SQ1: Google Earth

Gifting z/OS to Sun seems like the obvious choice, since they are so far behind the rest of the AI.

I'd say if we go to war with AOL, keep z/OS around for a few turns to distract their units, then gift it when they are ready to attack. In the meantime we can throw our units at the AOL cities over there.
 
Tone Update:

I think I've sorted out my computer problems. I'll be testing it more thoroughly tonight and then hopefully I will be able to take my place in the game again. If all works out well with the test, I'll reinstall the modified files and take a look at the game. Thanks for your patience-hopefully I'll see you all on Friday!
 
tupaclives said:
What are our immediate goals?
What do we want to steal/tradefore/research after mil trad and do we actually want to self research it?
If I reach the industrial age in say, 6 turns do I then stop at 10 or continue to 20?

Hmm, I thought I said something about that in a previous post, but I was probably stoned and didn't actually hit submit.

Goals (not necessarily immediate):
- Get military tradition and cavalry ASAP. See if there's some way to squeeze out an extra 5gpt so that science can be raised to 50% without causing a deficit.
- Find a convenient situation to start a Golden Age.
- Once we have more military built, try to get AOL Time Warner to declare war on us. RoP is canceled so it shouldn't be too hard.

I think I've devoted enough beakers to military tradition that it will be worthwhile to research it ourselves. And it would probably be a waste of the universities I built if we didn't do some self-research. Linux still has a monopoly on that tech and I want to avoid trading with them any more, they are showing signs of being a runaway AI.

Also, I suspect the other civs (IBM and Apple in particular) are probably busy researching the required techs like theory of gravity and magnetism, and if we can get military tradition early we could trade for those.

Lux deals with Linux and Sun are due to expire in 2 turns, what might we be able to get from those? Sun is #2 in the tech race now, I think we might be able to get something nice from them.

As for whether you want to play 10 or 20 turns into the Industrial Age, it's your call on that. Whatever you're comfortable with is fine by me.
 
I'll be away again this weekend from Fri morning so if my turn comes please swap or skip. I should be back on deck Mon 24th (Tues a public holiday here - :p )

FWIW I agree with above comments, just be aware of multitude of AOL units in our vicinity - most are prehistoric so cavs should carve em up fast. Having a few more WC on hand ready for upgrading would likely tip the balance.
 
Pre-Flight (630AD)

Everything looks pretty good. I mm a little for shields and growth but cant find enough extra commerce to either drop the research time or to get enough gpt to bump science 10%, best I can do is -1gpt with no taxmen and dont really wanna hire any.

IBT - AOL units move around... damn they have a lot of guys.

Turn 1 (640AD) - Redmond grows culturally, Menlo Park and Web Search finish uni's.
Worker moves, the two uni's dropped Mil Trad from 17 to 14 turns.

IBT - AOL really does have lots of guys...

Turn 2 (650AD)- Googleplex builds uni. Get our saltpetre connected. Mil Trad has dropped to 8 turns.
Deals with linux and apple have ended. We could get Mil Trad from Linux for 2 luxs but we've decided to pull the plug on trades with them. Can't find any reference to apple so I decide to trade with them.

Apple: Silks + Gems + Furs for Magnetism + 16 gp (we have 1 source of silks left to trade but only linux to trade them to)

IBT - Really, I am serious about those AOL guys... lots!

Turn 3 (660AD)- Mountain view finishes uni, mil trad drops to 5 turns. Everywhere building military units is on web crawlers for a bulkus upgrade. Googleplex is MM for 20spt so it can pop a webcrawler every turn.

IBT - But they are pretty crappy units really...

Turn 4 (670AD) - meh, not much. I'm getting ready for a bulk upgrade. Need cash, just waiting really. Keeping an eye on possible trades. None that great.

IBT - I think a couple muskets and we wont have to worry...

Turn 5 (680AD)- hey this aint too bad. IBM old mate, whats that? You're people are unhappy? Awww, thats a shame you know. Ay? Silks? Well yeh, we do have lots... yep a surplus. Military tradition? Oh I dunno... I'm a music fan too... hey thats good, lets do that.

IBM: Silks for Military Tradition + Music Theory (Bach's gone tho) + 1gp

Research is set to Theory o' Grav. Thats what we want (lucky wasn't something crappy like navigation...) wind back sci to 0% (I know a waste of hte new unis but its only for a little while) and turn all mil cities from cav back to web crawlers (can anyone say 'Leo your a Legend'?). Do the first big upgrade.
14 Web Crawlers - 840gp
1 Horse - 50gp
1 Knight - 10gp

We have 16 cavs and feel much better. Left our elite horses as horses. That is till they pop a leader (touch wood).
11 turns on silks deal with AoL, might be able to tempt war...

IBT - zzz

Turn 6 (690AD) - Just moving troops around, more upgrades (will be upgrading guys every turn till we hit a GA. I actually feel we could win the war in say 5 turns.

IBT - zzz

Turn 7 (700AD) - less than 5 even. Seriously, biggest problem is figuring out how to get into the war without ruining our rep. Eveyone else is Industrial.

IBT - zzz

Turn 8 (710AD)- ok, here's the plan. keep build web crawlers and upgrading them every turn till the silks deal runs out, then declare war kill everything our side of the choke. Take or burn all AOL cities our side of the choke. Hold the actual choke. Sue for techs with peace.

Piece'sa cake Peekay!

IBT - zzz

Turn 9 (720AD) - 7 turns...

IBT - They don't look so tough

Turn 10 (730AD) - 6 turns...

IBT - Penguins start Universal Suffrage...

Turn 11 (740AD) - 5 turns...

IBT - yahoo cancels our incense - silks deal, we have to forfeit our 1gpt in order to renogotiate :lol:

Turn 12 (750AD) - 4 turns... the tension is killing me. We are strong compared to AOL, probably for the first time in the game.

IBT - zzz

Turn 13 (760AD) - 3 turns...

IBT - zzz

Turn 14 (770AD) - 2 turns...

IBT - zzz

Turn 15 (780AD) - 1 turn...

IBT - Sun asks for a MPP, I consider it but decide, as I can't see who they are at war with I don't want to risk it. Might have been nice having them at our back though...

Turn 16 (790AD) - Well this is it. The big one.
We declare war on AOL
Its right now that I realise we don't have an embassy with Yahoo!, funny that. I make one.
I rearrange our defences, we aren't striking this turn. We are letting them waste that huge army on our side of the choke by moving into our territory where our cavalry (6 to a city all the way along the border) will utterly anhilate them.
As suggested I give Z/os to Sun.

IBT - Linux signs a Trade Embargo against us. Our wines deal with Apple is up for renewal, it costs us an extra 1gpt to keep it going. AOL starts to move into our territory... hehehe

Turn 17 (800AD) - start by picking off all the stragglers in our territory. (5-0) cover any exposed cavs with muskets. Despite killing 4 monthly subscribers and a spear at Warner Bros the city still stands. Ok... (10-0)
We kill 3 subscribers, and a spear and born Time (14-0). The territory made ours give us control of roads and we kill another 2 spears (16-0).

IBT - our people want Wall Street, we get a double palace expansion and LOTS (and I really mean lots, I'm counting upwards of 50 guys) of AOL troops move toward us... I really underestimated them... good thing I didn't cancel our web crawler upgrade scheme.

Ok well I'll have to pause here as I have to go play soccer (should win... hopefully), I play sweeper and am captain so I really have to go. I will complete this war upon my return.

Watch out AOL, Google has you in her sights!
 
Turn 18 (810AD) - start by clearing dudes out. Clear 19 and then after catting a sword I attack with a web crawler and...we have our GA!!
I was sure I took a screenshot but obviously not...

Income jumps to +293gpt, actually set a lot of stuff to infra (banks, uni, n harbors only tho, set Googleplex to Wall Street, I know, odd for the start of a war but we have cavalry to burn). Our Web Crawler upgrading days are over unfortunately, still have like 8 to upgrade and in our GA we can pump cavs in about 4 turns anyway, with our upgrading days over we no longer need the cash so pump science to 50% to have ToE in 5 at +46gpt. Keep clearing dudes...

Finally run out of cavs who can attack (have like 15 cavs at the front though and they've only had to pick off a couple of longbows, I was worried they'd be facing bulk rifles and cavs).
anyway the final numbers at the end of that turn are from this turn (32-1) and for the turnset (48-1). The stacks are still half there but I'm not too worried about them.

IBT - a sword covering a redlined elite cav and like 8 AOL workers dies against a vet monthly subscriber but redlines him. We get another palace expansion (3rd of the turnset)

Turn 19 (820AD) - clear out 16 guys at the front and in our territory, lose a cav capturing CNN (66-2). Let a lot of cavs heal this turn. Will wipe out their stack in my final turn.

IBT - IBM and AOL sign an MPP, now this presents us an interesting opportunity. We can make a huge gpt deal to catch up in tech, being in our GA means we can be sure we can afford the techs, then attack a AOL city and IBM will declare war, we keep the cash, we get the techs, everybody wins! Or is this too exploitative? I'll leave that to the next player after some discussion. Apple lands a decent stack next to the last AOL city our side of the choke. Maybe they are at war? Kill 2 swords on defence but lose 2 exposed cavs (68-4)

Turn 20 - Clear out the last AOL guys but somehow conspire to lose 3 full health vet cavs against spearson grassland... wow... anyway finaly kill count (77-7), a nicely roundable 11:1. I've had the save for ages and so I'll just hand it over now. Please note there are lots of moves still to be made.
I'm pretty tired and annoyed my soccer team lost so I'll do my analysis later.

As we'll be in the Industrial age next turnset I think that the next player should either play 12 (to take us to a nicely rounded 950AD) or 22.

Heres the save.
 

Attachments

Nicely done Tupac. I think the only thing that might have gone unnoticed is the scientist in Blogger - since we are doing self-research now, we can let him work a food tile and grow the city a little. (I think it's my fault for not doing that in my previous turnset, when I started the self-research.)

I think it's a good time to consider a Forbidden Palace location. I believe Andronicus mentioned before that he wanted it on the former site of Warner Bros., which would be here:

googleearthfploc9ze.png

I think it's a pretty good choice, and in the long run, 4 irrigated grasslands in the radius + 6 hills + city center translates to 24 food, enough to support a size 12 city.

Since Andronicus is out for the weekend, this would be a good time for Tone to come back in, unless you're not ready yet. Otherwise we'll just wait a couple days, no need to rush.
 
tupaclives said:
IBT - IBM and AOL sign an MPP, now this presents us an interesting opportunity. We can make a huge gpt deal to catch up in tech, being in our GA means we can be sure we can afford the techs, then attack a AOL city and IBM will declare war, we keep the cash, we get the techs, everybody wins! Or is this too exploitative? I'll leave that to the next player after some discussion. Apple lands a decent stack next to the last AOL city our side of the choke. Maybe they are at war? Kill 2 swords on defence but lose 2 exposed cavs (68-4)
You're the only one that wins, but Linux, Apple, AOL, Sun, and Yahoo! don't lose. but IBM does- they just give away free techs and take a rep hit, not to mention they will eventually be conquered by the allmighty Googlers! :worship:
 
Oddly enough, IBM is willing to pay us 13 gold for an MPP. But I don't think that would be a good idea.

As for a huge gpt deal with IBM... well... I'd say it's a bit exploitative, and since it doesn't seem "necessary" to our survival at this point, my vote is that we don't make such a deal. I avoided doing that with Yahoo when they landed a unit on our continent, and they declared war without my ever provoking them. Attacking AOL to trigger a MPP is quite a different story.
 
I guess I have a different sense of humor than many people on these forums, then.
 
lurker's comment: You could sign an MPP with IBM before the one they have with AOL is triggered. (It's attacking in the enemy's territory, not defending in your own, that triggers the MPP, as I recall.) Then they have to break their treaty with Microsoft and come over to your side. You get the cash and an ally instead of another enemy, and the AI gets the rep hit. Fun for all.

It does seem kinda exploitive to take the techs from someone who's about to declare war on you so you don't have to pay them. (Unless it's the Germans or Persians and you know they're about to stab you in the back, that is.) However, I've never been against signing over loads of gpt to a civ that's about to get wiped out. Not my fault that the Romans got stuck without iron, is it?

Just some thoughts. Very interesting variant, I must say.
 
SimpleMonkey said:
lurker's comment: You could sign an MPP with IBM before the one they have with AOL is triggered. (It's attacking in the enemy's territory, not defending in your own, that triggers the MPP, as I recall.) Then they have to break their treaty with Microsoft and come over to your side. You get the cash and an ally instead of another enemy, and the AI gets the rep hit. Fun for all.

Eh, what? Bill Gates has been burning in hell for quite some time now:

googleearthhistogram830ad0kn.png


What we have to be careful of is that stack Apple has just landed by the AOL city. If they attack, MPP will trigger a war between IBM and Apple, and I don't think we want to get involved in that. Especially since we have a GPT deal with Apple.

On another note, I think we are still exporting silks to IBM. If they declare war on us, that shouldn't affect our trading reputation, right?
 
If they declare war then we dont get a rep hit (of course as the AI doesnt care about each others rep they dont get a rep hit either), I wouldn't recommend us signing any MPP's because they always seem to come back to bite u in the ass.
 
lurker's comment: Sorry, my bad. I meant AOL. Yes, Bill is dead. Didn't catch that mistake be for I hit send.

I tend to avoid MPPs as well, unless I know pretty well what they're going to do. Just figured you could use this on to disrupt your foe's alliances.

Monkey be quiet now. ;)
 
I know what you mean. MPP's can get you involved in a war that you don't want, and can force you to brake trade deals, even other MPP's! With all of these exploits, the best one seems to be the huge gpt deal for techs one.
 
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