SGOTM7 - Team tao

[Keath]

This is by far and away too good a game to miss!

You said it! What a difference having your own island is from a random game on Deity!

What has happened to the Americans and Vikings? They haven't shown up at all and likely have only bumped into the Persians who then traded contacts with everyone else. Not that I'm in a hurry to say hi.

@ Renata - With Indian town spacing of 5 tiles it's going to take a lot of turns just to get beyond Calcutta. Would you consider attacking Delhi after Calcutta? I also wonder what the flip probability is for Lahore. I thought about using Lahore as bait for awhile - a good idea is a good idea again. In the meantime get our navy up and running then those distant Indian towns could be attacked from the sea.

Sorry, I think I'm blathering.

 

[Sabre]

Nice turns Keath! It's good to start clobbering the opposition.

I agree that Calcutta should be razed next. Beyond that we could then head off to take or raze Bombay and Karachi while a second force gathers to attack and keep Delhi. Both forces could combine to take Madras while a 3rd force takes Bangalore. This would leave two attack forces to hit the Zulus.

If Lahore is starved down to pop 1 and Calcutta is razed, I don't think Lahore should have too high a flip risk and even if it does flip, we'll constantly have units passing by so it'll be easily retaken.

I've got my COTM loaded up at the moment. Later tonight I'll take a look at the save and comment more.

 

[Keath]

This would leave two attack forces to hit the Zulus.

Yes! The Zulu should feel the wrath of the Ottoman! With such slow tech pace we should try to get MT on our own, though. With the conquering of the Indian and Zulu and the weakened Persians and Arabs, we should be in good shape to take out whoever we need to get a Domination win.

I would really like to see what our uu could do, partly because in a random game the AI have such an advantage you never can get to find out.

On reflection, the Americans and Vikings must be at war. If the Arabs and Persians are at it too, we should be in good shape to follow a plan as you suggest. Perhaps when we meet the shy AIs, we can get an updated map. That might change our plans if we find virgin territory to the west. An army, a settler and some backup might be what we need to take out a barb infested continent. All speculation at this point.

I'm just hoping that Renata can catch the number one spot on the *leader board*.

 

[tao]

Very good progress. Here a list of thoughts on the game:

1. Great Library should not build baracks, but a couple of catapults first; Impies are hard to kill because of their retreat capability; once the AIs know feudalism, we will face pikes and need bombardment.
2. We must raze Calcutta, because it breakes our rcp rings. Rebuild SE of current position.
3. Then go for Delhi to raze it before pikes are available (take lots of catapults).
4. Settle new town at rcp7 N-NW of current Calcutta position.
5. Then go for the ivory at Bombay.
6. Do NOT start hand-building Hangigng Gardens. Build 10 horsemen instead.
7. I seriously doubt, that we should research towards MT. Going for chivarly and wiping the AI out with knights wil be much much faster.
8. And once we know chivalry, we will need A LOT of money to upgrade to knights (we need at least 20 horsemen by then).
9. Irrigate the desert goats.
10. Mine the iron mountain.

 

[Keath]

We must raze Calcutta, because it breakes our rcp rings. Rebuild SE of current position

Wouldn't E be better? It is RCP 5 from Delhi, RCP 4.5 from Sogut and it provides an alternate sea passage.

Settle new town at rcp7 N-NW of current Calcutta position.

On the irrigated plain to get both ivory?

If possible, wouldn't it be better to capture all the coastal towns and Delhi? I can see razing Delhi but building anew in the same spot seems redundant. Sabre's plan with maybe one naval invasion might gain us the whole island intact except for Calcutta which we would rebuild anyway.

Going for chivarly and wiping the AI out with knights wil be much much faster.

What about waiting for Chivalry from the GL and upgrade to knights when available with saved gold and meanwhile keep tech going toward MT? If the tech rate is this slow, we may get to MT in time to have a final rush to domination under whatever circumstance we meet with the unseen map. We should know soon enough with meeting the other AIs and trading for a map. They could be colonizing the whole western half of the map. They're obviously involved in something and not exploring our way.

 

[tao]

Wouldn't E be better?

Since it is a innermost town, IMHO E gives it too few productive workable tiles.

On the irrigated plain to get both ivory?

If we refound at its current position, it is a ring 3 city. And 1 or 2 ivory makes no difference, since we can't trade resources.

If possible, wouldn't it be better to capture all the coastal towns and Delhi?

Raze and re-build costs us a settler each and give slaves. Trying to keep them will IMHO cost us a number of units lost in flips.

What about waiting for Chivalry from the GL and upgrade to knights when available with saved gold and meanwhile keep tech going toward MT?

I don't think this is the way to go. Better to spend the money for knights. Disconnecting the iron hill and build horses, then upgrade knights will give us all the power we need to win and we don't have to research 5(!) techs.

According to CivAssist
- chivalry=1280 beakers,
- MT = 11.200 beakers!

And since this is an archipelago map, there is no great land mass in the west.

 

[tao]

finding a few free hours to actually play looks iffy until probably Sunday. (I'll know more of my weekend plans by tomorrow.) If Tone can play in the meantime, I'd prefer that so as not to slow this thing up any more.

Since Tone is busy: Do you want to swap with me, since I can play this evening German time?

 

[Renata]

Sure, that'd be great.

Renata

 

[Keath]

Since it is a innermost town, IMHO E gives it too few productive workable tiles.

I liked the position E because it gave us a canal but the SE position might be better.

If we refound at its current position, it is a ring 3 city. And 1 or 2 ivory makes no difference, since we can't trade resources.

You are refering to Delhi then?

Raze and re-build costs us a settler each and give slaves. Trying to keep them will IMHO cost us a number of units lost in flips.

Maybe the last one we take will be safe to keep as long as the harbour is still intact.

I don't think this is the way to go. Better to spend the money for knights.

I will admit that I am biased about trying out Dragoons but we want the best finish date so I reluctantly agree.

According to CivAssist
- chivalry=1280 beakers,
- MT = 11.200 beakers!

I'd never have the time to work that out by hand but it is a lot of potential put into research. I'm just a researchin' kind o' guy.

And since this is an archipelago map, there is no great land mass in the west.

But there could be several smaller islands which would increase the tile count for domination. The Vikes and Americans must be engaged in doing something. It will be good to find out what.

 

[tao]

0: 350BC: ship horse and galley to India, move units to Lahore to support attack on Calcutta, move some trops

IBT Arabs start HG

1: 330BC: bombard Arab galley at Desert Beach to yellow, move towards Calcutta

IBT Zulu drop 2 warriors at Lahore, Arabs drop spear and archer at Al Bait, and South Beach riots, we switch to monarchy, Zulus start HG

2: 310BC: go thru all cities and put the citizens to work, mm to build warriors in 1 turn where possible, switch Uskudar to settler, good grieve! why didn't we improve the bg at Antalya?,
we can run with 10% lux and make +36gpt
bombarding Arabs fails - we need at least 6-8 catapults at Al Bait - vet sword kills spear and elitizes, vet sword kills archer
bombard Calcutta and yellow 4 reg spears
kill 4 spears loosing 1 horse, capture Calcutta with 2 slaves, raze it
kill 2 Zulu warriors veting reg sword

3: 290BC: Sogut b warrior s harbor to connect India

IBT Persia drops 2 immortals at Al Bait

4: 270BC: kill 2 immortals

5: 250BC: move towards Bombay

6: 230BC: kill Indian sword at Bombay

7: 210BC: kill Indian sword at Bombay

IBT Indian sword dies red-lining our spear at Bombay

8: 190BC: move towards Bombay

IBT Persia drops horse and immortal at Al Bait, Zulu drop warrior at Lahore

9: 170BC: kill Persians without losses; kill 2 spears, 1 sword and capture Bombay; since it is pop 1, decide to keep it despite of previously arguing against it we are lucky and both harbor and barracks survive
kill Zulu warrior and galley after bombardment

10: 150BC: galley looses against red-lined Indian galley
move towards Karachi

Final thoughts:
We have a settler to replace Karachi, because it is pop 4.
We need shields at South beach; mine the grass, desert afterwards. The library will give the eastern jungle (clear, mine) and the fish.
I irrigated at Jungle Port; we want to grow it to pop 6 asap and trigger WLTKD to reduce the flip risk.
After capturing Karachi, we should pillage the last Indian ivory.
The desert goats still should be irrigated (by Sogut worker after mine). Workers to mine the Great Library mountain.

I started some infrastructure, because we can afford to spend the shields now.

Renata(up next)
Sabre
Furiey
Keath
Tone (skipped)
tao (just played, swapped with Renata)

 

[Keath]

Lookin' good!

good grieve! why didn't we improve the bg at Antalya?

I suspect the Library kicked in while workers were busy chopping jungle as it wasn’t in our control until 490 bc; then hooking up iron had priority.

capture Bombay; since it is pop 1, decide to keep it despite of previously arguing against it we are lucky and both harbor and barracks survive

Nice move!

Looks like you have added 20 kills to our board and 2 losses gaining 2 slaves.

Where are the Americans and Vikings? I've never seen such shy AI.

Firaxis says we are numero uno!

 

[tao]

Here is a draft for the QSC spoiler. Please add/comment/etc.

From the very beginning, the team (Furiey, Renata, Keath, Sabre, tao, Tone) agreed to go for The Great Library. We all lacked AWD experience, but this sounded like a good plan.

Our build sequence was warrior, warrior, granary, settler. We turned Sogut into a 4 turn warrior/settler factory, in between 2 turn warrior/worker builds.

Our research was pottery full speed, 2 min turns iron working, switched to full speed alphabet (1 turn), trade for alphabet, min on writing for 40 turns, literature full speed. Then we stopped research to accumulated gold.
Ceremonial burial we learned from a goody hut.

Indian contact was made 3000BC; no trades possible.
Zulu contact was made 2950BC; they give alphabet and warrior code for masonry.
Arabs are contacted 1425BC and give iron working plus the wheel for writing plus 112g - we wanted to know about horses and iron.
No contact was made yet with Persia.

The town "Great Library" was founded 2590BC south of Sogut and immediately started on a GLib pre-build. In 1000BC it is 1 turn from completing this big project.

The barbarians were quite a nuisance, but not a really serious problem. We soon guessed to be alone on an island, and thus warriors and archers were enough military to hold barbarians at bay. 1000BC we had nine vet swordsmen, sixteen reg warriors acting mostly as MPs, three vet chariots, and a reg archer.

The town Al Bait on the west coast serves unguarded as a honey pot for the AI landing attempts. Thus we can concentrate our defense forces in one spot.

The settlers built in Sogut filled our island at rcp distances 4 and 7. The flood plains city of Uskudar built quite a lot of workers.

We were surprised at the AIs' weakness and soon guessed that they have limited expansion space. Our first target will probably be India, because they (a) fit nicely in our rcp schema, and (b) we want to kill them before they have jumbos.

 

[Tone]

I think that gives a good account of our QSC period. I always find it difficult to strike the right balance between being too brief and going over the top with minor details but IMO you've got it just about right.

 

[Keath]

Good report! I can't think of anything you've missed. I guess this means that we can look at the other QSC reports as most teams are ahead of us. It will be interesting to see what they did.

Edit: And it seems that we are first to log our QSC report - last to reach the mark, first to post

Good luck Renata, on the Indian front.

 

[Furiey]

I've been looking at the map and wondering... The cities are a long way apart and until we get Knights it's going to take a long while to get our troops from one city to the next. It's taken 20 turns to get where we have with the Indians. In a normal game this wouldn't be that much of a problem, we could wait, but this is a race. So, once we have the Indian lands, would we be able to field enough troops to take the Zulu from both ends? Or even start on the Arabs at the same time as the Zulu? The Arabs at the same time would be more difficult as we would also be open to Persian troops. Zulus from a couple of landing spots may be more practical, but those who have played and seen first hand the opposition in India would have a better idea of whether this was feasible. We have to walk the tightrope between as fast as possible and overstretched, I just have the feeling that if we neatly work our way down the continent we'll be too slow.

 

[Renata]

Me, too. And I'm bothered about the lack of a golden age. What prospects do we have, if we don't handbuild the Hanging Gardens?

1. Wait for a leader, and hope it shows up before anyone's built HG.
2. Capture HG (once it's built, who knows where), Pyramids (too far away), or Great Wall (if that's industrious, can't remember, but in any case, it's also a long way away), then build another wonder ourselves. This build will almost have to be with a leader, because after HG, the wonders get far too expensive.
3. Research to Dragoons.

I really can't see us managing to win this competition without a golden age.

I have a few turns until the decision has to be made (Sogut and Great Library are due to build markets in 5 or 6 turns; by then we may either have a leader or have lost the HG to someone else), and I'll play that far. I'd appreciate some feedback on golden age strategies, though.

Renata

 

[Renata]

Ah. Well, never mind that discussion. Zimbabwe built the HG on the first interturn. Still would like to discuss how we're going to get a golden age, though.

Renata

 

[tao]

Cross post with previous. Great news!

IMHO we can only hope for Zulus, Persia, or Arabs to build Hanging Gardens - if we don't get a Great Leader soon.

IMHO we will hardly get to dragoons in time to trigger a Golden Age. Or at least we will finish faster by spending the money for upgrading horses to knights.

Note: The iron mountain has a mine, but no road. This is intended! We should pillage the Indian iron once it is ours. Then we can easily disconnect iron and build horsemen again, even if we know chivalry.

Perfect scenario: we build HG and trigger our GA.

Near perfect scenario: we capture HG and use a Leader to hurry Leo's or Sun Tzu's.

 

[tao]

Renata: you should be able to capture Karachi and Delhi. Build some more spears for defense and galleys to ship troops to northern Zulu land.

The forrest 2N of Antalya is rcp 4 and would make a nice beachhead for a second landing, once Zulu forces are in the north.

 

[Furiey]

Well, Zulu building HG is certainly one of the better outcomes as they're next on our list.

2N of Antalya is a good spot, another would be the jungle near Ulundi, although this wouldn't give such a productive town.

I wonder whether it would be to our advantage or disadvantange now to meet another Civ to see if it speeds up what we get from the Great Library. Meeting the Vikings though would force us to change our policy on AI Bait (once Invention is about), so that probably wouldn't be so good.