SGOTM7 - Team Wacken

[dmanakho]

I am not arguing for the library...
But... I don't think 60 turns is a lot to build Gr.Lib when you look at the date.
It is only 1750BC. How often do you start building this wonder this early?
and again but.. You guys have almost convinced me to do libraryless game.

I'd rather go against India or arabs, but Zulus is the closest target. I'd say lets wait for this decision. Too early to say.
I am sure we will have both iron or horses (likely both). M-B would never allow chieftain teams to play on diety level without resources.
Our island may miss gunpowder or coal but i doubt we will ever find out
I just feel like i learned M-B's style enough in past several games to make such predictions.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Researching at any less than max to gather money is useless imo. Rather just research at max to get the tech, then stop research to get money.

I think Izmit and Uskadar are the real options to build a galley. Insence hill has to little production.
The capital might also be an option after we have settled our island, but that will take 8 more settlers.

I just notice something else though, Looking at the map, seeing there are 3 opponents very close to us. We are all together nicely on the right half of the map and nothing on the east side. It might be possible the other enemies are out of reach until astronomy. Lets hope this is not the case though.

Assuming the 3 enemies we have, i think it would be best to start at one side and move around rather than to start with the Zulu in the middle. In this case clockwise is best for the iraqi's are to build our GL.

For the risk of there only being 3 opponents to meet for a long time and us not being able to gift techs to enemies, i think it might indeed be a better idea to take literature for free. This is a risk which is in our own hands though, we don't have to meet the Iraqi's if we don't want to. It will enable us to settle our island though.

I wonder if MB would do something like that. It would make the game easier for there will be less AI to attack us, but it would harm the stronger teams who cannot dominate the world before astronomy (or using a suicide chain)
That might be just what he wants...

 

[Wotan]

Researching at any less than max to gather money is useless imo. Rather just research at max to get the tech, then stop research to get money.

I agree, go full out until we have literacy, then stop and search for a new AI tribe to pass it on to.

 

[dmanakho]

I agree, go full out until we have literacy, then stop and search for a new AI tribe to pass it on to.

Concur, and if we don't have IW or HBR by that time keep researching to get those 2 essential techs.

How about changing governments??? We are not going to be able to trade monarchy for anything. By that time we will be at war with everyone we know. Another point to Gr.Lib.
Or are we going to stay in despotism for another 2000 years until we finally capture the building with dust covered books?

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Concur, and if we don't have IW or HBR by that time keep researching to get those 2 essential techs.

How about changing governments??? We are not going to be able to trade monarchy for anything. By that time we will be at war with everyone we know. Another point to Gr.Lib.
Or are we going to stay in despotism for another 2000 years until we finally capture the building with dust covered books?

remember last sgotm ?
Pop rushing is rather powerfull

I also added some more thought to my previous post.

Addition to my seperate world theory:

If this happens to be the case, the AI wont be trading too much either. This makes the library to provide techs slowly (whether build or captured)
The limiting factor for victory in this situation could be who is first to reach astronomy.
In order to get that first, i think we will need to ICS the ground we conquer and get mad scientists.

 

[Wotan]

Small map! I do think we will do OK even if we do not get to Astronomy. Besides I have a vague memory about a comment by M-B about this game when we wrapped up the last game. We would be in for a fast and fun game. Fast and fun would be to be able to finish it before Astronomy, at least in my book.

Please do not take Lit as the free tech. MM is both more expensive and more valuable to us. And we should be able to find a fourth civ by the time literacy is available and that civ will definitely trade it to the other civs.

 

[Offa]

1500bc

I had a tough time with barbs. Undefended towns were sacked twice for population, and twice for cash, and we lost 2 warriors. Anyway we will have loads of warriors soon, and a lot of workers too.

1750bc
Izmit to barracks, Capital to barracks, Bursa to +5fpt.

ibt warrior in south survives barb horseman attack. Undefended Edrine is sacked by a barb and "some of our people are lost".

Oh well if we will play with no military.
A barb horseman moves onto the mountain 2 squares from Uskadar, and the worker next to it. I hope he will just take money.

1725 nil of note.

ibt Uskadar is pillaged and loses population. This is very unpleasant.

1700 Konya founded in the south.
Istabbul grows to 5 and as we have no MP I have to bump up taxes. Philosophy falls back a turn.

ibt Uskadar sacked again for 8 gold.

1675 I attack warrior in barb camp in south and our vet warrior dies.
Istanbul finishes barracks so starts a settler.
Edrine finishes a warrior who is sent back to Istanbul as MP.

1650 Bursa grows and has to be given a scientist to prevent rioting. Iznik has also grown and is about to riot.

ibt Zulu are building TOA.

1600 Istanbul builds a settler, and the combi factory is alive at last. Make a scientist in Bursa again so I can drop the lux

rate and get philo a turn earlier.

ibt a barb horse appears next to the jungle spices. Zulus finish the Oracle.

1550 Philosophy and I pick mapmaking. Start lit on max.

1525 shuffle lots of units around so I can found Sinop on the jungle spices despite having barb horse right next to it.
I try attacking the barb in the end with a reg warrior but the warrior dies.

ibt sinop is sacked for cash.

1500 another settler finished in Istanbul: not moved yet. I haven't moved the MP in Bursa either.

Literature is due in 9 turns (90% science). We still haven't met the Arabs.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Ah ya the citizens is unfortunate, but well.. it happens.
And take a look at our graph ! We are simply 10 turns ahead on everyone.

 

[dmanakho]

There is absolutely nothing we could do to protect against barbarians.
I don't mind them taking cash. Much worse when they kill our people.
Oh, well... it will change soon. Do we want to build few archers for barb hunting and MP purposes after that.
Lets put the plan together for next 10 turns. I reckon it is time to meet Arabs
Has anyone learned writing yet? If not i'd rather trade it now, AIs are definitely close getting it.
Offa didn't say a word on AIs techs, except the fact that ZUlus are builiding ToA - they are really close to get Monarchy.

it's 8pm May 20th here on East Coast. G-man won't be back for another 2 days. Do we want to skip him this time around? We can certainly follow the rules and wait 24 hours for his "got it"

Oh... screenie... can we have a sneak peak of the map?

Ah ya the citizens is unfortunate, but well.. it happens.
And take a look at our graph ! We are simply 10 turns ahead on everyone.

Actually that worries me. Past few games team Smackster was always way ahead of everyone else and at the end team Offa would somehow beat us.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Actually that worries me. Past few games team Smackster was always way ahead of everyone else and at the end team Offa would somehow beat us.

Don't worry, half team offa is with you now

About tech trading. We should wait until literacy before we trade with Iraq. We want to give them literacy.
Even if the world will not be seperated, they might very well not have contact with any other than the zulu's. If we dont make sure the zulu will get literature, they as well as the zulu might never get it or not get it before a long long time.
So just be patient for those 9 more turns....


Oh and for your tech questions and screenshot. You can download the safe game yourself as long as you don't do anything except for looking at the information available without making any changes. Of course, a screenshot here and there really makes our tread a lot prettier

The Zulu and India do not have writing yet.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

We can wait for him.

I don't have time to play durin the weekend either anyway.

And i always prefer discussions over rushing on. We have plenty of time. So 2 days of discussions is a good thing in my eyes. Although i don't have much to say it this moment for a change

 

[Xevious]

Well, I just opened the save, and right off the bat I see we are running 5-7 combi in Istanbul. If we change to a worker next, we can then do 4.5-6.5 warrior/settler. That's 8 or 9 shields at 4.5 + the extra from forest on growth. This will also save us a bit of unhappiness.

Also, Edrine is about to run out of 2f tiles to work. If we go worker in Istanbul, and then warrior/settler, we can use the grass SW of Istanbul instead of irrPlain. At 5 we have 9 shields, 5.5 we have 9 + 2 from forest, and at 6 we'll have to steal a shield from somewhere for the last one. Even then, Edrine will need more irr plains soon. We need to chop some forest. Would be nice if we had some iron or horses connected to allow chopping some units.

Uskadar is going to need food soon too. Would be good to send the worker from Istanbul (assuming everyone likes that idea) to irrigate the two plains tiles between Uskudar and Edrine.

Izmit is at 1fpt right now. Plains won't be irrigated for 3 turns, might be good to switch to grass just to get the food for 2 turns and then back to plains for turn 3.

Sinop also needs food, and should probably just build workers until it has more 2f tiles to work.

 

[dmanakho]

Here is the picture. So we have something to discuss about for the next 2 days.

According to mapstat Uskudar has now 0.979% chances to flip to Zulus
and Incense Hill has 0.757% chances to flip to Indians.
Looks like during last 20 turns chances to flip doubled in Uskudar.
We may want to consider building temple there after all.
We have 10 towns. Both India and Zulu have 6 cities each in their empires.

It also looks like we can drop lux slider to 0% and save a shine gold for a turn or two.

Iznik (corrected. I put Izmit in original post) is building barracks and has 3 shields after corruption plus growth in 2 turns. Why don't we switch it to FP now? The earlier with build FP the better according to my book. Bursa will be ready with Granary in 4 turns and can start pumping workers.
EDIT: Oh, almost forgot... Iznik will grow in 2 turns and with no MP we will need to bump luxury up to 20 or 30% and it will hurt our science project. I suggest send warrior from istanbul or bursa immediately and keep lux slider at 10%. 10% lux doesn't hurt science but 20% definitely will.

Izmit is finishing building galley, i think it should keep pumping units after that. It is one of very few uncorrupted cities and galleys with no units won't do us much good. Although i understand that if we build too many warriors we won't have money for upgrades, so building galleys now makes sense as well.

 

[Offa]

Sorry about no screenshot. It was pretty late when I finished, and I just didn't.

The galleys builds do reflect a bit of poor timing in that they were both building curraghs which were nearing completion when we learned mapmaking.

I think temples are even less indicated than before now we have maps, and soon may have a military.

 

[Wotan]

Hrmm, looking a bit troublesome ATM.
This waiting for Literacy just delays our game too much, I am starting to fear this will cost us dearly in the end. I would have liked us to have traded with Arabs when Philo was researched then go 100% at Literacy and search for a fourth tribe to pass that on to. At 1750BC Zulu still lacked Alphabet they now have it and I am sure they and Arabs are trading. So the price we can get for Writing will probably be substantially less than we would have recieved a few turns back.

We chose to go the bold road with the decision to go military and ignore TGL. Now we start to hesitate and act on just what we have ATM. We could end up in trouble if there is no 4th tribe closeby when we finally research Literacy but that would at least have given us some military from Iron or Horses discovered after trading with the Arabs. Right now the benefits from picking MM as the free tech is lost as we cannot use it to our advantage since we still want to wait for Literacy??? This is not a bold decision but a sign of too much hesitation and worries about "tomorrow". As the game is right now taking MM was not the correct decision, as it stand now we should have taken Literacy but I was thinking bold when I advocated MM bold enough to believe we could trade now with what we had after discovering Philo and again when we get Literacy.

Besides we might have city placed us out of being masters of our own destiny anyway. Sinop risk being in contact with Arabs if they culturally expand Baghdad.

On another issue, I am a bit puzzled by the placement of Konya? I would have thought one of the two available jungle tiels next to the river but the FP with extra food is a strange choice???

And yes, we are in no rush, no reason not to wait for Grahamiam.

 

[Wotan]

EDIT: Oh, almost forgot... Iznik will grow in 2 turns and with no MP we will need to bump luxury up to 20 or 30% and it will hurt our science project. I suggest send warrior from istanbul or bursa immediately and keep lux slider at 10%. 10% lux doesn't hurt science but 20% definitely will.

Dman, this is the same discussion we had re. Bursa. A city running at +5 food can go down to +3 and still grow while avoiding riots by putting a citizen on specialist work. That would allow us to keep the current level of research and even boost it if the specialist is a scientist.

 

[Offa]

On another issue, I am a bit puzzled by the placement of Konya? I would have thought one of the two available jungle tiels next to the river but the FP with extra food is a strange choice???

I just followed Wacken dotmap without thinking about it much (I had his map printed out), although I agree that the jungle would have been pretty good, and that you had suggested this. I hope this is not important and think the location may be OK: after the jungle is cleared it could have some useful production.

I favour waiting a little longer to meet Arabs. We are hardly ready to invade anyone yet. Unfortunately we will be stony broke if we research full on for lit so won't have any cash for upgrades after a trade. Our invasion will have to wait a little longer, but hopefully not too long.

I will be very surprised if we don't have iron and horses on our island, but I don't think the AI will all be as lucky. Mad-Bax wants people to win as he got a bit stung by sgotm3.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Hmm, it is indeed true that we need to see resources asap. Certainly if we won't have money to upgrade for the while to come, we don't want to be building useless warriors.

I do think we should have taken Lit for free as we could build an army while getting map making and prebuild the boats.

But indeed, building warriors for 9 more turns is a waste of time. Lets meet Saddam, convert the rice eating people and hope for the best.
If we conquer those we know, we are half way there.

Ind and Zulu only have 6 cities yet, so they shouldn't be too hard and certainly conquerable in AA.
If the other civs are not within military reach, the game will take long anyway (to astronomy)
In that situation, there are 2 options:
-Research on your own and reach astromomy before the others. Requires excelent research (but i think possible with ICS and scientists) and costs a huge investment.
-Wait and let the library get us there while we make money and use all our income to prepare an army to destroy them in 5 turns.

The nice thing is that even in that situation, it won't matter a lot if we had the lib finished already or if we build it 100 turns from now. If we get it before the AI has astronomy it is ok. Therefore, even in the case we are seperated, not having the Arabs build the lib is only a moderate loss. The loss would be that we probably be monarchy a bit later. This is a worst case scenario though, and hopefully Wotan is right.
If he is not, we Blame M-B for promising us a fast and short game !


I think we need to look carefully at our situation when we have met the Arabs though. We need to decide what to do with research. There is a pretty good chance we wont have horseback riding and only iron working. In that case, do we want to stop research and get money for upgrading warriors or do we research horseback ?
And suppose we get WC and Mysticism, do we want to research for monarchy.? (I think we should do so later after upgrading some)

Another option with that combi fact would be to simply skip a warrior, but worker is ok with me as well.

We should not build any temples, better to just send a few horses to destroy those towns at the other side.

The following words might sound surprising comming from me:
After 1 or 2 more settlers, i think our capital can go build military full time. The cities we build now are corrupt, just like those we conquer. So lets just start conquering. We do not need to fill the small gaps in the west i think,
certainly not the desert gap! Before building settler in other lands for domination or ICS, we need to capture other lands.
So i think we can stop producing settlers until either we smell victory and we want to fill gaps for our 66%, or we find no 4th enemy and we are gonna ICS the planet for science.
The yellow border on our lands in the east convinces me we should also abandon my dotmap plans for the east coast. Better just build 1 city right on top of that barb camp now and 1 or 2 in the southern jungles.

 

[Wotan]

I just followed Wacken dotmap without thinking about it much (I had his map printed out), although I agree that the jungle would have been pretty good, and that you had suggested this. I hope this is not important and think the location may be OK: after the jungle is cleared it could have some useful production..

Not important at all, I was just surprised. So I put the question to see if I had something new to learn from this. No critizism intended, just curious.

I favour waiting a little longer to meet Arabs. We are hardly ready to invade anyone yet. Unfortunately we will be stony broke if we research full on for lit so won't have any cash for upgrades after a trade. Our invasion will have to wait a little longer, but hopefully not too long..

This I believe is wrong though. We cannot start out boldly and then suddenly revert to being cautious. That way we will definitely lose this race. I believe we should have contacted Arabs when Philo was researched and then hunted for a 4th tribe to trade literature to in another 10 turns time. As it is now taking MM first gave us nothing really. The road you are asking us to take will leave us with a pile of Warriors we cannot afford to upgrade. If we do this we will wait another 10 turns or so for Iron/horses then another undetermined number of turn until we can either afford to upgrade enough Warriors or build Horsemen/Swordsmen from scratch. We would not be able to take the war to our adversaries until we are past the QSC period. Had we traded with Arabs with Philo and Writing we would already be building Swordsmen and maybe even Horsemen.
So I would urge the team to make contact now and try to pick up speed again. Send a western Galley hunting for another tribe while Literacy is researched. If I may have a request it would be a tribe that either has a border with India or Arabs so Literacy is quickly spread to the other tribes in our area.

I will be very surprised if we don't have iron and horses on our island, but I don't think the AI will all be as lucky. Mad-Bax wants people to win as he got a bit stung by sgotm3.

I guess you are right about that. He did say this would be an "easy" game.

 

[Wotan]

I do think we should have taken Lit for free as we could build an army while getting map making and prebuild the boats.

Still believe we made the right decision but the wrong decision when not following through on the "bold track" and trade when Philo was available.

But indeed, building warriors for 9 more turns is a waste of time. Lets meet Saddam, convert the rice eating people and hope for the best.
If we conquer those we know, we are half way there. .

Yes! We need to pick up speed!!!

The nice thing is that even in that situation, it won't matter a lot if we had the lib finished already or if we build it 100 turns from now. If we get it before the AI has astronomy it is ok. Therefore, even in the case we are seperated, not having the Arabs build the lib is only a moderate loss. The loss would be that we probably be monarchy a bit later. This is a worst case scenario though, and hopefully Wotan is right.
If he is not, we Blame M-B for promising us a fast and short game ! .

Or blame me for "pushing" us down the path of war.

I think we need to look carefully at our situation when we have met the Arabs though. We need to decide what to do with research. There is a pretty good chance we wont have horseback riding and only iron working. In that case, do we want to stop research and get money for upgrading warriors or do we research horseback ?
And suppose we get WC and Mysticism, do we want to research for monarchy.? (I think we should do so later after upgrading some).

We will have both Writing and Philo to trade with hopefully we will be able to get quite a few techs for them, including WC,IW and The Wheel. HBR might have to wait until we trade Literacy.

We should not build any temples, better to just send a few horses to destroy those towns at the other side.

Agree.

After 1 or 2 more settlers, i think our capital can go build military full time. The cities we build now are corrupt, just like those we conquer. So lets just start conquering. We do not need to fill the small gaps in the west i think,
certainly not the desert gap! Before building settler in other lands for domination or ICS, we need to capture other lands.
So i think we can stop producing settlers until either we smell victory and we want to fill gaps for our 66%, or we find no 4th enemy and we are gonna ICS the planet for science.
The yellow border on our lands in the east convinces me we should also abandon my dotmap plans for the east coast. Better just build 1 city right on top of that barb camp now and 1 or 2 in the southern jungles.

Yes! War is good...