SGOTM7 - Team Wacken

[Xevious]

No, no, no, it is not about to riot. Please do not MM this or use lux slider. As I said in my turn report the worker on the incense hill will finish the road next turn.

You mention reading through others posts, how could you have missed this both in my original post and in an exchange between me and Offa where he also warned about it rioting...

You're absolutely right, I did, in fact, fall into the same trap as Offa. I read all that last night and forgot about it this morning.

 

[Wotan]

You're absolutely right, I did, in fact, fall into the same trap as Offa. I read all that last night and forgot about it this morning.

Got you! But this does make me feel any better. I still brood over the "Cow affair"... Stupid, stupid me! I was probably so sure I saw what I thought I saw so I never even thought something was wrong... I knew it was to work the plains for one turn and then the grassland for 6 turns to grow to size 2.
BTW, please look at my last post on the previous page I have added a couple of issues to it.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Ok, wotan, sorry for feeling offended by your post and acting rather offended in my reply. I hope things will be ok from now on.

Replies to the latest posts:

"War: I think I like the idea of trying for an ancient age domination. India and Arabia both have late UUs, so I imagine we should go after Zulu first (especially since they are closer and have some land we could use. India might even be better since there is even more land close to our capital there."

-Xevious, you posted this probably in reply to my short note that i would go for this in a private game or gotm. I did not dare to post this as a serious suggestion, but since you seem to like it, i will post some further explanation and see if people like it.

-No attempt to build the GL. (GL costs 13 swords/horses) Forget about defensive units entirely, forget about bombardment as well. Research to map making and trade iron working for writing. Full focus on military. Start conquering with swords and horses asap, and hope to take a large quantity of the world with swords.
If swords are not able to take all needed 66%, i'd have 2 backup plans:
-Capture the GL with them and take the last bit with knights.
-Fill the world with scientists and research chivalry myself.
This however would be a very risky strategy and takes some nerve to attempt. There is a big chance it would fail. If however it does not fail, the victory would be centuries faster than anyone doing a more conservative approach.
I did't dare to suggest this seriously there will always be at least one that won't like it and he might be very unsatisfied if the plan fails and we lose miserably.

If you people like it though, i am all for this. 400 shields is a lot of military.
I not have a positive attitude towards any ancient wonders.
However, i feel fairly sure most or all other teams will go for the lib, i fully understand everyones reasons to do so. So it's not like the situation with the settler factory vs combi factory 20 turns ago, i do not want to pursuade anyone at all. If you want to do this though, just say so !

Workers from istanbul did also cross my mind, but i kicked that idea out of my mind for the following reason:
-We have 3 cities with food bonus. Only one of those has the production to be a settler factory. Workers are cheaper than settlers. Building workers in Istanbul wastes shields, building settlers in the other cities will take a long time. Therefore, i think it is best to keep building settlers in Istanbul and build workers from the other 2 food towns. No granary in the cows town is my idea because just cant wait 30 turns for that city to start building workers while we only have 3 or 4 now (3 or 4 because i still think of it as an option to start that granary in the wheat city right now)

About the tech trading. Certainly with the GL taking so long, you guys are right that we should get the best out of the trades we can. So yes, we probably need to trade writing.
I also agree we should prolly keep the huts until after we traded writing.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

PS: about the issue of not building but capturing the library, now that i see Wotan also commented on it:

I think the biggest risk is actually that the AI will not build it at all. We cannot gift them literature if they dont research it. I still remember one of my games where they never researched literature until i abandoned my game (failed sid attempt) mid industrial age.

400 shields is basically really enough to capture it if they do build it in time.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Edit:

Ok, so while i drove home from work, i started day dreaming again about the vitory without building TGL. Since 2 people did comment on it yet, i now started to think about it more seriously. i have thought about it a bit more and therefore decided i will post a bit more about it and make it a more seriuous proposition:

If we do not build it, we will gain 400 shields to spend on military.
This is normally enough to capture it. I don't think we would fail on capturing it.
That alone would be a good reason not to build it if it weren't for the fact that there is a good chance the AI won't research literature and if it does, it might take ages before it does so.

How to handle the fact that they might not build it ?
We could research literature, delay contacts until we have it, and then gift literature to the nearest civ. That way, it will most likely be close to home. We could have literature in 25 turns or so from now probably.
Another option would be to prepare for a game without TGL.

Either way, btw, also if we do build it ourselves, we will need to do without TGL for a long time to come. To live without, we need to delay contacts as long as possible and get them one at a time with long periods in between. We could trade with writing and and literacy with the next we meet, research something more (currency maybe if we can trade math) and then meet a new civ to trade that with. And so on.
If we trade not after writing, but after writing+philo+free tech, we will have 2 or maybe 3 techs to trade for that first trade.

If we do make someone build TGL, this will cost us only a little in that we need to research literature for him.
We will probably be ok by just doing that trade with philo+free tech. And get the rest after capturing TGL.
Possibly, we could also hope to trade our way to monarchy and research that ourselves. Other than that, we could do a 0 research game, where we can spend all our money on unit upgrades. This would further enhance our millitary strength and increase the chances of succes.

If we do not let someone build TGL or we fail trying to do so, we will need to prepare for a game without TGL.
We could go for a real ancient age victory, not researching and trying to win before they get pikes, but that is ehm.. rather risky

If we want to prepare for a game with no TGL whatsoever, we shall really need to do optimal trading, and while figting ferociously, focus strongly on science as well. Since this is C3C, we can use very efficient scientists. If we ICS the conquered corrupt areas a bit and fill them with scientists, we will surely be able to ourresearch the deity AI's.
If it happens to fail, we can still decide to build TGL later on. At that stage, the cost of it will be less significant. This scenario doesn't really look too tempting though, so i think we really need to make someone build it.

So there still are risks,
We might not be able to delay contact long enough to give literature to the right guys.
Someone else might research it and build it on the other side of the map.
It might be build on a walled city on hills.
It might be build so late that it is defended by pikes.
However, i do think we can both reduce the risk not to capture it and reduce the risk when we do not capture it quite a bit.

If we are completely succesfull, if the right guys build it for us, we spend our income on upgrading units and we capture it, our victory might be legendary.

If we fail, if we cant capture it or cant make them build it, we are in for a struggle, but we have shown we are brave !

 

[Offa]

Well this is a lively thread.

Anyone who wants can suggest micromanagement for my turns, but I would prefer if suggestions are made before not after. We have a pretty good team here and I think we can trust everyone to do their best. Solid micromanagement served team Offa very well even though the different players often differed quite widely in their perferred overall strategies.

Re the Great Library: it is indeed a idea not to bother in an always war game. Perhaps if we were behind a bold move like that would be worthwhile to catch up, but that is not our position. We can save a lot of cash by getting the Library. Without the Library we would have to research at least to maps, iron, ?horseriding, and possibly monarchy which effectively costs a lot of upgrades. Building the Library is almost bound to work on deity: it pretty much always works on Sid. It isn't like the Pyramids.

I think Wacken was probably right about the combi factory, as we have emerged unscathed from barbs. Team Grumpy is a little behind us, which implies that they did go straight to the combi factory.

It is a long way down the line, but if we don't plan to go to Siphai, how we will get a golden age?

Why go after the Zulus first apart from the culture squeeze on U? Their Impi will be hard to deal with, they will get an immediate Golden Age, and they may be easier to attack later when we are stronger. It might I suppose be good to trigger the Zulu Golden Age fairly early so they could build some wonders. However, the Indians and Arabs are surely more tempting targets before they get to their UUs.

 

[Wotan]

PS: about the issue of not building but capturing the library, now that i see Wotan also commented on it:

I think the biggest risk is actually that the AI will not build it at all. We cannot gift them literature if they dont research it. I still remember one of my games where they never researched literature until i abandoned my game (failed sid attempt) mid industrial age.

400 shields is basically really enough to capture it if they do build it in time.

I miss a line in my reply about this. It more or less read: Among the things we will depend on for it to be built are: Several AI's are building the same GW and one finish it, then if no better GW is avalable I think the AI will cascade to GL if they have Lit. A lot of ifs so it is not a very reliable plan.

I agree with Xevious and Wacken about the "blitzkrieg" approach. It is bold but if we are not audacious we will most certainly not do well in the annals of this game. I do not believe I have ever built a GW in a solitaire C3C game and would have no problems avoiding it in this game if that is the consensus. But we do need a few crucial techs, HBR, IW, MM and Monarchy so having the Lib is interesting but is it worth 13 1/3 Horsemen if we can get the techs another way?

It could backfire in a big way and we could find ourselves desperately behind in tech fighting Knights, Pikes and Muskets with Swordsmen and Horsemen.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

I edited my post about TGL 2 posts above with a few pages more text

PS:

"audacious"
Needed to look that one up, and it didn't even come from a native english speaker . Those damn swedes are too good with their english...

 

[Wotan]

If we are completely succesfull, if the right guys build it for us, we spend our income on upgrading units and we capture it, our victory might be legendary.

If we fail, if we cant capture it or cant make them build it, we are in for a struggle, but we have shown we are brave !

This is the stuff that makes people willing to move into the line of fire!
Why not go for it. We will have a game with a lot of excitement and nail biting but that is just part of the fun. Zulu have The Wheel, IW, WC and Myst. I am pretty sure Arabs are at least a carbon copy of this. If we hold off trading Writing for a few turns into Philo-research and save up about 100 gold we should be able to bag The Wheel/IW and possibly a third tech from them. After Philo take MM as the free tech and research Lit. WE should be able to take the war to our neighbours in about 20-25 turns time if this works out.

The AI seems to be quite keen on building GWs. India are building Pyramids and Colossus and Zulu are busy building Oracle and Colossus. Hopefully they will stay on this track. We should monitor what cities are building GWs and how long they have been working on them so we trade Lit at the best possible moment for one of them to get it from the AI we trade it to and be in a position to cascade to it. Easier said than done, but that is basically what we need to do.

 

[dmanakho]

you guys are NUTS!!!!
How do you expect me to play tonight if i have to read and study all these posts that look more like a "War and Peace" novel. And i must warn you i never managed to finish reading the original.

I didn't read posts but i hope there were instructions on where to move settlers for new cities. If none are there please give me some hints. I felt disconnected from this game, but i promise starting from today it will all change.

Oh well....
i am off for the exam wish me luck, be back in few hours

 

[WackenOpenAir]

you guys are NUTS!!!!
How do you expect me to play tonight if i have to read and study all these posts that look more like a "War and Peace" novel. And i must warn you i never managed to finish reading the original.

I didn't read posts but i hope there were instructions on where to move settlers for new cities. If none are there please give me some hints. I felt disconnected from this game, but i promise starting from today it will all change.

Oh well....
i am off for the exam wish me luck, be back in few hours

Ah you havent read our latest discussion and you think we are nuts already? You surely wont change your mind after reading it

I hope you and Offa also start to feel the blood running like me, wotan and xevious. Grahamiam would be surprised to find half the world in ottoman hands when he gets back

 

[Wotan]

@Dman, good luck! and when you return home prepare yourself for some reading before playing. A few things though: One Settler to the area S of Bursa, one to the NW peninsula. Do send Warriors ahead of the Settlers since there are plenty of Barbs around now. Prepare to convert Istanbul to a combo factory. Run Uskudar as suggested to end with a Barracks, irrigate plains and then chop forest. There are Barbs in the area so send a Warrior to fend off threatening Barbs. Easy, right?

EDIT: only 15 posts behind X-team now. Keep posting!!!

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Oh ya, i forgot to wish you luck as you asked.

I dont wish you luck though, i wish your skills, knowledge and intelligence to be there as you need them and to serve you well !

 

[Offa]

I will of course bow to a majority verdict, but I think we should build the Great Library.

 

[Offa]

a "War and Peace" novel. And i must warn you i never managed to finish reading the original.

You didn't finish it . Really, you should.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

EDIT: only 15 posts behind X-team now. Keep posting!!!

Then stop using the edit function !

 

[Xevious]

Well this is certainly going to be an interesting SGOTM no matter what happens. Something to think about: If we are NOT first to Philosophy, then we need to get Map Making on our own before Literature, which might make it less likely to get someone to build the GL.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

In that unfortunate event (and there imo is a very small chance of that happening as philo is almost as low priority as literature) i think we could first research literature, then try to get MM for literature and philo and if not, we could even do map making ourselves after that and meanwhile build some units and prebuild the galleys. We don't need many galleys anyway to get started, one galley can move 2 units every turn over this small piece of water.

For now, i guess we'll just await Dmans oppinions about the matter before speculating anymore.

About city placement:
I think if we settle on the incense hill it will also prevent the AI from taking the lambs we see on the other side as i think they wont settle in gaps only 2 tiles wide. We could then someday build a city there to use for landing place.

 

[Xevious]

About city placement:
I think if we settle on the incense hill it will also prevent the AI from taking the lambs we see on the other side as i think they wont settle in gaps only 2 tiles wide. We could then someday build a city there to use for landing place.

I think, actually, that they won't settle 2 tiles away from another city. Which means they could settle on the eastern sheep and that would be a problem. BUT in 20 turns Istanbul will expand and fill in that area anyway (once incense city is there).

 

[dmanakho]

Ok....
After reading all these posts here is the plan for my turns:

1. get 2 more settlers out of Istanbul and prepare it for combo factory
2. Change Uskudar to barracks. Uskudar has 0.5% chances to flip. I can live with that.
3. Izmit - Gr.Lib City.
4. Bursa worker -> granary at max shields
5. Plant a city NW on top of Incence hill and plant cities east and south of Bursa.
6. Evade barbs and do not meet Arabs until we are ready to do some trades.
7. I am sure i missed few things, but i honestly tried to read all your posts.


Pre-turn. Sending settler to NW city - that will take 9 turns if we don't meet barbs that is

IBT. Incense connected Barb moves towards Edrin
T1. 2110BC. Bursa worker-Granary. I will leave it at max food for 3 turns until it grows and then will MM for production. Our warrior kills pesky barbarian.
Workers from Bursa and Incense tile move to BG near edrin to mine it according to Wotan's plan. Another Bursa worker moves across the river to start slowly progress towards Izmit.
Worker near uskudar moves on forest to cut shields
As of my 1st turn. Zulus have W, WC, IW and Myst on us but they miss alphabet.
Indians have wheel and IW and they know alphabet.
Lux slider goes down to 10%. Max. science to 90% and writing is ready in 7 turns with -1gpt
Elite warrior is moving NW to cover settler in case of barb activity.
Switch Izmit to Pyramids as a prebuild for GLib.

T2. 2070BC. Worker cuts forest near uskudar. Settler is going north. Warriors open fog S and SW directions.
I can see another barb SE from eastern goody hut.
Istanbul grows. I am forced to push lux back to 30% and writing is still in 7turns

IBT. Zulu requested audience. They want alphabet for peace. Vikings completed Collossus.

IBT. Barbarian moved east and dissapeared in fog.

T3. 2030BC. Workers finished mining near Edrine. One started irrigating plains south of Istanbul. Another ccrossed the
river and moved to BG SE from Istanbul.

IBT. Barb warrior appeared north of Iznik. Exactly where the settler is going. I will let it sack the city and cover settler with elite warrior.

T4. 1990. Istanbul Settler->Settler. Moving settler to location east of Bursa. Lux slider down to 20%
Writing is ready in 4 turns.

T5. 1950BC. Forest near Uskudar chopped. Moving worker to the next one. Iznik worker ->Barracks.
I know we want to have granary in Bursa but it will riot in just few turns. I am thinking about switching it to worker. Actually i have switched it to worker... we need to connect those jungle spices and/or have a warrior Bursa. Worker is built in Iznik and runs away from barbarian.

IBT. Barb sacked 7 gold out of Iznik. Another barb will probably sack Edrine next ibt.

T6. 1910BC worker moves on cow near iznik. Writing is in 2 turns.
Worker finished irrigating plains S. of istanbul moves East to BG.

T7. 1870BC. Pesky barb turned of Edrine and moved towards Uskudar Istanbul. I have to chase him with warrior
Settler arrived to the destination. Elite warrior dispersed barb camp on the way to incense hill.
Worker irrigatin cow near Iznik. Bursa finished worker->granary.

IBT. Barb camp appeared right in front of settler. Barb attacks our warrior between Istanbul and Uskudar and dies. We get a promotion.

T8. 1830BC Settle and establish Aydin. Barb camp is dispersed and goody hut popped for 25 gold each.
Another settler arrived on top of incense hill Istanbul settler->settler. Writing came. philosohpy in 13.

IBT. Barb sacked Aydin and took 29 gold. Another barb appeared south of Edrine.

T9. 1790BC Both Edrine and Uskudar finished barracks. We will have an army soon. Incense Hill founded->worker.
Workers put road between Bursa and Izmit and should help to improve Izmit tiles now.

IBT. Barb horse appeared in southern jungles. Forbidden Palace message appeared.

T10. Moving settler and couple of workers. Barb will sack Edrine next turn other than that no immediate danger.
I am also moving elite warrior from north down south to help fighing against barbs.

Post-turn: I hate it when Barb horses appear... They always mean troubles. It looks like it is about the time to meet with
Arabs and trade writing. Well, may be in next 3 to 4 turns that is.
I hope i did not messed up much of MM tasks. We will need couple of archers to clean jungles. Right now our entire army consist of 3 warriors. I am not sure if i made a right decision of roading towards Aydin and sending an extra worker to Izmit. But it felt right at that point. I just wanted to connect all cities in our empire together.
EDIT: Philosophy is ours in 10 turns.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Ah, it looks like you made the decision on the library. Remember, it will take really long (~80 turns) so don't make everything depend on it. We must get MM, HBR and IW before that.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Bursa is building a granary, and is now focused at production already at size 3. In cases like this, where you have to choose between 5 and 2 food surplus, it is best to keep it at 5 food until it is like size 5 or so. It is a big project, thus the time to grow it to size 5 is not too long in comparison to the project. When it is to size 5, it can get so much more production than at size 3. It will be done faster and you will end up a bigger city if you grow it to size 5 first. A little calculation i shall include, starting 1 turn ago.

8 turns at size 3: 24 shields
8 turns at size 4: 32 shields (using the BG)
-16 turns, a city 4 food from size 5.

3 turns at size 3: 6 shields
4 turns at size 4: 12 shields
8 turns at size 5: 40 shields (production focused, using BG and 1 goat)
-15 rurns, city 4 food from size 6.

I know many people would do like you did, i guess it feels more intuitive, so thats why i post it with calculations included. I suggest moving it back to growth now until it is size 5. Then, we will have the same thing i shown in my second calculation, only 1 turn later so we will not win a turn, but we will win a citizen.
Maybe this granary can be sped up a little by moving the mountain goats from the library to this city for the turns where it is usefull.
*For corruption numbers, i moved some workers around in this city to see on the gold in this city what the corruption will be at size 4 and 5.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Iznik is rather corrupt but has lots of food. I suggest continuing to build workers there. We need many more of them.

------------------------------------------------------------------------