Welcome to your C_IV SGOTM 2 Team Thread. Please use it for all internal team communication, turn logs and discussions. Subscribe to it to receive notifications, and do not visit the other team threads for this game until you have finished. Please also subscribe to the Maintenance Thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=4354542) for this game, where teams and staff may post non-spoiler information of general interest.

This game will be played in Civ4, patched to v1.61.

You are cast in the role of Tokugawa, mighty leader of the Japanese. Tokugawa's brother has left the island city of Kyoto to avenge the death of his wife and only son. He has travelled to a distant land without finding their murderer. So the brother of Tokugawa will settle and found a new Japanese colony, and the Japanese have sworn to conquer the rest of civilization in order to hunt down and destroy their enemy.

The game is on a Standard size fractal map, modified as only Gyathaar knows how, at Epic speed. All victory conditions are enabled, but the laurels for this contest will be awarded to the fastest teams to achieve a Conquest victory. The number of AI rivals has not yet been revealed. It will be played using version 1.61 of Civ4 with locked modified assets.

Individual start files for all teams will be available on the SGOTM Progress and Results Page (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/submit/civ4sgotm_submission_list.php) at midnight, server local time, at the start of August 8th.

Here's the start position.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/SGOTM02_start.jpg

Map Parameters
Playable Civ - Tokugawa of Japan
World size - Standard
Difficulty - Monarch
Landform - Fractal, hand modified
Game Speed - Epic
AI Aggression - YES!
Barbarians - Raging!!

Please visit the following link to ensure that you are adequately prepared:
Civ4 SGOTM reference thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=168439)

Notes:

A. ONLY Civilization IV v1.61 is supported for this SGOTM. All teams will compete for up to four awards - the Gold, Silver and Bronze Laurels for the fastest finishes, and the Wooden Spoons for the lowest scoring finisher.

B. All teams must play the sponsored variant - victory will be awarded for the fastest victory by Conquest.

C. All saved game files uploaded to the server are parsed through software that extracts and archives data about your save, including reload count for each turn set.

I'm sure you'll enjoy this game :D

Signing in.

One of the reasons I attempted to recreate our start is to learn how much distance will affect us, due to having two cities. Unfortunately it appears WB is beyond my abilities.

Since we’re going for fast Domination we’re going to want to research as fast as possible. In my opinion Sailing is going to be needed to help our capitol, as in the lighthouse. Without a lighthouse our capitol can support a population of 12 with all resources improved. With a lighthouse it can support a population of 16. To be honest, I’m wondering if we might want to wait for a while on Sailing. The improved resources will be plenty to get us to max happiness during the early stages of the game.

The settler on the mainland should IMO move NW and settle on the plains tile. We’ll still have the rice and fp in our radius, plus we’ll gain the fish.

I’m worried about the effects of distance maintenance between our two cities. Anyone know how to figure that up? We could possibly use the minimap provided to figure out how many tiles separate our two cities.

:salute: :whipped: :D

Actually the goal is fastest Conquest, not domination :p, but that won't really affect our reasoning in the early stages of the game. I agree that fast early research is the key to success. In particular, we should get the CS slingshot. This is what made the two fastest teams so successful in the last game, and for this game it is even more important, considering we are who we are (Samurai).

I've tried a few starts with the same parameters, and on all starts I was able to pull off the CS slingshot quite easily. I didn't even go for it all out, I took the time to research some other useful techs as well. With our current start I would suggest something like the following research path:
Agriculture - for farming the rice to let us grow
Pottery - for cottages to help research
Mysticism
Meditation - cheaper than Polytheism
Priesthood - Oracle
Writing
Code of Laws - will probably net us Confucianism too
Civil Service - by finishing our Oracle build the same turn CoL comes in
The techs I've felt I've missed the most in my test starts are Bronze Working for chops, and in some games Animal Handling. In one test game I actually managed to put in AH before Pottery and still get the Slingshot in (IIRC) 670 BC. Judging from some discussion I've read, this is really quite late. We might all want to read up on the start of team CFR from last game to see how they pulled it off with Pottery. Also the first spoiler thread for GOTM08 was enlightening, though the parameters for that game are very different.

With the help of the "free" capitol, it shouldn't be a problem for us to pull it off, even if we get a maintenance penalty for the distance, our second town will pay for it self pretty fast I would bet. The question is how, and in particular how daring we can be in researching other techs in between.


I agree with Methos that NW seems a good location to settle, with the fish and the rice. Build order could possibly be workboat->warrior->warrior->worker->settler, though I'm not a good judge at these things yet. The raging barbarians are not a huge problem in the early game, it will be lots of animals roaming outside our borders. We won't have a problem until the archers show up, which in my tests has happened at very different times, between, say, 2000 BC and not at all before 700 BC (didn't play longer).

Btw, the Japanese people should be very thankful to those murderers that made the lost brother go abroad, imagine being stranded on that rock :eek:!

@Methos: I noted that the test game I played after trying yours was actually set to OCC, which I certainly didn't mark it as. Could this be the reason for the weird settler?

Checking in!

I start with a look back on our CIV SGOTM 01. This was, after rechecking the game and reading the other threads a great game and 5th place was a very good achievement looking at the experience our team had so far. But now we have quite some fame to defend. It won’t be too easy to repeat this, so we have to work hard. SGOTM 02 is a conquest game, so the military experienced players get an advantage. However since I also finish nearly all my game the military way (It is simply faster and a good choice when you don’t have so much time.) I don’t fear the permanent wars. And so far s as I know zyxy, he is an expert in warmongering. So I think we are well prepared to again be a strong competitor for the laurels.

Who wants to get laurels must pass Smurkz first! So let’ go.

First before we go into detail some general game topics:
When playing always war, WW is always a nuisance. There is one hope - the police state civic! If we can get the pyramids as we did in SGOTM 01, it would be of great benefit for us. We should keep this in mind while scouting the terrain and possibly finding stone. Conquest however is more complicated than domination, since one has to destroy all civs on the map. The general logic I play is:

- deciding on the unit type that should do most of the conquest e.g. the Maceman. This is in our case our unique unit, the Samurai. So we should definitely try to do it with them. The problem is we need to know additionally machinery for them and copper won’t do. Maybe we can successfully upgrade a couple of swords.
- have a build phase and research asap to the required military tech for that unit (e.g. CS) preferably by CS slingshot via the Oracle (we may have a look for marble!)
- Forget about the economy and have a great conquest race in a second phase to subdue the world.

This is roughly what also CFR had played in SGOTM01.

The problem is that after you start the conquest your economy definitely goes down. That will make it impossible to research other important military techs in the time frame set. So you run against an imaginary date, when the economically most powerful civs researches a defensive tech that produces a unit that simply makes your main conquest unit obsolete. Then you have a couple of turns left while your sheer numbers are still enough to press on. But when the offensive ever comes to a halt, one is really stuck. Other than in Civ3 the maintenance paid by then doesn’t allow you to get better attackers fast. So we win early or very late – nothing in between.

That problem sets one important rule to conquest games:

Strike first at the economically most powerful civs even if they are very far away!

Here comes the problem. The map type of the game is fractal, hand modified. Whatever that means, it at least tells us, that Gyathaar has put some thoughts on this problem while generating an interesting setup. Always fearing the worst, I would think that might say, that our potentially strongest enemy is a far away civilisation. But we have no chance to do anything concerning this. Just put strong emphasis on scouting. But that we would have done in any case.
I was a little bit wondering, what this far away island should do. First it increases distance maintenance. So a natural way to play in builder mode would be to go for the Forbidden palace early. Second it may be vulnerable to AI attacks, but then we just lose the distance maintenance problem for a while. OK we must reconquer this city then, what might cost important turns, but that we also would have to do, if this island would have been simply settled by an AI if not occupied by Kyoto. I don’t think any AI can reach this island early in the game. It just serves as a drag on our economy later on and speeds up the research in the very early phase IMHO.

Gyathaar has set a certain aggressiveness to the barbs and the other civs. So we will have problems in the build phase!!!!! We should definitely try to avoid popping up of barbarian units by total sight coverage of the land. One early war before the great conquest might unavoidable given the AI aggressiveness.
One important thing will be to speed up our slow Samurai attackers by galleys and/or galleons. A ship chaining setup will significantly improve our conquest speed. I believe we have to strike at the far way civs first if possible.

@Methos: I noted that the test game I played after trying yours was actually set to OCC, which I certainly didn't mark it as. Could this be the reason for the weird settler?

I opened a thread in the General forum asking about it, and Gythaar mentioned possibly having the OCC checked. Whoops... :blush: Sorry guys, I forgot I played an OCC game prior to this. If you like I can create another save this afternoon.

Concerning the obviously needed start discussion I want to give my 2 pence:

I think it is too early to fix a start location yet, cause in CIV it is often worth to look for the surrounding rather than save the first 1 or 2 turns. An exception would be if one is going for an early religion, but since we don’t know mysticism that is not an issue. BTW, Niklas with his mythologic BC domination in GOTM 57 recently has persuaded me that walking around may also be a very good choice in Civ 3. In that game I also moved the settler two tiles NE from the start but then settled. But reading Niklas post I really got envious not to have tried to go further - as he did with the 4!!!! moves prior to initial settlement. And then dominating the world BC!!! Very impressive! In SGOTM 01 nearly all teams settled on the same spot as we did. This position was too obviously the best one. Now I think things may change and the selection of the starting location already might cause differences in the starting phase. Back to SGOTM 02, I think I am judging as follows:

Definitely not settling on spot, cause we would loose a good tile for a cottage and we don’t have so many around.

Probably not going north or NE - the chances that additional resources are located there are too small.

Definitely scouting before moving the settler. I am not sure what is best. The possibilities worth to be tried seem to me 1E, 1SE and 1 SW. In the east the terrain seems to be hills and forest, that would not allow to uncover a large area. So I would vote for warrior 1 SW as the first move.

The settler however is the much better scout and can move 2 tiles, when heading south. My personal animosity towards the starting location 1 NW is simply the lack of hammers around. There is only one hill, as visible so far. Producing settlers and workers, we can rely on the food, but everything else is difficult to get and for fast domination one better has one mighty production powerhouse. Setting up this one early is an advantage and waiting for that until our first settler pops up feels too long for me. So I would go for a walk through the southern lands. Maybe best would be travelling along the river IMHO.

Good analysis MA, we will definitely have to be careful not to overrun our economy. This emphasizes even more then importance of a fast CS slingshot, via CoL.

We're going to see a lot of warfare, but I'm not sure about calling it Always War. In my test games, the over-aggressive AIs were just as aggressive to one another, and it was easy to get at least one early friend. But we're going be at war a lot, that's true, so WW will be a problem. I too want the Pyramids, but I want the Oracle a lot more.

In Civ3 I would be unwilling to move unless I knew there was something to gain from it. I would have settled 2NE in GOTM57 if it wasn't for the scout seeing a better location. As a contrast, think of GOTM49 Carthage, where those who didn't settle in place got to walk for 20 turns to get out of the mountains, only to end up in the desert. :rolleyes: But thanks for the praise. :)

I too want to move the warrior SW, that seems to be the move that uncovers the most area for us. But if we want to chance it one turn, we could move the settler SW-NW, and then NE-settle next turn unless the first move(s) uncover something better. Then we'd be free to move the warrior E or NE to check the lands there, which we would then of course do before moving the settler. In any case I agree with your assessment of settling on the spot or E- or NE-ish. If we move, it's bound to be along the river or SW-ish.

Actually, thinking some more on it, I don't see why we shouldn't move the settler. The starting location is not perfect, though it could make a good second spot. But most importantly, we have a palace settled already, so we're not wasting a large number of turns of research, so the price of walking for a few turns is marginal compared to what we stand to gain. It might even be that settling the second town will incur, say, a -2 gpt maintenance which means we'd actually be better off with the early research if we don't settle right away.

If we find a good spot to settle somewhere along the river, the plains NW or the forest 2N are both good candidates for another town, having both the rice and fish in range.

In principle I have nothing to add to this ATM. Very good!

To be more precisely, I didn’t mean always war, but thought of the second game phase when we intentionally strike permanently to finish. Then no hesitation makes any sense IMHO. WW is just moving up and one should not need too many reinforcements from later production once the Great War has started. Concerning CS-Slingshot importance, pyramids and so on, I simply agree. No complaints!

The start discussion will (hopefully) go on, so let’s first hear the others.
BTW, do we again play in order of checking in, what would mean this time: Methos, Niklas, MA, … ?

To the GOTM 57 praise: Honour to whom honour is due! Generally I thought the same than you about hiking around the first settler in Civ 3. And in GOTM 49 many suffered from not obeying this rule. (poor Redbad!) OTOH the early problems I got in that game, led me to win by spaceship this time and lacking competitors there I got my first award. But there are no awards for not-conquistadors here, besides the wooden spoons, so let’s forget this.

PS: The competition got a further kick, since klarius has joined! Quite a reason to really work hard, since he is always good for grabbing the laurel.

Time to mention something very important and obvious that must be respected concerning the start: We are not creative and the capital is already settled! So our to be settled start city will not expand by palace culture only. We rely on the initial 9 tiles for a good start unless we get culture by either religion or obelisks/stonehenge! The initial phase is becoming more and more game decisive - completely in contrat to SGOTM 01! We have to find some very dense good tiles for the startup. Or did I miss something like a second palace or so?

Quite right so, well spotted. We either need to find a very good resource-dense starting location, or we'll want an obelisk really fast. Stonehenge isn't worth it IMO, and building Stonehenge early means more AIs will go for Oracle. Hmm. Oh the wait, can we have the game already?? :D

Re klarius, I considered inviting him to our team since we're "only" 6 with zyxy still somewhat busy. But I didn't want to do that before asking the team, and I was hesitant because I consider us a good team not really in need of more help, 5½ players or not. And before I came to a conclusion, markh beat me to it. But that will just make beating the Geezers even more sweet, eh? ;)

EDIT: @Methos: Yes, if you could give us a playable starting save reminiscent of our start that would be great! :)

Time to mention something very important and obvious that must be respected concerning the start: We are not creative and the capital is already settled!

Excellent spot, as I hadn't even considered that. I definitely agree with doing a little walking first.

Re klarius, I considered inviting him to our team since we're "only" 6 with zyxy still somewhat busy. But I didn't want to do that before asking the team, and I was hesitant because I consider us a good team not really in need of more help, 5½ players or not. And before I came to a conclusion, markh beat me to it. But that will just make beating the Geezers even more sweet, eh? ;)



I thought exactly the same, when his sign in turned up. Also thinking on the time we made little progress in SGOTM 01,when an additional player would have helped. But I also wanted the team decision on that. And then I thought Smurkz is already larger than the 6. We may well reserve spot 7 and 8 for ControlFreak and CommandoBob! And yes we already belong to the strong teams. No need to further improve our strength for balancing reasons. So I think you did right. But quite a pity that the also already strong Geezers got him. Would have been interesting to see klarius working with a team of SGOTM newcomers. Would have improved the balance IMHO. But ok, we are definitely prepared to take on the challenge against the Geezers.

Signing in. Man, I thought this thread was coming out on the 8th - sorry. I guess that's for actually starting the game.

Again, I'm completely amazed by my team's analytical ability. I'll be the mascot. ;) Btw, what does a Smurkz look like anyway?

In regards to always war, an upside to it is that WW will also be a problem for our rivals.

I've been reading over bradleyfeanor's post Methos sent us. I started up a Prince game as Japan on continents, looking to war early. But, I then found myself all alone on a continent and in need of adjusting my reaserch. I have a feeling we will need Sailing earlier than expected simply to map our surroundings - get some feet on the ground.

We may also want to look at oscillating wars, to weaken each rival before coming through for the final blow(s). The question is, will that take too much time.

Aside note, maybe we can get a Team Smurkz avatar worked up. Any one interested? Any ideas? Anyone know Mistfit?

Again, I'm completely amazed by my team's analytical ability. I'll be the mascot. ;) Oh come on, don't be shy, we don't bite hard! If you never try your hand at analysing yourself, you'll never learn it either. So get in the water, pose a few questions, write a few answers, you'll get into it no time. :)

In regards to always war, an upside to it is that WW will also be a problem for our rivals.

I've been reading over bradleyfeanor's post Methos sent us. I started up a Prince game as Japan on continents, looking to war early. But, I then found myself all alone on a continent and in need of adjusting my reaserch. I have a feeling we will need Sailing earlier than expected simply to map our surroundings - get some feet on the ground.

We may also want to look at oscillating wars, to weaken each rival before coming through for the final blow(s). The question is, will that take too much time.See, that wasn't so hard, you're doing fine! :)

A lesson I've learnt by Drazek, the Civ3 master of the conquest VC - it's the last town that counts. There's absolutely no reason to chase down the last remnants of a AI close to home when there are still other AI alive elsewhere. The final troops produced can do that, the ideal is to set it all up so that everyone gets :hammer: on the same final turn. So oscillating wars is not at all a bad idea, although I'm thinking we probably don't want more than two waves - one to break them, a second to clean them out.

Regarding Sailing, is there any reason why we could not scout our surroundings with work boats? A lighthouse seems useful, but it will be a while until Kyoto has any need for it.

Btw, what does a Smurkz look like anyway?

Aside note, maybe we can get a Team Smurkz avatar worked up. Any one interested? Any ideas? Anyone know Mistfit?
I had the idea when we chose the name that the Smurkz were the evil cousins of those pesky bluish do-gooders (the name Smurfz was discussed but voted down (which Methos seems to have missed, judging from his Civ History page ;))). A smurk thus looks a lot like a smurf, but has a greenish skin and a mischievous mind, with world(s) domination as the ultimate goal. But since they are so few in numbers (now we are 8 :)) they must work through others to accomplish their goal. The smiley most reminiscent of a smurk is :p. I have no idea if this fits well with what the rest of the team thinks though, and I wouldn't promote it as the one and only truth. :lol:

A Smurky avatar sounds like fun, I would imagine a smurf-like head with a greenish hue and a demeanor like he's making fun of all the inferiors. Don't ask me to draw one though! ;)

Here's the article (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=144029) I was looking for on the early game. I feel this is my weak spot, in civ3 I can see an area and immediately judge where good city spots are. I can't yet do that in CIV, but I'm eager to learn.

@Methos: Don't know if you saw my edit above since you posted at the same time - yes, a test game (with a working settler) would be great to have, I would be very happy if you could fix one. :worship:

The first thing I thought when I saw the save was Palace Jump. Can't do it in the Civ III sense, you've got to build it. I've only built a palace in a game once, and remember that it wasn't very expensive. I can also recall seeing it in the building options and noticing that it didn't cost as much as I thought it would. I just finished searching reference charts, the manual, forums and can't find an actual cost. I think I remember hearing that it's variable based on map size, speed (of course), and difficulty level.

Regarding the start, I would move the Warrior E, and then move the Settler SW-NW if the warrior didn't see anything good.

I think Libraries will be our best bet for getting culture.

(the name Smurfz was discussed but voted down (which Methos seems to have missed, judging from his Civ History page ;) )).

Whoops. Fixed.

@Methos: Don't know if you saw my edit above since you posted at the same time - yes, a test game (with a working settler) would be great to have, I would be very happy if you could fix one. :worship:

Yeah, I missed the edit. I have created two test saves (and the settlers do settle) and attached them to my signing in thread (post #2). I figured that would be easiest to locate. Let me know if I made any errors, or if you would like any more. I can create a few more with certain settings we desire if you all so choose. Just let me know.

BTW, I removed the messed up save from my history page.

Lurking with interest. :wavey: Good luck, Team Smurkz! :thumbsup:

I dont know about [civ4], but do you begin with 2 settlers in this SGOTM? :hmm:

Lurking with interest. :wavey: Good luck, Team Smurkz! :thumbsup:


Welcome! :wavey:

I dont know about [civ4], but do you begin with 2 settlers in this SGOTM? :hmm:

This SGOTM was specially designed with two settlers, which will possibly make it more difficult in the early years due to distance costs.

@Methos: Thanks for the saves, I'll play some test games tonight. :)
Since you have already tried to settle, what kind of maintenance costs are we looking at for the distance?

Since you have already tried to settle, what kind of maintenance costs are we looking at for the distance?

To be honest with you I haven't done anything with the saves except create them. I know you can settle due to the 'Build City' button, and the culture border surrounding the settler when using the mouse to possibly move it. Sorry, but right now if I'm not at work or asleep, we [wife and I] are at the hospital with her grandma. Neither one of us are home much.

Hopefully I'll get some time to try and play them tonight. It's the weekend, so don't really need sleep. ;)

Okay, I just loaded up both saves and we're getting a maintainence cost of 8 gpt on both saves :ack: . At 50% research we are at -1 gpt and at 40% research we are at +1 gpt. Doing a little walking before settling definitely sounds like a good idea.

Due to this we are definitely going to have to research only desired techs and not stray off the path. With that sort of cost we can't afford to research any unnecessary techs.

Edit: BTW, I noticed on test save #2 the tile northwest of the settler is a grassland, rather than a plains tile. I'll fix that now and upload the fixed save.

Edit #2: Removed the old save, and replaced with the new save.

Whoa, 8 gpt, that's a fortune each turn! :eek:
Ok, we need to completely rethink our early strategy. Going for any kind of slingshot will be well-nigh impossible, there's no way that we can research fast enough at what I suppose will be ~4 bpt (10 for capitol, 2 for colony, -8). We definitely need to do very careful research, and only the necessary techs. And we need to do a very precarious balance between settling late (more research) and not settling too late (time to build up troops to counter the barbies).

I'll do some careful test games tonight with the uploaded saves. This will be really tricky. :hmm:

Whoa, 8 gpt, that's a fortune each turn! :eek:

FYI, when I checked both saves I settled 1 NW. When I edited the 2nd save I settled on the flood plains and had a maintainence cost of 9 gpt! In other words, we don't know the exact cost, but do know it'll be extremely high!

Anybody have the patience to copy the starting image minimap and measure to see exactly how many tiles distant the two are from each other? A bit tedious, but something we might wish to consider. I might try this afternoon before I leave.

Hmm, IMO this means we need to rethink the purpose of our first town as well. With moderate maintenance we could afford to make the second town a production center, but now it seems to me we would need to go straight for a commerce town, research to Pottery and spam out cottages.

Another tech we'll certainly need fast is BW, both for the axmen, for chopping to make up for the low productivity, and for slavery to make up for it even more. In particular the capitol will never go above 2 hpt, but will have a huge food surplus. We may need to rely on this in other towns as well for a while.

I'd like to change my previous comment - settling late does not give more research, only on the very short scale. But what use will Pottery or BW be to us if we have no worker to build the cottages and do the chops? And how will we get a worker out if we don't settle? No, the faster we can settle, the more research we can generate in the long run.

NW is a reasonable site. It will give us the FP from the start, and thus do +2gpt (or will the CC generate +3gpt since we're on the river?). Build order could be warrior (15)->worker (60)->obelisk (30)->workboat (30)->settler (100) (note that the numbers are for standard speed, is it x1.5 for Epic?). But it's far from perfect, though I'm not sure what perfect would be with this start. :sad:

Okay, doing a little measuring (using graph paper, couldn’t find a ruler), I came up with a east-west distance of around 44 tiles. North-west distance is approximately 6.5 tiles. I placed a settler at both distance N/S of six and seven, and still came up with a maintenance cost of 8 gpt.

I'm not sure if my distance estimation is correct, but it should be close. So 8 gpt should be around what we're looking at.

NW is a reasonable site.

I've attached a screenshot of Osaka if we settled on the plains tile 1 NW from the start. I also set research to Pottery and adjusted the slider to 40% for the +1 gpt.

134726

The first thing I thought when I saw the save was Palace Jump. Can't do it in the Civ III sense, you've got to build it. I've only built a palace in a game once, and remember that it wasn't very expensive. I can also recall seeing it in the building options and noticing that it didn't cost as much as I thought it would. I just finished searching reference charts, the manual, forums and can't find an actual cost. I think I remember hearing that it's variable based on map size, speed (of course), and difficulty level.Very good point. I've looked it up, since I too think this is something we need to do, sooner better than later. On this page (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/info/wonders/smallwonders.php) at CFC it is said to cost 160 hammers (which means 240 hammers on Epic), not overly expensive but still a respectable amount. Also it requires that we have 4 cities, so we cannot do it in the very early game. Nevertheless, I definitely think we should plan for a palace jump at the earliest possible time. I cannot find a tech prerequisite, like Construction in Civ3, so I assume it's available from the start.

Gee, I've just played a series of very disheartening test games (from Methos' Test Save 1). In every single one of them I lost Osaka to the raging barbs, I managed to hold out for a while but in the end I couldn't resist. No copper nearby, and I realize now that I need more than one archer when the barbies come several at a time. Not enough hammers to build the needed fog busting warriors.

I did manage by far the best in the game where I didn't settle right away, instead taking a hike down south with the settler, and the reason I did better is that I could research hunting->archery fast before incurring the huge maintenance penalty that drops research to well-nigh zero.

I can't help but get the feeling that there's a catch to this game. All SGOTM's I've played so far have been set up so that no team would suffer an early loss. Well, you won't lose Kyoto and thus not the game, but if you lose Osaka or your settler you might as well give up. I just wonder what that catch is...

I'm going to play my broken record one last time for each team:


Please also subscribe to the Maintenance Thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?goto=lastpost&t=180489) for this game, where teams and staff may post non-spoiler information of general interest.

Anything I post there will NOT be repeated individually in every team thread. You may even find some useful information there now :p

I feel I'm spamming this thread a lot now, but with no one replying I can't help the triple posts. :p
EDIT: AlanH got in between, so no triple for me this time! :crazyeye:

@AlanH: Way ahead of you, I always check there first! :D
The extra info from the maintenance thread is interesting, 7 gpt cost if we settle on the spot. Then it is confirmed that the cost is indeed high, there is nothing fishy with this particular map in that aspect to help the survival rate. Also 7 rivals will make for a somewhat crowded place to live. Methos, how many rivals were in those test games?

I've mulled over my test sessions a bit, trying to come to some sort of useful conclusion. I'll try to discuss a number of different strategies that we could try, hoping to find something worth going for.

Capitol
First of all I'd like to discuss Kyoto, our capitol with the unsmurky name. I do hope that names are changeable ;)!

At size one it is making +2 fpt from the fish, and +2 hpt from the CC, and that's not going to change in quite a while. Growth will come in 17 turns and a work boat will be completed in 23 turns. During this phase it will provide a steady income of +11 gpt (+8 from palace, +1 from CC, +2 from fish). This means, assuming we don't settle Osaka just yet, that we'll get 187 gp during those 17 turns.

When we grow to size two there will be 6 turns left on the workboat, so for those next 6 turns we'll collect 12 food and generate 6 * 13 gpt = 78 more gp, for a total of 265 over 23 turns. That's a decent amount, probably more than all of our competitors considering we're getting the extra gpt from the coastal tiles.

Once the work boat is finished and starts netting the fish, we'll be doing +5 fpt and will thus grow in 5 (?) turns, making another 65 gp while we do, total now at 330 gp over 28 turns.

At size three we'll be doing 15 gpt, at size four 17 gpt, and at size five (assuming a warrior MP) 19 gpt. Once the first fish is improved, the growth will be significantly fast and will really boost our economy.

In some sort of conclusion: Our capitol will give us 360 gp over the first 30 turns. We could research quite a few low-tier techs from that. For example, Agriculture costs 90, Mining would cost 75, BW after that would be 180, Hunting + Archery is 150 together. We could get a whole bunch of techs very fast, as long as we don't settle our second town. This opens the discussion for a whole slew of early-game strategies.

Unfortunately my clock has been ticking a bit too long now, gotta get to bed, so I'll have to leave the discussion of the strategies I've been thinking until tomorrow. Please don't let that stop you guys from posting your thoughts in the meantime, and comment all you like on what I've talked about here. Don't wait for me to continue. :)

EDIT: Continuing the discussion on the capitol.

We have a capitol that is a real food powerhouse. With four fishing boats, at size four we'd be making a whopping +12 fpt. But the problem is, what to do with all that food? Thanks to the palace we have a happiness cap of 5, assuming we have an MP warrior. The obvious worker/settler builds will be useless since we can't get them off that rock until Astronomy, as only the inner 8 tiles are coastal. This also means that we can't rely on our trade network to supply luxuries there, so the capitol is on its own. The happiness cap doesn't prevent us from growing larger though, it will only eat up 3 of our fpt for each pop above 4, 2 for the extra angry citizen and 1 for the health which caps at 4 with both crabs and fish.

To state the obvious: The setup seems perfect for slavery. Each surplus citizen will yield 45 hammers (right?), and with +12 fpt we could grow fairly fast to, say, size 7 despite the -3 fpt for each size over 4. Whipping 3 pop gives 135 hammers, well enough for all early improvements, including the important lighthouse and library.
An example: Assuming we're capped at size 4 from happiness after whipping something, it will take 4 turns to grow to size 5, another 5 to grow to size 6, for a total of 90 hammers generated in 9 turns, that's 10 hpt! We're making a base 2 hpt, so in 9 turns we'd make 108 hammers. A lighthouse costs 90, a library 135 if I count correctly.

The lighthouse will improve the efficiency of this even more, as we'll make +16 fpt at size 4, +13 at 5, +10 at 6, +7 at 7 and +4 at 8. As another example, we can grow from 4 to 6 in 6 turns (15 hpt), and to 7 in another 5 (12.3 hpt for 135 hammers in 11 turns).

There is one thing that would make this even more powerful though - getting more happy faces! We're not likely to see religion spread to this isolated rock, so no help there. There are no early non-religious happiness improvements. I can see only one way to accomplish this - Ggetting the Pyramids for Hereditary Rule or Representation. But the cost of that pointy thing is immense - 450 hammers on normal speed means 675 hammers on epic (right?). We couldn't possibly hope to rush that in our capitol in a very very long time, unless some queue swapping technique could help out here, I'll try to do some calculations on this. Our mainland towns will be fighting for survival, so I don't think we could hope for any help there.

I have one conclusion at least - we want slavery, fast! I'll consider this when writing down my strategy ideas. Hope to get that done tonight. :)

I was thinking along the same lines. I haven't played the test games yet, but I'm sure I'd have the same problems with survival as you did. One thing that could help with the barbs is if we have a close neighbor in the actual game. He/she'd catch some of the barb's attention, and might make things go a little better.

Getting the low tier techs before founding a 2nd town is a good strategy. One tech we'll need is sailing, so that we can build a lighthouse and get the extra food in our capital.

Methos, how many rivals were in those test games?

I went with the standard of six. According to the Maintenance thread it should have been seven.

BTW, how are you all getting the turnlog that lists everything? I've seen in threads where there is a turn log that lists every single event for that turn. It's not the autologger, but something else. I'm guessing its some sort of extractor from the save file.

BTW, how are you all getting the turnlog that lists everything? I've seen in threads where there is a turn log that lists every single event for that turn. It's not the autologger, but something else. I'm guessing its some sort of extractor from the save file.
Correct, you get the log by uploading a game to the server, there's some extraction tool in place there that prints the log for you. It is said to extract the relevant stuff, plus anything you write in the chat so that you can add your own tags to it.

I've found it of limited use though, for instance it prints out if you've finished a build and automatically began on one in queue, but it doesn't print anything if you've finished a build and get promted to choose the next build. I suspect the same is true for researching techs, I think it's all about if you get one of those leftfield text messages or not.

I think it's all about if you get one of those leftfield text messages or not.
Yes. It just replays the text messages that appeared at the top left of screen during your turns

This tool (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=141769) by Gyathaar is a stand-alone version of the extractor. I'm not certain because I don't use it a whole lot, but I think it's more inclusive than the one on the upload page.

I've added some ramblings to my discussion on the capitol above, edited in instead of posted here to keep it all in context. I'll work on the strategy ideas I have and post them later today.

I was thinking along the same lines. I haven't played the test games yet, but I'm sure I'd have the same problems with survival as you did. One thing that could help with the barbs is if we have a close neighbor in the actual game. He/she'd catch some of the barb's attention, and might make things go a little better.This is true, and coupled with a fair amout of fog busting we could possibly reduce the problem significantly. I'll see if I can manage some more test games.

Getting the low tier techs before founding a 2nd town is a good strategy. One tech we'll need is sailing, so that we can build a lighthouse and get the extra food in our capital.We will certainly want a lighthouse, but it won't really do us much good until we have slavery. See my post above. So Bronze Working should be a very high priority whatever else we choose to research.

Hi have been out for another interview with an astronaut! Just to see the discussion made great progress!

Great testwork Niklas! :goodjob:
Great work to provide the testfiles Methos! :thumbsup:

I also played a couple of test games. It really felt very hard to survive the early barb attacks on Osaka here. And even if I survived pushing forward after Osaka was quite hard to impossible with that constant flow of barbs keeping my worker always inside the capitol. With Niklas I am quite surprised by this. Have thought SGOTM should be a fun for everyone. But what happens if 80% of the teams lose in the very early phase and the few that survive have a really long time job to recover from the start? Hmmm. We really have to work very hard this time. Or I am too weak as a CIV player. Maybe the latter.
Hmmm what can we do? Couple of times I was wondering what we can use this senseless capital for. After it has grown to size 4 with two work boats it really gets useless. It can’t work any further tiles lacking happiness, what we can’t provide there. Since the work on the continent is only warring the barbs, I would like to let Kyoto (Do we rename it Smoto?) take the responsibility for culture. Can it finish stonehenge? Then we can play on without caring for obelisks but build units instead in Osaka. In a few games I played with this variant, I was able to build stonehenge. (took 45 turns with the two hammers Kyoto has) But that doesn’t tell that it will work. But that city has simply not many other things to do.
The rest as now all have figured out is getting build Osaka next to a single super tile for production. I agree that we definitely need archery prior to settling. Only a set of two archers was in my games able to hardly defend the town. The rest is depending on wha is our superproduction tile. If we find something like gold or so, we might need Mining. Building cottages has a little decreased on my priorities list, since they don’t give us production for units. Better find a gold tile for commerce and production. Thankfully Methos had three in a row in his first test file. But then we need another good food tile to let Osaka at least grow a little. Maybe cows would be really great. But then we need AH. There are so many options all depending on what we may find. So I propose to go a different approach this time. We should not play SuccessionGame, but rather discuss all the early moves in detail (around 20 or so) That seems to be impossible due to the time zone difference. But can we play, let’s say 0:00 GMT. Then it is very late for us Europeans and the Americans have to get to the Computer at 16:00-19:00 in the evening. Then the executing player posts a shot of every move and then we have 10 minutes time each move to post comments. Also I don’t believe that it would work, but that seems to me to be the best. Weird situation this SGOTM02.
BTW McLMan, very good idea to go for an early Palace jump. The next cities after Osaka would really kill our economy totally. But without them we cannot suppress the barbarians effectively without putting a large military all over the land and then see the other AIs settle.
As I said, emphasis for the Osaka region should be production and if possible that together with commerce. So a gold mountain looks good. And next to it in the 3 tiles radius should be a food rich tile. (I don’t hope to find more than two resources for Osaka, but if we manage to find three – the better we start.) Hope of survival would come up, if the tile we settle on can then be a plain hill. With that 5 hammers then I think we would have a chance to survive.

It made a huge difference to discover a sum of money by a hut, since then I could have run the research a few turns longer on 100%. But what if we find barbs right from the start under the hut? So huit popping would be risky.

How about Smurky Oto? :D

I will comment on the strategy later when I get the time, but I'd like to comment on your suggestion for playing. I've been toying with the same idea with short moves and constant screen shots, but I really don't think it will be for the better. A single player who knows what we're looking for in the early game could just as well play alone until he finds a reasonable site with resources. Then he could stop and post a screenshot, and we could discuss that location, and the player could resume the next evening. Better to play slowly and meticulously in the early game than to be killed early. But stopping to post every turn seems a bit too excessive.

Yes, hut popping would be very risky. But in the two test games I played where I didn't settle right away, I didn't pop a single barbie, but plenty of gold, maps, and even Pottery in one of them. In the games where I settled right away and used the warrior to pop huts, I got one map in one of them and the rest only barbies. I suppose this was just a lucky fluke, but could it be that you cannot pop barbies unless you have a town somewhere? Not likely I know, and easy to dispute, but one could always hope... :)

Checking in. Lots of good thoughts going around already! Here's my two cents.

Capitol: can build workboats and a warrior I guess, after that relatively little to do, maybe a wonder, or some infra (courthouse?). Palace "jump" asap is a good idea I think.

Settling: sooner or later we will have to bite the bullet and settle our second town. I don't see much reason to wait, and there is a good reason not to: the sooner we settle, the sooner we can grow and overcome the maintenance problem. The best spot visible right now is NW IMO. It would be a good commerce town (river, coast), and I would rather get that than a good production town, because we need the money to fund further expansion. Obviously a culture expansion is needed to grab rice, fish and the hill. This we can get early by building obelisk (requires Mysticism), Stonehenge (Myst), or founding a religion (Myst + at least one more tech). Stonehenge has the advantage that we get expansions for free in all other towns (for a while), and it gives great prophet points. OTOH, obelisks are quite cheap.

Research: Mysticism seems important, and we also need something to defend ourselves - warriors will not do well, probably. Archers are quite effective, and although archery is a dead end tech, we may need it early on. BW is another good early goal, so that we can chop some forests around Osaka to aid early production. This will keep our worker(s) busy early on. Pottery is useful midrange, to get more commerce. I don't think agriculture, AH or sailing is a priority, we have plenty of food, and no need for health resources or horse based units. IW is needed midrange to locate iron and possibly start a war with swords (if not axes). Longer run, we can aim for CoL (courts) and Civil Service (Sams).

Conquest: Macemen are strong for conquest, and Samurai are even better. We should try to most of our conquering with these guys, and perhaps even an early war with axes/swords. Our traits help too: 1 free combat promo (only for melee and gunpowder units!); and organized allows us to run the fairly expensive civics Theocracy and Vassalage. Together with a rax that gives 10 XP units for three more promo's!
We can try to use diplo for a divide and conquer strat, i.e., everybody fights. Aggressive AI should be helpful for that.

Religion: It would be helpful to get one, to run Organized Religion and later Theocracy. If we research Myst first, then we can see whether Hinduism or Buddhism is feasible. OTOH, maybe we'll be first to CoL, then this is not such a high priority.

I like the idea Niklas had about using Kyoto for pop-rushing. That would make the city more affective. I was also thinking of using it as a GP farm, as we'll definitely have plenty of excess food. In truth we might be able to balance it between both, due to its high food.

I'm getting ready to play a few test games myself, are there any specifics we are looking at? The everyone work together might work if we can all manage it, so we should at least consider it. Is anyone unable to make that time period?

I believe at first me might want to focus on fog busters a lot. I'll attempt it in my test games to see if it works.

Do we want any other test games? Other than making it similar to the start, the only other thing I edited was removing the stone resource that was near Osaka. The main difference is we have six opponents in our test game when it should be seven.

Let’s see, three attempts at a test game and all of them end up ending really quickly. My initial plan on each was a research path of Pottery>Mining>Bronze Working. I held of settling Osaka until I began researching Bronze Working.

First attempt I used the settler to explore and popped a hut of crazy barbs.

Second attempt the settler stayed put while the warrior explored. In no time bears showed up and the settler just couldn’t make it.

Third attempt no one moved and I managed to stay alive long enough to build Osaka. I finished my research path and was beginning on Mysticism. I had built a worker in Osaka and finished a cottage on the fp when barb archers showed up. Osaka went down in flames.

One thing I did do was once Kyoto got big enough and I had a couple work boats out I started using the citizen specialist. It’s only +1 hammer, but that’s a 50% increase for each citizen specialist. I switched to the Slavery civic, but ended the game before getting a chance to use it.

I’m thinking that waiting before settling is too much of a risk. We should probably settle either right away, or very soon. I’m also thinking that building only military at first would probably be the best bet. Since that is the case either going straight towards Archery or BW would be the best, and skip Pottery until later.

One things for sure, barbs come extremely early.

I’m going to try again. Hopefully I’ll make it past 2000 BC, or was it 2800 BC? Lol! :lol:

Okay, I am currently playing a test game using the test save #2 and was curious about everyone’s opinion on it. I’ve added the turn log plus attached the save. Is this plan even something worth considering, or should it be ignored?


Turn 0 (4000 BC)
Methos: Research Path: Hunting>Archery
Research begun: Hunting
Methos: Settler moves to settle 1 NW while warrior joins the city.
Osaka founded
Osaka begins: Barracks
Methos: Osaka starts work on a barracks out of my curiosity.
Methos: Slider at 40% [+1 gpt]

Turn 7 (3790 BC)
Kyoto's borders expand

Turn 10 (3700 BC)
Osaka grows: 2

Turn 11 (3670 BC)

IBT:
Buddhism founded in a distant land

Turn 12 (3640 BC)
Methos: Barb lions show up.
Methos: Maintenance jumps up for some reason. Possibly due to pop increase. Still at 40% with 10 gold, now -1 gpt.

Turn 16 (3520 BC)
Kyoto grows: 2

IBT:

Turn 17 (3490 BC)
Methos: Kyoto grows which increases our commerce, causing us to break even with 5 gold in the bank.
Tech learned: Hunting

IBT:

Turn 18 (3460 BC)
Research begun: Archery

Turn 22 (3340 BC)
Kyoto finishes: Work Boat
Osaka grows: 3

IBT:

Turn 23 (3310 BC)
Kyoto begins: Work Boat
Methos:
Methos: Osaka grows, causing us to jump back to -1 gpt, still with 5 gold in the bank. It appears as Osaka grows maintenance costs due to distance increases. Something we definitely need to understand better.

Turn 26 (3220 BC)
Methos: Our treasury is getting to low [2 gold], so I drop the slider to 30% at +1 gpt.
Osaka finishes: Barracks

IBT:

Turn 27 (3190 BC)
Osaka begins: Warrior
Kyoto grows: 3

IBT:

Turn 28 (3160 BC)
Methos: Kyoto grows to size three, allowing me to put the slider back at 40% with neither a loss nor gain in gpt. Still at 4 gold.

Turn 33 (3010 BC)
Osaka finishes: Warrior

IBT:

Turn 34 (2980 BC)
Osaka begins: Warrior
Methos: With the additional warrior, I move the starting warrior out as a fog buster.

IBT:

Turn 35 (2950 BC)
Kyoto grows: 4
Osaka grows: 4

IBT:

Turn 36 (2920 BC)
Methos: Osaka is at max happiness, so I move the citizen on the fp to the plains hill to stagnate growth and increase hammers.
Methos: If I drop the slider to 30% I can switch two of Kyoto's citizens to a citizen specialist, providing 4 hpt.
Tech learned: Archery

IBT:
Hinduism founded in a distant land

Turn 37 (2890 BC)
Research begun: Mining

IBT:

Turn 38 (2860 BC)
Osaka finishes: Warrior

IBT:

Turn 39 (2830 BC)
Osaka begins: Archer

IBT:

Turn 40 (2800 BC)
Kyoto finishes: Work Boat

IBT:

Turn 41 (2770 BC)
Kyoto begins: Warrior

Turn 44 (2680 BC)
Osaka finishes: Archer

IBT:

Turn 45 (2650 BC)
Osaka begins: Archer
Archer promoted: City Garrison I
Kyoto finishes: Warrior

IBT:

Turn 46 (2620 BC)
Kyoto begins: Work Boat
Methos: Kyoto now has a warrior for defense happiness, so I follow up with a work boat. I remove the two citizen specialists and put them back on the sea. We need commerce more now.

IBT:

Turn 47 (2590 BC)
Warrior promoted: Combat II
Methos: Wow, finally meet actual barbs and they're just warriors!

IBT:
While defending, Warrior defeats (0.72/2): Barbarian Warrior at 89.1 percent.

Turn 48 (2560 BC)
Warrior promoted: Combat III
Methos: I promote for the health, but move to the hill south for the fog busting. Spot more barb warriors.

IBT:

Turn 49 (2530 BC)
Kyoto grows: 5

IBT:

Turn 50 (2500 BC)
Methos: With Kyoto growing again I can up the slider to 50% at -1 gpt. We currently have 8 gold in the bank.
Osaka finishes: Archer

IBT:

Turn 51 (2470 BC)
Osaka begins: Archer

Turn 53 (2410 BC)
Methos: Not wanting Kyoto to get above size 5, I turn on 'Avoid Growth'.

IBT:

Turn 54 (2380 BC)
Tech learned: Mining

IBT:

Turn 55 (2350 BC)
Research begun: Bronze Working
While attacking, Archer defeats (2.52/3): Barbarian Warrior at 92.7 percent.
Methos: At 3 gold, so set slider at 40% [+2 gpt].

IBT:
While defending, Warrior defeats (0.60/2): Barbarian Warrior at 98.8 percent.

Turn 56 (2320 BC)
Osaka finishes: Archer

IBT:

Turn 57 (2290 BC)
Osaka begins: Archer

Turn 59 (2230 BC)

IBT:
Judaism founded in a distant land

Turn 60 (2200 BC)

IBT:

Turn 61 (2170 BC)
Methos: Since we're at 15 gold, I up the slider to 50% [-1 gpt].

Turn 63 (2110 BC)
Osaka finishes: Archer

IBT:

Turn 64 (2080 BC)
Osaka begins: Worker

Turn 66 (2020 BC)
Methos: Our unit cost went up, bringing us to -2 gpt.

Turn 68 (1960 BC)
Methos: I now have enough fog busters out to stop any barbs from popping up. Now I need to build up our empire.

Summary:
Research path was Hunting>Archery>Mining>Bronze Working
Kyoto built two work boats followed by a warrior. As happiness limit was reached I began assigning citizens as citizen specialists [+1 hpt]. After the warrior I removed the citizen specialists and worked tiles to speed up commerce.
Osaka started with a barracks and then either went warrior or archer (when they were available). All units (except for the one of city defense) moved out to sit on hills as fog busters.


One thing of note (which I never realized) was that distance maintenance seems to increase as your population does.

@zyxy: Good to see you here, then all are accounted for! :)

It's a good test case, and definitely one possible avenue for us. The most obvious think to point out is of course that you survived, which is better than any of my test games so far. :crazyeye:
But there is one obvious major drawback as well - after 54 turns you've researched Hunting, Archery and Mining for a grand total of 225 beakers. If we wait to settle, we could have that in 20 turns instead. I have more to say on this subject though, I'll be writing up my strategy thoughts now.

EDIT: On maintenance, it indeed seems that the maintenance cost is (8 + pop) gpt, except at pop 1 where it is 8. Growing the town is costly.

But there is one obvious major drawback as well - after 54 turns you've researched Hunting, Archery and Mining for a grand total of 225 beakers. If we wait to settle, we could have that in 20 turns instead.

Very true, the problem was in all the test games I ran where I waited to settle the majority of the time I lost the settler due to barbs. When I did manage to settle the barbs overwelmed me.

The question I have is, is waiting to settle worth the risk?

BTW, looking forward to reading your strategy article.

Gah, I've been writing my strategy for an hour, and then I misclick and close the browser window! :mad: :cry: :sad:
I should really write in a separate editor that asks me if I want to save before exiting. I gotta get to bed now, so I will have to rewrite it in the morning. :(

I should note that in the two test games I played where I didn't settle right away, I managed to settle later at better locations without a problem. It could just have been luck though, the barbies were never close. Both of the times I was overwhelmed afterwards, but that was more due to not concentrating on military before the area was secure.

Alright, at long last, and written in an external editor :rolleyes:, my thoughts on strategy. I've already rambled at length about our capitol, so this time I'll concentrate on the people of Ikegawa, the avenger.

As I see it we have two conflicting goals. We want to settle early to get many units and an early start on development, but we also want to settle late to get some early crucial techs as fast as possible. IMO the early strategy should be about optimising those two equations. I'll list a number of strategies that we could follow, each one driven to the extreme, and also discuss some more moderate variations of the theme.

Spam spam spam warrior spam
The obvious way to counter the raging barbarians is fog busters. By Methos' turn log, the real barbiarians (those that could get inside our borders) will show up some time after turn 40. If we settle NW right away and start building warriors, working the flood plain for early growth and commerce, I reckon we could build somewhere between 4 and 6 warriors in 40 turns, which is a decent number of fog busters. In Methos' test game, he notes at turn 68 that he has enough fog busters, and if I count correctly he does at that point have 2 warriors and 4 archers. If early research is set towards Archery we would have that in turn 36, too late to have any effect on the early spamming.

The upside of this scenario is that we get a head start on the barbies, hopefully enough to keep them far away from Osaka. It is even possible that we could keep them far enough that we could skip the Archery path altoghether and head straight for BW. This would have to be tested a lot though, it would be quite a risk to take.

The downside is that we're relying on warriors to do the job since we won't research fast enough to get any real help from archers. We could start building archers later though, as Methos has shown they can still make quite a difference against the barbies even if we don't start building them until around turn 40. The other major drawback is that we'll be very late to Bronze Working and Slavery.

Possible variations of this theme include Methos' early barracks, which could possibly pay off quite well. The higher win probability for each unit would have to be contrasted to the earlier fog busting and thus earlier chance at expansion.


The Archery Gambit
If we delay settling for a while, we'll research much faster in the early game. It would take us 14 turns to research Hunting + Archery (11 bpt x 14 t = 154 bp, 150 needed). Thus if we settle right after Archery comes in, we could start building archers on turn 15. Archers are more costly than warriors so it would take longer to build them, and at turn 40 we would probably have no more than three. In Methos' test game he has only two (promoted) warriors on turn 40, so this should still work quite ok, and we should build more archers faster after that, not quite as fast as in Methos game but almost, so we would still have around 6 archer when we hit turn 68 for comparison. They would not be promoted though.

The upside of this scenario is that we can use archers against the barbies instead of warriors. Also our early research will be greatly improved, and we should hit BW some 20+ turns earlier than in the previous scenario (just how many turns earlier depends on how much we let Osaka grow, higher pop = higher maintenance).
Another upside is that we could move our settler around a bit, scout out a larger area and thus possibly find a better location to settle in. One consequence of this is also that we might be able to move closer to our capitol, thereby decreasing the maintenance penalty somewhat.

The downside is that we sacrifice a lot of early production, towards turn 68 I roughly count we'd be losing some 60-80 hammers since we'll basically hit size 4 14 turns later. Also relying on archers has a flip side, we're not making use of our Aggressive trait since the free Combat I promo is only available to Melee (and GP) units. An early warrior that whacks a lion and promotes to Shock or Woodsman will have strength 2.6 under the right conditions, compared to 3.0 for the archer, so the difference is not all that large if we play our cards right with promos and unit placement (yeah, I know the way combat is played out makes that 0.4 difference much larger than it seems).
A third downside is that we need our settler to survive for 14 turns. In Methos test game he sees the first lion on turn 12, so this doesn't seem undoable at all.

Variations on this team would be to not wait the full 14 turns for Archery to come in. Any compromise would do, if we settle on turn 10 we'd delay Archery to around turn 22-23 (assuming -7 gpt maintenance) and could build a warrior first while waiting for it. BW would be sped up by 15+ turns compared to settling right away.

The Brazen Bronze Gambit
This one is not for the faint of heart! Since archers are not that very effective anyway, we skip the archery path and head straight for the all-important Bronze Working. Researching Mining + BW would cost 255 bp, a lot more than for Archery which means we wouldn't have it until turn 23 (11 bpt x 17 t + 13 bpt x 6 t = 265 bp). Settle a food-rich location and start warriors while switching to Slavery for one turn anarchy (you still grow during Anarchy right?). Osaka would grow to size 2 on turn 34 with +3 fpt, at which point we can whip out two warriors right away. Rinse and repeat.

(Q: Is it possible to queue up several warriors and switch between them in the queue? If yes, the best scenario would be to build one warrior, switch to another one turn before we grow to have one hammer in the bin, queue up yet another that gets the overflow, we would get two warriors from the whip and can switch back to the original warrior again that will still have all the hammers collected. If not, we can build something else while waiting for the whip, a barracks for instance.)

The major upside of this is of course the very early BW and Slavery, that lets us use the food as hammers. I've already shown how powerful this is in our capitol, it will not be quite as efficient in Osaka but it will still count for a lot.
Also the same benefits from moving around apply as for the previous scenario - better location, closer to home.

The downside is again a sacrifice of early production. Compared to a scenario where we settle right away and grow to size 4 fast, we would still lose some 60-80 hammers in Osaka (very rough count), same as in the Archery Gambit, but with a lot more research down. Also we'd again be relying on warriors to do the barbie hunting, for better or worse.
But the biggest problem will be to keep the settler alive and well for 26 turns. I'm going to try a few test games just to see how well I can manage that, for the sake of curiosity, but in reality it seems way too much of a gamble.

There is also one thing that I haven't discussed here at all, which is Copper. If we have copper nearby (remember this is a designed map for this SGOTM), we'd be off to a running start. A worker would be needed to mine and road the copper, but once we have it we can rush Axemen. After all the barbies are just the first step, there are 7 AI opponents to beat down after that. But really, I know this is only a very minor part of our early strategy.

Variations are again a compromise between settling early and settling later. If we settle after 10 turns we'd probably have BW around turn 34. If we settle after 15 we could have it around 30. This would probably be a lot more doable than waiting around with the settler for the full 23 turns, and we wouldn't be able to fully utilize the Slavery benefits until around this time anyway.

Concluding Remarks
I'm clearly a big fan of Slavery (well, not really, but you know what I mean ;)). I haven't tested any of this, but I have the distinct feeling that we'd be better off in the long run the faster we can get to Slavery, after a certain point when we can really make use of it. But we must survive the first turns, or else all is lost. I'm going to run a few test games with some of these setups, but I have only so much time. It would be nice if you guys could test some of these scenarios as well, to see if they have any chance of working in practice.

OMT is Pottery. Initially I thought it important for the cottages, but since survival became more of an issue it fell down my list of priorities. But it is on the rise again, and the reason this time is the granary. It will make Kyoto twice as good a producer, since it will grow back the whipped pop twice as fast. The only problem will be to give it something to build and whip, anything at all. Wonders come to mind... :mischief:

Excellent article, though I'll need to read it a couple more times for everything to sink in.

But it is on the rise again, and the reason this time is the granary. It will make Kyoto twice as good a producer, since it will grow back the whipped pop twice as fast. The only problem will be to give it something to build and whip, anything at all. Wonders come to mind... :mischief:

This is the problem I had with Kyoto, as in nothing to build. I ended up building a barracks in Kyoto even though it didn't need one.

I may be biased, but I'm thinking whichever way we go we'll still need to do some sort of unit spam. I'll give the brazen bronze gambit a try and see how things turn out.

There is also one thing that I haven't discussed here at all, which is Copper. If we have copper nearby (remember this is a designed map for this SGOTM), we'd be off to a running start. A worker would be needed to mine and road the copper, but once we have it we can rush Axemen.

Copper is one of the biggest downfalls of this strategy IMO. In order to make the BBG strategy (brazen bronze gambit) work we would need copper. In my test game building a third city brought my research down to 10% and 20%. Even with both Kyoto and Osaka at max happiness the third city basically halted my research. In order for the BBG to work we'd have to wait and settle once we knew where copper was.

Copper is one of the biggest downfalls of this strategy IMO. In order to make the BBG strategy (brazen bronze gambit) work we would need copper. In my test game building a third city brought my research down to 10% and 20%. Even with both Kyoto and Osaka at max happiness the third city basically halted my research. In order for the BBG to work we'd have to wait and settle once we knew where copper was.
I'm not sure I agree with this, but I haven't tested anything so it's just an opinion. The way I see it, the point of the BBG is not Copper, it's Slavery. If we have copper nearby, as in within 21 of Osaka, it would be a big boon. If not, we'll have to cope with that the same way we would have in any of the other strategies. In what way do you find Copper crucial for the BBG to work?

Regarding our third town, I would build two settlers in quick succession in Osaka when the time is right, and then whip the palace at first chance.

I only played two test games using a modified brazen bronze gambit, one for each test save. I decided to try waiting until copper was known before settling Osaka. Below is my turnlogs:

Turn 0 (4000 BC)
Research begun: Mining
Methos: Start research on Mining (requires 111 beakers). BW next with a required 268 beakers.
Methos: Will wait to settle, though not sure when yet.

Turn 2 (3940 BC)

IBT:
Contact made: Indian Empire

Turn 7 (3790 BC)
Kyoto's borders expand

Turn 9 (3730 BC)
Tech learned: Mining

IBT:

Turn 10 (3700 BC)
Research begun: Bronze Working

Turn 12 (3640 BC)
Contact made: Chinese Empire

IBT:
Buddhism founded in a distant land

Turn 16 (3520 BC)
Methos: Barb lions appear
While attacking, Warrior defeats (1.66/2): Barbarian Lion at 77.7 percent.
Kyoto grows: 2

IBT:
While defending, Warrior loses to: Barbarian Lion (1.16/2) at 54.7 percent.
While defending, Settler loses to: Barbarian Wolf (1.00/1) at 45.3 percent.

Turn 17 (3490 BC)
Methos: A second batch of lions appears and decimates our warrior. Followed by a pack of wolves that kill off our settler.

Turn 0 (4000 BC)
Research begun: Mining
Methos: Same research path, Mining to BW.

Turn 7 (3790 BC)
Methos: Barb lions spotted.
Kyoto's borders expand

Turn 9 (3730 BC)
Tech learned: Mining

IBT:

Turn 10 (3700 BC)
Research begun: Bronze Working
Methos: Since the whole landmass is explored, I park both the warrior and settler in the middle on a forested hill with the river on one side.

IBT:

Turn 11 (3670 BC)

IBT:
Buddhism founded in a distant land

Turn 16 (3520 BC)
Kyoto grows: 2

IBT:

Turn 17 (3490 BC)
Methos: Barb lions show back up.

Turn 22 (3340 BC)
Kyoto finishes: Work Boat

IBT:

Turn 23 (3310 BC)
Kyoto begins: Work Boat

IBT:

Turn 24 (3280 BC)
Methos: Barb lions are now adjacent to our settler pair. Wait and see.

IBT:
While defending, Warrior defeats (1.74/2): Barbarian Lion at 99.5 percent.

Turn 27 (3190 BC)
Tech learned: Bronze Working
Kyoto grows: 3

IBT:

Turn 28 (3160 BC)
Research begun: Pottery
Methos: Wake the settler pair and move towards the copper.

IBT:
Hinduism founded in a distant land

Turn 29 (3130 BC)
Osaka founded
Osaka begins: Worker
Methos: I'm not expecting to last very long. 23 turns to complete a worker means I'm going to have a lot of barbs by the time I'm ready to improve the copper.

Turn 36 (2920 BC)
Kyoto grows: 4

Turn 43 (2710 BC)
Kyoto finishes: Work Boat

IBT:

Turn 44 (2680 BC)
Kyoto begins: Warrior

IBT:

Turn 45 (2650 BC)
Tech learned: Pottery

IBT:

Turn 46 (2620 BC)
Research begun: Mysticism

IBT:

Turn 48 (2560 BC)
Kyoto finishes: Warrior

IBT:

Turn 49 (2530 BC)
Kyoto begins: Work Boat

IBT:

Turn 50 (2500 BC)
Methos: Barb archers show up.
Kyoto grows: 5

IBT:

Turn 51 (2470 BC)
Osaka finishes: Worker

IBT:
While defending, Warrior defeats (2.00/2): Barbarian Archer at 84.9 percent.
While defending, Warrior defeats (1.48/2): Barbarian Warrior at 99.3 percent.

Turn 52 (2440 BC)
Osaka begins: Warrior
Warrior promoted: Combat II
Methos: The barb archers had a warrior with them. Managed to survive it, but I'm thinking we won't be able to protect our copper long enough to make it useful.

Turn 55 (2350 BC)

IBT:
While defending, Warrior defeats (1.22/2): Barbarian Warrior at 99.4 percent.

Turn 56 (2320 BC)
Tech learned: Mysticism

IBT:

Turn 57 (2290 BC)
Research begun: Writing

IBT:

Turn 59 (2230 BC)
Osaka finishes: Warrior

IBT:

Turn 60 (2200 BC)
Osaka begins: Warrior
Methos: Copper is now both improved and connected. I believe I'll finish one more warrior before going axemen.

IBT:

Turn 61 (2170 BC)

IBT:
While defending, Warrior loses to: Barbarian Archer (1.56/3) at 86.6 percent.
Osaka razed by Barbarian State
Osaka lost

Turn 62 (2140 BC)
Methos: Osaka falls.

Waiting for Copper to show is way too much of a risk IMO, though I do realize that Niklas didn’t technically mean this when he stated the strategy. The problem I have is if we go with the BB Gambit than waiting to settle until Copper shows is our best option. A third city will end all research.

The only possible option I’m seeing with this strategy is to build Osaka in a high food area and have a settler (for third city) finish just as BW is researched. The settler than settles on the Copper tile and immediately begins building axemen. This will cripple our research, but still allow Osaka to build a few units for fog busting.

In what way do you find Copper crucial for the BBG to work?

Missed this earlier. About this time we should start seeing barb archers running around. I hate to have just warriors to defend against them. I haven’t played long enough to see any barb axemen yet, but I’m afraid they’ll start showing up soon after. When they do we’ll need something more than warriors. IMO, and I may be wrong, we need to be able to grab the copper ASAP!

Here’s my two test games where I attempted to build Osaka around turn #10, followed by Tokyo settling on the copper tile to automatically gain its benefits. Again, one from each test save:

Turn 0 (4000 BC)
Research begun: Mining
Methos: Research path= Mining>BW
Methos: Will wait to settle until after Mining is known.

Turn 2 (3940 BC)

IBT:
Contact made: Indian Empire

Turn 5 (3850 BC)
Contact made: Chinese Empire

Turn 7 (3790 BC)
Kyoto's borders expand

IBT:
While defending, Warrior defeats (0.50/2): Barbarian Panther at 97.1 percent.

Turn 8 (3760 BC)
Methos: Barb pumas have already shown up. Time to get my settler back home.

IBT:

Turn 9 (3730 BC)
Tech learned: Mining

IBT:

Turn 10 (3700 BC)
Research begun: Bronze Working

IBT:

Turn 11 (3670 BC)
Methos: Whoops, settler is now adjacent to a lion. This game appears shot.

IBT:
While defending, Settler loses to: Barbarian Lion (2.00/2) at 2.9 percent.

Turn 12 (3640 BC)

Turn 0 (4000 BC)
Research begun: Mining

Turn 7 (3790 BC)
Kyoto's borders expand

Turn 9 (3730 BC)
Tech learned: Mining

IBT:

Turn 10 (3700 BC)
Research begun: Bronze Working
Osaka founded
Osaka begins: Warrior
Methos: At 40% BW will take 43 turns. Hope we can speed that up.

IBT:

Turn 11 (3670 BC)

IBT:
Buddhism founded in a distant land

Turn 15 (3550 BC)
Methos: Barb lions appear.

IBT:

Turn 16 (3520 BC)
Kyoto grows: 2

IBT:
While defending, Warrior defeats (2.00/2): Barbarian Lion at 97.1 percent.

Turn 20 (3400 BC)
Osaka grows: 2

Turn 22 (3340 BC)
Kyoto finishes: Work Boat

IBT:

Turn 23 (3310 BC)
Kyoto begins: Work Boat

Turn 26 (3220 BC)
Osaka finishes: Warrior

IBT:

Turn 27 (3190 BC)
Osaka begins: Warrior
Kyoto grows: 3

Turn 32 (3040 BC)
Osaka grows: 3

Turn 34 (2980 BC)
Methos: Barb bears appear.

IBT:

Turn 35 (2950 BC)
Kyoto grows: 4
Osaka finishes: Warrior

IBT:
While defending, Warrior defeats (0.92/2): Barbarian Bear at 73.0 percent.

Turn 36 (2920 BC)
Osaka begins: Settler
Warrior promoted: Combat II

Turn 42 (2740 BC)
Kyoto finishes: Work Boat

IBT:

Turn 43 (2710 BC)
Kyoto begins: Warrior

IBT:

Turn 44 (2680 BC)

IBT:
Hinduism founded in a distant land

Turn 45 (2650 BC)
Tech learned: Bronze Working

IBT:

Turn 46 (2620 BC)
Research begun: Pottery

IBT:

Turn 51 (2470 BC)
Kyoto finishes: Warrior

IBT:

Turn 52 (2440 BC)
Kyoto begins: Work Boat
Kyoto grows: 5

IBT:

Turn 53 (2410 BC)
Methos: Forgot to mention that barb warriors showed up last turn.

Turn 55 (2350 BC)
Methos: I pop-rush the settler in Osaka, which shaves off six turns.
Osaka finishes: Settler

IBT:

Turn 56 (2320 BC)
Osaka begins: Warrior

IBT:

Turn 57 (2290 BC)
Methos: Barb archers appear.
Tribal village results: warrior
Tokyo founded
Tokyo begins: Axeman
Methos: I settle Tokyo on the copper and start an axemen. The city auto pops the hut getting us a warrior.

IBT:

Turn 58 (2260 BC)

IBT:
While defending, Warrior defeats (1.40/2): Barbarian Warrior at 95.6 percent.

Turn 59 (2230 BC)
Methos: The barb archers head straight for Osaka.

Turn 61 (2170 BC)
Methos: That sucks, the barb archers switch course and head for Tokyo instead.
Osaka finishes: Warrior

IBT:
While defending, Warrior defeats (1.28/2): Barbarian Archer at 65.9 percent.

Turn 62 (2140 BC)
Osaka begins: Barracks

IBT:

Turn 66 (2020 BC)
Tech learned: Pottery
Osaka grows: 3

IBT:

Turn 67 (1990 BC)
Research begun: Writing
Methos: Starting to run out of funds, so have to drop research to 20%.

Turn 69 (1930 BC)
Osaka begins: Worker

Turn 72 (1840 BC)

IBT:
While defending, Warrior defeats (1.70/2): Barbarian Warrior at 96.4 percent.

Turn 73 (1810 BC)
Kyoto finishes: Work Boat
Tokyo grows: 2

IBT:

Turn 74 (1780 BC)
Kyoto begins: Work Boat

IBT:

Turn 75 (1750 BC)
Kyoto's borders expand

IBT:

Turn 76 (1720 BC)

IBT:
While defending, Warrior defeats (1.40/2): Barbarian Warrior at 96.4 percent.

Turn 77 (1690 BC)
Methos: Now at 10% research.

Turn 83 (1510 BC)
Osaka finishes: Worker

Turn 85 (1450 BC)
Tokyo finishes: Axeman

IBT:

Turn 86 (1420 BC)
Tokyo begins: Barracks

Turn 89 (1330 BC)
Methos: At this point all the island is cleared of fog, so the barb problem is gone.
Methos: 66 beakers invested in Writing with 101 turns left to complete. Treasury is stagnate.

This actually wasn’t too bad. I should have started the settler earlier though. The biggest problem I see with this is it wastes a lot of turns. It seems we are taking way too much time in just surviving, and I fear we will be too far behind the other AI’s.

Odd that I never seem to be able to survive when playing test save #1.

Unfortunately I cannot do any test runs - my comp is too stupid for Civ4. Hopefully that will change by the end of the week.

Anyway. Our two immediate problems are defense and finances. Going for BW doesn't really solve either of these: slavery and chopping add production, but we have little use for it, except perhaps to produce a load of warriors. Copper would be nice, but probably comes too late to fend off the initial barbs (and is a gamble anyway). We cannot wait with settling too long, or we may lose the settler.

For defense, archers are pretty good, and will hold out quite well even against axemen.
To solve the financial problem, pottery would be needed, as well as a worker of course. Unfortunately, if we settle NW, there is only one tile in the first nine where we can build a cottage (the FP) - for the others we first need to chop. That would bring the total to 5 techs (IIRC): Pott, Hunting + Archery, Mining + BW. This seems to take too long to get going. Some alternatives:

Safe choice

Maybe we should scout around a bit while researching hunting + archery, then settle a good spot (somewhere along that river with a lot of open grass would do), research pottery while training some archers and a worker. Disadvantage is that we might lose the settler to an early wild animal. Also, maintenance might get higher if we move away from Kyoto.

The next problem is to expand further. We now need to train a settler and probably research to BW. Ideally, we'll get 2 settlers out shortly after each other (using the whip or chop if possible), found the 3rd and 4th town and quickly move the palace. Again, 5 techs needed, but mining and BW can wait a bit.

Riskier choice

Alternatively, we could count on warriors for defense, research up to Pott and BW but skip archery for now, and train a worker for chops and cottages. Chops can go to some warriors and 2 settlers, and in this case we could settle 1 NW.
This probably gets quicker development, but on emperor level starts with standard barbs I have found that archers are a necessity. Maybe Monarch level with raging barbs is easier, I don't know. In any case, a warrior defense is risky and depends a bit on lucky rolls...

I think that all in all scouting around for a few turns while researching, say, Pott, won't hurt. Depending on what we find we can either settle NW and research to BW, or settle somewhere else.

I will concur that not having archers at hand might be to risk it too much. Even if we manage to fog bust enough, warriors will not stand a chance against barbarian axemen. And I don't want to go with a strategy that absolutely requires that we have Copper, which Methos' test runs seem to indicate that the BBG does. If this was a SP game, I might chance it, but for a SGOTM it is much more important that we get to play the full game - we have only one chance!

We will want BW for Slavery, with Kyoto we have a wonder factory just waiting to happen. But I guess we could wait a while longer to realize it, the survival of Osaka is much more important.

So maybe a variation of the Archery gambit then, moving around just a little before settling down, getting Archery around turn 25, then continue on BW. Pottery will be important for our finances, but I just don't see how we could spare the time to build an early worker to make good use of it in the early game. I will try to run a test game or two later today to see if it's feasible.

Short comment on the type of unit. I prefer the archer gambit. That is because the barbs drove me back every time since I didn't manage to get all the land controled. That is not a problem, if we are on a small island, what I don't believe since the map is fractal and hand built. The archers however worked very well. After the initial town defender I tried to position archers on forest hills in the surrounding and the barbarian axemen had no chance to conquer them.
Concerning the third town I only can repeat that all further towns kill our economy totally, as Methos has also stated. So Niklas approach to fast build two settlers and then whip the palace seems the clear way to proceed for me. Finding bronze for Osaka however seems dangerous. The settler could have moved without danger until 3700BC in my games. Anyone saw an earlier animal? The area to be uncovered in this time frame will be enough, if we can move two tiles every time and end turn on hills. After that the warrior must be back to protect the settler. But that's not a 100% assurance. So I would like to settle somewhere in the time from short after 3700BC to archery discoverage. If we can manage to pop gold from a hut we can settle some turns earlier. That is my favourite strategy ATM.

The settler could have moved without danger until 3700BC in my games. Anyone saw an earlier animal?

Post #52 test game #2 3790 BC (turn 7)
Post #53 test game #1 3760 BC (turn 8)

So 2 out of 5 of my games (that I actually kept track of) were pre-3700 BC. The others were between turns 12 and 16. I’m counting 4000 BC as turn 0 by the way.

Notice in TG1 that I met pumas in turn 8 and lions in turn 11. In other words, I wouldn't chance going past turn 10 if possible, unless escorted.

So Niklas approach to fast build two settlers and then whip the palace seems the clear way to proceed for me.

I agree. Niklas’s approach appears to be the best option when concerning building beyond our second city. When we build our third city, it should be followed immediately by the fourth. Followed by a rushed palace.

@Niklas: Have you done much testing on this [pop-rushing the palace]? I’m curious what we’re looking at. Kyoto would still be high maintenance cost, but our other three cities should be reasonable. I’m not very experienced at the slavery civic.

Edit: Question: When the settler pops a hut is it similar to the results given from a scout? In other words, can the settler only pop good stuff from a hut, or good and bad? In my test games I chose not to pop any huts so as not to alter my test games too much.

No, I haven't done any testing with it at all. It costs 240 shields to rush, which means that we cannot rush it right away in any case. We would need a small treasury to eat from while building up to a level where we could rush. If each of the three towns cost ~9 gpt on avg (Osaka will cost a lot more since it will have grown) and Kyoto makes 17 gpt, we're looking at -10 gpt until the palace is moved.

We would need to settle Osaka in a food-rich location to be able to pull this off somewhat efficiently. 240 hammers, with 44 hpp (hammers per pop ;)), we would need to rush 6 pop to pull it off, not really feasible. 5 pop would give us 220 hammers, so it would be good if we could get Osaka to pop 6 before rushing, hence the need for food. Btw, I hope there is no restriction on how many pop you can rush in a turn as there was in Civ3? Otherwise we'd need a really big treasury, and lots of production in Osaka...
One other possibility is that we have workers almost ready with a number of forest chops for the Palace. How much from each chop, 44 in the nearest area with a penalty further out?

The logical result of jumping the palace would be that the maintenance costs of our three mainland towns drop to between 0 and -2 gpt for a total gain of ~20-25 gpt, and that of Kyoto soars to between -10 and -15 gpt depending on size. So the immediate gain will be descent, but more importantly it will give us the possibility to expand even more around our new capitol.

I'll see if I can get a few test games running later tonight. I would like to test both the cut-short Archery Gambit, survival rate of the settler, and effects of pop-rushing. In particular I would like to see how long it will take to BW with this strategy.

Methos is right! Now I also met a lion in 3760BC.
The settler however also can pop a barb from a hut. I have had this several times.

We would need a small treasury to eat from while building up to a level where we could rush.

Very true, when I built my third city my research dropped to 10% at one point. With a fourth city we'll definitely need to have some cash in our treasury. I don't believe we'll be able to maintain four cities for long with Kyoto as our capitol, even with 0% research.

Just played one until the palace jump. I needed three chops and finished the last 85 hammers by 3 rushed pops. Took me 12 turns. I had started the first chop 3 turns before I switched to palace. Have attached the save. However I had made the site an economical powerhouse and not a special pop farm. Don't ask me about the locations of Tokyo and Edo. Just wanted to check the palace jump.
And after the palace something very strange happened. Gandhi just turned up to gift me iron working. Never had had this before! Methos, what did you do with the save?

Methos, what did you do with the save?

:confused: What save are you talking about?

That's your Test Save 1, but I doubt you did something special to it. I notice that MA is quite some ways behind the opponents at this stage in the game, could it be that Gandhi wants to cultivate an ally against the others?

The maintenance is what we suspected, -5 gpt total for the mainland towns and -17 gpt for Kyoto at size 6. Osaka as a commerce center is not at all a bad idea.

Gah, I just realized that all my calculations are off, tech costs are a lot higher than I've calculated with. I just compensated for Epic (x 1.5) but I guess there's a factor for difficulty as well. Hunting is 88 beakers, not the 60 I was calculating with. So the actual modifier is (x 2.2), and the research times are roughly 50% longer than what I've counted. So make that 20 turns for Archery and not 14. :wallbash:

Need to recalculate and test again. :(

:confused: What save are you talking about?

I used your test files for playing. :) Just to be able to compare to your efforts. But asking what you did with the save was only a joke, since I never saw this AI behaviour before. :joke:
AIs sometimes gave me techs when I asked for it, but never showed up just to give me one unasked. So I was quite surprised. That's all.

I've played one test game & re-started a couple of times. I never got to Palace Jump stage, just checking very early tech and survivability of Osaka. I had the best success in exploring with the Settler (covered by the warrior so I didn't get too far) and bee-lining for archery. I founded the city very close to the starting spot because it has good production. For builds I archer spammed. My 1st archer was completing as the 1st barb warrior came into view. At 1300 BC I have 5 archers, the original warrior & just finished a worker. Covering the worker while he builds a cottage on the FP is going to be tough. It will take 2 archers, and probably rotating healthy ones in and out of the city. My biggest error was in Kyoto, I started running citizen specialists rather than working tiles for the gold. As stated by others I ran out of things to build, so I decided to build a couple of workers to ship over to the mainland later. Not a good idea due to the maintenance cost issues.

Tech wise I did better than I thought I would have. I researched Hunting, Archery, Mining, BW, and Pottery.

Strategy from here would be to venture out to get one more city founded, then jump the Palace.

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f68/McLMan/SGOTM-02/Pregame/1300Techtest.jpg

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f68/McLMan/SGOTM-02/Pregame/1300Kyototest.jpg

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f68/McLMan/SGOTM-02/Pregame/1300osakatest.jpg

Alright, I played Test Game 1 up to the palace jump:

134934

134935

I did really really well in this game so far, but I feel I got off to a better start than I had any right to. I had copper one tile from Osaka, which I didn't know when I settled. Still, even without the copper it would have been a great location.

Research-wise I have Hunting, Archery, Mining, BW, Agriculture, Pottery, Writing, Meditation and Priesthood, going on CoL.

I was beaten to Stonehenge by Mansa, who also got the Pyramids. The maintenance reduction from the palace jump was only 4 gpt because of Kyoto being so large, I feel I could have done that better and not growing needlessly when I can't rush anyway.

Well it seems many of us agree to the research of some key techs. Let me summarize:
We start with:

Hunting->Archery!

Then settle Osaka down.

Alternative A: Mysticism. That maybe if we see good additional resources in the 21 tile zone around Osaka. Following Alternative B

Alternative B: Mining -> BW and then Mysticism.

After that probably Pottery or AGRI->AH if we find the appropriate resources in our city radius.
Don’t want to discuss that further, I only want to point out that this limits the resources we can use early on. Other techs we still shall consider when scouting. Finding rice, corn and wheat all one tile away from a center shall make us consider agriculture again IMHO.
Otherwise I think we are limited to a certain sets of resources in the very early phase:

- Elephants
- Deer
- Fur
- Gold
- Silver
- Gems that are not in a jungle
- Copper

EDIT: and of course the sea food we can already work! Not a too bad idea to scout along the coast!

The finding of copper certainly makes a very big difference. But we can just have luck to find it. And we should look for plain hills to settle on if possible to have the additional hammer in the critical phase, what also would be a big boost to throw out the archers. And it seems we should consider Kyoto to stay small for maintenance reduction to –7 to -12gpt after it has built maybe Stonehenge. Don’t think we have a chance at the Oracle. But I have nothing against trying it at least.

I had to get to bed fast last night so I had no time to really comment my game, so here goes:

I had very little problem with barbarians. Much of this I credit to the fact that I was smack in the middle of a dense settling area, with three competitors close by. I had a few archers come at Osaka from the northern desert, but a single archer took care of them. So in hindsight I built far too many units, but as a test case that may have been just as well. In the real game we're going to have 7 competitors, which might just make for even closer borders. That is for good and for worse though, the AIs in the test games are not extra Aggressive (right?), so while close proximity means help with barbies, it can also mean more tension. But if we find ourselves with neighbors close by, I would gamble on slightly fewer archers and instead start the expansion faster.

However, I did play a few more test games where I tried to stay alive longer, and it is just too risky. I would probably not wait longer than 10 turns, which means settling Osaka after Hunting, but well before Archery.

Once more my calculations were off on tech - I forgot the +1 factor! This factor is really going to make quite a difference once Osaka has been settled. Instead of researching at, say, 5 bpt we'll research at 6 bpt, a 20% increase! So while waiting to settle Osaka, I was researching Hunting at 12 bpt instead of 11, almost gaining me a turn (7 x 12 = 84, 88 needed) but certainly gaining me several turns towards Archery.

Another factor that played an even larger role is maintenance. I deliberately walked my settler in the general direction of the capitol, and where I settled my maintenance penalty was "only" -6 gpt at pop 1, compared to -8 gpt when settling the spot, or -9 gpt settling where MA did. In the real game we'll start in a location where the maintenance would be -7 gpt, so by walking in the right direction it would not be the least bit infeasible to bring this down to -6 gpt, provided there's no ocean barrier like in Test Game 2.
This factor is at least as large as the +1 factor, only it doesn't kick in until the second town is settled.

If we want the Stonehenge, we're going to have to go for Mysticism early, like MA says. I would think Mining->BW is more crucial, and we have no chance on Stonehenge without pop rushing anyway, but after them I think Mysticism is the most crucial tech. I waited until after both Agriculture and Pottery, and I was beaten to it. But being beaten to it is not a complete disaster. I had built a bit on it, and when it was built in Mali I got a nice gp boost that I could immediately pump into research. This is even more true for Oracle. I don't think we stand a chance to get it, but the more we can build on it the more our economy is boosted.

I agree that we should keep Kyoto small. It will grow very fast when we anticipate the need for whipping, but until we have a concrete opportunity for it we should avoid growth.

I still can't help but wonder what the catch is with this game. How will everyone survive? I can't imagine many of the other teams doing the kinds of analyses that we do, which team thread post counts also indicates. Are we trying too hard?

I wonder if the staff is laughing at us: ;)

http://img73.imageshack.us/img73/8387/gyathaarzf4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

How will everyone survive?
Survive? I cant imagine anyone getting wiped out early... Have you ever seen an amfibious attack done by barbarians? :evil:

Survive? I cant imagine anyone getting wiped out early... Have you ever seen an amfibious attack done by barbarians? :evil:No, true, survival is not the hard part. But if the exiles don't survive, being stuck on that rock until Astronomy is a fate worth than death. :ack:

Commenting on Niklas order of techs: The order of techs concerning Mining or Mysticism first I think depends a lot on where we finally settle Osaka. With no super food tiles around is not very effective to whip in Osaka. And the first thing worth whipping in Kyoto for me was Stonehenge. The warrior itself also might be whipped but we cannot save a lot by this if nothing else can be build there after. The idea of building wonders in Kyoto for economic reasons I just can only support. It helped a lot in my games when I had lost the race for Stonehenge. We just convert otherwise useless hammers to commerce – good idea. However Mysticism early will probably only really pay off with Stonehenge after the palace jump. Since we are in any case looking for a location for Osaka that also is very good in the inner 9 tiles, we might just postpone also the obelisk to the time when we have secured the surroundings by military. So in that case the Mining->BW route first is better IMHO – especially if we really would find gold. But with the early Mysticism after archery I always came to BW long before Stonehenge finished (12 – 6 turns) and whipped it immediately to never care again for culture and getting additionally a great prophet. Since I went for production in Osaka, I had no chance to whip something earlier, so I didn’t feel that BW came in too late when going at Mysticism first. But with a food rich surrounding of Osaka that will change probably dramatically. However too much whipping in Osaka is not possible since we get that 15 turns +1 unhappiness and can’t work the Osaka region beyond 4 tiles. So I think if we can manage to build the archers by production below 15 turns we would be better off by not whipping them but building them. In my last game however I had an elephant, that already gave me one more happiness, so whipping worked better. OTOH I missed a food rich tile then and so on, so on…. That shows IMHO, that it is only really worth to start these efforts after the first ten turns when we know the surroundings. Since we seem to agree on these first 10 turns (scouting and researching hunting), I would say let us just start with the scouting and have the big discussion on the Osaka location afterwards. I somehow think, that the surroundings will be great. Just because (as also Niklas has articulated) I don’ think the moderators want the teams to die early on to provide some fun for every team. (Mabe we find an embarrassment of riches.)

Moving the settler towards Kyoto is a good strategy saving quite important commerce early on. –6gpt shall be reachable.
Being on the coast however also reduces the number of directions from where barbs can come. In my last test game I had a lot of barbs simply due to being surrounded by barb sources. I haven’t lost a unit to them, but the problem was the permanent danger to the land improvements. I really didn’t like this, cause it meant to attack often with the archer stationed inside Osaka, what always gave worse chances to win. A fish resource in the back of Osaka would be simply immune to barbs, but we cannot reuse the workboat, what we will do with the worker.
I can support the idea of settling after ten-twelve turns, so significantly before archery comes in. In ten turns we shall be able to scout enough land to decide on a starting location. With hut gold from the warrior, send to a different direction we are still fast getting archery. Let’s hope!

BTW, Niklas, do we play 10 or 20 turns each in the initial phase this time?

And nice to see Gyathaar is observing this thread. Only cause I missed the moderators congrats on our win in SGOTM01. Or is our last save still missing?

I wonder if the staff is laughing at us: ;)


They will surely do. But that's it! SGOTM is for fun. They are providing great fun for us. So they really have earned laughing at us. I don't mind being the clown or cabaret artist. Having a laughing and applauding audience is always great for me. And let's be honest this civilisation gaming is something like cabaret for real politics. Prominent German politic magazines like "Der Spiegel" have written long articles about it.
So let's go on with our show for the moderators and lurkers!

EDIT: "Smurky oto" is great for our early capital. Took me a while to understand it, but now I got it :blush: Let's take this name I say! Maybe we can put one additional letter to make it Smurky OTOS, meaning Smurky On The Other Side (of the globe)

With the game finally coming out tonight, I guess it's time for the administrative post. I've dodged any questions so far because I haven't had any good answers, and I wanted to know as much as possible about what we were up against. Well, it won't get any better than this, so here goes. :)

I follow my usual tradition of setting up the initial roster after sign-in order, but anyone who wants up or down has only to say so.
Methos - Starting UP!
Niklas - On Deck!
Marc Aurel - Warming up
dojoboy - Still relaxing
McLMan - taking it easy
zyxy - getting a new computer

With the very special start, the early game is going to be very special. We have discussed a near-cooperational playing of the first turns. If Methos wants to play at a particular time, and states that, anyone who wants to can stay around and comment. I will be around if that time is reasonable for my timeframe. In any case I think we should not rush the first turnset. Possibly playing 5 turns the first night, then waiting for a longer discussion on what to do next.

I think we should go with 20 turns per player for the first revolution of the roster, does anyone see any reason to do otherwise?

In any case I think we should not rush the first turnset. Possibly playing 5 turns the first night, then waiting for a longer discussion on what to do next.

I think we should go with 20 turns per player for the first revolution of the roster, does anyone see any reason to do otherwise?

I agree on starting off playing 5 turns at a time, as the beginning will be the roughest part. I'll play 5 turns tomorrow and post pics so we can discuss how to continue. I'll probably play them in the morning when I get home from work (around 8 AM GMT -5) and than play the next 5 turns tomorrow afternoon/evening when I wake up. Unless I don't get enough responses.

Well it seems many of us agree to the research of some key techs. Let me summarize:
We start with:

Hunting->Archery!

I agree, it seems that we all agree these are the first two techs to research.

Alternative A: Mysticism. That maybe if we see good additional resources in the 21 tile zone around Osaka.

IMO this alternative depends on how much we want Stonehenge. At this point we’ll be researching fairly slowly, so Mysticism will take twenty or more turns ( to be honest, I’m not for sure, just guessing). The benefits of a free obelisk at the start will definitely help, since we won’t have the time to hand build obelisks.

Alternative B: Mining -> BW and then Mysticism.

This depends on how soon we want the Slavery civic. The faster we can get to Slavery the faster we can jump our palace.

I guess it all depends on what our goals are at the beginning. I’d like to have the free obelisks for the quicker expansion, but I’d also like to get our palace jumped fairly quickly too. I’m unsure which I prefer.

What about our first builds? In Kyoto I stuck withe Workboat>Workboat>Warrior>Workboat>Workboat. In Osaka do we want to start with a barracks, followed up by warriors. Or stick with warriors from the get go? Osaka may depend on where we settle.

AIs in the test games are not extra Aggressive (right?),

In the test game they are agressive. I checked the Agressive AI's box at startup.

Yes, we all seem to agree on Hunting + Archery. We most probably won't see Archery within the first 20 turns (unless we come upon some grassland gems :rolleyes: ), so the discussion on what to research after that can wait. I really think we want Stonehenge, so I'm willing to go with Mysticism as the third tech, no use having Slavery if we don't have anything to rush! Sure we could rush the third work boat, but the gain of that is rather small. But as noted several times now, it all depends on what we find.

Build sequence in Kyoto sounds good, not much else we can build there (is there any chance whatsoever that we will get anything off that island before Astronomy?). In Osaka I would build a single warrior, followed by archers. Since we're not settling right away, taking the time to a barracks seems too risky.

According to AlanH, the saves will be released at 4AM GMT, i.e. 11PM Methos-time. Will you be able to grab the save then, play the first moves of the settler and warrior (without ending the turn), and then upload a screenie? Or are you off to work then already?
In any case, I would move the settler SW first. We want the settler to move in the general W-ish direction, towards Kyoto. I don't know if we want the warrior to go W as well for protection. Probably.


*************************:king:******************* ***********

The fact that the test game AIs are aggressive is interesting, I was worried we would see way more early warfare, but if they're not more hostile than that then I wouldn't mind so much settling near them. After all, that just makes the supply lines to the front shorter. :mischief:

According to AlanH, the saves will be released at 4AM GMT, i.e. 11PM Methos-time. Will you be able to grab the save then, play the first moves of the settler and warrior (without ending the turn), and then upload a screenie? Or are you off to work then already?

Nope, I have to be at work at 10:30 PM, so will just miss it. I can play in the morning after I get home from work though.

Edit: Settler SW is understandable. I'm thinking it might be wise to go S-SW with the warrior, to keep him close to our settler as well as towards Kyoto.

Nope, I have to be at work at 10:30 PM, so will just miss it. I can play in the morning after I get home from work though.
No problem. I'll just have to dl it myself then, run it up and sit there drooling until you come around and post a screenie. :p ;)