelammar--on deck
bed_head7
denyd
Whomp
CKS

 

[jeffelammar]

I'm wondering if Wanderer's internet issues are not allowing him to play till Tuesday?
It's been 24 hours and no got it. Should we ?
Wanderer --up
jeffelammar--on deck
bed_head7
denyd
Whomp
CKS

I guess that is probably what we have to do. I'll post a got it if Wanderer doesn't in the next couple hours.


Edit: Consider this a got it. I'll see what I can do.

 

[jeffelammar]

Well that was fun

The 150 BC Save

Quick summary. My turnset was all about the war with the Mongols and setting up the next set.

Mongols are almost toast. An invasion force is forming up for Japan. I also have some troops ready to head for China if we want to wipe them out in 4 turns when peace expires.

Turn Log

Turn 0 - 350 BC - preflight
Drop Luxury as mentioned by CKS.

IBT: Carthage and India start Great Lighthouse

Turn 1 - 330 BC
Call the Mongols and declare war.
Battle of Ulaanbaatar - Army kills spear, V. GS kills spear and takes city.

IBT: zzzz

Turn 2 - 310 BC
Buy 2 Iroquois workers for 216 gold.
Battle of Hovd - V. GS kills R Spear. (Promotes to elite), V GS kills spear and captures the town with a worker. (Town is autorazed)

IBT: zzzzzz

Turn 3 - 290 BC
America now has Republic

IBT: Lose GS to Mongol Sword.

Turn 4 - 270 BC
Lose 2 GS on Mongol Swords :grr:
Kill the swords.

IBT: Iroquois want alliance vrs Japan + ROP. Refuse.

Turn 5 - 250 BC
Buy Indian worker for 104. Skirmish in mountains.

IBT: Vikings finish Great Lighthouse. Eeek that is scary. They could be dangerous when they get Berserks.

Turn 6 - 230 BC
Upgrade 19 GS for 1140. Disconnect Iron again.
Battle of Kazan: V GS kills R Spear, R spear kills V GS, V GS kills spear and takes it. (That is their Iron, they shouldn't put up any more real resistence)

IBT: Cancel ROP with Japan, I think we will attack them soon.

Turn 7 - 210 BC
Battle of Dorhan - Kill 2 spears and 1 archer with V GS's. Take city +2 workers.

IBT: Cultural Expansion in Curovenum pops barbs on small island south.

Turn 8 - 190 BC Elite GS kills warrior and we get GL. Use for army as we are already close to finishing the Epic and FP. One more and we can pentagon it.

IBT: Crap, overlooked end of GA, HE city goes into disorder as we lose the GA bonuses.

Turn 9 - 170 BC
Battle of Dalandzadgad: Lose GS - GS kills spear (prom to elite) - GS kills spear and auto-razes.
Battle of Karakorum. Army kills 2 spears (no damage), V GS retreats, V GS dies, V GS kills spear. V GS kills archer, takes city. Raze it due to high flip risk and plentiful supply of settlers.

IBT: zzz

Turn 10 - 150 BC
Battle of Tabriz: GS ret, GS dies, GS kils spear, GS kills spear, takes it autorazing it.
Upgrade some more troops.

Notes:
We have 6 Settlers, 41 workers, 10 Warriors and 55 GS.

The iron is connected. I left enough $ to upgrade a few more Warriors. I left it up to the next player to choose which ones you want to upgrade. Then you can disconnect it.

The troops in Mongolia should be able to finish the job. There are sufficient troops in place to take their two 3 pop cities next turn.

There are 5 GS in Veralamium and 3 in Deva in preparation for the imminent end of our treaty with China. Use them or not as the team decides.

There are several GS's preparing to attack Japan. Some have already been landed. There are 2 Galleys in Noviomagon that have been ferrying the troops over. There are 4 more GS's in Augustodunum ready to embark.

As CKS pointed out, there are lots of opportunites to pop rush in China and Mongolia as they hit the magic "20" shield limit. I've tried to catch them.

I shut down the Settler factories for a little while to build libraries for the culture. Also I had a surplus for the moment. We will need to turn them on again later though.

Culture Total: 1298

 

[bed_head7]

Well, playing tired doesn't seem to have affected you tonight. Very well done!

 

[jeffelammar]

A couple more things that occured to me while lying in bed this morning.

1. It is getting close to time to stop our Warrior -> GS gambit. In the near future we should start building a force of horsement for upgrade to knight. It is currently unclear exactly when we should, but we want a huge force as soon as the AI researchs Chivalry for us.

2. Keep cranking out military. We are still 50 units under our allowed limit, and that limit will just keep rising.

3. Settlers. There is one nw of Kazan that I think should settle in place. There are a bunch in New Alesia that should be used for re-populating the old Mongol space. I don't like all that tundra, so consider not filling it too much.

4. There is incense in the Mountains. I haven't moved to connect it as it is in the middle. Consider using a slave to colonize it.

 

[denyd]

If we happen to get another GL during the rest of the Mongol acquisitions or during the end of China war, I suggest we build another army, however only load it with a single GS. Then it can be moved to Japan to lead the assault there. Load it up the another pair of GS after it's reached Japan (galleys only transport 2 units and the army counts as one). With a third GS in the field we should switch our most productive city to the Pentagon. A 4-unit GS army would be a 6-4-3 with 16-20hp. We should be able to roll over the rest of our continent with 3 of those leading our forces (even against pikes).

I imagine we've shut off research and are letting the GL do the work for us.

I don't remember where the Viikings are. Can we reach them without needing an ocean crossing? I'd like to turn our troops towards them once Japan is taken care of. We need to get the ToA very soon or the GL is going to obsolete it before we get to use it.

My original plan was to acquire the ToA, never research Education and kill all except one AI city using GS, Knights & Cavalry. Keep adding cities with them each getting libraries, cathedrals & colleseums (that's 10cpt each and pop-rushing as available). We should be able to place 200-300 cities, so thats 2000-3000 cpt.

 

[Wanderer]

Greetings worthies!

Thanks for the bump - that helped.

I've started DLing the save, and will take a read through the post, and get back to you.

GOT IT!

 

[Wanderer]

turn 0 : 150bc

6 warrior potentially upgradeable. 203 GP, so only only enough for 3 atm.
Stats look seriously impressive - wow you guys have done well!
43 cities atm.
Pretty happy empire.
Missing republic, but we don't care for it.
I see we have a 6 turn deal with China. am I right in thinking that's the count-down to war?

Lugdunum and Entremont on Libraries - these to go back to settler's afterwards?
Forbidden palace in 8. Are we jumping, or are we staying?

I don't usually do too much pop-rushing (I guess that's why I am here - to learn!)
Are we saying that as soon as we have the correct amount of people/shields required
(i.e. size 3, and 40 shields needed) we pop, or should we only pop when we need 20
(i.e. only pop for 1 city size)?

Durocorturm has an empty army? There are several vet GS's nearby - they should populate the army?

Should I use one of the settler's near New Alesia to get those horses in our empire, and convert
Warrior --> horseman production?

wow - China has an 11 spearman stack outside anyang - what's with that? I see quite a few empty
cities not too far off.

5 GS's in Veralumium - core of another stack?
4 GS's in Augustodurum - For assault on chinese?
9 workers on iron - the idea is to mine, or be there waiting to re-connect?

A galley (empty) and Kevin (the galley) with 2 GS's in Noviomagus - are we building an offence force
for Japan?

Mongols have 5 cities - we can see all of them, and should have 2 in the next turn.
Is the goal to wipe-out, or leave a 1 city opposition?

I see a few empty-ish areas inside our borders in terms of cities - is the general consensus that we
are using settler's to push the border's?

I assume with next to no culture, against us, we are capturing cities now, or are you razing
and re-building?

Any more pointers - this game is being played pretty far above my skill level, so I am worried of
causing a foul-up that ruins the rest of the players hard work. You guys are showing me how much I
still have to learn!

PLEASE post some responses/directions....

 

[CKS]

I see we have a 6 turn deal with China. am I right in thinking that's the count-down to war?

Yes, I think so. We'll need a boat to get to the last city to wipe them out, but we might as well get rid of them completely.

Lugdunum and Entremont on Libraries - these to go back to settler's afterwards?
Forbidden palace in 8. Are we jumping, or are we staying?

As soon as we need settlers, we'll need to have already started up production again. We should fit colosseums in whenever we have an abundance of settlers.

My understanding of the FP in Conquests is that jumping the palace is of little or no value as far as the overall empire is concerned, as we don't get two productive cores. We could jump all over the place, changing the productive part of the empire and letting the old section lapse into unproductive obscurity. I would prefer not to do this, as I think that it'd be hard to manage well, and rushing temples is pretty easy as a religious civ.

Are we saying that as soon as we have the correct amount of people/shields required
(i.e. size 3, and 40 shields needed) we pop, or should we only pop when we need 20
(i.e. only pop for 1 city size)?

We can't rush 40 shields at size 3, as you can't kill off more than half of your citizens. You can rush 20 and then 20, I think, if you have an appropriate intermediate item to build. For temples it doesn't matter, but for libraries and cathedrals, I think we can consider rushing with more than one death. However, if we aren't sitting at size 6 when we rush them, our city probably isn't growing the way it should. Happiness will cause problems if we rush too much, so I'd lean towards rushing 40-60 shields at size 6, then building population and shields and doing it again after the happiness hit is gone.

Durocorturm has an empty army? There are several vet GS's nearby - they should populate the army?

As denyd pointed out, we might want to move the army over to Japan after we get a city over there and fill it up on the other side of the water, as it won't fit in a boat if it is full.

Should I use one of the settler's near New Alesia to get those horses in our empire, and convert
Warrior --> horseman production?

This sounds good to me. We do want to start on horses, as chivalry won't be that far in the future. Plus, once we have feudalism, our warriors will upgrade to MI, not GS, and we don't really want MI. We need to switch to horses at least by the time someone has learned feudalism.

wow - China has an 11 spearman stack outside anyang - what's with that? I see quite a few empty
cities not too far off.

This is an interesting situation. When we made peace with China, they gave us a bunch of cities. All their defending spearmen went to their new capitol. They then started walking them out toward Anyang, which had no defender (as we were just given the city). They couldn't attack, since we are at peace, but they settled down there to block our access to the city.

9 workers on iron - the idea is to mine, or be there waiting to re-connect?

I think we want them there to reconnect, or that they are there after having connected it.

The galleys are for the invasion of Japan. Make sure we've no deals with them and no units in their territory, and then attack.

I'd vote for wiping the Mongols out. If we do, we don't have to mess with flip risks at all. We can pick a later opponent to keep around if we haven't hit 100K before they are all pretty much gone.

I think that we should fill in cities inside our boundaries whereever we can fit one in, but our first priority should be to get new land right now. We can fill in later. We should capture what we can, but raze if a city has a lot of culture, no good wonders, and it will be a while before that AI is wiped out.

Any more pointers - this game is being played pretty far above my skill level, so I am worried of
causing a foul-up that ruins the rest of the players hard work.

Don't worry about it. Play your best, ask questions when you have them, and have fun. We'll all make mistakes, and we'll all catch other people's mistakes. It isn't going to ruin anything.

 

[CKS]

I don't remember where the Viikings are. Can we reach them without needing an ocean crossing? I'd like to turn our troops towards them once Japan is taken care of. We need to get the ToA very soon or the GL is going to obsolete it before we get to use it.

My original plan was to acquire the ToA, never research Education and kill all except one AI city using GS, Knights & Cavalry. Keep adding cities with them each getting libraries, cathedrals & colleseums (that's 10cpt each and pop-rushing as available). We should be able to place 200-300 cities, so thats 2000-3000 cpt.

Unless jeff found them, we haven't met the Vikings yet.

I don't think we ever resolved the ToA question, we just stopped discussing it after deciding we wouldn't _build_ it. I think part of the question is, are we shooting for score or speed? If we want score, we need to get out of despotism, so that we don't have the tile penalty on food. If we want speed, then that doesn't matter, and the free temples are a big deal.

As you say, we need to decide this soon, so we can dump the GL before we get education, if we want the ToA temples. We also need to find the Vikings and take them out quickly, which we want to do anyway so we don't face berserks.

 

[Whomp]

--IMO I would only pop rush 40 shields in Mongol or Chinese cities. You will lose two foreign citizens.
I pop rushed temples in our cities with 20 shields left for only 1 citizen. Try to mm as close to 20 or 40 shields when planning to pop rush.
-- Unhook the iron after you upgrade the warriors.
--we definitely want the horses
--IMO Settlers could probably be knocked out for Japan with some of our other cities. I think it's time to let those cities grow.
--As denyd said move the leader with only 1 GW to start inside onto a galley for Japan. A galley will only hold 2 people (the GS and the Leader). You can load the army on the Japan side with 2 more GS. By filling the army with one there's a possibility for another leader after you fill it with 1 GS.

I would read some of the more recent thread on add'l strategy.

 

[Whomp]

@CKS we can only have two governments despot and commie. I agree we need some scouting for the Scans because bezerkers are not fun.
IIRC I think if you pop rush twice you need take 3 turns to do it. 1.pop rush/2. build shields/3. pop rush again for 2 citizens.

I think the winner of the SGOTM is the fastest to 100k. We are doing pretty well according to the graphs. Right there with Offa's team.

 

[denyd]

"I see we have a 6 turn deal with China. am I right in thinking that's the count-down to war?"

Yes - Once that deal is done finish off Mao

"Lugdunum and Entremont on Libraries - these to go back to settler's afterwards?"

Yes until we fill up the available land then another culture building (cathedral or collesseum).

"Forbidden palace in 8. Are we jumping, or are we staying?"

Staying. What the FP does is double the OCN (Optimum City Number), which will reduce our corruption in some of our new cities.

"I don't usually do too much pop-rushing (I guess that's why I am here - to learn!) Are we saying that as soon as we have the correct amount of people/shields required (i.e. size 3, and 40 shields needed) we pop, or should we only pop when we need 20 (i.e. only pop for 1 city size)?"

I'm not much of a pop-rusher either (normally in Republic by now), so I'll leave that one to the experts.

"Durocorturm has an empty army? There are several vet GS's nearby - they should populate the army?"

Load a single GS into the Army (use an elite* if one's available), so in case the unit is attacked it has some chance for survival. Then load the single unit Army to a galley and deliver it to Japan. Once in Japan, add another pair of GS to the army and have it lead our offensive against Japan.

"Should I use one of the settler's near New Alesia to get those horses in our empire, and convert Warrior --> horseman production?"
Once we see someone with Feudalism, it'll be time to stop with the warrior->GS path and move to the horsemen pre-build for knights.

"wow - China has an 11 spearman stack outside anyang - what's with that? I see quite a few empty cities not too far off."
That's the collection of spears that got relocated to the capital during the peace settlement.

"5 GS's in Veralumium - core of another stack? 4 GS's in Augustodurum - For assault on chinese?"
I think both of these stacks are aimed at China, though if our Mongol attackers need support that should be the priority.


"9 workers on iron - the idea is to mine, or be there waiting to re-connect?"
If you mine, it'll be destroyed by the pillage, so don't bother. We'll probably continue with the connect-disconnect once the warrior->GS plan is done as we'll us the same plan for horse->knights.

"A galley (empty) and Kevin (the galley) with 2 GS's in Noviomagus - are we building an offense force for Japan?"
Yes, Japan is next on the hit list. I believe that there is already a collection of GS in Japan that will be seeing action soon.

"Mongols have 5 cities - we can see all of them, and should have 2 in the next turn. Is the goal to wipe-out, or leave a 1 city opposition?"
If you can reach all of their cities (no boats required), then terminate him.

"I see a few empty-ish areas inside our borders in terms of cities - is the general consensus that we are using settler's to push the border's?"
Since we are a long way from the domination limit, settle and get some culture going with them (I normally build a worker first, then a temple).

"I assume with next to no culture, against us, we are capturing cities now, or are you razing and re-building?"

As long as the city isn't a flip risk, I support keeping it. We should try to starve/pop-rush it to size one and then let it grow again.

"Any more pointers - this game is being played pretty far above my skill level, so I am worried of causing a foul-up that ruins the rest of the players hard work. You guys are showing me how much I still have to learn!"

You'll be fine, don't worry. The main things to try to remember are:
1. Try to remember to check for available trades (Check out Dianthus CRP MapStat)
2. Try to prevent cities from rioting (CRP MapStat)
3. Protect our elites (See the SirPleib article on leader farming)

We have a pretty overwhelming force against the Mongols attack, stay aggressive and they should be gone without much difficulty. As for China, wait until our current deals end, position our troops at the border (no units on Chinese territory), then when the deal is over, attack. Try to pick off units from that spearmen SOD when they are on flat terrain (and not accross a river) for the best success. As for Japan, I'm not that familar with the setup over there (city size, terrain advantages and resources), but in general it's a good idea to attack towards an oppenents resources. Battling spears & archers is better than pikes & swords.

A couple of questions for the rest of the team:
1. Who is to the NE of China? Are the a good target for our troops from the Mongol & China wars?
2. Is Japan all alone on that island or should we plan on continuing to wage war on that island?
3. If the ToA is out (which is fine), then we might as well leave science at zero and keep kicking AI butts until we reach the domination limit.
4. Once we reach Education, do we want to start researching ourselves (heading where? Communism?) or will the pointy stick method keep working?



PLEASE post some responses/directions....

 

[Whomp]

".

A couple of questions for the rest of the team:
1. Who is to the NE of China? Are the a good target for our troops from the Mongol & China wars?
2. Is Japan all alone on that island or should we plan on continuing to wage war on that island?
3. If the ToA is out (which is fine), then we might as well leave science at zero and keep kicking AI butts until we reach the domination limit.
4. Once we reach Education, do we want to start researching ourselves (heading where? Communism?) or will the pointy stick method keep working?
PLEASE post some responses/directions....

1. I don't remember
2. They are with the Iroq. who they were at war with on my turns. It may be worthwhile to get the Iroq. to pay us for a MA.
3. and 4. With all the libraries won't we have some serious research capabilities going to move to commie asap?

 

[jeffelammar]

A couple of questions for the rest of the team:
1. Who is to the NE of China? Are the a good target for our troops from the Mongol & China wars?
2. Is Japan all alone on that island or should we plan on continuing to wage war on that island?
3. If the ToA is out (which is fine), then we might as well leave science at zero and keep kicking AI butts until we reach the domination limit.
4. Once we reach Education, do we want to start researching ourselves (heading where? Communism?) or will the pointy stick method keep working?
PLEASE post some responses/directions....

1. Nobody by china unless we use boats. Carthage is west of Mongols. They seem like the next target for the western strike force.

2. Japan is not alone. Lots of other civs are east. The first is the Iroquois to their north east.

3. The Vikings are a long way away. (See attached Minimap.) So I think we may have to leave ToA out of our strategies.

4. After Education, I think we should revisit this, but my inclination is to go for Communism.


Also That is one reason I left the army unpopulated. I wanted the next player to have the choice of whether to go to Japan or Carthage with the army.

The workers on the iron just finished re-roading it. They can be used however you wish, but keep them close so they can re-road again when necessary.

"5 GS's in Veralumium - core of another stack? 4 GS's in Augustodurum - For assault on chinese?"

My intent was that the 4 in Augustodurum would head for Japan and the 5 in Veralumium would head for China to mop them up in 6 turns.

Any more pointers - this game is being played pretty far above my skill level, so I am worried of causing a foul-up that ruins the rest of the players hard work. You guys are showing me how much I still have to learn!

Don't worry about screwing up. Just take your time and do the best you can. If you have any questions during your turnset don't hesitate to stop playing and post the questions.
This is supposed to be fun, so (RDWPSC) Relax, Don't Worry and Play Some Civ.

 

[denyd]

Looking at the map (thx JL), I'm not sure we should waste our time with China. I'm thinking if we send those 10 GS to join up with the Mongol attackers we could roll over Carthage and hit Japan from 2-fronts using the existing troops there plus the new Army from the west . If we manage to take out Japan quick enough (no Samurai), we could then turn on India and possibly avoid the War Elephant. Note that in C3C, the War Elephant is born with an additional HP and requires no resources. Very tough indeed.

The next set of warrior->GS troops (8-10) could then take out China.

Based on where the Vikings are (w/Trondheim & ToA), I agree with skipping that strategy this game.

I agree that Communism should be our science goal once we turn on research again.

Are their any wonders that we should consider building for the culture? With our despotism handicap, I'm not sure we should bother.

 

[bed_head7]

I haven't looked at the save, but will still try to share what is hopefully a halfway intelligent opinion.

Full bore towards communism. More food everywhere means faster pop rushing.

I like denyd's plans on avoiding the tougher chivalry UUs. China won't be getting riders, so we can put them off for now unless it is super convenient to get rid of them now, and it does not sound like it is.

Let's gather up as much gold as we can with GL, and then try and research for cavalry. Those are handy. Civs we are at peace with and at peace in general should do the top half of the tree for us.

Until we get Feudalism, build warriors/gallic swords where it is efficient and horses where it is efficient. A mixed force of gallic swords and knights will be very effective, and we don't really want to be building horsemen at 14spt. In fact, I would prefer to get as many gallics as we can, as seven of them are probably better than four knights. So where it is efficient, build horses, but otherwise warriors/gallics are great.

There are a lot of ideas out there, and I am sure I missed stuff, but I hope that covers my opinion on the most important issues.

 

[Whomp]

Japan and India's UU's are beastly so I think skipping China to get Japan pre UU makes a ton of sense. RDWPSC Go get em Wanderer.

 

[jeffelammar]

we don't really want to be building horsemen at 14spt.

To me this is the key point. Build what makes efficient use of our shields.