SGOTM8 - klarius

[Megalou]

Even if bombers don't get the bonus shields, I don't see why we should not mobilize. Rome is pretty strong and we may need to wage a two front war soon.

Edit: never mind, there are two factories to hurry first.

 

[klarius]

It's the question when. Are all other infrastructure buildings finished (factories and coal plants also can't be build).
Also our culture grows slower so we will fall back.
We should mobilize some time, but then we also should use it by building ground units everywhere.
I would first build bombers everywhere, finish all useful infrastructure, then have a phase of mobilization and build ground units.

 

[Northern Pike]

A simple trick will give us most of the benefit of mobilization while building bombers. Just build cav or riflemen, and then switch to bombers when those builds have one turn to go. Ideally this is combined with short-rushing of the bombers (when they'll take two turns), but we may not have the gold for that.

So I don't think mobilization should wait for anything except the final infrastructure builds. Unless you have reason to think Philadelphia's university will definitely save us a turn at some point, by all means change it.

 

[Megalou]

900 AD save

850 AD - Removed warrior from gems.
Micromanaged Washington to Theory of Evolution 4t, then changed to Universal Suffrage as a precaution.
Changed Troy to build worker.
Changed Newcastle to build worker.
Changed Richmond to build worker.
Sold Music Theory to China, 56 gold,

World Map.
Sold some maps.
No investigation of Tientsin. It would cost 63 gold.
Hurried cavalry in Anyang.
Declared on China.
Traded with Rome:
Peace Treaty, Alliance against China, plus 19 gpt for new gladiators.
Sold: The Corporation for 131 gpt. They had 43 gold too but I want to protect our reputation.

IT: Japanese archer lands near Sapporo.
14 Roman MIs and some legionaries approach Yokohama. They're movin' in for the overkill.
New York: Coal Plant -> bomber prebuild.
Hurried Cavalry in Portland.

860 - Captured Yokohama (no defender).

Razed Tokyo with two elites.
Captured Nagasaki destroying a caravel.
Captured a Chinese worker.
Cancelled ROP with Rome (before we forget to.)

IT: Not much, but we go over the unit support limit and we lose furs and silks.

870 - Disbanded 2 warriors.
Captured Macao. The rest is up to Rome.
There is some unhappiness but no upcoming riots.
Captured some Japanese workers.
Hurried settler in Tatung.
Increased production in Washington.

IT - Scandinavian galleon approaches.

880 - Not much. Saving gold. Checking things. Changing some specialists. Garrisoned Chicago.
Planted/chopped the last forests around Delphi.

IT: Refining learned. Switched Wasington to ToE.
ToE completes. Combustion (6t) and Flight (6t) learned.
Changed New York to Bomber.
Changed Philly to Bomber. Edit: No, I didn't.
Trade Refining, Steel, wine, 3 gpt to Rome for Nationalism and furs.
Hurried 2 bombers.
San Francisco: University -> cavalry.
Miami: Coal Plant -> cavalry.
Pollution in Houston.
JS Bach in Veii.
Scandinavian galleon stays put.
We have one oil, in ex-Greece.
Researching Replacable Parts.

890 - Bomber bombs Hakodate (Japan) and kills citizens! So units in towns must not be red-lined before this happens.
Captured Satsuma.
Confimed: settlers can not be airlifted; workers can.
Rebased 2 aircraft in Seattle.
Built 8 airfields on home area.
MMed Seattle and mined their last mountain for another aircraft.

IT: Roman galley leaves its home.

900 - We bombard Shimonoseki down to size 1, but with just one size 2 town left out of 3, Japan is still not close to giving all three towns, so we must settle for 2. It would be very risky to bomb the last one too.

Hurried a worker in Ise, then set it to riot. Do not change this.

Rebased 1 bomber near Tientsin. There is a lot off MM to do for sure, but I'm already late.

We are ready for war on England, but if war with Rome comes upon us, we will not be ready for both wars yet.

 

[Megalou]

The Philly university will perhaps save us some money because we are dependent on scientists now. So I didn't change it. But the biggest city improvements should be possible to hurry now for Mobilization next turn if we want.

 

[klarius]

Looks nice.
From now on, our troops should be in action. Units have no business in towns. We can draft rifles in an emergency in size 7 cities, so we don't need to be very careful in our core. Losing a corrupt town on islands where we have more cities is also no problem - we need also no units there.

Next business - airfields on every island.
Then I would recommend war against England and Greece. Prepare some cities (mainly japanese) to gift them twice. Everything that can ride or walk goes into England. And I mean from everywhere. We are now in the age of flight, we can transport units fast in emergencies.
Bombers bomb down Greece.
One point: before war on Greece you should sell medicine to Rome for whatever they give. It's too dangerous that Greece buys them against us with medicine.
An alternative for the bombers is to start on the Vikings already. Then the bombers need to be concentrated in the south to bomb and kill invaders.
But in any case I think we need two wars immediately.

I'm still torn about mobilization. Most of our cities don't have many tiles with shields. Mobilization doesn't give a big benefit. On the other side Washington could do one-turn cavs with some MM in mobilization.
I would like to mobilize within a few turns, but look to complete infrastructure before. We could draft in corrupt big towns, to speed up builds by disbanding.

 

[klarius]

BTW

Ciceronian
Northern Pike
Megalou just played
Evil_Kanevil up
Ronald on deck
klarius

 

[Megalou]

Even if we only have half a reason to go into Mobilization, there aren't many reasons not to. We can still build harbours. I would like a temple in a Scandinavian town, if there is time, but a Scandinavian town can only be achieved after a peace treaty and we can go back to Normalcy after a peace treaty anyway.

If we want to finish University in Philly and factory in Chicago before mobilizing next turn, we must follow this procedure:
1. Sell World Map to Greece
2. Hurry the University
3. Finish the turn
4. Let Philly finish the University and zoom to city
5. Scroll to Chicago and hurry the factory.

Washington is about to build a bomber, but I don't think the option "Ask for build orders after unit construction" works, in which case we would not be able to scroll through the cities.

 

[Northern Pike]

I haven't studied the save yet, but good work.

 

[Megalou]

Thanks. I do think that Hangchow is a better base for our bombers than S:t Louis, though. From Hangchow we can bomb both Tientsin and the Greek Herakleia. Herakleia will be a pretty tough nut to crack and we should bomb the iron and salpeter sources as well as the town itself, I think.

Feel free to interrupt our workers on the English island to build airfields if you think it's time - it probably is time.

Edit: From Oakland and Phoenix we can bomb Tientsin, Herakleia and Argos. There are infinitesimal flip risks in both those towns. We must minimize rebase missions. First we should go after Greece and China, then Scandinavia (Oslo.) But it would be preferable to do both at the same time so I think we need two separate bombing fleets. They don't need to be huge - 10 attacks per town and turn is an exaggeration because it takes time before our enemies are willing to talk peace and so we will have several turns of bombing.

We also need a couple of bombers for Dover and eventually for Rome. This is getting complicated - but fun.

 

[Megalou]

A simple trick will give us most of the benefit of mobilization while building bombers. Just build cav or riflemen, and then switch to bombers when those builds have one turn to go. Ideally this is combined with short-rushing of the bombers (when they'll take two turns), but we may not have the gold for that.

Are you sure the game allows this trick? Sounds a bit like chopping forests for shields and then trying to change to a wonder build. If it works it's brilliant.

 

[Northern Pike]

Are you sure the game allows this trick? Sounds a bit like chopping forests for shields and then trying to change to a wonder build. If it works it's brilliant.

Yes, it works. I suppose it's never been corrected because in an orthodox, single-player game, any trick that only becomes available with Nationalism doesn't much matter in win-lose terms.

[The rest of this is a cross-post with Megalou's last two, so I don't acknowledge that he's already mentioned the workers on England's island, and so on.]

I agree with Klarius that we need to get to grips with the English and the Greeks immediately. I hope everyone sees that (barring freak combat results, of course) we can attack the English after a ten-city gift-and-retake in 910 AD, take Canterbury then, take Warwick, Coventry and Oxford in 920 AD, and take Hastings in 920 or 930 AD. The English will then be down to London, Liverpool, and Dover (which we'll probably have to bomb down to size one), and presumably we'll have a good chance of getting the latter two in the peace.

The first requirement, if we're going to move this fast, is that our workers near Newcastle and Troy should abandon the projects they're engaged in and build airfields (in the case of Newcastle's worker, as close as possible to Richmond) this turn. Then we should build seven airfields in and around Japan and two on Tatung Island, so that cavs to that number can be airlifted to the English front(s). These nine airfields should be carefully positioned so that slow units which move on to them by airlift from our homeland will be able to participate in GARs next turn, because...

...every city we gift and retake will require a unit to retake it. Since we don't want to waste our cav strike force on this duty, and we have so few ground combat units apart from our cav--twenty-one--this issue will require careful handling in its own right, and can't be taken for granted. I think we'll all agree that we need to be in a position to GAR all our cities on Rome's continent except for Caesaraugusta, so that's six non-cav units we'll need to airlift there. And I very much believe, since I don't accept the speculation that there's a limit to the useful size of a GAR, that we should be ready to gift all our cities on Tatung Island except for the two smallest. That means that six non-cav units will need to be airlifted there as well. Then we can throw in about ten cities on our home continent, which won't require pre-positioned forces, and really get serious about charity.

The Greek war will require a larger preparatory GAR (I see no reason to settle for less than twenty cities, since we'll be able to include some English ones), which will take a little longer to set up, but we can do most of the work of getting cav near their accessible cites before we declare, and we may be able to take all four of them (Rhodes from the north after Hastings, of course) by 950 AD. That airfield near Troy will again be absolutely crucial here, along with one on Eretria's island, of course.

We shouldn't treat the number of airfields we've got on our home continent as final, either. To send out both cav and slow units in the next two turns, we may well need more.

I think we can just afford to rush Philadelphia's uni before hitting Enter, rush Chicago's factory next turn, and mobilize the turn after that. (Edit: Megalou's procedure for getting all this done by next turn is better, of course.) I'd do it.

Whenever we have spare bomber-turns, we should bomb Tientsin. We can help the Romans by reducing the city's population so that it's unproductive, perhaps destroying its barracks, etc.

Matsuyama has a clown on duty for no apparent reason. No offense, Megalou, I know you didn't have time for the last MM.

 

[Ronald]

England and Greece is probably enough work for the next 5 turns. The real challenge will come then to bomb down Odense and Oslo.

BTW we have strong military against everyone but Rome (weak against Rome they must have tons of outdated units).

We haven't heard anything from Evil_Kanevil for a while. I wait untill tomorrow. If we hear nothing by tomorrow evening (GMT), I will take it. Is that OK?

 

[Megalou]

England and Greece is probably enough work for the next 5 turns. The real challenge will come then to bomb down Odense and Oslo.

BTW we have strong military against everyone but Rome (weak against Rome they must have tons of outdated units).

We haven't heard anything from Evil_Kanevil for a while. I wait untill tomorrow. If we hear nothing by tomorrow evening (GMT), I will take it. Is that OK?

Definitely OK. How is the spoiler text coming along btw?

 

[Ronald]

Definitely OK. How is the spoiler text coming along btw?

The weather was so nice during the weekend I did not want to stay indoors. Maybe this weekend

 

[Evil_Kanevil]

I'm here, been following the discussion and I'm looking at the save currently, I will play later today though I might not finish until tomorrow.

Oh, and good job everyone. I'm impressed.

 

[Evil_Kanevil]

I started out a bit.... http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm8/klarius_SG008_AD0920_01.SAV

Turn log:
Turn 0, 900 AD: I prepare for the GAR-attack against england. Our troops are strategically positioned to both blitz into

england and to reclaim our charity gifts. This means building quite a bunch of new airfields.
I had to draft some just to get enough units, as well.

Sell world map to greece. Hurry university in philadelphia.

Turn 1, 910 AD:
Hurry the factory in chicago. Set mobilization to war-time.

MM a little.

Time to gift and retake. GAR Cities:

Orrville, Canton, Corinth, Satsuma, Izumo. Thermopylae, Macao, Tatung, Nagasaki, Shantung, Yokohama, Cleveland, San Diego,

Sapporo, Portland, Olympia,

Gift cities, and Declare.. Luckily we had enough troops to reclaim our gifts and all went well.

We take Canterbury without losses (2-0)

Set up air force base in Hangchow.

920:
Take Coventry and Hastings without losses (8-0).
In Warwick, one of our three cavalries loses their battle leaving the city with a redlined defender. (10-1)
Switch a cav build to bomber when it's 1 turn left, and it seems to work fine .

I pause here to ask a question: I see we that have 3 turns left on a gold vs gold trade with greece. Will there be consequenses for our gift-and-retake reputation if I break that trade?

 

[Megalou]

Hi Evil, nice to see you back in action.
I presume we bought Medicine in that deal so yes, there will be consequences. But I don't think it matters. We will hardly need to buy cash or techs for gp again. It's much more important to keep the ROP type deals clean and fair for a while, until we get that foothold in Scandinavia.

 

[Ronald]

Hi Evil,

looks good so far.

Just to make sure: Don't rush units unless a real emergency. We will need all money to keep research at 100% in the future.

Additional to that: I don't know whether you laoded the file before or after some micromanagement. There are many cities with a lot more excess food than they need. By setting that to more taxmen, the cash surplus could be much higher. I did a quick run through the cities and without much real MM I was able to increase cash from 186gpt to 276gpt. Please have a close look at that.

 

[Northern Pike]

Good work so far, Evil. I'm glad that you did the English gift-and-retake wholeheartedly. The Greek GAR will have to be even larger, incorporating several English towns, of course. It won't be easy to get both Argos and Herakleia from the Greeks, and we have to give ourselves the best chance.

In that connection, two small points: Matsuyama shouldn't build its worker, and Spokane should be micromanaged to grow more quickly, because we don't want to GAR size-one cities.

In fact, I don't really see why we're building more workers at all, apart from special cases on islands. The ones we have already are reduced to some pretty marginal tasks, relative to the short remaining time in the game, and we need our pop points for other things.

Assuming that Megalou and Klarius are right about the absolute distinction between gpt reputation and RoP/peace reputation, I agree that it doesn't matter if we wreck the former by declaring war on the Greeks.

It's your call, but we might want to airlift at least two cav from England to Troy next turn. It would be chancy to advance simultaneously on Marathon and Thessalonica otherwise.

After Washington completes its current bomber, we should implement Klarius's idea of micromanaging it to produce a cav a turn.

Looking ahead a little, here's a question which arose in SGOTM5, though I don't think we really answered it then. Does a RoP-rape damage the player's reputation any more than a normal, humane stab-in-the-back right after a peace treaty? In other words, since we're certainly going to break a peace treaty with the Vikings, should we RoP-rape them too to get our money's worth?