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The Game
As Peter The Great, Leader of All the Russias, you are charged with achieving a Diplomatic or Space Victory.

This Monarch difficulty game is on a Standard size, Gyathaar-special, crowded map, at Epic speed, against 17 rivals. All victory conditions are enabled, but the laurels for this contest will be awarded to the teams who achieve the fastest Diplomatic or Space victory.

Version
Your team will play this map in Civilization IV version 1.61, using the standard HoF Mod for Windows version 1.61. This is currently HOF_Mod-1.61.008 (http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/mods/HOF-1.61.008.exe), but we shall use the latest version of the mod as at the start date for the game.

Your start file 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 December 1st.

Here's the starting position - click the image below to see a larger version.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/sgotm3_start_small.jpg (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/sgotm3_start_large.jpg)

Map Parameters
Playable Leader/Civ - Peter of Russia
Rivals - all the other 17 civs in version 1.61
World size - Standard
Difficulty - Monarch
Landform - Archipelago, low sea level, tropical
Game Speed - Epic
AI Aggression - Aggressive
Barbarians - Standard
Permanent Alliances Enabled
No City Razing

Notes

Please visit the Civ4 SGOTM reference thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=168439) to check out the rules and procedures to ensure that you are adequately prepared for this game.

BOTH Civilization IV v1.61 and Warlords v.2.08 are supported for this SGOTM. No other versions can be used, and you will have to stick with your chosen version throughout the game.

Teams will compete for four awards for each version of the game - the Gold, Silver and Bronze Laurels for the fastest finishes, and the Wooden Spoons for the lowest scoring finisher.

All teams must play the sponsored variant - awards will be given to teams who achieve Diplomatic or Space victories in the least turns.

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.


Remember, Rule Number 11: Have Fun. :)

Checking in to the SGOTM3 champions thread! :trophy:

Also checking in :) . Im away this weekend but wil be back sunday evening. I think that diplomacy and tech trade will be very important factors in this SGOTM with many opponents. And wonders and religions will be very hard to get. Talk to you later...

Checking in :scan:

Checking in also.

This should be fun, a nice change from warmongering.

I'll start the ball rolling with some initial discussion.

It looks to me like the screenshot may very well be showing us all of our starting island. If that's true it looks like we could fit at most 2 cities on the island without crowding things. That small of a starting landmass might make things interesting since low sea levels should mean a couple of decent sized islands out there which could give the AI a nice headstart.

I would think our first move should be to move the scout north onto the hill to confirm there is not more land that direction.

Coming up for air and checking in. I'll have lots of time soon!

This should be fun, a nice change from warmongering.

Actually, I think there will be war enough. I've never been on a map so crowded (17 civs on a standard map??!!) but when leaders like Napoleon or Tokugawa get pinched for space they just declare war on you - I've had both make suicidal war declarations on me for no other reason that I could see other than the fact that I was closing them in. In this one we have aggressive AI's to boot, so I think there will be war enough to keep the warmongers happy!

Winning by diplomatic may be quite a challenge under those circumstances, unless someone goes for a back door diplomatic win cultivating one friend, and taking over half the world...

Also checking in :) . Im away this weekend but wil be back sunday evening. I think that diplomacy and tech trade will be very important factors in this SGOTM with many opponents. And wonders and religions will be very hard to get. Talk to you later...

Yes, I think we will have to watch like hawks for tech trading oppertunities. With 16 AI's once alphabet gets around there will be plenty of techs whizzing back and forth between them making the tech pace fairly fast.

Meeting them all may be a challenge until we get optics and build caravels too since with aggressive AI's, open border agreements may be more fragile not allowing galleys or fishing boats to pass through to meet other civs.

Diplomacy will indeed need to be done carefully. With so many civs and lack of space there will be war, and we don't want too many onto us at once!

It looks to me like the screenshot may very well be showing us all of our starting island. If that's true it looks like we could fit at most 2 cities on the island without crowding things. That small of a starting landmass might make things interesting since low sea levels should mean a couple of decent sized islands out there which could give the AI a nice headstart.

I would think our first move should be to move the scout north onto the hill to confirm there is not more land that direction.

It's impossible to be sure from the screenshot whether we see all our starting island, but I agree that moving the scout to the hill to the north is a good way to find out.

Where the settler is is certianly a nice spot to put a city, but if the island is not much (if any bigger than what we see we might want to place a city so as to get two cities best placed on the one island?

Here's some ideas I came up with in the last few days:

Initial thoughts:

Diplomatic victory can be achieved a lot sooner than Space Race. So we will need to get to Mass Media and build the UN. And we will probably need to have several allies that are friendly with us by the time we get the UN. The Aggressive AI setting will make this a bit harder than normal. It’s hard to get more than a few friendly allies so a good bit of conquering will probably still be necessary.

Peter is Philosophical and Expansive. These traits have some nice synergies. The extra three health and cheap granaries and harbors mean it is easy to get some big cities that can support a lot of specialists. The 100% bonus GPPs that specialists generate should allow us to lightbulb a lot of techs on the way to Mass Media. Building farms seems to be favored over building cottages. The secondary benefit of having big population cities will come at the end when we are voting for ourselves at the UN. More population = more votes. If we are running a specialist economy, the Pyramids would be really nice for the Representation benefit.

Starting screenshot:

Settling in place would have some very nice food potential and would make our capital a nice GP farm. In the longer term, settling in place would make for a pretty poor hammer city if we chop the forests for a wonder, although we can do some big whips there with a big population. Settling in place would waste a flood plain. Settling one tile north would give us one hill in the fat cross for a bit more production and would avoid wasting the flood plain. But settling one north would waste a forest that we could have chopped and would only give us one clam in the fat cross, which would mean less food in the capital. We should be able to get another city to use the other clam eventually (by settling or conquest), but we can take advantage of both clams sooner if we have them in the capital’s fat cross. Starting with two workboats would give us a lot of early food and make pumping out workers and settlers happen faster. A third option would be to leave both clams for a second city if our scout finds another good spot to the northeast. There is a plains hill 3 NE of the settler that would give an extra hammer for settling on top. Right now, I’m leaning toward settling in place for the big food.

Early techs:

Fishing seems a good choice for the first tech for getting two workboats on the clams and a couple more for exploration. We can prioritize Sailing according to what our scouting workboats find on nearby islands. Bronze working is another tech that would be useful early (especially for whipping). Archipelago (with low seas) is a map that is good for meeting a lot of other civs, so Writing and Alphabet should be very useful. Early religions are probably impossible with 5 civs starting with Mysticism. For diplomatic purposes, we might want to avoid adopting a religion until we see who we want to be friends with. Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, and Archery don’t appear to be much use early. Barbs should be pretty rare on Archipelago with 18 civs. If we don’t have copper within reach, we could go toward Iron Working.

Wonders:

The Pyramids would be a great wonder to get for a specialist economy. But without stone, they may be quite hard to get. There could be anywhere between 1 and 5 industrious civs on the board. We might have to capture them rather than build them ourselves. The Oracle is possible to build by chopping the forests, even without marble, and could be good for Metal Casting or Code of Laws. The Great Library would be good choice with our Philosophical trait (minimum of 16 GPPs for a GS) and should be easy to get since the AI is always slow to Alphabet and Literature.

War and Diplomacy:

Diplomatic victory can be achieved the undiplomatic way by conquering and reaching 60% of the world’s population. But it might also be nice to build up a few close friends whose vote we will be able to count on if we build the UN before having 60% population ourselves. One strategy that worked well in my practice game was to not found any religions and wait until a couple to spread to my cities. Having made contact with almost all 17 civs, I could see that a plurality of the other civs were Hindu, so I adopted Hinduism, and started attacking my neighbors who weren’t Hindu. I rejected any trade offers from civs outside of the Hindu bloc and gave in to demands for resources and techs from the Hindu civs. I was getting positive diplo points for “years of peace”, “trade relations”, “giving help”, “same faith”, “sharing techs”, “civics” and “mutual military struggle”, and was well on my way to having friendly relations with 4-5 civs. The other civs hated me, but that just told me whom to attack. It’s better to have a few good friends than to try to keep everyone happy. Your weaker friends can be bribed to help you in wars. Any population they capture will ultimately be a vote for your victory.

The new diplomacy advisor screen in the HOF mod makes it easy to see who likes whom. I recently realized from reading the forums that when a civ pops up in between turns and asks you for a trade or makes a request/demand, it is possible to bring up the diplomacy advisor screen by hitting F4 (I think), and to think about the consequences of accepting the deal. This should allow us to choose wisely which trades/requests/demands to accept and which to reject. If your friend asks you to stop trading with someone else who is cautious toward you, it makes sense to agree.

Tech path:

To win by diplomacy, we need Mass Media. One path (in reverse order) to the required techs for Mass Media is Radio, Electricity, Physics, Scientific Method, Astronomy, Printing Press, Optics, Calendar, Machinery, Paper, Civil Service, Code of Laws, Mathematics, Compass, Metal Casting, Iron Working, Writing, Preisthood, Pottery, Bronze Working, Sailing, Polytheism, Mining, Mysticism, Fishing, Wheel. The image below shows this beeline.

http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/7628/massmediabeelinete0.th.jpg (http://img120.imageshack.us/my.php?image=massmediabeelinete0.jpg)

A great person lightbulbing plan might go something like:

Avoid Meditation and Civil Service. Research/trade early prereqs Wheel through Iron Working, Compass, Mathematics, Calendar, and CoL.
Metal Casting (1 engineer)
Optics (1 scientist)
Machinery (1 engineer or 1 scientist)
Astronomy (2 scientists)
Research/trade Civil Service, Paper, Printing Press. Other techs like Meditation, Philosophy, etc are now permissible.
Scientific Method (2 scientists +)
Physics (4 scientists)

Other optional tech goals would be Construction -> Engineering -> Gunpowder -> Chemistry -> Biology for cats, pikemen, grenadiers and the population growth from Biology; Meditation -> Philosophy -> Education -> Liberalism for using the Pacifism civic and for a free tech from Liberalism. Philosophy, Education, and Chemistry are all pretty high on the Great Scientist's tech preference, and Engineering is high on the Great Engineer's tech preference.

It's impossible to be sure from the screenshot whether we see all our starting island, but I agree that moving the scout to the hill to the north is a good way to find out.

Where the settler is is certianly a nice spot to put a city, but if the island is not much (if any bigger than what we see we might want to place a city so as to get two cities best placed on the one island?

How about moving to the hill to the ENE? That could be a good place to found another city if we have one where the settler is now - only two tiles of overlap.

Edit: I am suggesting moving the scout ENE, not the settler.

Yes, I think we will have to watch like hawks for tech trading oppertunities. With 16 AI's once alphabet gets around there will be plenty of techs whizzing back and forth between them making the tech pace fairly fast.

Meeting them all may be a challenge until we get optics and build caravels too since with aggressive AI's, open border agreements may be more fragile not allowing galleys or fishing boats to pass through to meet other civs.

We have to be careful about whom we trade techs with. If we want to make a group of friends that will vote for us later, we might not want to trade techs with their enemies. That goes for trading resources and maps too. I think we can meet most civs and even get circumnavigation with fishing boats if we keep looking for different paths. Most civs will grant open borders with a +1 diplo rating, except maybe Tokugawa. If we dont trade anything early, dont adopt an early religion, and dont refuse anyone demanding a resource (we can cancel the deal in 10 or 15 turns), we cant earn any negative diplo points, so the "years of peace" should keep borders mostly open. Having at least two workboats out exploring is going to be important early.

Diplomacy will indeed need to be done carefully. With so many civs and lack of space there will be war, and we don't want too many onto us at once!

If we can get a group of 3-5 friends, and attack our nearby enemies, I think we will be ok. This game will definitely have its share of warmongering. There is no way to keep enough civs friendly to get the majority of them to vote for you in the UN. Those negatives for "trading with our worst enemies" and "refusing to help us" are diplo killers. So I think we want to pick out our early victims after we decide who our friends are going to be. It would be really nice to have copper or iron by that time.

Just checking in. No time to read now, but I'll catch up soon.

OK - we're all checked in. Is good!

Some interesting thoughts ShannonCT.

Certainly we can get diplomatic long before space race. I think we should aim at diplomatic and use space race as a "plan B" if diplomatic all goes wrong. The challenge with diplomatic will be the crowded map. There will be war. Some civs will hate us. These are certainties I think. Your strategy of getting a core of good friends is a good one. We need 60% of the vote for a diplomatic win, so we and our friends need 60+% of the world's population.

The suggestion to use religion is a good one. Let's make sure we have an army too though! :)

Thanks for the work on the research tree. We should beeline at Mass Media, and it's always really handy to know what techs to avoid so we can lightbulb as much of the way as possible.

Regarding the starting position, I think losing a flood plain is not such a problem. Settling in place looks fairly good because of all the food it has not counting the flood plain the settler is on. That will make excellent whipping, and a good settler and worker building location.

My first thought with tech was to go with sailing a bit earlier that you suggest, but on second thought we don't need it earlier if we can use fishing boats as exploration vessels.

With 17 civs we will no doubt have the "diffiult" leaders on the map - ones like Tokugawa, Monty and Napoleon who tend to declare war at the drop of a hat, though only Tokugawa is difficult to get really freindly with if you really try. We'll also have the religious fanatics to either be our best freinds or worst enemies depending on religion... :)

Wonders:

The Pyramids would be a great wonder to get for a specialist economy. But without stone, they may be quite hard to get. There could be anywhere between 1 and 5 industrious civs on the board. We might have to capture them rather than build them ourselves. The Oracle is possible to build by chopping the forests, even without marble, and could be good for Metal Casting or Code of Laws. The Great Library would be good choice with our Philosophical trait (minimum of 16 GPPs for a GS) and should be easy to get since the AI is always slow to Alphabet and Literature.

Good. We should be very careful where we build wonders so that we get the right GP points in the right city. It's best to specialise GP points so that we can really control what kind of GP we get in each place.

If we find stone we should seriously think about hooking it up to build the pyramids. If not, then I think we shouldn't try for the pyramids. Waiting to see who builds it and trying to capture them is rather like roulette, but it's the best we'll be able to do without stone I think

We have to be careful about whom we trade techs with. If we want to make a group of friends that will vote for us later, we might not want to trade techs with their enemies. That goes for trading resources and maps too. I think we can meet most civs and even get circumnavigation with fishing boats if we keep looking for different paths. Most civs will grant open borders with a +1 diplo rating, except maybe Tokugawa. If we dont trade anything early, dont adopt an early religion, and dont refuse anyone demanding a resource (we can cancel the deal in 10 or 15 turns), we cant earn any negative diplo points, so the "years of peace" should keep borders mostly open. Having at least two workboats out exploring is going to be important early.


If we can get a group of 3-5 friends, and attack our nearby enemies, I think we will be ok. This game will definitely have its share of warmongering. There is no way to keep enough civs friendly to get the majority of them to vote for you in the UN. Those negatives for "trading with our worst enemies" and "refusing to help us" are diplo killers. So I think we want to pick out our early victims after we decide who our friends are going to be. It would be really nice to have copper or iron by that time.

What about when we first get alphabet? I like to be first to alphabet and hold it as a monopoly for a while and trade around with civs who have what I want. I've never done this with diplo win in mind though. Those negatives for "trading with our worst enemies" last forever don't they? Seems like you have to check the "glance" page of the foreign advisor before every tech trade? Does that mean we have to decide who our friends are by the time we get alphabet? That's tough. Several religions will yet to be founded. If hinduism or buddhism spread quickly early this won't be such a problem because we can put ourselves in one of those blocs, but if they don't and confucianism becomes widespread (which it sometimes does) then decisions made at the time we get alphabet may be regretted later! It's a difficult problem I think.

Edit: Actually, we can help prevent the wide spread of cunfucianism by being first to CoL and founding it ourselves and not building any confucian missionaries.... :)

Good. We should be very careful where we build wonders so that we get the right GP points in the right city. It's best to specialise GP points so that we can really control what kind of GP we get in each place.

If we find stone we should seriously think about hooking it up to build the pyramids. If not, then I think we shouldn't try for the pyramids. Waiting to see who builds it and trying to capture them is rather like roulette, but it's the best we'll be able to do without stone I think

Well, I think we will want mostly scientists and engineers. I think we'll be getting a lot of Great Scientists when we start running scientists in our GP farms under Caste System. With a philosophical Peter and focusing on getting big cities, we should be getting so many GPs that it wont be a big problem if we get an unwanted Prophet or Artist.

We might also consider using a GS for lightbulbing Philosophy, unlike SGOTM2, where we avoided Meditation to use our GSs for Optics and Astro. Given that we need to get further along the tech tree, using Pacifism to increase our GS output is probably better than avoiding Philosophy. We just need to avoid Civil Service and Theology long enough to use 2 GSs for Astro (CS and Theo open up Paper and Education for the GS).

Agreed about not going for Pyramids without stone. It would stunt expansion too much. If we can find stone, we can settle our second to hook it. Otherwise, we can watch for the "Pyramids built in..." message and check the Top 5 Cities/Wonders screen to see if we know the owner. That might influence our decision about which group we want to be friends with and whom we want to attack.

What about when we first get alphabet? I like to be first to alphabet and hold it as a monopoly for a while and trade around with civs who have what I want. I've never done this with diplo win in mind though. Those negatives for "trading with our worst enemies" last forever don't they? Seems like you have to check the "glance" page of the foreign advisor before every tech trade? Does that mean we have to decide who our friends are by the time we get alphabet? That's tough. Several religions will yet to be founded. If hinduism or buddhism spread quickly early this won't be such a problem because we can put ourselves in one of those blocs, but if they don't and confucianism becomes widespread (which it sometimes does) then decisions made at the time we get alphabet may be regretted later! It's a difficult problem I think.

Edit: Actually, we can help prevent the wide spread of cunfucianism by being first to CoL and founding it ourselves and not building any confucian missionaries.... :)

I'm not sure exactly how the negative diplo points work with tech trading. I'll have to test it. I suspect that if you trade techs with a civ that another civ is currently annoyed or furious with, you get the diplo hit, but the civs that are cautious or pleased wont mind. Since tech trading is a one time deal, I hope that it wont give a diplo hit with a civ that was ok with the trading partner at the time but later becomes annoyed. I guess resource trading is more of a diplo risk because it is ongoing trade.

Edit: Testing confirms my suspicions. Diplo hits occur with civs that are annoyed/furious with your trading partner. Early tech trading with Alpha is a good idea because most civs dont even know each other yet and haven't had enough time to get annoyed with each other. Having several workboats scouting early increases the chances of having more civs that we can trade techs with without taking diplo hits.

CoL would be a good tech to take with Oracle for the reason you mention and for Caste System. We could also get Taoism if we use a GS for Philosophy.

I think we need to be very focused and selective regarding wonders given the fierce competition with 17 opponents. Let me give an example. Let's say that for a particular wonder there is a probability of 20% that a given civ will beat you to that wonder. In a normal game with 6 opponents that means you will get that wonder with a probability of (1-0.2)^6=26%. With 17 opponents the probability of getting the wonder is (1-0.2)^17=2%. Thats why I think we need to select only a few wonders we want to build and then get the required techs very fast. We also need a good production city and since our capital really sucks when it comes to production we should plan for building wonders in our second and maybe third city. I think this rules out any chance of getting the Pyramids by building them ourselves. I would rather focus on The Great Library, The Oracle and The Colossus (almost all of our cities will be coastal) but maybe only one or two of them. Anyway - why build wonders if you can capture them :ar15:.

If we dont have stone, the probability of getting the Pyramids is zero. There are going to be 8-9 stone on this map, and if we dont have it, someone else surely will. If we settle in place, we will have five forests in our fat cross, which could be chopped for 150 hammers pre-math. One more forest outside the fat cross is worth 20 hammers pre-math. Those 170 hammers would get us most of the 225 needed for Oracle, but nowhere near the 675 needed for Pyramids. If we do have stone though, those 170 hammers become 340. If we prechop the forests but then wait for Math, 340 becomes 510. And when the capital reaches a population of 6, we could whip three people for 132 hammers (44*3, 50% penalty for whipping wonder, but 100% bonus for stone). So building the Mids ourselves is very possible if and only if we have stone.

If the scout doesn't find stone on our starting island, I think we should try for Oracle. So we will need to go toward Mysticism-Polytheism/Meditation-Preisthood and then get Pottery and maybe Writing so we can take Metal Casting or CoL with the Oracle. The Mids will be built by someone else and we can only hope that it is someone close enough for us to conquer early.

Another interesting option, sometimes refered to as the "Stone Thrower Gambit", is that if we do find stone, we hook it, but then gift it to a nearby industrious civ and let them build the Mids for us while we build units to capture it. This saves our forests for something like the Oracle or Great Library and doesn't tie down our best city.

There is a plains hill 3 NE of the settler that would give an extra hammer for settling on top. Right now, I’m leaning toward settling in place for the big food.

I think that hill is a forested grassland hill rather than a plains hill.

Also, while talking about wonders...two wonders I love on island maps are the Collosus (however you spell it) and the Great Lighthouse.

I think that hill is a forested grassland hill rather than a plains hill.

Also, while talking about wonders...two wonders I love on island maps are the Collosus (however you spell it) and the Great Lighthouse.

I still think the tile 3 NE of the settler is a forested plains hill. It's showing 3 hammers in the screenshot. If we move the scout to that hill, we might find a good place for our capital or second city. Although, I'm not sure if it's a good idea to waste a forest by settling on top. I guess the first player could save after moving the scout and consult with the team if he finds something that might be better than the two clams. (BTW - what's the playing order?).

Colossus and Great Lighthouse are a couple fairly cheap wonders that would be good money makers. I guess it will depend on how many forests we can chop. I like the Great Lighthouse over the Colossus. Colossus will be obsolete with Astronomy, which we should get pretty early. And Colossus is only good if you are working a lot of water tiles, which are food neutral. With philosophical Peter, I think it's better to work only tiles with three or more food/hammers and use excess population for specialists.

With philosophical Peter, I think it's better to work only tiles with three or more food/hammers and use excess population for specialists.

I think only some of our cities will focus on specialists to get GPP. Normally it doesn't give you many extra GP's to have many mediocre GPP cities - see:

GPP Distribution (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/gp_focusdist.php)

Hi Guys,

Diplomacy is good with me. Never got it before other than by the sword, but it'll be fun.

Interesting reading the threads so far. I particularly like the "Stone-thrower gambit" - that sounds pure evil.

I've been playing these types of maps a fair bit recently. It's going to be very crowded isn't it? Even with the low sea levels I'd be surprised if most civs have enough space for more than about 4 cities. With the low production we always get on this type of map too I think we need to keep an eye on how much we chop. I agree that Radiopill should have a good chance to use his whip though.

As usual, I can't really fault ShannonCT's analysis for how to get to Mass Media. Few wonders and lots of scientists sounds good to me, and if we start well there's no reason that shouldn't win us things. I'm happy with settling in place too; it's not perfect, but it doesn't look like there is much better out there.

The start is the key though. I think we'll determine if we win or lose in the first 150 turns. Fast expansion followed by early war would certainly be how I'd look to play this. If we expand as fast as we can, and try and limit a couple of neighbours expansion, then we should be able to take them out. With low production they'll have small armies; plus we won't have met most civs and so can't upset them diplomatically by declaring war on others. Those that have met our victims probably won't have had time to form friendships, especially with them all having aggressive AI.
We should note as well that the aggressive AI may limit the number of Open Border agreements that can be set up early.

Anyhow, I guess we should nominate a captain. Based on the amount of analysis done, quantity and quality of posts and an unnerving ability to respond at all times of day and night, ShannonCT would you be up for it?

Sure, if a city has 1 or fewer bonus food tiles, it's never going to be able to support enough specialists to pop a GP in the mid/late game. Those cities would be better to focus on production and on commerce from water tiles or cottages.

OK, a question about something that will come up fairly ealry in the game. If we settle our settler in place, we will have three river tiles that could be farmed or cottaged. Which is better?

In general, farming a grassland or floodplain allows you to support half of a specialist (happiness cap permitting) and foregoes the possiblity of having a cottage there. Half of a specialist (let's say a scientist) gives 1.5 beakers, times any modifiers, plus 3 GPPs. Those 3 GPPs are equivalent to 1/50 of the first GP, 1/100 of the second GP, 1/150 of the thrid GP and so on. With a GS able to generate a max of about 2250 beakers for a tech, 3 GPPs are worth up to 45 beakers for the first GP, 22.5 for the second, 15 for the third, and so on.

Cottaging a grassland or floodplain means you wont be increasing your ability to support specialists but will be getting an extra 1 GPT right away, 2 GPT in ten turns, 3 GPT in thirty turns, and 4 GPT in seventy turns, times any modifiers. What's more, working 2 cottages instead of 1 farm and 1 specialist gives 1 extra food for population growth and gives you two tiles that are generating GPT instead of one specialist generating beakers and GPPs. And for our capital, the Bureaucracy benefit applies to gold from cottages but not gold/beakers from specialists.

The other issue is that we want to max out the population of our cities by the time we finish the UN, because population=votes. Maybe a good mixed approach would be to cottage the two river grassland tiles (after chopping) and farm the flood plain. That will give us a 4-food tile to work when we want fast pop growth or extra specilist support and two high commerce tiles when we can't hire any more specialists or want more steady pop growth. That would still leave a path to start farming all of the other tiles around the capital when we get Bureaucracy, so that we would be ready to jack up its population when Mass Media was finished and the UN was being built.

I've been playing these types of maps a fair bit recently. It's going to be very crowded isn't it? Even with the low sea levels I'd be surprised if most civs have enough space for more than about 4 cities. With the low production we always get on this type of map too I think we need to keep an eye on how much we chop. I agree that Radiopill should have a good chance to use his whip though.

I agree that the whip will be important in outproducing the AIs that we are attacking. And I think we need to make the most of every forest and hill, which I guess means not settling on a hill when there is a worker who could mine it. Whether to chop a forest or keep and work it will probably depend on the alternative uses of the city's population.

The start is the key though. I think we'll determine if we win or lose in the first 150 turns. Fast expansion followed by early war would certainly be how I'd look to play this. If we expand as fast as we can, and try and limit a couple of neighbours expansion, then we should be able to take them out. With low production they'll have small armies; plus we won't have met most civs and so can't upset them diplomatically by declaring war on others. Those that have met our victims probably won't have had time to form friendships, especially with them all having aggressive AI.
We should note as well that the aggressive AI may limit the number of Open Border agreements that can be set up early.

If we are sharing our island with 1 or more other civs, then it will be a real race for the best locations, and maybe a good chance to steal a settler or worker. If we are alone on a small island, it's going to be a bit more complicated, since we will need to scout other empty islands and build galleys to transport settlers and units. It would be nice to get three extra workboats early, two to go for circumnavigation, and one for exploring the nearby islands so we can plan our early expansion/conquest better. Either way, chopping and whipping will give us the edge for producing more settlers, workers, and units than our rivals.

In my practice games, open borders aren't too hard to get before you start getting negative diplo modifiers. The only AI that consistently refuses open borders upon initial meeting is Tokugawa.

Anyhow, I guess we should nominate a captain. Based on the amount of analysis done, quantity and quality of posts and an unnerving ability to respond at all times of day and night, ShannonCT would you be up for it?

:mischief: I guess being unmarried, childless, and self-employed has its privelages. I am willing to be captain or to defer to Mad Professor.

If we are sharing our island with 1 or more other civs, then it will be a real race for the best locations, and maybe a good chance to steal a settler or worker. If we are alone on a small island, it's going to be a bit more complicated, since we will need to scout other empty islands and build galleys to transport settlers and units. It would be nice to get three extra workboats early, two to go for circumnavigation, and one for exploring the nearby islands so we can plan our early expansion/conquest better. Either way, chopping and whipping will give us the edge for producing more settlers, workers, and units than our rivals.


Eeeh - I hope there's no-one on our island - that would be tough. I meant more that the race to the other islands around us will be crucial - half of them will be occupied, half of them won't, and if we can limit a couple of our neighbours ability to settle on these islands then they'll be ripe for destroying.

I'm not sure about prioritising the circumnavigation - the extra movement would be nice, but we'll meet enough other civs early anyhow. I think galleys and settlers early will be important; once we've settled we can think about sending the galleys off.

I'm not sure about prioritising the circumnavigation - the extra movement would be nice, but we'll meet enough other civs early anyhow. I think galleys and settlers early will be important; once we've settled we can think about sending the galleys off.

Workboats are just as good for exploring as galleys and a good bit cheaper. I would put a pretty high priority on early exploration on this map because 1) circumnavigation is usually possible pre-Optics on these settings and 2) the more civs we meet early, the more tech trading we can do with civs that are not annoyed with others. Galleys I would keep near home for settling other islands and delivering troops to attack neighbors.

Workboats are just as good for exploring as galleys and a good bit cheaper. I would put a pretty high priority on early exploration on this map because 1) circumnavigation is usually possible pre-Optics on these settings and 2) the more civs we meet early, the more tech trading we can do with civs that are not annoyed with others. Galleys I would keep near home for settling other islands and delivering troops to attack neighbors.

Yep, but my point is we'll need to settle the islands first and so we'll need galleys for that. I guess it depends a bit on who we've got for neighbours and just how close they are. In the current game I've been playing I've barely explored at all, yet have met 16 other civs - they came and found me. Most of them came pretty early too.

I guess my concern is that our starting island is too small for us, and that we need to be settling the islands. But that's just my opinion, it's a succession game so I guess everyone's going to work towards the same goal slightly differently.

BTW: Do we need to draw a roster up? I did wonder if it was worth us delaying our start and trying a few opening gambits on an identical starting screenshot to see what works best. What does everyone else think?

Yep, but my point is we'll need to settle the islands first and so we'll need galleys for that. I guess it depends a bit on who we've got for neighbours and just how close they are. In the current game I've been playing I've barely explored at all, yet have met 16 other civs - they came and found me. Most of them came pretty early too.

I agree that we want to get several cities up and running quickly. If we are on a larger island with 1 or more other civs, fast expansion will be more important, especially to beat the AI to copper and other resources. If we are on a large-ish island by ourselves, fast expansion is a little less important and we can place more emphasis on building the Oracle or Pyramids. If we are on a small island (enough for 2 cities) by ourselves, fast expansion to neighboring islands is probably more important than building a wonder. It's hard to tell which of those three scenarios we're looking at.

I guess my concern is that our starting island is too small for us, and that we need to be settling the islands.

Our starting island is certainly too small for what we want to accomplish. Unless we resigned ourselves to a Space Race (and no laurels), we're going to need a whole lot more land and population than what we could fit on a few islands. I think you're right that we need to be focused early on getting several food/hammer rich cities that we can use to start dominating our neighbors. In SGOTM2, the only tech we really had to have was Astronomy. In this game, we need Astro plus Printing Press, Scientific Method, Physics, Electricity, Radio, and Mass Media. Getting those last few take a long time without a lot of cities with a lot of specialists and/or cottages.

I don't think we have to worry about expanding too quickly in this game. In the early/mid game, we can sustain our teching with specialists, great people, and tech trading. Lightbulbing techs like Philosophy and Machinery will give us some big ticket items to trade around for the techs we skipped. In my practice games, by the time I had met nearly all of the other civs, the other civs were still missing a lot of contacts and most didn't have Alphabet.

BTW: Do we need to draw a roster up?

Captain Mad Professor? What say you?

I did wonder if it was worth us delaying our start and trying a few opening gambits on an identical starting screenshot to see what works best. What does everyone else think?

I have tried a couple openings:

1) Start research with Fishing and then Bronze Working. Start building a warrior, but switch to workboat when fishing comes in on turn 8. Finish workboat and whip a second one after BW comes in. Finish warrior and grow to size 2. Build a worker and settler (or vice versa). Tech toward Wheel, Pottery, Myst, Meditation, Preisthood. Worker prechops 5 forests. Build workboat for exploring and start Oracle when Preisthood comes in. Research Writing. Chop forests and whip the rest of the Oracle. Can choose Metal Casting, CoL, or Alphabet as free tech. Second city builds warrior and another exploratory workboat. In this opening, we get the Oracle and a valuable tech like MC, but the second city is rather slow. But if we are alone on a decent sized island, we can afford to expand a little more slowly.

2) Start with BW and then Fishing. Start building a worker and finish it. Chop three forests to build a settler. Not enough forests left to build the Oracle in the capital. Second city can build Oracle if it has at least 4 forests in its initial radius, preferably 5. If Oracle is feasible, follow same tech path as in (1). If Oracle is not feasible, skip Mysticism-Meditation-Preisthood and get Writing through Animal Husbandry. Build several workboats in capital and grow it to size 6. Whip a library and hire two scientists when it comes back to size 5. Build another settler in second city and keep expanding. With this openeing, we would get our second city around 30 turns earlier but would have a hard time getting Oracle (or Pyramids). And if the capital doesn't build the Oracle, it can get a library and two specilists sooner. This opening would be a strong one if we had competition on our island, or if we only had room on our island for two cities.

Some thoughts on early GP strategy. The usual "sling shot" AH - Writing - Mysti - Poly - Priesthood - Chop Oracle and select: CoL - use Great Prophet to LB CS. A strong openening. Early research of Writing opens up for Scientists allthough we have to wait until the Prophet is born. We also found Confusianism. An alternative strategy: Fishing - Sailing (build lighthouse) - Masonry (Build/chop Great Lighthouse) - Bronze Working - Use Great Merchant to LB Metal Casting. This strategy doesn't give as many beakers in the short run but it has some nice synergies with the map type that makes naval technologies important. If we have copper available we migth even be able to snatch the Colossus as well because we have taken the fast road to MC. The lighthouse gives 2 extra trade routes and combined with early exploration it might allow us to get some very valuable foreign trade routes.
Unfortunately we can't do both since the first strategy requires that we don't research Masonry.

Right now I'm leaning towards the first strategy if its feasible. The risk is that we are too late because we may want to research Fishing and Bronze Working first (to get workboats and slavery) before we take the research path
outlined above.

On a crowded map early war is probably inevitable so Iron Working and Construction should also be high on our list of preferred techs. If we grow big early (e.g. first a war fougth with axes and swords and then a war using maces) we might be able to skip some of the later military techs like Military Tradition and Chemistry in order to save time and get to Mass Media faster. Btw. if we research Drama and Music at some point Great Artists can be used to LB Mass Media.

I agree with ShannonCT's idea of building a coalition based on common religion. We shouldn't forget though, that we need the second strongest civilization (In terms of population) to be an enemy of our coalition in order to be sure that we get the vote of our friends when the UN is built. Worst case would be that our opponent in the UN elections is part of our own religious block.

Regarding fast expansion versus fast exploration I'm leaning towards fast exploration. The advantages of knowing all opponents early is that we get many tech trading options, techs that are known to many other known civs become cheaper to research and when the Pyramids are built we will know where to strike! Capturing the Pyramids is really important but we can only do this if we know where they are.

Btw it looks like Smurkz won't beat our time in SGOTM2. They are currently at 1700 AD and they still have to capture 12 Chinese cities. I doubt that they can do that in 4 turns... They will probably be out for revenge in SGOTM3. Let's see if we can disappoint them and maybe even challenge CFR-V.

Some thoughts on early GP strategy. The usual "sling shot" AH - Writing - Mysti - Poly - Priesthood - Chop Oracle and select: CoL - use Great Prophet to LB CS. A strong openening. Early research of Writing opens up for Scientists allthough we have to wait until the Prophet is born. We also found Confusianism. An alternative strategy: Fishing - Sailing (build lighthouse) - Masonry (Build/chop Great Lighthouse) - Bronze Working - Use Great Merchant to LB Metal Casting. This strategy doesn't give as many beakers in the short run but it has some nice synergies with the map type that makes naval technologies important. If we have copper available we migth even be able to snatch the Colossus as well because we have taken the fast road to MC. The lighthouse gives 2 extra trade routes and combined with early exploration it might allow us to get some very valuable foreign trade routes.
Unfortunately we can't do both since the first strategy requires that we don't research Masonry.

Right now I'm leaning towards the first strategy if its feasible. The risk is that we are too late because we may want to research Fishing and Bronze Working first (to get workboats and slavery) before we take the research path
outlined above.

I agree that the Oracle path is better. The Oracle is a one and done wonder that will get us a big tech that will sustain our early trading. The Great Lighthouse will be pretty strong later in the game, but we can still capture it and get its benefits until Scientific Method obsoletes it. I am torn between taking CoL and Metal Casting with the Oracle. CoL is a must have for Caste System and would give us control of a religion that we could keep bottled up. CoL leads to Civil Service, which we could take with a great prophet if we avoid Masonry. I'm not sure if CS has such a big early advantage in this game though. If we settle in place, our capital is going to be good for producing settlers, workers, and great people. But it's going to bad for hammers and marginal for commerce. Civil Service also opens up the Paper-Education to our GSs, which would delay our using 2 GSs for Astronomy. On the other hand, Education leads to Liberalism, which could get us a really expensive tech like Physics, Electricity, or Radio. Taking Metal Casting with the Oracle has its advantages too. Metal Casting is on the beeline to Mass Media and is more expensive than CoL. It will probably be easier to trade Metal Casting for CoL than vice versa, as someone always seems to beeline for CoL. And early Metal Casting makes it easy to build the Colossus, which would be a nice moneymaker for coastal cities that wont be able to keep up in GP production.

Anyway, what to do with the free tech is a decision that can be made if and when we are close to completing the Oracle.

On a crowded map early war is probably inevitable so Iron Working and Construction should also be high on our list of preferred techs. If we grow big early (e.g. first a war fougth with axes and swords and then a war using maces) we might be able to skip some of the later military techs like Military Tradition and Chemistry in order to save time and get to Mass Media faster. Btw. if we research Drama and Music at some point Great Artists can be used to LB Mass Media.

I expect that most of our warring will be done with cats, axes, swords, and maces. It's a shame not to use Cossacks (18 strength in Vanilla!) , but Music, Nationalism, and Military Tradition are off of the beeline. Maybe we can trade for those techs within our coalition.

Drama might be needed later to adjust the culture slider for happiness, but I dont think we should run any artist specialists at the expense of scientists. Our GSs are going to have plenty to lightbulb, and GSs give more beakers than other GPs. According to my tests, Mass Media would take 5+ GAs to lightbulb. If we happen to get a GA or two from a polluted GP stream, we could save them for Radio or Mass Media, but I think it's best to maximize the number of GSs we pop.

I agree with ShannonCT's idea of building a coalition based on common religion. We shouldn't forget though, that we need the second strongest civilization (In terms of population) to be an enemy of our coalition in order to be sure that we get the vote of our friends when the UN is built. Worst case would be that our opponent in the UN elections is part of our own religious block.

There should be some clever ways around this potential problem. We can gift the UN city to one of our enemies outside of our religious bloc so that we are guaranteed to have an opponent that our friends wont vote for. As long as we are the most populous civ, we will be the other civ up for vote. I think we're going to have to choose our friends before we know who is going to be the second civ by the time the UN is built. We shouldn't necessarily rule out joining a religious bloc in the early game just because the top civ is in that bloc.

Regarding fast expansion versus fast exploration I'm leaning towards fast exploration. The advantages of knowing all opponents early is that we get many tech trading options, techs that are known to many other known civs become cheaper to research and when the Pyramids are built we will know where to strike! Capturing the Pyramids is really important but we can only do this if we know where they are.

And fast exploration is not really very costly - two workboats can work magic. Two workboats can be had for two whipped population.

I have tried a couple openings:

1) Start research with Fishing and then Bronze Working. Start building a warrior, but switch to workboat when fishing comes in on turn 8. Finish workboat and whip a second one after BW comes in. Finish warrior and grow to size 2. Build a worker and settler (or vice versa). Tech toward Wheel, Pottery, Myst, Meditation, Preisthood. Worker prechops 5 forests. Build workboat for exploring and start Oracle when Preisthood comes in. Research Writing. Chop forests and whip the rest of the Oracle. Can choose Metal Casting, CoL, or Alphabet as free tech. Second city builds warrior and another exploratory workboat. In this opening, we get the Oracle and a valuable tech like MC, but the second city is rather slow. But if we are alone on a decent sized island, we can afford to expand a little more slowly.


Maybe a better modification to this opening would be to build one workboat and finish the warrior while growing to size 3. Then start on the worker and whip 1 population to finish it. Start settler and have worker chop one forest to speed the settler, and then prechop the other 4 forests for the Oracle a little later. Whip another population to finish the settler. Start the capital building the Oracle and start the second city building a workboat for the capital's second clams. Chop a forest to speed workboat and then start chopping prechopped forests to finish Oracle. Whip to finish the Oracle.

This gambit basically guarantees that we get the Oracle and can take CoL or Metal Casting. And we get a settler fairly early to hook copper, stone, or marble.

Coming up for air again. You guys have been busy! This should all pass for me in a day or two and I'll have more time than I know what to do with for a few weeks hopefully, as long as I can reserve some of it for other things than those associated with the wife and kids! ;) ShannonCT certainly seems to have some time advantages there!

I'll catch up on the discussion over the next day or two hopefully. Looks like fast dipplomatic wins are a thing of very careful planning...

Who wants to do the first 20 turns? Anybody NOT want to do the first 20 turns? Do we even want 20 turn turnsets to start with? Any suggestions on an order for playing, or do I just post one? It looks from the maintenance thread that we could start in about 24hours if we are ready, though I don't think I will be personally!

Who wants to do the first 20 turns? Anybody NOT want to do the first 20 turns? Do we even want 20 turn turnsets to start with? Any suggestions on an order for playing, or do I just post one? It looks from the maintenance thread that we could start in about 24hours if we are ready, though I don't think I will be personally!

I can play anytime. I suggest you just post a turn order. 20 turn turnsets sound fine except I think maybe the first turnset could be 30 turns, since I dont think much will happen at the beginning.

It seems that we all like the idea of settling in place unless the scout finds something amazing on its first move. If the scout does find something to throw into question the capital location, player 1 could save and we could discuss. Otherwise, Turnset 1 will probably be following some preplanned tech order and build order, and scouting our island.

Personally, I would like to see the first player move the scout and pause. I really think the knowledge of how big our island is is going to be critical for deciding our opening strategy (how early do we really need sailing for example). I also don't think we need to be in any hurry. It's not like we have been pushed by the deadlines of the previous games. I would like to know for sure if there is more land the north before committing to a strategy.

Personally, I would like to see the first player move the scout and pause.

It certainly couldn't hurt.

I'm not sure that I can play this weekend so I would prefer to be 3rd or later in the rooster.

I like the idea of choosing Metal Casting instead of CoL to optimize the number of beakers saved. There should be time enough to research CoL before the Great Prophet is born and we can LB CS. I agree that Bureaucracy is less important with a capital that has little production and moderate commerce. We do, however, probably need maces for war so using a GP this way seems like a good idea to me because we save lots of beakers. As ShannonCT points out having CS early means that we have to research Paper and Education as well. Education may be good to have since we can build Universities at half price and we really need some research power to get the late techs - particularly Radio which is very expensive. If we build the Colossus it is also in our interest to delay Astronomy and prolong the period where we get the extra gold from the water tiles.

I like the idea of choosing Metal Casting instead of CoL to optimize the number of beakers saved. There should be time enough to research CoL before the Great Prophet is born and we can LB CS. I agree that Bureaucracy is less important with a capital that has little production and moderate commerce. We do, however, probably need maces for war so using a GP this way seems like a good idea to me because we save lots of beakers. As ShannonCT points out having CS early means that we have to research Paper and Education as well. Education may be good to have since we can build Universities at half price and we really need some research power to get the late techs - particularly Radio which is very expensive. If we build the Colossus it is also in our interest to delay Astronomy and prolong the period where we get the extra gold from the water tiles.

Thinking about the CS - Paper - Education issue a little more, I remembered that the using the GP to lightbulb Civil Service doesn't actually get us 100% of the tech (maybe 90%). So we could burn the GP on CS and then finish researching it later if we want to lightbulb Astro with two GSs before getting the necessary CS - Paper - Printing Press. Once we burn the GP on CS, the Masonry - Construction path is safe, and we can have cats for war. We could skip Education entirely and use up to 6 more GSs for Sci Meth (costs 2 GSs) and Physics (costs 4 GSs) (they come before Education on the GS tech preference), or we might decide that it is more efficient to lightbulb Education (costs 1.8 GSs) before we research PP (which opens Sci Meth to our GSs) and research Liberalism up to one turn left, popping it for Physics, Electricity, or Radio, depending on when the AI gets the prereqs for Liberalism (Philosophy and Education). If we want to use Liberalism, we should not trade Philosophy or Eduaction with anyone.

I hope that made sense. Here's the relevant part of the GSs tech preferences for reference.

Great Scientist:

Writing
Mathematics
Scientific Method
Physics
Education
Printing Press
Fiber Optics
Computers
The Wheel
Philosophy
Chemistry
Fission
Fusion
Optics
Paper
Astronomy
Biology
Electricity

How's this for a playing order (for now):

ShannonCT
BSouder
KingdomBrunel
Frederiksberg
Mad Professor
Radiopill

ShannonCT will start, move the scout and save and show us the results. If no big deal comes up, fine, but if it shows something significant, then we'll need some discussion before he plays his next 19.8 turns!

The order of course as always is flexible!

The rooster suits me fine.

Maybe a better modification to this opening would be to build one workboat and finish the warrior while growing to size 3. Then start on the worker and whip 1 population to finish it. Start settler and have worker chop one forest to speed the settler, and then prechop the other 4 forests for the Oracle a little later. Whip another population to finish the settler. Start the capital building the Oracle and start the second city building a workboat for the capital's second clams. Chop a forest to speed workboat and then start chopping prechopped forests to finish Oracle. Whip to finish the Oracle.

I tested this approach and it seems to work if you do a little micro management emphasizing growth to get fast to size two and then hammers to finish the workboat fast. The tech path fitting this build order is something like Fishing - BW - Mysticism - Polytheism - Priesthood - The Wheel - Pottery.
It's very important that we have Pottery before the Oracle is finalized because it is required to get MC. A drawback to this approach is that second clam is hooked late and work boat exploration is also delayed. On the other hand we build worker and settler early for fast expansion and we are almost certain to get the Oracle.

How's this for a playing order (for now):

ShannonCT
BSouder
KingdomBrunel
Frederiksberg
Mad Professor
Radiopill

ShannonCT will start, move the scout and save and show us the results. If no big deal comes up, fine, but if it shows something significant, then we'll need some discussion before he plays his next 19.8 turns!


Fine with me. I will play 0.5 of a turn when the saves come online tonight, moving the scout to the ENE hill, but not settling yet.

OK gentlemen,

SGOTM3 begins. I opened the save and moved the scout to the forested plains hill, which was a fortuitous decision. Here's what I saw...

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/87280/Start1.JPG

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/87280/Start2.JPG

So the forested hill tile would have fish, clams, and stone in the fat cross. I think we need a serious discussion about where to settle.

I've created a practice game with the same tiles as are now visible after moving the scout. I forgot to load the HOF mod 1.61.009 so the game is in unmodded Vanilla.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/87280/SG3_Practice_BC-4000.Civ4SavedGame

I hope this will help us answer a few questions:

1) Do we still want to settle in place or move to the forested plains hill? The plains hill gives us an extra hammer on our city tile, but takes two more turns to get to and wastes a forest. This site would be much better for production, with three hills and the stone. It's still good for food with a fish replacing a clam (fish is worth one more food than clam, after improvement), and could therefore support two scientists with a library. It's a bit worse than the flood plains site for early commerce because the most productive tiles dont have the 1 commerce (like the flood plain and spice forest in the other potential site). Either way we go, the starting site and the plains hill would be my choices for our first two cities.

2) What does this new information mean for our wonder plan? Dare we go for both the Oracle and the Pyramids? Is it even possible, and can it be done without inhibiting our early expansion/exploration too much? The plan for using the GP from the Oracle to lightbulb most of Civil Service would be out if we research Masonry to hook the stone. We could use the GP from the Oracle to LB Theolgy, which is an alternative path to the needed Paper -> Printing Press. If we build the Oracle and Mids, we could use the Oracle for Metal Casting and the GE (which would be the second GP if we dont hire any scientists in the Mids city) for Machinery. Or might it be worth trying the "Stone Thrower Gambit". Throwing stone to an industrious civ would seem to give a very good chance of getting the Mids built close to us. But what if none of our neighbors are industrious? What's the chance that the gambit would still work? Should we just follow the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid)? The practice game wont tell us who our neighbors will actually be or how many industrious civs are on the board. Should we skip the Oracle, build the Mids, and then focus on getting the Great Lighthouse or Colossus?

I am going to delay finishing my turnset for a day or two so we can have time to try out some practice games and decide on a strategy.

Somehow I'm not surprised that Gyathaar has presented us with this dilemma.

As I see it we have 3 options:

1) Settle in place and proceed with our Oracle plan. Second city hooks the stone and we could try the stone thrower gambit

2) Move the settler to the plains hill, hook the stone and build the Pyramids. It would be nice if we had time to use the same build order as for option 1) i.e. warrior - switch to workboat - finalize warrior - worker - settler - Pyramids. Tech path could be something like Fishing - Masonry - BW.

3) Move two tiles east and procede with the Oracle plan. This makes the Capital sligthly better with an extra floodplain and a fish resource instead of one of the clam.

Right now I'm tempted to go for option 2 if the test game indicates that it's possible to win the race towards the Pyramids. The Pyramids will give us a Great Engineer that can be used to LB Metal Casting as far as I remember. Maybe we should skip the Oracle and go for the Great Library instead?

There is a small mistake on the practice map, a grassland floodplain in the fat cross of the hill city that should have been just grassland. Here's a corrected save for practice:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/87280/SG_Practice_BC-4000.Civ4SavedGame

I tried a practice game settling on the plains hill where the scout is now, and I had no problem building the Pyramids after building a workboat, 2 warriors, worker, and settler. The Mids finished two turns after someone built Stonehenge, which would indicate that no one else was even close to finishing the Mids, and that it shouldn't be too risky to build another settler or some exploratory workboats before the Mids. Having the stone and hills in the fat cross of the capital is making things a lot easier. With a happiness cap of 7 with Representation, it can work a fish, a clam, stone, two mined grass hills, an engineer specialist (with forge) and a scientist specialist, for 14 base hammers and 0 surplus food (2 with lighthouse). The first GE from the Mids can go for Metal Casting. Building a forge and hiring an engineer specialist speeds up another GE that can build the Great Library, which is a monster wonder with Pyramids and Philosophical.

I want to try another practice game building on the plains hill again but chop-rushing the Oracle in the second city before chopping the Mids in the capital. The speed with which I got the Mids in my first practice game makes me think that it should be easy to get both wonders. And if we take Metal Casting with Oracle, the Mids city can whip a forge and hire an engineer specialist to get the GE before the GP in the Oracle city. At least that's the plan...

When you do your test you could consider entering the world builder the turn before you finish the Pyramids (or whatever wonder) and see which other civs are building it and how close they are to finalizing it.

When you do your test you could consider entering the world builder the turn before you finish the Pyramids (or whatever wonder) and see which other civs are building it and how close they are to finalizing it.

Yeah, I think I'll just play a few quick practice games and find the normal range of completion dates for Stonehenge, Oracle, Pyramids, Great Lighthouse, Colossus, and Great Library. I suspect the variance will be pretty low with so many AIs, but we'll see.

I am happy I was wrong about the size of our island.

I really like those two city sites, but I am inclined to lean toward Frederiksberg's second option. The plains hill site makes for a much better capital, leaving the second city with the option of becoming either a specialist or even commerce based research city long term and a very nice settler / worker producer early game.

I'll mess with some test games tonight and have more input in the morning.

Whooo that's a good surprise Gyathaar made us... A really nice spot for our capital!

About the option proposed by Frederick, te second's looks like the best, which is confirmed by Shannon's tests. But Shannon can you tell us, what was your tech path in your test?

Date ranges for key wonders:

Stonehenge 1420BC (turn 86) - 1060BC (turn 98)
Oracle 1270BC (turn 91) - 880BC (turn 108)
Pyramids 805BC (turn 113) - 640BC (turn 124)
Great Lighthouse 835BC (turn 111) - 355BC (turn 143)
Colossus 320 AD (turn 188) - 620AD (turn 208)
Great Library 485AD (turn 199) - 890AD (turn 226)

As you would expect, the AI built the wonders earlier when there were more industrious leaders. There could be anywhere between 1 and 5 industrious leaders on the board. The early dates for Oracle, Pyramids, Colossus, and GLighthouse came when I chose 5 industrious leaders. The practice game I posted has 4 industrious leaders. The probability distribution for the number of industrious leaders on the board (assuming random leader selection) is 1-6.25%, 2-25%, 3-37.5%, 4-25%, 5-6.25%.

It seems that the AI rarely starts the Pyramids before Stonehenge is built, and that the Mids are usually finished 20-30 turns after the Henge. The Oracle is usually started by 1 or more civs who dont decide to start the Henge. The early Oracle date (1270BC) came when an industrious leader hooked marble.

Next post: trying to build Oracle and Pyramids...

Whooo that's a good surprise Gyathaar made us... A really nice spot for our capital!

About the option proposed by Frederick, te second's looks like the best, which is confirmed by Shannon's tests. But Shannon can you tell us, what was your tech path in your test?

Fishing, BW, Masonry, Wheel, Pottery, Writing, Alpha.

I picked BW before Masonry so that my worker could start pre-chopping forests while the capital was still building a settler, and so that I could whip earlier.

Next post: trying to build Oracle and Pyramids...

It is possible. But not the way I thought. If we build the capital on the plains hill and second city on the flood plains, the second city cannot build the Oracle because there would only be four forests to chop for that city, and becuase the spice forest would be outside the borders and unworkable. There just wouldn't be enough hammers. What does work is to build the Oracle and the Pyramids in the capital by first chopping the Oracle and then the Pyramids, using some of the southern forests as they appear in our borders. The second city would have to go north of the capital because if it's on the floodplains, it will get hammers from some of the chops needed in the capital. With no second city to the south before finishing the Oracle and Mids, the capital has at least 8 forests to go to the wonders. Because the capital on the hill would have the stone and two grass hills in its radius, it can be getting 12 hammers per turn (24 for Mids) in time to help build the wonders. I finished the Oracle around 1000 BC and the Mids a couple turns later (because I had already started working on the Mids while waiting for Preisthood). Checking Worldbuilder, no one else was within 20 turns of the Mids. I took Metal Casting with the Oracle and whipped a forge for the engineer specialist, and my first GP was a GE (55-60% chance). The second GP was also a GE, so I used one for Machinery and one for the Great Library.

My tech path was Fishing, BW, Masonry, Wheel, Mysticism, Meditation, Preisthood, Pottery, Metal Casting

Trying this gambit would by no means guarantee the Oracle. That really depends on which leaders are on the board and who gets marble. But the Mids would be near certain if built before 900BC. I dont know yet what lies in the fog to the north and whether there is a good city site up there, or some forests for chopping the Oracle in the second city.

I haven't had time to play with the practice games, but based on what I read here, and on gut feeling, I like the capital up near the stone there on that hill. My first thought was then that the second city has to be south near the flood plains to get commerce flowing somewhere, but with so much sea around, this is less of a problem than a I thought with my first reaction. The scenario that ShannonCT suggests here with the second city to the north of the capital would be acceptable if the third city went south and got hold of those flood plains.

I think we should definitely try for the pyramids with stone so convenient, and I'm willing to try and get the oracle as well, though we need to think carefully about the best way to get it. We could always concentrate on other things after getting them both, and with the pyramids engineer(s) we'd have a much better shot at other wonders we might find useful such as the great library or collosus.

If we go both the pyramids and oracle, we'll be a little behind on the military and expansion side no doubt, but I'm willing to have a go at it thinking we can do some fancy diplomatic footwork to avoid being a target until we've corrected that little discrepancy. We'd need to beware of the likes of Tokugawa or Napoleon who tend to to declare war just because they are cramped for space, and of course Montezuma who declares war just because he's bored. At lesat the likes of Isabella can be appeased by simply adopting her religion, but that doesn't work for Tokugawa, Montezuma orNapoleon.

Btw it looks like Smurkz won't beat our time in SGOTM2. They are currently at 1700 AD and they still have to capture 12 Chinese cities. I doubt that they can do that in 4 turns... They will probably be out for revenge in SGOTM3. Let's see if we can disappoint them and maybe even challenge CFR-V.

They've finished with a 1727 conquest so 5th place is ours in SGOTM2. They qualified for domination in the last turn also, but got awarded the conquest. I'm also looking forward to finishing ahead of them in this one as well ;)

Based on ShannonCT's test map I have 2 observations.

First is it wasn't hard at all to get the Oracle built in the second city (North of Capital). That map has a near perfect second city site though with copper on a grassland beside a plains hill with gold and a ton of forests. To counteract that a bit I intentionally delayed the Oracle start and didn't even start it until the Pyramids were almost done (which we can finish ridiculously fast with our capital). I still didn't have trouble getting it built in time.

The second is a minor observation that although I love that flood plains / clam spot on the south of our island we wouldn't want that for our second city no matter what. IF there is someone else sharing our landmass, they HAVE to be to the north so we should settle that direction just to be safe. With us concentrating on wonders early, we will fall behind in expansion so we need to seal off a chunk of land. In my test games, after finishing the Pyramids and Oracle and settling my third city I am typically behind by 1-2 cities and the world is mostly full. With these settings it doesn't look like there is going to be a lot of uninhabited islands other than the 1-2 land square variety, so we need to ensure ourselves some space while wonder-hunting. The good news is next to no barbarians.

Following along with my second observation was the fact that achieving a bit of breathing room through early wars wasn't as easy as I thought. By the time I had 3-4 cities and was looking to expand too many people had already met each other and more importantly too many people already liked each other. Even a very early war on these settings looks likely to give us negative diplo hits for "declared war on my friend". I was very surprised to find my closest neighor with 2 people already "pleased" with them by the time I had 3 cities and was able to start building any military at all.

The second is a minor observation that although I love that flood plains / clam spot on the south of our island we wouldn't want that for our second city no matter what. IF there is someone else sharing our landmass, they HAVE to be to the north so we should settle that direction just to be safe. With us concentrating on wonders early, we will fall behind in expansion so we need to seal off a chunk of land. In my test games, after finishing the Pyramids and Oracle and settling my third city I am typically behind by 1-2 cities and the world is mostly full. With these settings it doesn't look like there is going to be a lot of uninhabited islands other than the 1-2 land square variety, so we need to ensure ourselves some space while wonder-hunting. The good news is next to no barbarians.

I agree that if our scout finds someone else on our island, blocking their path south is reason enough to settle north. The flood plains site is going to be a nice GP farm eventually, but unless there's some metal down there, it's going to need some help getting going and it's not going to be able to produce things like axemen and galleys because it's going to need GP farm buildings like a granary and library. It would be better if our second city could be a little more self sufficient and crank out some workboats, workers, units, etc.

Following along with my second observation was the fact that achieving a bit of breathing room through early wars wasn't as easy as I thought. By the time I had 3-4 cities and was looking to expand too many people had already met each other and more importantly too many people already liked each other. Even a very early war on these settings looks likely to give us negative diplo hits for "declared war on my friend". I was very surprised to find my closest neighor with 2 people already "pleased" with them by the time I had 3 cities and was able to start building any military at all.

Doesn't declaring war on a friend only give a -1 diplo point? I think the worst negative diplo points come from trading with the enemy and being the wrong religion. If there is someone else on OUR island, they have to go, diplo points be damned.

Doesn't declaring war on a friend only give a -1 diplo point? I think the worst negative diplo points come from trading with the enemy and being the wrong religion. If there is someone else on OUR island, they have to go, diplo points be damned.

Yes, it's only a negative 1, but if we are going for votes every little bit helps. That's my biggest fear in this game. I have never found the voting to be entirely predictable, I have had my best friend abstain before. So, I am a bit wary of taking negative hits before our religion blocks have established themselves.

I do agree we want our landmass to ourselves, but we also want to be careful. Assuming we do have a neighbor I would like to try to seal them off and restrict their expansion as much as possible, and then if they have made other friends try to provoke them into declaring war on us.

Yes, it's only a negative 1, but if we are going for votes every little bit helps. That's my biggest fear in this game. I have never found the voting to be entirely predictable, I have had my best friend abstain before. So, I am a bit wary of taking negative hits before our religion blocks have established themselves.

I'm not suggesting that we go for an early axe rush. But diplomatic victory with 17 opponents is going to require a good bit of conquest. We need 62% of the vote for diplomatic victory, and your friends won't usually vote for you unless they are Friendly. I don't think it's possible to get Friendly more than a few civs. The only votes you can count on are the ones from your own population. That said, the easiest civs to conquer are going to be our neighbors. If declaring war on one neighbor upsets another, that just tells us who to conquer next. We're probably better off being friends with a group that is not too close to our starting position.

I do agree we want our landmass to ourselves, but we also want to be careful. Assuming we do have a neighbor I would like to try to seal them off and restrict their expansion as much as possible, and then if they have made other friends try to provoke them into declaring war on us.

This is pretty hit-or-miss. You can have a -30 diplo score with a civ and they won't necessarily declare war on you if you are ahead of them in power. It's inevitable that we will have to declare on some opponents. Exploring the map early and often will help us make better decisions about who to attack after we take out our nearest neighbors. If we have several Buddhist neighbors, and we find a Judaist bloc on the opposite side of the map, we can adopt the distant religion if/when it spreads to us and wipe out the nearer religious bloc. Usually, that difference in religion means that civs of different religions will not consider themselves friends and one group wont get upset for us declaring war on the heathen group.

When we get Alphabet early, we can trade pretty freely without regard to negative diplo points since not many civs will be annoyed with each other yet, but as the allies start shaping up, we will have to stick to trading with our friends, especially resource trades that are ongoing. Religious neutrals will probably still be ok for one-time trades of techs, maps, and money.

I think in the end, we can reasonably expect to have 3-5 civs that will vote for us and we'll have to have 40-50% of the population ourselves. That's certainly within reach, especially with the timeframe that we're looking at for researching Mass Media and building the UN. The fact that we are going to be focusing on getting big cities for a Representation-fueled specialist economy should mean that our territory will have a higher population density than our opponents'. I predict that the limiting factor for victory will be how fast we can build the UN and not how fast we can get the votes.

So, I guess no one has any objection to settling on the forested plains hill? I'll play my turnset about 20 hours from this post, aiming for Fishing and BW and building a warrior and workboat. I guess the main fun will be not getting the scout eaten.

Speak now, or forever hold your peace.

So, I guess no one has any objection to settling on the forested plains hill? I'll play my turnset about 20 hours from this post, aiming for Fishing and BW and building a warrior and workboat. I guess the main fun will be not getting the scout eaten.


This sounds good to me. Our Capital will be an early production monster and we should have no problem getting the Pyramids. In the longer term I see a new dilemma: If we want the Oracle as well the tech path is something like Fishing - BW - Masonry - Wheel - Mysticism - Polytheism - Priesthood and if we want to emphasize early exploration with workboats it's Fishing - BW - Masonry - Wheel - Pottery -Writing . The last one because we need Writing in order to be able to sign open borders with the civs we meet. I guess the Oracle is important enough to justify delaying the exploration a bit. Would be nice though to build the Oracle in our second city so that we know what type of GP we will get first. I fully agree with BSouder that our 2nd city should go north if possible. We might be unlucky though and only find jungle to the north. We will know more when ShannonCT has finished his turn set.

Would be nice though to build the Oracle in our second city so that we know what type of GP we will get first. I fully agree with BSouder that our 2nd city should go north if possible. We might be unlucky though and only find jungle to the north. We will know more when ShannonCT has finished his turn set.

It would also be nice to separate the Oracle and Pyramids so that our capital will generate GEs and GSs only, and at a much faster rate than the Oracle city will generate GProphets. If the Pyramids dont come too much later than the Oracle, we can get our first two GPs to be GEs by building a forge and hiring an engineer specialist. We'll might get a GProphet at some point, but if the capital has The Mids, The Great Library, 1 hired engineer, and 2 hired scientists, it will generate 38 GPPs (60 w/ the National Epic) against the Oracle's 4, limiting the number of Prophets to 0 or 1. A southern city by the two clams would be able to support 8 scientists pre-Biology and help prevent any GProphets coming from the Oracle.

My turnset is done and uploaded. Here's what happened:

4000BC (1) Scout to plains hill, settler NE.

3970BC (2) Settler to plains hill.

3940BC (3) Moscow founded, starts building warrior. Research Fishing in 9 turns.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/87280/Moscow.JPG

3910BC (4) Scouting

3880BC (5) Scouting

3850BC (6) Scouting

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/87280/cows.JPG

3820BC (7) Scouting

3790BC (8) Scouting

3760BC (9) Scouting. Moscow warrior->warrior. Warrior north to bust fog.

3730BC (10) Scouting

3700BC (11) Scouting

3670BC (12) Scout survives panther attack. Fishing -> BW. Moscow starts workboat.

3640BC (13) Scout healing

3610BC (14) Scouting. I spy a hut. Buddhism FIDAL.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/87280/hut.JPG

3580BC (15) Scouting

3550BC (16) Warrior survives lion attack.

3520BC (17) Scouting

3490BC (18) Scouting

3460BC (19) Meet Alex's scout from the island SE of Moscow. Alex is annoyed with us for no reason.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/87280/Alex.JPG
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/87280/Alexscout.JPG

We are alone on this island:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/87280/island.JPG

3430BC (20) Scout returning north.

3400BC (21) Scout returning north.

Here's a shot of the land to our north. Fish, cows, rice, gems. Dotmap anyone?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/87280/northland.JPG


So I guess the big news is that we are alone on a good sized island with lots of gems and some cows, rice, clams, fish, and spices. We know Alexander is on the island to our SE. There aren't any forests or hills for a northern second city, so no Oracle up there.

Note: due to a miscount, I played 21 turns.

ShannonCT (just played)
BSouder (up)
KingdomBrunel (on deck)
Frederiksberg
Mad Professor
Radiopill

Hmm... from the culture graph on the results page, it looks like most teams so far are choosing to settle on their first or second turn, instead of the third like us. Let's push our advantage.

I've got the save and this looks interesting. We will definately need Iron Working moderately soon now.

It looks like we will have some barbarian issues before we can settle our island, and it also looks like we will not be in dire need of sailing to expand.

It also looks like we will have next to no production anywhere but our capital. There's also no rivers so very little farming until CS and then we would be looking at a sizable irrigation project to get water to the north, but then one of the few hills we do have blocks the entire western area from ever being irrigated.

For now I guess we continue with BW and hope that we get some copper somewhere, if for no other reason than the productivity increase. After that I think our best play is still Masonary -> Wheel. Once we have those two though, we may have to consider if we want to try to sneak in Iron Working before going for the Oracle, otherwise we will be stuck expansion wise for a while.

How's this for a dotmap?

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j127/BSouder/th_sgotm3-dotmap.jpg (http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j127/BSouder/sgotm3-dotmap.jpg)

The red city could work the cow early to get some production to help build basic improvements then give up the cow so the blue city could work the gem hill. I hate not using the hill between the double gems and the clams but I can't find a way of using it that I like.

Forgot...the red city could be a second city if we had AH, but since we won't for a while it looks like our second city will have to be the flood plains one.

Forgot...the red city could be a second city if we had AH, but since we won't for a while it looks like our second city will have to be the flood plains one.

That's what I was thinking. We'll need AH or IW to get anything from cities in the north. At least the floodplains city will have some good food sources and some forests, and could whip things like a granary and exploratory workboats. It's no use in researching AH and IW too early if our worker(s) is going to be busy chopping the Oracle and Pyramids. Chopping jungle and building mines and farms takes a lot of turns.

Edit: here's my dotmap

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/87280/Dotmap.JPG

Anyone have any surprise suggestions for my turnset?

My plans are to finish BW and start on Masonary. Once we reach size 2, I'll start on a worker and probably follow it with a settler. The one thing I was wondering about was whether we should use the workboat on the clams or the fish (4food 2commerce vs. 5food 1 commerce). I am thinking that the one extra commerce might just pay off in getting to Priesthood in time for the Oracle although the one extra food will get us a worker and settler faster.

I tried the test game once more and just barely managed to build both the Oracle and the Pyramids in Moscow. It made me wonder if we should give up the Oracle and focus our research and production differently. The Oracle can be viewed as an advantageous way of exchanging hammers for beakers but since our start is hammer poor it might be better to spend them differently. Like ShannonCT mentions our worker will be tied up chopping around Moscow and our tech path will be limited to Mysticism - Polytheism - Priesthood. We could get an extra settler and an extra worker for the hammers needed to build the Oracle and Iron Working instead of the religious techs. I'm convinced that if we try to get IW before Priesthood we don't have a chance of getting the Oracle. In order to get the Oracle we also need to build it before the Pyramids are finalized and this means that our first GP is more likely to be a Prophet. It's a tough decision. Oracle is really nice but so is an extra city and some mined gems. An alternative development without Oracle could be BW - Wheel - IW - Pottery - Writing. This would also allow us to put more emphasis on exploration and tech trade.

There is also the question of getting border expansions. If we give up the Oracle we could easily build Stonehenge before The Pyramids. Again we have the problem with getting a Prophet instead of an Engineer. If we do this I would like to move the blue city on ShannonCT's dotmap 2 tiles east and one tile north to grab the fish on the east coast thus allowing us to move the pink city 1 tile NE to grab the fish inside the "Horse Shoe". If we don't I would keep it as it is because we need one ressource within the start 3x3 borders in order to bootstrap the city.

I like using the workboat for the fish. As you say, the fish will get us the worker and settler faster. And with more food, we will grow our pop faster, where we could whip another workboat for the clams earlier. If we are concerned about not finishing Preisthood fast enough for the Oracle, we can work the improved fish and the unimproved clams while building the worker, giving up one hammer for two commerce. This should speed up the tech rate a bit, working two commerce tiles during the worker-settler build, instead of only one commerce tile. Also remember that if we are going to build the Oracle and Pyramids in Moscow, it might be necessary to chop a couple southern forests before settler settles on the floodplains. So maybe it would be better to build another workboat after the worker, to give the worker time to hook the stone and chop a couple southern forests into the Mids.

Ah, another thing that will speed Preisthood is going for Meditation instead of Polytheism. I dont think we need to avoid Meditation in this game, because it will lead to Philosophy, which will work well with our specialist economy.

I still like the idea of getting Oracle and Pyramids, rather than just the Pyramids. Getting Metal Casting early will speed up our beeline and let us build a forge for more GE points. And getting one prophet is ok, because we can trade for or research Theology and still use the GProphet for Civil Service, if we avoid Monarchy. Since we are on this island alone, we can delay our expansion a little and then expand like crazy with our first two cities producing a lot of beakers and GPs to sustain our teching.

There didn't seem to be a lot of doubt about what should happen in the next 20 turns, so I played my turnset.

*******************

0 - 3400 - Nothing
1 - 3370 - Scout north for fog busting
2 - 3340 - ditto
3 - 3310 - ditto
4 - 3280 - Work boat done, letting warrior finish. Also a forest grew inside the cross of Moscow. =)
5 - 3250 - Work boat nets the fish. Start working the fish to grow in 2 turns and put our 2 hammers a turn into a work boat we will need eventually.
6 - 3220 - Nothing
7 - 3190 - Moscow grows to 2. Start working the stone and building a worker.
8 - 3160 - Nothing
9 - 3130 - Nothing
10 - 3100 - Nothing
11 - 3070 - Woohoo, Jungle grew north of Moscow...bah
12 - 3040 - Nothing
13 - 3010 - BW done, started on Masonary. There is copper on our island, but it's on the far tip of the western lobe.

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j127/BSouder/th_SGOM3-Copper-3010BC.jpg (http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j127/BSouder/SGOM3-Copper-3010BC.jpg)

14 - 2980 - Switch from working the stone to the clam. Worker still due in 5 turns and Masonary from 13 to 11 turns.
15 - 2950 - Nothing
16 - 2920 - Hinduism founded in a distant land.
17 - 2890 - Nothing
18 - 2860 - Nothing
19 - 2830 - Worker completes, head him to a forest to pre-chop. Switch back to working the stone and start on a Settler.
20 - 2800 - Worker starts pre-chopping a forest.

I realized while I was uploading that I should have sent the worker south to pre-chop since we won't really have time to do much chopping between building the Settler and starting on the Pyramids. Won't make a lot of difference though I think since we will likely have to park the Settler on the floodplains for a bit while chopping anyway.

Nice MMing. One piece of luck that I was hoping for came to pass: an extra forest to chop. Now, we should be able to settle on the floodplains straight away and have enough forests to chop the Oracle and Pyramids with hammers coming from the stone quarry and two mined hills (and 2-3 whippable population in Moscow). I'll give it a practice run on my sample game to check the completion dates for the Oracle and Mids, and another practice building just the Mids and settlers/workers/workboats to expand and explore faster.

Nice turns. If we decide to go for the Oracle I think it's better to work the clam instead of the stone to improve tech speed. And use the path Wheel - Mysticism - Budhism - Priesthood - Pottery as suggetsed by ShannonCT. When the forrest is pre-chopped the worker should move to the stone tile and start the quarry as soon as Masonry is researched. When the quarry is done Wheel should be almost there so the stone can be hooked. Build order should be something like Settler - Pyramids - (switch to) Oracle - Pyramids. I guess the forrests inside the fat cross of Moscow are adequate to get the Oracle so that we can settle on the flood plain down south immediately.

Another thing - maybe we should swap the fogbusters so that the scout is placed where the warrior is now and the warrior is placed on a grassland hill near the place where the scout is now. Then, if a barb archer approaches from the foggy side of the Horse Shoe Island our warrior will have a good chance of defeating him. We might also want a fog buster near the bronze soon. If a barb city appears there we could be in trouble unless we can find iron near Moscow.

Nice going guys.

KingdomBrunel is up next.

Nice turns. If we decide to go for the Oracle I think it's better to work the clam instead of the stone to improve tech speed.

At least until the stone quarry is done. 1 food and 4 hammers is too good to not work.

Another thing - maybe we should swap the fogbusters so that the scout is placed where the warrior is now and the warrior is placed on a grassland hill near the place where the scout is now. Then, if a barb archer approaches from the foggy side of the Horse Shoe Island our warrior will have a good chance of defeating him. We might also want a fog buster near the bronze soon. If a barb city appears there we could be in trouble unless we can find iron near Moscow.

Good idea. The jungle hill will be a good choke point for our warrior. Two or three more warriors and we'll have the island almost completely busted. It will be a nice change from SGOTM2. Does anyone know if a barb city is prevented from spawning if any of the 9 city tiles would appear in unfogged territory?

In my practice game using what we know about having an extra forest and wanting to settle on the floodplains, I built the Oracle in 1120BC and the Mids in 940BC. Checking the WB, the closest civ to building the Mids was 21 turns away.

Basic guidelines I used:

1) Research path is Masonry, Wheel, Mysticsim, Meditation, Preisthood, Pottery.
2) First build in second city is a worker.
3) Moscow works unimproved clams when the alternative is 1h/2f or 2h/1f, but prefers stone quarry and/or mine to unimproved clams.
4) Chop the two forest/grass/hills into Mids when stone is hooked and build mines after chopping each. Prechop other forests for Oracle and both workers chop like mad when Preisthood comes in.
5) Switch to Slavery after finishing Oracle and whip Pyramids as soon as it is possible.

It is possible to make the Oracle finish later and the Pyramids sooner by putting more chops into the Mids and fewer into the Oracle.

At least until the stone quarry is done. 1 food and 4 hammers is too good to not work.

Naturally :)

Good idea. The jungle hill will be a good choke point for our warrior. Two or three more warriors and we'll have the island almost completely busted. It will be a nice change from SGOTM2. Does anyone know if a barb city is prevented from spawning if any of the 9 city tiles would appear in unfogged territory?

I think we saw in the previous SGOTM that a barb city can spawn if there is even one foggy square. I believe it spawned between Osaka and Barcelona blocking the way for our missionaries.

In my practice game using what we know about having an extra forest and wanting to settle on the floodplains, I built the Oracle in 1120BC and the Mids in 940BC. Checking the WB, the closest civ to building the Mids was 21 turns away.

Basic guidelines I used:

1) Research path is Masonry, Wheel, Mysticsim, Meditation, Preisthood, Pottery.
2) First build in second city is a worker.
3) Moscow works unimproved clams when the alternative is 1h/2f or 2h/1f, but prefers stone quarry and/or mine to unimproved clams.
4) Chop the two forest/grass/hills into Mids when stone is hooked and build mines after chopping each. Prechop other forests for Oracle and both workers chop like mad when Preisthood comes in.
5) Switch to Slavery after finishing Oracle and whip Pyramids as soon as it is possible.

It is possible to make the Oracle finish later and the Pyramids sooner by putting more chops into the Mids and fewer into the Oracle.

Sounds like we will be able to get both wonders then. I think Oracle is the most critical wonder in terms of time. If an industrious civ hook marble even 1120 BC could be too late. We must also remember that it's essential that we have Pottery before the Oracle is built - otherwise we won' t be able to select MC as our free tech.

I'll check the save tonight, and respond tomorrow. I won't get a chance to play until Wednesday at least, maybe Thursday. Nice to see such a good sized island, I'm not nearly so worried about taking other islands now.

Regarding the fog busting plans, remember that we have a band of fog between Moscow and our warrior for now. If barbs spawn on the western lobe, they may or may not come up that isthmus and if they do we could move the warrior to the jungle hill to intercept. My initial plan was to leave things as they are until Moscow gets 1 more culture expansion, which will let the scout make the eastern lobe guaranteed barb free. My thinking was that IF a barb spawns near Moscow, I wanted the warrior closer to be able to respond if necessary. I would rather lose the scout than have our worker harried while chopping our wonders.

Maybe we should move the scout to the tile east of the cows and the warrior to the grasland/gems hill on the northern part of the island. That would leave only a few foggy tiles on the eastern part of the island and we would have time enough to build an extra warrior if a barb should anyway spawn in one of the two north eastern tiles.

I was wondering if we have time to build an extra warrior. We could do this without delaying the Oracle but the Pyramids would of course be built a couple of turns later. I'd like to use the warrior to fogbust near the bronze in an attempt to reserve this spot for our 3rd city. If we can live with the delay we should build him now and start moving a warrior down there. I would hate to see a barb city spawn and claim the bronze tile. Note, that the Oracle will not be delayed by building a warrior now.

Another thing is that we should problably not finalize any chops before we have started the Oracle. I don't recall if the available hammers or the tech speed to Pottery is the limiting factor regarding the build date of the Oracle. If tech is limiting we could chop before Oracle as well allthough it doesn't really matter and won't change the date we finalize the Pyramids (assuming that the few lost turns moving the worker after a pre-chop are not limiting in any way).

I was wondering if we have time to build an extra warrior. We could do this without delaying the Oracle but the Pyramids would of course be built a couple of turns later. I'd like to use the warrior to fogbust near the bronze in an attempt to reserve this spot for our 3rd city. If we can live with the delay we should build him now and start moving a warrior down there. I would hate to see a barb city spawn and claim the bronze tile. Note, that the Oracle will not be delayed by building a warrior now.

We could also just send the warrior that is guarding Moscow out to help. Moscow's happiness cap is 4 without a garrisson, and a population of 4 is just right for working the fish, stone, and two hill mines. The scout can move to the tile east of the cows while Moscow's warrior moves to the jungle 2 NW of the scout's new position, and the northern warrior moves to guard the copper. That would leave only two foggy tiles even remotely close to Moscow, and it would give Moscow plenty of time to build/whip a warrior if needed.

Another thing is that we should problably not finalize any chops before we have started the Oracle. I don't recall if the available hammers or the tech speed to Pottery is the limiting factor regarding the build date of the Oracle. If tech is limiting we could chop before Oracle as well allthough it doesn't really matter and won't change the date we finalize the Pyramids (assuming that the few lost turns moving the worker after a pre-chop are not limiting in any way).

I'm in favor of chopping the two forests on the grassland hills after the stone is hooked and the settler finished, so we can build mines there and work the extra hammers into the Mids and Oracle. If the floodplains city starts with a worker, the two workers have plenty of manpower, so that the limiting factor becomes getting Pottery.

A couple notes to KingdomBrunel:

1) Could you mark the forests that you prechop, either on the game board or on a screenshot?

2) The settler should be finished on your turnset. Watch out for the foggy floodplain tile where we want to settle, as there is a small chance of a barb killing our settler if you move the settler to one of the two forests above the floodplains.

An unexpected chance to play has come up tonight. Nothing I'm unsure about in my tunrset, so I'm going to play now. ShannonCT - your notes are noted. Also happy with your research path.

Speak to you all later.

Right - all done. All went pretty much to plan. St Petersburg has been settled on the floodplain. We have a quarry on the stone, and the forests 2N1W and 1N1W of Moscow have been prechopped.

Masonry and The Wheel have been discovered, and we're looking into Mysticism. No sign of any barbs as of yet, but Mao popped by to say hi. He's 3rd in power overall, and Alex is 6th. We're not in the top eight.

Turn log is below:

Turn 45, 2650 BC: You have discovered Masonry!
Turn 56, 2320 BC: You have trained a Settler in Moscow. Work has now begun on a Work Boat.
Turn 57, 2290 BC: You have discovered The Wheel!
Turn 57, 2290 BC: Mao Zedong adopts Slavery!
Turn 59, 2230 BC: St. Petersburg has been founded.

Over to Frederiksberg.

Nice that you found some time to play.

I expect to play tomorrow about 24 hours from now.

Tech: Mysticism - Meditation - Priesthood

Builds: Switch to Pyramids in Moscow. Maybe switch to worker in St. Petersburg. We could also let it grow and work the clam to speed up tech. I kind of like this option. If we do this we can build either warrior or workboat in St. P.

EDIT: We could consider chopping part of the second worker if we let St. P. grow to size 2.

Worker: Build road on stone - chop prechopped forrest on hill and build mine - chop and mine other hill.

Other units: Reshuffle to put a warrior near the bronze, a warrior on the gems hill and the scout near the cow tile.

My plan was to let St Petersburg grow to size two before building the worker. But whichever you fancy - the twenty turns are yours.

My plan was to let St Petersburg grow to size two before building the worker. But whichever you fancy - the twenty turns are yours.

I would prefer if a discussion within the team could reveal which option is the better one. If this doesn't happen I will go with my own instincts :) . Key issue is that we might need the increased tech speed we get when St. P. grows more than we need the worker early for chopping.

Nice turnset KB. Do you remember which forests are prechopped? I notice we met Mao. That's good news, as he is the non-Industrious Chinese.

I see that Moscow is 5 turns away from a workboat. How about Moscow completes the workboat while the worker hooks the stone. The workboat goes to St. Pete's clams. St. Pete switches immediately to the unimproved clams for the extra coin and grows to size 2 with the help of the improved clams. St. Pete then starts building a worker. It will be getting 5 surplus food and 1 hammer, so the worker would finish in 15 turns, and could even be whipped after 8 turns (or 9 if we aren't in Slavery yet). The worker would be done in time to help chop the Oracle and Pyramids. The Oracle should come a few turns before 1120BC and the Pyramids a few turns after 940BC. Let's just be sure to do everything possible to get the Mids at the earliest date: chopping the forested hills and building the mines after hooking the stone, and whipping the Mids as soon as it is allowed.

I would rather chop the worker in St. P. than whip him because whipping will cause science rate to drop. Finishing the workboat is fine with me - it should only cause a very slight delay of the Pyramids since it will anyway take 4 turns before stone is hooked.

Going to play now.... Will post the log later this evening :)

I did my turns. Things went as planned except for some bad luck with a barb warrior.

2140 BC Worker starts road on stone quarry.
2050 BC Workboat finished, stone hooked, Moscow start building Pyramids.