Sirian's Infantry Variant - Succession Game Challenge

[Zed-F]

Evened up the turns, took to 1780 AD.

- Research: We researched Steel and Combustion and traded lux and resources for Refining and Espionage. We're now on Mass Production. We have one source of Oil on Babylon, and none elsewhere that I spotted.

- Infrastructure: Several cities built Hospitals or Cathedrals and started on Infantry. London and York just started Battlefield Medicine & Intelligence Agency but these could be changed if necessary. We rushed a Granary in Babylon and started Forbidden Palace, which should be done fairly soon since we seem to have rush-built enough infrastructure to allow it to get up to size 12 quickly. It has a lot of hills in range so it will be a very good production city; unfortunately most of the rest of the island seems to be pretty crappy and starved for food -- lots of fishing towns nestled in among the mountains.

- Military: Spent most of my turn building up Infantry. We now have 2 defenders per city on our continent so we have a reserve if needed. We have transferred the bulk of our artillery to Hyderabad (near Ivory Coast); we also have a number of Infantry there, with more coming. We have a number of galleons for transfers from Dover to Hyderabad, and a similar number for transfers from our main continent to the other city on Dover's island (IIRC Brighton.) I also built some Ironclads to beef up our navy a bit, but we needed Infantry more & we should have Battleships soon so I didn't build more than a couple.
- Diplomacy: Renegotiated a couple treaties to try to get some more cash. Otherwise not too much happening. The AIs are trading amongst themselves immediately once they research a tech so they must have some fre gold.

- Looking forward: What I expect to have happen once we have sufficient force available at Hyderabad is we'll negotiate an MPP and ROP with India, then provoke France into declaring war on us. Even if they have an ROP and use it to sneak attack us the worst they can do is go after Ivory Coast and Hyderabad, which is right where our forces are concentrated anyway. Of course, we could try something else instead...

 

[Carbon_Copy]

It happens every other week. I'd REALLY like to play some of this game, so if I could pass on this turn and pick up the first turn after Monday night (or if I manage to get it done early, ON Monday night), it would be much appreciated. The same goes for RBD 3, too. If I can get it earlier than Tuesday, I'll post.

 

[Sirian]

Charis is offline for a couple of days, too, so no sense me rushing ahead. We'll just wait for you in this one.

- Sirian

EDIT: Charis is back? I thought he was going to be gone all weekend. Well, I'd like to keep things moving, so we'll get the ball rolling here again. "Got it."

 

[Sirian]

Inherited Turn: Arrgh! We're locked into long term deals with everybody! Unless I betray our word (not gonna do it) there can be no war on this round. Bah.

Well, we can (and probably should) increase unit production during the war via mobilization. That's not always the best bet, but most of our cities here are coastal, and none are cranking 80 shields per turn even with full rails and power plants. This means that during extended peace time, with no threats on the horizon, the best thing to do is max infrastructure production. So... I tinker with this and I tinker with that, mostly police stations, some other bits and pieces, and I plan to do some worker modifications, turning some mines to irrigation to speed city growth, turning some irrigation to mines to speed production in cities that don't need growth at the moment.

Early turns: more of the same.

Middle turns: we research Combustion, I opt to squeeze as much out of Colossus as we can before it goes obsolete, so I set us on the path to get Marines, with Flight to be postponed until after that. (We'll pretty much need marines away, for the higher attack value, to be besieging cities defended by infantry.)

Late turns: Forbidden Palace completed, several other key buildings completed, empowering a variety of cities. Intelligence Agency got postponed, but it's due in plenty of time, well before our deals with France run out.

France is the target. I've entered us into MPP with India and Rome, and those should expire about ten turns after we can go after France, which SHOULD free us up for peace with France if we so desire (for a respite from weariness) long about the time they'll talk to us again.

Stay away from Computers! I found in my Infantry game, that mech inf were unnecessary and unwanted. Sure, we'd LOVE to have miniaturization on THIS map, but we can make do without.

It's 1800 already. We have, at most, 174 turns left in which to complete total world conquest -- or we shall lose. ("Winning" by histograph is a failure for this variant). 174 is plenty of time, but not so much that we can squander 20 here and 20 there.

Do not make deals with potential targets, just for some convenience. When France's luxury deal with us runs out, if it is renewed, that will delay us at least another 20 turns. Etc etc. We have already played this one conservatively. There isn't all that much for us to have to conquer, but our pace isn't exactly going to be flying along, either.

Charis, you're up, with Carbon slated to jump back in to make up his turn, some time after Monday night.


- Sirian

 

[Zed-F]

Can't we just keep insulting France in the diplomacy window and moving units through their territory to the point where they declare war on us? Then we would not be the one breaking agreements. Not sure if that works or just makes them really mad at us, but I was under the impression that it would. That's what I meant by provoke anyhow...

 

[Sirian]

Nope. If we move units in, they demand WE move or WE declare war. The stain would fall on us. The only way to provoke them would be with planting spies (unlikely, Joanie's set to minimum aggression in her AI routine). We'll just have to wait it out.

Now if she had units on our lands and we demand she remove them, and she refused, that would be on her head. Making threats can sometimes provoke war, but I've never sat and made threat after threat after threat, and have no idea how much that would stain us (I think it wouldn't be good). We could attack somebody she's in MPP with, but she's not in any MPP's and we are economically tied (for the moment) to everyone else anyway.

Besides... you signed a Right of Passage with her. Right? We could park our troops anywhere, and she wouldn't say a thing. If we left them there when the RoP expired, the stain (and a bad one) would fall back on our heads again.


- Sirian

 

[Zed-F]

Yeah, I did that while I was trying to get better prices for stuff. I realized after I had tried to renegotiate the ROP with France that that it was a mistake, but by then it was too late. Sorry...

 

[Charis]

EDIT -- UGH! Skip me or swap, if anyone cares to.
RBD5 has gone from nothing to report, nothng to report,
to the mother of all bloodbaths. I've been at it for 5 hours
and am about 1/3 done I think
(After going to bed soon, I'll pick up tomorrow with the Vikings
to not that get a bad start, then finish 5, before thinking
about inf. Sorry, but I don't want to play a bad/rushed turn
in any of these here)

-------


Ok, got it...

This eve (gonna be a long one) :

RBD5
Infantry
RBD8

Or at least as far as I can get with each.
(Feast or famine strikes again )

Charis

 

[Jaffa Tamarin]

Okay, I'll pick this up today.

Edit: today being Monday, in case that wasn't clear.

 

[Sirian]

Well, after Jaffa's done, it would be Carbon's turn again. If somebody gets lapped here, we're not givin em two turns.

I figured that RBD5 had exploded, since we hadn't heard from Charis. Go Musketeers! :shotgun:

 

[Jaffa Tamarin]

War! With France! Ummm, wasn't I just doing that?

0) 1800AD Temporarily raised science tax to get mass production in 2 turns.

Diplomacy check. Changed nothing. Seven turns to war

Hired some tax collectors in the Falklands, which aren't getting above 1/1 production even in WLTQ.

Reading builds a police station when it doesn't have a courthouse yet? Oh well. It doesn't need a courthouse now.

1) 1802AD Luxuries donation to Rome comes to an end. We sell spices to China for 100g+10gpt.

3) 1806AD Indians and Romans start building Hoover Dam.

4) 1808AD India and Rome sign an MPP. Intelligence Agency completed.

5) 1810AD French start on Hoover Dam.

6) 1812AD I remember that we can now plant spies. We put spies into France and China. India and Rome catch our agents.

Joan comes calling and cancels our luxury trade. Such impudence! This means WAR!!

7) 1814AD We send a polite note to Joan informing her we no longer want her gold.

8) 1816AD We send another polite note to Joan informing her that we are now at war.

Our fleet sinks 2 French ironclads.

I send an elite infantryman to attack a vet musketeer. The musketeer kills him I follow up with a conscript infantryman against the still undamaged musketeer. The conscript is victorious! And unharmed!

French cavalry kill a couple of our infantry. India and Rome declare war on France

We learn about flight!

9) 1818AD Our artillery bombards Avignon. Airports constructed in London, Hastings and Canterbury.

10) 1820AD We capture Avignon! Unfortunately, the French culture border keeps me from reinforcing it other than with troops immediately to hand, so it's not as secure as I'd like.

The French have an ironclad/transport pair advancing on Jamaica, which is defended by just one infantry. Ooops. I suspect we're going to lose Jamaica.

 

[Sirian]

Good timing! Carbon's up, and also in RBD4, he's got some post-deadline celebratory wars vs France to handle.

 

[Carbon_Copy]

The other shoe shall drop...sometime tomorrow.

 

[Carbon_Copy]

I'm taking a break for the night on turn 5. I'm at an impasse right now. War weariness is breaking our backs, to the point where almost every city besides London is on break even/negative food for entertainers, and we're still two to three turns away from being able to weasel out of MPPs. Worse yet, I only managed to capture a net of one french city so far on my turn (I captured it, lost it when I forgot to pull healthy infantry from our other town, then retook it later). Do I:

1) Try to ride out the storm and hope the government doesn't collapse?

or

2) Revolt and put us in Monarchy (or even Communism?)

I'm leaning towards revolt into Monarchy, with maybe another for Communism if we gobble up enough of the French/Indian/Chinese continent.

Well, the bad news is out of the way, the good news commences:

-I got a Great Leader in the fighting. This is my second TONIGHT, where previously I had ONE total in the last two and a half months of playing Civ 3. I used him to make an Infantry army, and loaded the army with two elite infantry and a vet, for a 14 hp unit of DOOM. The Heroic Epic and Military Academy should be done by the end of my turn, barring a revolt.

-Jamaica SURVIVED. The transport was filled with:

-1 inf
-2 swords(!!)
-2 horsemen(!!!)
-3 cavalry

And our sole infantry swept the table and got promoted to elite.

I was going to stop at this point for the night, anyhow, so I figured I would poll you guys before I played the second half. I'm personally of the mind to revolt and continue to bring the fight to France, especially with the army in the field. Our other option is to hunker down and do nothing else on the offensive for the remaining turns on the MPP, then switch foes to India or China.

I eagerly anticipate your comments, or I'll just execute whatever half-baked plan floats through my empty skull.

 

[Jaffa Tamarin]

Originally posted by Carbon_Copy
-Jamaica SURVIVED. The transport was filled with:

-1 inf
-2 swords(!!)
-2 horsemen(!!!)
-3 cavalry

And our sole infantry swept the table and got promoted to elite.

OMG, WoW!!! I actually hit next turn after I saved the game to post, and saw all that lot coming, and thought for sure Jamaica was doomed. Give that man the Victoria Cross

We're going for a conquest victory, aren't we? Which means we'll likely be in war the rest of the game. I think we should revolt.

--
Jaffa

 

[Sirian]

We've got enough tech, at this point, that we can afford to let go of democracy now. Go ahead and revolt.

Also, avoid Computers. I found it unnecessary and undesirable in my solo infantry game to bother with Computers. Marines, planes, ships, armies, and helicopters can do the trick. We want to build the Military Academy in London please!

If you go, switch to Monarchy.

As for victory conditions, we not only are going for Conquest, but we must. It's the only enabled victory option.


- Sirian

 

[Carbon_Copy]

"I've got this bizarre recurring dream, doc. The year is 1820, and I have to fight the French."

"How often have you had this dream?"

"I've had it twice tonight already."

"Very interesting. Tell me about this dream."

1820:

Deja vu?

1822:

France fails to retake Avignon. France also lands their stack-o'-something-just-short-of-doom in Jamaica. Maybe if they had sent fewer units from TWO ERAS AGO, they might have taken it. The English Navy is dispatched to deal with the ironclad and transport that carried these units

1824:
-A Leader! What should I do with Edward? Make an infantry army, of course! I wait for one turn to allow my elites to heal before joining them to the army.

1826:

Nothing much happened in 1826. WLTQD ends worldwide.

1828:

-I load the two elites plus a veteran infantry into the army. Now all I need is an easy victory. Aha, France left me a longbow outside Avignon to play with. I bombard it to 1 hp first, then take it with my army. London switched to Military Academy, Hastings switched to Heroic Epic (and yes, I had it like that before you suggested, Sirian ). Tientsin is captured, but I forget to reinforce beyond the infantry that took it 10% luxury tax instituted to offset war weariness.

1830:

-Motorized Transportation learned. England enters the Modern era and Queen Elizabeth turns into a librarian . Rather than press ahead with Recycling or Fission, I backtrack to Amphibious War so we can build marines. Many cities riot and massive numbers of entertainers have to be hired worldwide to prevent governmental collapse. Then Tientsin gets retaken by the French :aargh3: . I rush the cathedral in Newcastle to prevent wholesale starvation due to there being more entertainers than laborers in this size 12 city.

1832:

I recapture Tientsin with the army and reinforce it this time. Half our artillery sets up shop outside Besancon and the other half outside Rheims. At this point I pause and post the poll above. After Sirian confirmed what I was suggesting we do, I went ahead and revolted. ...Enh, 6 turn anarchy, at least it wasn't the dreaded 8 turn beast.

1834:

Wholesale bombardment of Besancon and Rheims.

1836:

Rheims captured, the next city over is Paris!

1838:

I'm running out of bodies, so I load up a bunch of the second defenders on the English homeland and ship them to France. Mao asks me for an MPP. Since I don't know if we want to be fighting him or not during the next 20 turns, I decline and give him a free map instead. Gandhi doesn't want to renew our omnibus RoP/MPP/lux deal, so I let it expire and add his name back to the top of our "people to kill" list. Besancon captured, giving us more or less a monopoly on the world's dye supply, though two of the dyes are out of our city radii right now.

1840:

China and India sign an alliance vs. France. Orleans captured. Some preliminary bombardment of Paris begun.

Other fun facts:

France and India are Communist, Rome and China are still Democracies.

Capturing Marseilles will give us the entire eastern seaboard of France. India may beat us to it, though, with that obnoxious horse-riding thing that they do.

We are free to attack India without reputation penalty. Our MPP with Rome has apparently expired, but the Romans are still pleased with the deal they struck, so it's still in effect. If we want to fight China, we should cancel all our existing (but expired) deals with them first.

Rome has been landing troops in Amiens for several turns now, but apparently without luck since the city remains Frenchy pink.

We are in desperate need of more troops once we come out of anarchy in two turns. Once we're in the clear: MONARCHY.

Lot of pollution to clean up, not much you can do to combat it while under anarchy. The good news is that Nottingham is running out of land to pollute, so it can't get much worse than it is already in that neighborhood.

 

[Sirian]

The turn orders are getting a little murky. It's not just the shuffling here, things across the board have been loosening up, and generally I'm OK with that. But I've looked back over the turn order for this one twice tonight and I'm lost. And this one is my game!

At what point does flexibility start degrading into disorder?

As might be typical of Murphy's law, a number of us sit around with no game to play several nights in a row, then all our turns in various games come due on the same night and we're swamped. Charis calls that the Feast or Famine. We've all experienced it! Any number of things can cause it. Sometimes a war quadruples the real-life time it takes to play ten turns, and that can come unexpectedly or with unforeseen pressures. This kind of bump in the smooth transfer from leader to leader is probably the most understandable. Someone gets the Feast, there are only so many hours to play, and so we have tried to designate some games as lower priority. RBD7 would sit idle for days on end while Charis or I were swamped, then we'd often knock out a turn or two each per day for a couple days while all our other games were sittin around doing nothing because someone else was swamped.

Are we playing too many games? Probably not. Maybe in some people's case, they're pushing it a little. Bottlenecks form. Then rush hour ends and those same people are sittin around bored. I don't think shooting for no bottlenecks is desirable, so on that front I think we are doing OK.

But with the turn swapping, floating, rotating, skipping, it's starting to become a whole extra game just to keep track of who is, was, or should be coming up next. I find myself missing the easy confidence of "I follow Player X, as soon as he posts it's my turn." That has evaporated, and I even got scolded for going out of turn once in RBD4 when I lost track. Now I'm starting to worry about having to post "got it" every time I come up, or else I might play ten turns and come back to the board to find someone else has jumped in there. (That happened to Cy once).

None of us wanted to see Zed excluded. His circumstances became more restricted, but he remains highly motivated to participate. Yet we went from "he'll take his turns in games X and Y if he comes due on the weekends" to "he'll jump in at any point on the weekend" to "he'll jump in at any point that he can, in any game". We've also slacked off on both posting "got it" within 24 hours, and posting results within 48, while bringing new people into the rotations. We're not yet at any crisis point, but I see some problems brewing, especially if entropy keeps marching on.

So what should we do? Any thoughts?

It occurred to me that problems resulting in people taking turns late, or being skipped, might be best resolved by making permanent changes to the turn order. Like... if Carbon gets skipped (as he did in this game) then can take a turn two players late, shouldn't we just move him to that slot and go from there? Ah, but wait! If we do that, everybody in the game gets shuffled around as to who they are following. It all LOOKS simple enough, but people sit around without realizing it's their turn, or they take a turn they shouldn't, or use the wrong save file, etc. So... maybe it's important after all to have a firm roster order and stick to it.

What about extending the time? If we allow up to 72 total hours, that cuts back on the need to skip people. Ah, but it also cuts the overall pace way back, too, and then we get more people sitting around twiddling thumbs and waiting, and would end up starting more games to fill the demand. That might only add to the bottlenecks, as what the world do you do if you come up in eight games at once??

Should we be more hard line about the 24/48 rules? About the turn order? About "play or pass"? I don't know. Every option comes with costs. I don't see a perfect solution. Some discussion might be in order.


In the mean time, I'm going to take charge here in this game and permanently reshuffle the turn order. Working backward on who took their turns most recently, we see: Carbon, Jaffa, Sirian, Zed, Charis.

CURRENT ROSTER:

Charis
Zed
Sirian
Jaffa
Carbon

We'll give Zed 72 hours for his turn, but no more turn swapping in this particular game. Play or pass. If his 72 fall within a time period where he thinks he can play his turn, or play and post a partial turn, then good. Up to 10, but less is OK. If not, we'll just have to skip him that round. Extra time is still some preferential treatment for his time constraints.

If anybody else wants to request extra time, now is your chance.


Charis: you're up. Good luck.


- Sirian

 

[Charis]

You raise some good points Sirian, and I've been thinking about those lately as well. Just figuring out what game I'm up or on-deck in has gotten very hard.

In mid-'feast' mode last week when was due up in this game I finally realized "you know, it's ok if you actually miss a turn once in a while!", and asked to be skipped. I had an early somewhere in there and could have hopped back in to turn it into a swap, but instead got caught up on sleep, not wanting to confuse the order.
If/when we had one or two games going on, 'swapping' wasn't a problem, but the more I read "I'll get to this tomorrow eve, maybe, cuz I have to play...", the more we need to gracefully accept skippings. Another option most are NOT taking is taking less than the full allotment of turns. If you can do 6 of 10 turns and either post or finish next eve, why not post? Keep the ball rolling.

So I have the following suggestions:
- Don't change the permanent order or I'll get horribly lost
(It's a done deal here in Infantry, I'll manage)
- If any longer or less confident than "tomorrow night for SURE",
pass.
- If it's going to be 24-48 hrs before you START your turn in a war-heavy game, that's also a warning sign. Plan less turns or skip.
- When a game gets war-heavy in modern or late industr. age, consider THEN increasing the 'play' time to 72 hrs (still keep 24hr to post got/bump) (rbd5 falls in this category when at war)
- When you post at the end, copy the 'roster' lines from the last post and show who is up:

Charis <<<<< up
Zed << on deck
Sirian
Jaffa
Carbon

This will avoid the "OMG I'm up" syndrome by seeing when you're on deck, and helps clarify.

For now "Got it" here, I only have a 1/2 turn left in 6 and can take this tonight.
Charis

PS I think the one I'm about to start will try a closed "grab the game" style, with a fixed enlarged roster, to see if that works for us.

EDIT -- PPS - Sirian, your comments on the utility/neccessity of Mech Inf was meant for "this game", right? I forgot they were special here, so I'll repost a few key rules to remember:

* Conquest is the only enabled victory condition (and of course, Score, if no victory is won by 2050).

* Cavalry, Tanks, and Modern Armor are forbidden. They may not be built at any time for any reason.

* Mechanized Infantry are allowed, but MAY NOT ATTACK. They cannot even attack noncombatants, such as workers. They may only defend. [ [ In other words, with later playtesting you've seen that even these are not 'necessary' and could have been banned ] ]

* All ships, airplanes and missiles are legal.

 

[Jaffa Tamarin]

As an alternative to the current arrangements, where your time between turns in each game is essentially random and you're almost guaranteed to be playing in 'feast or famine' conditions, a possibility would be to organise games with one-week turn cycles, where each player gets allocated a specific day(*) on which to play. So for example I would always get RBD5 to play on Wednesday, with a deadline of posting before 6am Thursday, however many turns (with a max of 10) that I've managed to play by then. This would allow people with limited (but regular) availability to join in without having to delay or disrupt turn order, at all.

(*)Or other time-period. Could squeeze in extra turns, likely at weekends, if someone wants to commit to always playing before noon.

Just a thought

Edit: I notice I'm using 'turn' to mean two different things in the same paragraph. Oh well. That's English for you.

Edit edit: Actually no, they're not two different things. Both 'turns' -- the in-game turn, and the turn of each player in the game -- are the same concept, but measured at a different level of granularity. You could also talk about the 'turn' of each individual unit within the 'turn' of the player. Am I confusing anyone yet? :crazyeyes

--
Jaffa