SGOTM6 - Xteam

[AlanH]

The dots look good. These will mostly be very corrupt cities, so we just want to get them out there asap, and grow them ready for pop rushing. I guess we want to connect them up to give good mobility across our empire, so do we build a worker in each one before we grow it? The workers will also be needed for irrigation and rails when the time comes.

 

[Gyathaar]

those that can work 2 food tiles should build workers in 10 yes, those that only have 1 food extra can prolly just start with a temple.

We prolly want to have around 200+ native workers eventually (since getting replaceable parts will make poprushing harder)

Unit support should atleast never be a problem for us in this game

 

[AlanH]

We have several open questions on the table:

1. Should we be trying to slow the tech pace down? It seems to me that since we are going for a fast date pure and simple, and our date is going to depend on getting to MT, communism and steam as fast as possible, we would want the fastest tech pace we can keep up with. I'm not sure how we determine that. Once we are on the warpath we should have plenty of opportunities for pointy stick work to keep up, though. I'm tempted to suggest we turn off research entirely. We are dumping 5gpt into it now, to no real effect.

2. @Gator: I've seen no horses within our immediate region. There are horses in all the adjacent territories, so we'll have to go out and get them, probably from China or Japan, and probably real soon now while our UU can still cut the mustard.

 

[Gyathaar]

As for horses, i would say its best if we take them from china.. they are easilly accessible, plus it removes their ability to build riders, which is the biggest threat towards us atm Hmm.. china actually dont have iron... so they cant build riders without trading for iron..

China appears to be a nicely spaced core at RCP 5 around beijing too, so jumping capital to Beijing would work out ok..

This brings out the point we should build the FP soon Where do we want to build it?

For tech pace.. I say keep as high rate as we can keep up with... Rails,MT and communism will all be major boosts.

 

[DJMGator13]

Build FP wherever Alan tells us to build it, he is the Master.

As for acquiring horses, sounds like we should keep expanding (settlers) and start amassing an army for a soon to be launched offensive against China. How do we compare to China, ie number of cities and military strength? Gyathaar mentioned China has no iron so not only no riders but no swords. If we can hit them before they acquire Feudalism we should only see spears and archers (actually they need iron for pikes and MDIs as well). EDIT: And horsemen.

Are any of our other neighbors short iron?

 

[Gyathaar]

For next player: england has a worker for sale

we have 15 cities, most of all civs
china has horses, no iron, 12 cities
japan has 2 iron, 2 horses (and a 3rd right outside borders)- only 1 iron and 1 horse connected, 14 cities
mongols has iron connected and horses still unconnected, 8 cities
carthage has no horses, no iron (but has iron 5 tiles north of borders, and has 3 defense UU), 8 cities
Iroquis has both horses and iron, but neither are connected, 12 cities
India has horses connected, one iron partially connected (not to capital yet), one iron unconnected, and a 3rd outside borders. 9 cities

There are also 2 unclaimed horses and 2 unclaimed iron between india and babylon/america

For the more remote civs:
America has iron connected, no horses, 11 cities
babylon has unconnected iron, no horses, 11 cities
vikings has horses connected, no iron, 8 cities
france has horses, iron outside borders, 13 cities
england has connected horses, unconnected iron, 9 cities

our 15 warrior, 1 archer army is:
average vs mongols
average vs england
weak vs everyone else

on power graph we are behind (in this order):
Japan
france
china
babylon

we appear to be equal to america in power, and ahead of the rest

 

[leif erikson]

I agree, China should be our first target, and the sooner the better as it'll take us some time to get iron connected and Warriors upgraded.

I am looking at CRpMapStat and Carthage, Babylon, and Japan have both Monarchy and Republic while England and the Mongols have Republic. Looking at this, I agree with Alan that it is time to turn off research as the Gold, imho, would be better spent on purchasing tech. We are even with everyone but the Vikings and the Iroquois and we are up Currency and Construction.

I think Alan makes a good point about tech pace. It is always been tough for me to balance as war will generally slow tech pace but it also grinds up forces so we can challenge them militarily. Perhaps we should start wars between the rivals we want to take on soon and allow the strongest powers to keep up their research and trading. With a good rep and relations, we can continue to trade with them while savaging the civs we need land from to build our continuous sprawl.

Although it is still small, perhaps our Forbidden Palace would look nice in Ratae Coritanorum. With Gyathaar's dot map, it would be in the center, more or less of the near time city builds we plan and we can fill in around it in ICS.

EDIT - Can't spell

 

[WillowBrook]

Given our lack of horses, it sounds like we want to to use our UU to take them from China. So we should hook up Iron and start saving for upgrades? This means we'd have an early rather than later GA, but unless someone has a better plan for military expansion, I'll vote for this.

We definitely want to foment wars, as well, so we'll have to spend gold on that, too. I'm no expert on getting the AI to fight, so I'll let others figure out the details.

I agree that we should keep pumping out settlers, worker is good first build for towns with 2 extra food, and temple for other corrupt cities. Or should the one food corrupt towns first build a warrior in 10, then a temple which can be popped ten turns later with no waste of the 20 sheilds from the population point?

 

[AlanH]

Re: Corruption and the Forbidden Palace:

We are proposing to build a Forbidden Palace in one of our current core cities, and then relocate our Palace to another centre using the Free Palace Jump. Here are some thoughts about where the new Palaces should be.

The Palace core is optimum if it has rings round it while we are in Despot. Once we are in Communism corruption is evenly distributed so we can just in-fill and create ICS is both cores. Beijing has four cities at radius 5.x. We could reposition Nanking to put it at radius 5.x as well. It's currently at 7 and sitting on an olives desert tile. There's not a lot of scope to develop a second ring around Beijing - it currently has three cities at radius 10 and one at 11. We could probably get five or six at radius 10.x. That would give us a productive Palace core of capital plus 5 cities at corruption rank 1 and 6 cities at rank 6.

I've played with a template to find a good place for a FP. A FP built in Agedincum would have 17 cities within radius 5.x based on Gyathaar's dot map and our existing builds. All those would be at corruption rank 1, with only Beijing closer to the Palace than they are. The next annulus of FP cities, up to radius 10.x would all have rank 6. There are more than 30 cities in this range, including Nanking, which would be closer to the FP than to the Palace. If we include the Japanese towns near our borders, and a couple of towns I've added to the dot map, we get up to about 35. I imagine this will exceed the OCN, so we won't do much better wherever we set up shop. We could build the FP nearer to Entremont, in Ratae Coritanorum, which might build it faster, but we'd lose three towns in the 5.x radius.

Here's a dot map with palace positions and ranges. Click the small one to get a 1 MB biggie.

​

Dark blue disks are existing towns. Lighter blue are the next two towns to fill our first two rings. Red disks are new towns to build. Pale blue and orange lozenges are existing AI towns - China and Japan respectively

 

[Gyathaar]

I agree that we should keep pumping out settlers, worker is good first build for towns with 2 extra food, and temple for other corrupt cities. Or should the one food corrupt towns first build a warrior in 10, then a temple which can be popped ten turns later with no waste of the 20 sheilds from the population point?

A warrior first is prolly better yes, we will always have good use for warriors as MP in this game so (unit support will be of little worry since we will end up with 1000+ allowed units soon enough)

 

[AlanH]

Good thinking, WillowBrook

 

[DJMGator13]

See I told you Alan's the man when it comes to FP locations.

An additional thought on the FP or more precisely the Palace jump. We know that we can control the jump thru units so is it feasible to jump our palace several times as we conquer more area? This would allow us to build some basic cultural improvements ans will keep a productive core near the front at all times. The former palace cities can easily be replaced.

 

[AlanH]

See I told you Alan's the man when it comes to FP locations.

You threw down the gauntlet, how could I not pick it up?

We could do multiple jumps during the expansion phase, but that should be quite a short period if we use cavalry well, and it may not be worth it. Once we get to Communism the Palace location does nothing to assist corruption. I think the only benefit in multiple jumps then would be flip protection. But by that time our culture should be starting to provide protection in its own right.

 

[Tomoyo]

750BC (0): Buy a worker from England for 26g and WM.

IT: Entremont: Warrior --> Settler. Lugdunum: Warrior --> Warrior

730BC (1): Raise the lux tax because Mohacs will riot. Switch a city from worker to temple. There were dyes right outside the radius.

We are a couple of gold short of affording the Mono-Republic two-fer.

After some fiddling and trading, we now have 180 gold, Republic, Mono, and no income. Sorry, team.

IT: Eboracum: Worker --> Temple.

710BC (2): Some civs have Feudalism.

Whip the temple in Burdigala.

This MMing with ICS-ish city placement is a nightmare already! I can't wait until later.

IT: Lugdunum: Warrior --> Warrior

690BC (3): Dunno. Forgot, I guess.

670BC (4): Camulodorum: Settler --> Warrior. Pull a disbanding/specialist trick in Mohacs. I had to. The city would take our lux tax up another notch.

Whip two temples.

Have a really hard time finding a spare mined BG for Entremont to make a settler next turn, while still allowing it to grab a forest. This better work.

IT: Mohacs: Settler --> Settler. Gergovia: Temple --> Worker. Austorum: Temple --> Worker. The Japanese settle a city in our southern tundra. Entremont doesn't grab the forest!!!!

650BC (5): Fix Entremont with a taxman.

IT: Entremont: Settler --> Settler. Lugdunum: Warrior --> Warrior. Camulodorum: Warrior --> Settler. Richborough: Settler --> Settler. Cataractonium: Worker --> Temple. The Chinese steal a city spot!

630BC (6): March settlers.

IT: Verulanium: Warrior --> Temple. Ratae: Barracks --> Warrior

610BC (7): Lindum founded.

IT: China demands TM and 26 gold. I cave.

Lugdunum: Warrior --> Warrior

590BC (8): Start roading the iron.

IT: Something happened.

570BC (9): Whip a temple.

IT: Lugdunum: Warrior --> Warrior. Agedincum: Temple --> Worker. Lapurdum: Worker --> Temple. Cori: Warrior --> Warrior. Tolosa: Worker --> Rax.

550BC (10): Nemausus founded, starts worker.

Notes:
- Northern settler settles in place, southern settler goes to Spices.

 

[AlanH]

is MMing with ICS-ish city placement is a nightmare already! I can't wait until later.

Isn't it fun! Sorry to see you had trouble with Entremont's shields. I took over 30 mins per turn when I played my set. Must have run through the core cities at least twice every turn to try to ration out the food and shields, and then I missed once in one of them.

 

[Gyathaar]

It actually isnt that bad when you get lots and lots of cities.. because then a lost shield or gold wont matter that much

 

[leif erikson]

Good progress Tomoyo.

Did I read that we're broke? Oh well, better learn to use the whip. Time to set up to take down China?

In the middle of Gator 100K or bust tonight, tomorrow is for this. That'll leave some more discussion time.

A lot of MM huh?

 

[Tomoyo]

I realised that during my turns, our status on the graph went way down compared to the other teams...

Anyway, we're not that broke anymore, we have 24gpt. In 11 turns, we'll get back that 30ish gpt that I used.

 

[DJMGator13]

Our tight build is affecting our score, but it's the fastest date not score as we all know. I'd also have to assume that the teams that have taken a sharper turn on the graph have probably kicked off their first war and have added cities and territory.

 

[Mistfit]

I took over 30 mins per turn when I played my set. Must have run through the core cities at least twice every turn

And why did I want to sit this one out Oh yeah...My short attention span.