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The Game
This Monarch difficulty game is on a Standard size, Gyathaar-special, fractal map, at Epic speed, against 7 rivals including India. All victory conditions are enabled except Diplomatic, but the laurels for this contest will be awarded to the teams who achieve the fastest Space defeat by Gandhi.

Versions
This game will be played in Warlords Version 2.08 only.

It will be played using the current version of the HoF Mod. This is version 2.08.003 for Windows. There are insufficient Mac players to form a Mac team. so it will be played in Windows only.

If later versions of Warlords or the HoF Mod are released they cannot be used for this 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 February 23.

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

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/sgotm4_start_small.jpg (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/sgotm4_start_large.jpg)

Map Parameters
Playable Leader/Civ - Ragnar of The Vikings
Rivals - 7 civs including Gandhi (who is locked in war with Ragnar)
World size - Standard
Difficulty - Monarch
Landform - Fractal, cylindrical, medium sea level, temperate
Game Speed - Epic
Diplomatic Victory Disabled
All other settings are defaults

Notes

Please visit the C-IV Warlords SGOTM reference thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=208462) to check out the rules and procedures to ensure that you are adequately prepared for this game.

Warlords v.2.08 is supported for this SGOTM. No other versions can be used, and you will have to stick with the same version throughout the game.

Teams will compete for up to four awards - the Gold, Silver and Bronze Laurels for the fastest finishes, and the Wooden Spoons for the lowest scoring finisher.

Awards will be given to teams who achieve Space defeats to India 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.

Please enjoy the game :)

Hey all, checking in.

Played with most of you in previous SGs, but I am curious to see who we all are:
Name, age, City, Country, Timezone, Civ background, Personal…

Who am I: Remco, age 32, live in Amstelveen, Netherlands. Timezone GMT +1.
Civilization: Played Civ since the original series. Started succession gaming in SGOTM2, and have since played almost a dozen SGs for Civ IV in the last months. Right now my focus is on SGOTM. Was Captain of Pioneer Knights for SGOTM2 and 3.
Personal: Happily married, 2 kids (nr 3 in progress). Employed as a Project Manager for a Food Company.

I was happy to be invited into this team by Pigswill. Looking forward to having a fun game!

Checking in. Good to see 3/4s of the Independence team here.

Who am I? Tuomas, 17 years, (18 tomorrow), living in Helsinki, Finland. Currently studying, hope to study in a university in a few years. Avid sports fan. Will do any sport provided it isn't soccer.

Played Civ2 & 3 single. Bought CIV, discovered SGs and nowadays check the forum everyday for new games.

As for the game itself, settle in place?

:bday: Stuge! Woo-hoo! 18 to boot! :beer: :beer: and more :beer: !

I commute between my job in a rural area and home. Friday -> Sunday is [c4w] time. Timezone is -9.30 GMT if anyone can work these things out.

I played Civ2 and got quite involved with customised games and was co-editor of Scenario League on Apolyton for quite a while, and did quite a few modder tutorials. I played Civ3 but hated it until Conquests came out, which I enjoyed, but not as much as Civ4.

As for the game ... have Pigswill, Cabert and I got a surprise for you guys! :shifty: :D

Hi all.
I'm Peter; married , no kids. 50 in two weeks time (:old: :lol: ). I work as a community psychiatric nurse in a mental health crisis team. I live in England (gmt 0).

Played civ 1 a lot, never got round to playing civ2, gave up on civ 3 after a while coz I was totally unimpressed by distance and corruption. Enjoying civ 4, been playing SGs for a few months now. Can't really comment too much on sgotm3 until its officially finished.

Tuomas :bday: [party] :salute: :salute:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Stuge!

As for the game ... have Pigswill, Cabert and I got a surprise for you guys!
:crazyeye:

Hmmm.... Did you guys already talk about this game :confused:?

My ideas about the game:
We are at War with peaceful Gandhi, but we have to lose from him by space defeat! So we have to aid Gandhi, but we can never gift him anything.

I feel we have to do two things:
1. Make Gandhi's life as pleasant as possible (eventhough he will be attacking us and building military instead of science). We need to provide room for him to expand, we could even build cities near him and have them captured by Gandhi. We could also destroy useless cities he builds...
2. Keep other civs small They should not mess with Gandhi, but if they can support him fine. They should not be big enough to beat Gandhi to space. If anyone declares on Gandhi we should attack them as well.

Our civilisation
Techs:We have Hunting, Fishing. We could go for wheel > pottery > writing to use our financial advantage and build cottages. Or Agriculture > AH to build improvements. Or the normal power start mining > BW.
UU: Berserker (replaces Maceman) starts with Amphibious warfare and 10% city attack.
UB: Trading Post (replaces Lighthouse) Navigation I promo for naval units.
Traits: We are aggessive and Financial. So our berserkers (and other melee) get Combat I. Financial means we get more commerce, especially from water and river tiles.
Overall: We are well suited to be coastal, rule the seas, attack from ships and be aggressive.

The start
Starting position is good on food (lake, clams, pig, corn), production and forests. The scout can move S, E to reveal south.

My main question mark is the plains hill with the blue circle 2N from the settler.... Probably a little Gyathaar hint that suggests more stuff up north.

Moving 2N with the settler would not cost us any resource and grant us a plains hill for the capital and whatever else shows up.... I think it's worth the extra turn.

It has to be admitted that cabert, Cam_H and I have been talking to each other already :blush: ; we've been playing as the nucleus of the Trash Team in the P666 series for a while now.

On the other hand it has been somewhat exclusive :( so I can understand you not being 100% happy about this :sad: .

Basically what we've been considering is playing a practice game in the thread. Couple of reasons for this:-

1) To discuss strategy and tactics in the context of an actual game rather than as an abstraction.

2) To get used to each other's playing styles and learn to play together as a team before playing sgotm4 itself.

Edit: We've got the best part of four months to complete the game so as long as we all play regularly (average of 20-30 turns per week) we'll finish in plenty of time.

As for the game itself I've had a couple of early thoughts:

Build up some tasty wonder-packed cities (colossus,GL, Glib) and let Gandhi capture them.

Stomp aggressive civs initially; let the tech hogs develop peacefully so they can trade with Gandhi then stomp them when they start building spaceship themselves.

Hi all, happy birthday stuge

I work as a community psychiatric nurse in a mental health crisis team.

we sure can use your profile in here ;)

As for who I am, I don't think I need to be THAT precise in a public forum ;)
I live in France (GMT + 1 if I'm not mistaken), I'm an engineer, have a wife and 3 daughters that don't like me playing cIV ;).

And about talking before starting the game, since there was no thread open and the team wasn't really formed, we had no real choice, sorry guys.
Pigswill somehow sumed up what we were talking about, let me just add one thing :
We need to discuss our Grand Strategy a lot before moving anything.
I've never played to lose, and this variant is somewhat crazy (that's where your profile is needed Pigswill ;)).
I believe :
- we need to find India as late as possible to avoid him being in war mode
- in the meantime we should build up nice capturable cities for him, including ?

I'd say some nice to have wonders for a philo leader (not us!) include the pyramids and the great library, but gandhi would use the pyramids to switch to US, that isn't a big help in the early game. I'm a bit clueless.
Cam, did you manage to build a test game?
Or better to play a test game?

No problem you guys discussing ahead. There was no thread so no place to talk. My only worry was that the plans were laid out and carved in stone. It is clear that this is not the case. I am all in favour of lots of talk before starting.

I always urge teammates to play testgames before we start. it gives a good feel for the settings. I suggest we build a fast testgame (quick speed) for the general idea of the game: can we make Gandhi build a space ship while at war with us. And we could have an epic speed test game to optimize the first turns, so that techs, worker actions and build orders fit together.

I dont mind putting some test games together tonight, but if Cam builds one I'll play that.

Not sure about building wonder packed cities, I would prefer to take cities from Gandhi's neighbours and have Gandhi take them from us. We need a solid base of 8-10 cities to be able to keep Gandhi safe.

OK ... this has been 'constructed' by a WorldBuilder newb ... I've opted to not include the HoF mod as part of the set up. We have a 'house rule' never to make peace with Gandhi (because I don't know how to be 'always at war' with Gandhi but no other tribes). The 'blue circles' are not the same as the official game. I've done it at Epic ... if Fast or Normal is preferred, then I don't mind one iota if someone (looking at Remconius ;)) wants to roll up an alternate map. I have not played this, but it should play alright.

Do we all play to 2400BC and compare results as per our traditional 40 turn rounds, or do we have something else in mind?

Pigswill - it might be good if we discuss '15 turn' rounds and 'half-time breaks' and 'Cam's tantrums because a friggn Granary was built in St. Petersburg' at some stage.

Remconius ... absolutely nothing carved in stone, let me assure you! We just want to play a test game because it has dawned on us that we're not sure as to what works and what doesn't work with this bizarre variant.

Please note that I can only play on Fridays-Sundays 'Australian time'.

I'm looking forward to this - it should be great fun! :)

about testing, I already expressed my feeling somehow.
But remco's option of taking neighbours' cities and semi gifting them to gandhi sound appealing too.
I think one full length test game should help us having some insight.

Thanks for the test game, Cam. I'll have a crack at it tonight and make one at quick speed. So we can play faster and see if Gandhi will actually build the metal bird and how we can support him.

Hello everyone, checking in and looking forward to my first ever SG.

My name's Mark, which is where the name MrMahk comes in...I'm 16 and live in NY (EST or GMT-5). I played CivIII and CivIV, but as I said I have yet to take part in an SG.


As for the game, I pretty much agree with what remconius said about sort of "watching over Gandhi" - let him do what he wants (except killing us!) and don't let other AIs gang up on him.

I'm sure our strategy will evolve over time here because as this is a fractal map, anything is possible- we and Gandhi could be on the same island, separate islands, Gandhi could be alone on an island with Monty and Toku :eek:, every civ on a big pangea, etc... so we really don't know what to expect yet.

As for the start, I am pro-move 2N. Whether we move the settler 2N or not, there will be at least 3 food resources in the fat cross. If we move 2N, there is 1 extra visible hill we can work and what appear to be 2 additional hills that would be in the fat cross, which could make the capital a big production powerhouse.


Lastly- Stuge I just met you, but happy birthday!

Aww, thanks for the cheers, guys! :thanx:

Helping a civ to win faster while at war with them certainly takes some dodgy thinking. Remconius already gave us some ideas, which dovetail partly into my own.

- Making sure that Gandhi doesn't get beat up.

- "Trimming" his civ. (You _don't_ do anything with that iceball city.)

- Building up a solid base at first. Then devouring any nearby civ and letting Gandhi capture our old core. Rinse and repeat. Just be careful that we don't feed him over the dom limit.

- If Gandhi's land looks underdeveloped, we can just march workers over. Although giving our own over to slavery isn't pretty.

I'm also in favor of test games, but these strategies depend a lot on the map and we have here a Gyathaar-special fractal, so it's impossible to know what to expect, like MrMahk said. So let's not get too caught up in testing.

As for the start, moving the settler 2N certainly won't hurt. We're not going after a religion here, so a couple of wasted turns don't matter.

I'm also in favor of test games, but these strategies depend a lot on the map and we have here a Gyathaar-special fractal, so it's impossible to know what to expect, like MrMahk said. So let's not get too caught up in testing.

True it could go any way. What if Gandhi is on a single square island and he is surrounded by islands with aggressive neighbours :devil:

Or he could be on a small island with us. Then we have to pull an independence day and migrate :)

Anyway, I'll make a quick test game and report back.

Okay, ran a small test tonight and it seems that Gandhi is enough of a warmonger to come at your cities quite aggressively, so I'd say that the "feeding
him cities"-strategy might well work. Didn't test any other parameters, though. But I'd say that a mining ->BW opening with worker -> work boat -> warriors/archers ->settler is the way to go. Whaddaya think?

Pigswill, can you post a roster for when we are ready to go?

We all ought to decide on basic stuff like who's captain. I was captain of trash in sgotm3, remconius was (is) captain of pioneer knights. I'd be quite happy if remconius wanted to be captain (or anyone else for that matter).

In terms of availability Cam_H can only play at weekends (though can make constructive comments at any time). Anyone else limited in when they can play?

What about we play an open succession game from Cam_H's save; we all play and post at 2400bc, compare opening strategies, pick the 'best' then play on again until say 1000bc.

I would be happy either way with or without captancy.

Good idea on all trying the Cam_H save to get the best opening moves.

What is also important to see how the game plays and what factors we can use to influence Gandhi's race to space. I guess if we attack him. he'll get more WW which wont help him...
We could start a random game with Ragnar, and Gandhi at war in quick speed to see how far we get in a hurry...

Demo game removed

I'm sure our strategy will evolve over time here because as this is a fractal map, anything is possible- we and Gandhi could be on the same island, separate islands, Gandhi could be alone on an island with Monty and Toku :eek:, every civ on a big pangea, etc... so we really don't know what to expect yet.

This game will re-enact the historical Civ3 SGOTM 09 challenge. It is 4000 BC. You are the Viking leader, Ragnar. You have met the Indian leader, Gandhi, and you have signed a pact in blood. The Vikings agree to teach india the art of war, and make them strong through conflict. In return India will take the Vikings to the stars.

You start the game as a neighbour of India. Following the pact you are at permanent war with Gandhi, and will remain so for the rest of the game. You are allowed no peace treaties with India. And India must win by space victory. All victory conditions are enabled except Diplomatic, but the winning team will be the one that gets India to Alpha Centauri, and does it fastest.

The highlighted bit is mine, but it's from the Sign Up thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=5070037&postcount=1).

I've got a few thoughts ...

War Weariness:

Do not actually attack Gandhi if at all possible, and try to lose as few troops as possible. War weariness is a condition of losing troops in combat and razing cities, so we need to turtle up as best we can as far as our conflict with India's concerned.

Tech' rate:

We have to play like Cabert. Make any trade which isn't wasteful. We have to keep pushing the AI's technology rate along, so that means trading with tribes that don't despise Gandhi.

Conceding border cities:

I agree that this seems to be a good move provided that we vacate the city of troops beforehand and as per below, don't 'shoot ourselves in the foot'.

Remaining competitive:

It's no use if we end up conceding so much to Gandhi that we can't influence the later game.

Test Game: (Please note - replacement test map)

I'm very happy to play a quick game if that helps.

Otherwise ... sorry about this ... I have scrapped the last 'test' start and replaced it with this one. Please use this instead.

I knew the last game's map and having thought about it I have opted for this one, which is going to be more useful and less frustrating. If we are to use an Epic game, then this map should probably be used in preference to the one I posted yesterday. It uses the HoF mod.

Apologies if you have spent some time on the first test map :blush:, but I think that this one will work much better.

Just wanted to say howdy... I don't get to play, as I'm on a Mac, which is probably fine as I've never played an SG... So for various reasons I've picked your team to observe throughout, that I might learn something about SG and the game itself. This will likely be my only intrusion into your thread...

Good luck!

Good catch there Cam_H, although I am not totally convinced that wording was meant to be taken 100% literally...;)

I will give that test game a shot nonetheless.


Edit: welcome aboard Ankh- you and I are in the same boat with SG experience so I hope to learn a lot too!

Welcome abord Ankh! I hope you enjoy the bickering! ;)

Mark - why not literally?

One thing about the start ... lots of food! We need to get at least one of Agriculture or Animal Hubandry pretty promptly, and we can be 'generous' with the whip once we get Bronze Working if we want to. It's a great spot for running a couple of Specialist Scientists once we get our Library up also.

Mark - why not literally?
I'm just saying that "neighbors" isn't really that specific- it could refer to being next to each other on the same island, we could be on adjacent islands, etc...however I think it does narrow it down away from the whole 'Gandhi is on a small island surrounded by agressive AIs and we are far away' theory.

Whizzed through Cam_H's test map up to 2410bc:
Unusual start for me. I saw the clams and lake and thought high commerce start, maybe early religion and holy city for Gandhi to capture later. So I grew the city non-stop, researched mysticism, polytheism (got hinduism), archery and mining. Now 6 turns from bronze. Buildwise I went WB, archer, archer (scout got attacked by 2 panthers at once and didn't survive :lol: ). Currently building worker to start chopping/mining.

Save: http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/90414/Trash_Tester_BC-2410.CivWarlordsSave

Demo game removed, images removed.

OK ... I did one turn later (2380BC). I'll stick it in 'spoilers' also, so other team members can try their own strategies. I actually had two attempts at this - I hope that's OK ... we're not being competitive here are we? :shifty:

I did a do-over ... the first attempt was to get a Worker out quickly to chop out Warriors, a Settler, and a Work Boat. All up, it wasn't such a great idea, and instead opted for a high-commerce - high-food approach. So the rest of this blurb is attempt #2.

True to my first attempt, I repeated the opening move and sent the Settler two tiles to the north, and was rewarded with lots of Coast and a Desert.

I went after Bronze Working from the outset ... with all of that food, Slavery could become very handy, and there are plenty of forests too. I'm not usually keen on whipping the Capital too much, but I think we need to get a few basics done quickly ... we can look at running some Specialists down the track.

The citizens worked on the 2:food: 3:commerce: tiles of the lake and the Clams. Having eventually got to Bronze Working, I whipped out a Work Boat. I also went after Warriors to get population growth, and on the last turn whipped out a Settler.

Goodie Hut-wise, picked up The Wheel as a free technology, a second Scout, and then 47:gold: and 89:gold: ... so we're the wealthiest tribe. :)

I researched Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, so when I get to Workers, they'll have plenty to do! Currently on Writing.

I spotted a 'reasonable' second city site with nine resources on a river! :crazyeye: That's where the Settler's going!

Good news - Delhi's got some high-:commerce: resources, so Gandhi's technology rate should move along pretty well.

Despite the Corn and Pigs, I'm thinking that it might be best not to stagnate growth by going after a Worker too early. It seems counter-intuitive, but the 'grow population and whip' approach seemed to work a bit better. I look forward to reading everyone else's findings.

War Weariness:

Do not actually attack Gandhi if at all possible, and try to lose as few troops as possible. War weariness is a condition of losing troops in combat and razing cities, so we need to turtle up as best we can as far as our conflict with India's concerned.

I'd say we just need to avoid entering into indian borders.
fights in our borders won't hurt us.
Of course they will hurt gandhi:mischief:

Tech' rate:

We have to play like Cabert. Make any trade which isn't wasteful. We have to keep pushing the AI's technology rate along, so that means trading with tribes that don't despise Gandhi.

:lol:
OK, for our members that don't know the trash series, cam is usually a cautious trader, while I'm a "total" trader.
Here, I'm not quite bought.
I'd say we need to focus on "non culture building" techs, like MC, currency and such, to be able to build good cities to hand to Gandhi.
And trading them to gandhi's friends may or may not be efficient. But speeding the general tech rate is a good move for a faster finish.

Conceding border cities:

I agree that this seems to be a good move provided that we vacate the city of troops beforehand and as per below, don't 'shoot ourselves in the foot'.

We need to cut off both our feet, if that helps gandhi launch earlier.

Remaining competitive:

It's no use if we end up conceding so much to Gandhi that we can't influence the later game.

100% agreed.
We need to be able to build military buildings and units that makes us his big bad brother.

I reckon it would be well worth our while establishing a religion and building a shrine for Gandhi to capture (maybe Oracle/CoL slingshot) because we can keep spreading the religion throughout the game getting Gandhi richer and shrines never obselete.

I play tested for a while, and here is the first thing I learned :
- we can settle right next to gandhi, he won't attack us too fast if there is enough garison (I had 2 chariots). This doesn't stop him from expanding.

Played to 2380BC on Cam_H's new test map:

Wound up settling in place, started workboat while working the corn for growth. Meanwhile, my scout popped agriculture :). Having something for my eventual worker to do (since I like making workers pretty early), I switched to BW. I found that extreme-resource site, then Gandhi soon after. My scout got killed by a lion, so I switched to a warrior- he came in and is now fogbusting for the site to the south, WB is on the clams, and my worker is farming the corn. I will grow to size 5 soon and start a settler. Here's a picture of my situation (as you can see, Gandhi founded buddhism):

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f271/MrMahk66/testgame2380bc.jpg

My overall research done: mining, (agriculture), BW, archery, and AH will be done in 5

I don't think it's worthwhile to found a religion ourselves. Gandhi is prone to snag a couple on his own. And if we want a "gifted" religion to really help Gandhi, we'd have to build a shrine. And chasing a great prophet distracts us from expansion and military.

Do we have enough views to decide on the initial build order? I still advocate my suggestion: Worker ->work boat -> soldiers -> settler, while going for BW. What are your ideas?

Stuge makes some good points about religion, so I agree about not worrying about founding one ourselves. We would also have to go through the trouble of spreading it too, which as he said would take away from other aspects of our strategy. However, if Gandhi's religion winds up spreading to us we should definetley try to spread it more.

Do we have enough views to decide on the initial build order? I still advocate my suggestion: Worker ->work boat -> soldiers -> settler, while going for BW. What are your ideas?

IMO, building a worker while going for BW is counterproductive because he would have nothing to do until it comes in and I'm not really big on chopping anyway. I would prefer work boat, a soldier or two, worker, soldier if necessary, then settler. Much of this game is about seeing what Gandhi wants to do and then adapting to it, and a large part of that has to do with cities and their placement. In the above build order, going for BW would be fine.

I tend to agree with the Work Boat first on the basis of my two quick shots at it. Starting with a Worker is going to keep the city at size 1 for ages - especially if you work one of the high-:commerce: tiles. The Work Boat seemed to me to be the better option given that we have two '2:food: 3:commerce:' tiles that can keep our tech' rate moving along nicely until the Clams get harvested. I might try the Worker-first approach again for comparison's sake.

I am surprised about the religion gamble that's being proposed in that I would rather spread one of Gandhi's religions once it creeps into our borders. To me it's an interesting idea worth discussing, but I'm personally not in favour of it unless we're thinking of bee-lining to The Oracle.

Too many damned competing tech paths with merit! :crazyeye: ;)

Argument in favour of religion/shrine.

AI's are good at founding religions and its likely that Gandhi will snag at least one. However AIs suck at using GPs wisely. Most games I've played shrines aren't built until mid game; I've seen priest specialists in captured cities and no shrines built; AIs routinely burn GPs on Golden Ages. Thus its unlikely that Gandhi will establish a shrine early on.

The aim of the game is to survive and prosper enough to help Gandhi into space. We can't help Gandhi directly which I suspect is the main purpose of always war. Therefore we have to help Gandhi indirectly. Various ways of acheiving this: tech trade widely hoping that Gandhi wil benefit indirectly, building cities for Gandhi to capture, building wonders for Gandhi to capture, capturing cities for Gandhi to capture from us. All of these are a direct cost to us.

In terms or relative cost I think a shrine and a widespread religion are good value; it benefits Gandhi, we can choose when we build missionaries, if we stick to shrine religion as state religion we get the benefit of religious civics.
Say for instance we went for Oracle and CoL; we get the free great priest within 75 turns without doing a thing, it does delay our first GS butthat's the only cost. Oracle costs 150 hammers for a 500 beaker tech thats useful in its own right. Comparing this to building a city and building eg parthenon inthe city its very good value.

I played the test game a bit myself.
No need for spoilers IMHO, it's for testing sake.

2 things strike me :
- in my game, gandhi is dead last in score, although I 'offered' him a city (a good one, with horses, stone, mines, farms to feed the miners...)
- he was the only buddhist leader.
So my conclusions were:
* religions may play a major role
* settling cities too near to India will result in 0 worker activity in India = bad crippling.

A few other points (mostly about techs) :
- we don't need BW early. We need agri and AH immediately. High output tiles will produce workers as fast as slavery (almost)
- the GotMs maps don't have huts. So we don't need that many scouts ;)
- trading widely all my techs was indeed making the global tech pace fast. But not Gandhi's. He was dead last in techs! We may need to trade carefully.
- colossus is better for us financial guys than for Gandhi.

I'll play the test game later today to find the optimal start.

Personally I feel that the start is less crucial in this game vs other games. What I an doing is a few random games with Ragnar and Ghandi at war in quick mode. To see if I can get him to build the space ship. I am not even bothering to change the start map. Just playing it through to get a feel for the settings throughout the game.

It'd be nice if a few others also tried this to see what they find.

Remconius; could you post your quick save. Congrats on finishing sgotm3, I don't know if you'd had a chance to look through trashteam thread yet. I've been tied up playing a shadow of ALC13 but haven't forgotten about this one.

This is just a random quick game with similar settings.

Test game save (http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/32943/test_game_SGOTM4.CivWarlordsSave)

Try to get Gandhi into space, asap.

OK guys.
I vote for Pigswill as captain. He was a brilliant captain in SGotM3.

About the rest, I'm tired of test games.

Can we try and get a general direction for the start?
I think we have 2 big options:
- fast growth for us, in order to be a big brother to gandhi
- religious way, to prevent Gandhi from being the lonesome cowboy out there (it happened in my test game, and really he didn't trade techs with anyone :eek:).

I vote for fast growth, and let gandhi research his buddhism on his own.
If another religion gets founded out there, we may just go capturing it ;).
In fact, I'd recommend this as a general direction : try to make gandhi the most loved AI, for better trades to him.
To achieve this, we need to
- avoid him being the only buddhist (or whatever)
- give him "mutual struggle bonus" at times, by declaring on his neighbours. We can do this even without troops, or without actually knowing where the neighbour is!
Of course, we need to build up our military forces.
I'd also say that we need to avoid crippling Gandhi.
For this we must not settle cities too near to his borders.

In my test game I had Alexander from the north declare on Gandhi to my east. I closed borders to slow Alex. I did give a few cities to Gandhi which helped him leave the last place.

I need to play further in my test game to see if Gandhi will launch. We can complete our test games in parallel to playing the first number of turns.

As for start, settle 2N, build Workboat. Then build worker only if have anything to improve. If we go for religions we might be better off building another scout.

If we find Gandhi we should settle in his direction our second city. Then found a religion, then let him capture the city.

I'll support Pigswill as captain. No problem.

Good discussion guys! :)

My next round of two cents;

Test Game

I have only played my test game to 2380BC, and haven't learned too much other than I don't think the 'Worker first' option is the best approach and we should instead get the Work Boat and use our high-:commerce: tiles on getting to Bronze Working for Slavery. I'm not ready to start. I don't want to settle two tiles north until we see what's two tiles north, although I suspect it will be the superior spot.

Religion

It's all but a given that Gandhi will found Buddhism or Hinduism. It is our role to get it into our empire and spread it ... almost like a religious crusade! I suspect that the AI will burn a Great Prophet on a Shrine if the religion has been spread widely enough, otherwise it goes towards a Golden Age. Gandhi is of course now Philosophical, so the Shrine shouldn't take too long one would hope if we do our job.

Proximity of Cities

I agree with Cabert ... we should give Gandhi as much free space as we can so he can settle his own cities rather than us gambling on him taking ours. I'd leverage our Financial trait by settling along the coast and let Gandhi take the inland spots provided we're not forgoing natural opportunities like grabbing an Iron or a couple of Gold tiles for instance.

We need to be strong in order to influence the game, so being too concessionary to Gandhi early on may be ultimately counter-productive.

The Colossus

Totally agree with Cabert ... unless we've landed next to Stone or some other dilemma-causing incident like that, I think this is the WoW that should be high, if not top of our hit list.

Technology Path

Bronze Working > Worker technologies > Sailing > Metal Casting?

Proposal only, but we should be agreed on this.

ok for BW, while gandhi researches his religion

The only problem is that we don't start with mining, so it's a pretty long way to BW. I guess it's ok though because finding military resources is important to make sure we have enough "leverage" over Gandhi.

So overall, I think Cam_H's plan sounds good!

The thing with settling 2N is that we dont lose anything.

But gains are nice:
-plains hill to found on.
-Chance of more resources up north.

I suggest our opener moves Scout S, E and settler 2N and then posts screenies before continuing

The thing with settling 2N is that we dont lose anything.
you overlooked 2 things :
- fish
- cottageable land

But gains are nice:
-plains hill to found on.
-Chance of more resources up north.
- we don't need to found on the plains hill. We have loads of food and could put this hill to good use with a mine
- chances are for tundra or ocean up north


I suggest our opener moves Scout S, E and settler 2N and then posts screenies before continuing
I agree with this except what I striked out ;).
Settling where we are, building workboat 1 then workboat 2 then possibly worboat 3 for exploration duty while researching mining/BW seems the best moves right now.
Hopefully our scout doesn't fall into an indian trap.
The goal is to have food to grow to size 4
(will allow us to whip a worker after 1 turn of hammers invested then barracks/warriors while growing back...)

I agree with Cam_Hs initial plan. Definetly snag the clolossus if we manage to expand waterfront.

BTW guys, would it be alright for one more player to join us? Patagonia would be eager to play but has missed the sign-up.

I'm wondering about our overall strategy. Haven't got round to playing a test game (or two) yet so this is still speculative.

Exploration seems important early on; so I'd favour fitting in sailing and a trireme or two (and a lighthouse!). I think we need to get our home island explored. We also need to locate Gandhi early on, maybe plan to expand in the opposite direction.

I remain keen on the idea of an early religion and shrine for Gandhi to capture coz relying on any AI to do what what we want is a recipe for frustration and disappointment.

I would like us to win the circumnavigation race because +2 naval movement (with tradehouse) is likely to prove a huge strategic benefit throughout the game.

In terms of wonders I reckon its a matter of available resources.

I'd be more than happy for patagonia to join us if he can swing it with AlanH (signing in blood that he hasn't read any other threads etc.).

you overlooked 2 things :
- fish
- cottageable land


- we don't need to found on the plains hill. We have loads of food and could put this hill to good use with a mine
- chances are for tundra or ocean up north




Which Fish? I dont see a fish :crazyeye:

We do lose cottageable land, but gain 2 plains hills. Currently we only have 2 plains hills and 1 grass hill. When moving we would have 4 plains hills and 1 grass. If we want to protect Gandhi we need lots of units to fight Gandhi and his enemies. With all the food available I would really like to have a production powerhouse capital. And with bureaucracy it would be very powerful.

If the results from moving 2N are extremely bad we could always move back and settle in turn 3. Remember the start is not crucial, we dont need to be the best, we just need to stay alive and help Gandhi.

Which Fish? I dont see a fish :crazyeye:

We do lose cottageable land, but gain 2 plains hills. Currently we only have 2 plains hills and 1 grass hill. When moving we would have 4 plains hills and 1 grass. If we want to protect Gandhi we need lots of units to fight Gandhi and his enemies. With all the food available I would really like to have a production powerhouse capital. And with bureaucracy it would be very powerful.

If the results from moving 2N are extremely bad we could always move back and settle in turn 3. Remember the start is not crucial, we dont need to be the best, we just need to stay alive and help Gandhi.

you're right there is no fish.
I still favour settling in place. :p

Tricky one. At the moment we have no idea what the situation is. Are we sharing a small island with Gandi? Large island with Gandhi? Is Gandhi on an island north/south/east/west of us?

We can't really formulate a plan until we know these details.

Immediate question. Do we intend to found an early religion? If so settle in place, work high commerce and build a workboat for more commerce. If not then we can spend a turn or two exploring; send settler north, scout south-east and then decide on city#1.

We don't know if this will be a long term capital, an early game gimme to Gandhi or a mid-game gimme to Gandhi so let's think short/medium term for this city.

I say screw religion, we don't start with mysticism so going for an early religion is big gamble even with 3C tiles. Just go take a peek 2N, then decide where to settle.

Are we ready to go?

Been fog gazing.

148902

These are the squares we gain when moving north:
1 Plains hill river
1 Plains hill
1 grassland hill
1 Grassland
1 Plains
2 coast
+3 unknown: Chance of more resources, risk of useless tiles.

We would lose:
5 Grassland
1 grassland hill
2 coast
2 ocean
+ certainty of knowning all and 1 turn early settlement

The net change is:
+1 Plains hill river
+1 Plains hill
+1 Plains
+3 unknowns
-4 grassland
-2 ocean
Basically a gain in hammers vs commerce.... We need production to build units. Gandhi needs commerce to build the ship, not us...

Let's be adventurous and move!

I agree that religion is a gamble. We could always get a scientist and try to get philosophy, or code of laws for Gandhi.

As long as one of his neighbours had the same religion they'll share techs. In my test game Hatty and Gandhi both had hinduism. I gave techs to Hatty she shared them with the low food, peacelover. We can spread whatever religion Gandhi has across the world.

Agree with Pigswill that we need to start and see what's out there. What is the roster and how many turns in the beginning?
First person should post some screenies after turn 1.

Religion

I remain keen on the idea of an early religion and shrine for Gandhi to capture coz relying on any AI to do what what we want is a recipe for frustration and disappointment.

Can't we just make the religion that he's going to found stronger by spreading it for him - initially in our own cities so we can get Temples (:)) and Monasteries (:science:) up, and perhaps then to a 'mutually friendly' neighbour who will be willing to trade technology with both the Vikings and the Indians?

It seems risky to hope that we are going to found a religion in the first instance ... distracting us from more warfare-oriented technologies (unless Confucianism, or to a lesser extent Taoism or Christianity), then will it be founded in a Viking-Indian border city, there's the cost of burning a Great Prophet when we should probably be chasing other Great People, then there's the hope that India is going to attack the 'right' city. All for what? Maybe 10:gold: extra per turn to the Indians?

I'd rather ensure that we have Gandhi's religion in our own cities for the :) and :science: and possibly embrace a religious civic, and then start manipulating world politics by flooding other tribes with Gandhi's own founded religion of choice.

Settling the Capital

I might have been unclear; I am happy to explore to the north, but I'd rather not commit to settling there until we see what's there. That is, let's not commit to on the spot or two to the north until we see more. Whoever has the first round should probably consult the Team once the Settler has moved to the north.

So all up, I agree with Tuomas.

I don't know Patagonia.

I still haven't learned anything from playing my test game. If you guys have to start, it's your call, but I don't think that we really understand our grand strategy yet, and what will work and what will fail.

This is a great discussion, but there is one thing nobody has mentioned yet- even if Gandhi does found a religion, there is no guarantee that it will spread to us (at least quickly).

Also, if we found a religion and "give" him the holy city, that could create some other problems diplomatically because he might keep switching back and forth between his religion (assuming he founded one) and ours. If that were the case, we wouldn't really know which missionaries to spam and might wind up creating more enemies for him than friends.

Personally, I think we are better off letting him found his own, and just hoping that it spreads to us. In my opinion, introducing more religions into the mix only makes it more complicated.


As for the start, I agree that we might as well move 2N then post up the picture, and discuss from there.

I was playing the test game. When I tried to finish off Jules, Both Alex and Gandhi came at me hard.

If Gandhi is our neighbour he'll focus on units... :(

We could migrate.... Who watched Independence Day (the SG...)

Remco,

The thought (Independence Day) crossed my mind too, but I was wary that we would give away too much in order to make it work. It could be a possibility however - exploration will be important, so Sailing should probably be an early feature in our technology tree.

Mark,

I would imagine that there's a greater liklihood of us attracting Gandhi's religion (provided he is a neighbour as earlier discussed) than our capacity to; found a religion in the city of choice and then lose that city with a Shrine in it to him.

I guess a lingering question I'm dwelling on is; How aggressive will Gandhi be if we are brothers and sisters of the faith? Will he tone down the military and not attack our cities, or won't it make a bit of difference?

I think we should maximise the value of the religious civics and improve our chances that he'll keep off our 'case' by adopting his religion and trying to also convert an intermediary leader (ideally a leader like Hatshepsut) for technology trading.

It might be nice if we're on a reasonably large landmass with four or five tribes, so we can raze some cities of some 'third party' tribe and give Gandhi some room for expansion while also fostering a good relationship with a friendly intermediary who hopefully won't be too competitive with Gandhi ...

... otherwise Independence Day might present itself as a realistic possibility. If so, how should we go about it?

Mark,

I would imagine that there's a greater liklihood of us attracting Gandhi's religion (provided he is a neighbour as earlier discussed) than our capacity to; found a religion in the city of choice and then lose that city with a Shrine in it to him.

Yeah- I totally agree. I was just throwing it out there.

It seems there is a consensus on letting Gandhi found a religion and we spread it rather than us found a religion and let Gandhi capture it; having read the arguments in favour of this position I will agree with one caveat. If Gandhi doesn't found a religion of his own (unlikely but possible) then we'll think about founding one for him.

It also seems that there is a consensus re initial move of moving settler to the north for exploration as our very first move then deciding on location of first city.

Whilist I can understand that we want to start playing something of which I'm conscious is that in sgotm3 TT (Trash Team) started playing and didn't formulate a strategy until half way throughthe game which is ok in a non-competitive game but not so good if we're aiming for a laurel.

We could for instance play an open succession type dummy game in parallel with sgotm. Advantage would be we'd having something to play to bond as a team and keep interest going. Disadvantage would be that being a different map with different leaders etc plans that work ina dummy game may not apply to real sgotm.

I agree that we should hold off playing the 'real' game until we know what the heck we're doing. For this reason I don't think that we'll benefit much from a parallel game.

The test game that I posted (http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=148644&d=1172271888) gives us a close enough identical start to the one in the screenshot, and has leaders that are generally pretty moderate in terms of not being particularly nutty or erratic, as far as Civ leaders go. Remco has another test game (http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/32943/test_game_SGOTM4.CivWarlordsSave) with quick speed.

I really believe that all the team members would benefit from playing one of these through to completion and comparing results. Personally I don't play Epic speed that often, so I need to get a better handle on how to better use the whip and not to be so impatient. I don't know if it's better if we do this 'succession style' or whether we just play one or both of these in our own time.

Sorry if I'm sounding like a pain in the @r$e about this, but I don't feel comfortable about starting the real game until we have a solid plan derived from some experience with this set up. Of course, I will go along with the group decision if it differs from my position.

Hum,
Maybe I'm not competitive minded enough, but I gave up the testing.
It's kind of boring to play similar games twice or more.

I believe some independance day move is the best for us.
That's why I want us to create a very strong commerce city to semi gift to gandhi.
We may have to "protect" the cottages vs pillaging, and that's a tricky part.
But I believe a totally empty city is enough temptation.

Until we actually start playing we won't know where Gandhi is in relation to us, and so we won't know whether migration is a good option.

I'm wondering how near we are to making a start in sgotm4. We've agreed pretty much on explore first turn to decide on location of first city. We could also do with deciding on initial tech and initial build then we could start exploring our home island and hopefully find Gandhi fairly early.

We're still quite a way from establishing a grand strategy.
1) We've more or less decided on religion.

2) An equally important question is do we expand towards Gandhi which let's him capture our cities early but means he builds more units and doesn't develop tiles or do we expand away from him (assuming of course we have options to do either) ?

3)What's our policy towards third parties?

4) We have to survive and prosper ourselves. What's the most effective way to achieve this? How does this balance with helping Gandhi?

Until we actually start playing we won't know where Gandhi is in relation to us, and so we won't know whether migration is a good option.

I'm wondering how near we are to making a start in sgotm4. We've agreed pretty much on explore first turn to decide on location of first city. We could also do with deciding on initial tech and initial build then we could start exploring our home island and hopefully find Gandhi fairly early.

We're still quite a way from establishing a grand strategy.
1) We've more or less decided on religion.

2) An equally important question is do we expand towards Gandhi which let's him capture our cities early but means he builds more units and doesn't develop tiles or do we expand away from him (assuming of course we have options to do either) ?

3)What's our policy towards third parties?

4) We have to survive and prosper ourselves. What's the most effective way to achieve this? How does this balance with helping Gandhi?

Good post captain :)

My position on your questions :
1) OK, although it's not necessarily easy to get gandhi's religion in our cities. Sailing may be a priority for this. Over BW? I'd say no. Over agri/AH? I'd yes. Which means we need no workers for the first 3000 years.:crazyeye:
2) We'll dotmap when we know a bit of the land of course. But for the first 4000 years, we need to give Gandhi a break = build "away" from him if possible.
3) That's the tricky part. We cannot help out gandhi directly for a long time (giving him cities early would cripple him!). So our influence can only be on the third parties. I'd say :
- we need to help him in any war he is in.
- we can try to improve his relations with good tech partners by spreading his religion and declaring war on those guys : mutual struggle will help him grow in their hearts. For those things, we need power, and loads of it.
4) that's another tricky part. I'd say we don't need to be tech leader, we need to be power leader = the world's big guy. Techs help in this matter of course, but I'm not sure that trading away anything is actually helping Gandhi.
This is the one game where I would like to be a cautious trader and a big military freak.

I agree we need to test a bit more to get a feel for the grand strategy.

We can, however, take the first steps. And even play the first turnsets to see how the cards are dealt. We need more info to make a grand strategy.

With regards to indepence day: We built 4-5 commerce only cities. Rush to astronomy with great scientists. Have cities with minimal improvements. Then sail a bunch of settlers, workers and units to the other land. Build one city, let the old world get captured, so the capital moves. Then build other cities... voila.

Depending on the map we may have a bolt hole accessible by galleys. We may not. If Gandhi is sharing an island with us then we can build lots of non-culture improvements for him to capture along with our cities so its quite different from Independence Day (the game, not the movie).

How to make civ x like Gandhi.

- Flood civ x with missionaries of Gandhi's religion.

- Declare a phony war on them so that the mutual military struggle-bonus kicks in.

Then pray that x and Gandhi will trade a lot. This can be done with multiple civs, if our resources permit it. Imagine a cheesy high school movie. We're the big bully, who all the little nerds hate and conspire against.

Any more ideas on this?

How to make civ x like Gandhi.

- Flood civ x with missionaries of Gandhi's religion.

- Declare a phony war on them so that the mutual military struggle-bonus kicks in.

Then pray that x and Gandhi will trade a lot. This can be done with multiple civs, if our resources permit it. Imagine a cheesy high school movie. We're the big bully, who all the little nerds hate and conspire against.

Any more ideas on this?

well, those are the only ideas I had too :mischief:
we could try other moves, but those need testing :
1) pillage civ x's health or happiness that Gandhi has 2 or more of, to try to force trading the resource
2) bribe civ Y into war with Gandhi and bribe civ x into war vs civ y ... (could be a better move than trying to be stronger than all the rest)
3) trade to civ x a tech gandhi doens't have when gandhi has a tech civ x doesn't have? tricky one, though

About adopting Gandhi's religion... Would give him and us the penalty of being at was with brothers of same faith... not good.

Ideally Gandhi's friends will be pleased/friendly with us whilst we have no religion. And G's friends will have the same religion....

well, those are the only ideas I had too :mischief:

Shut up, you. I'm trying to focus on posting not reading...
Er, wait. That sounded so much better in my head. :blush:

Rem is right about the happiness hit. Let's hope that the diplomatic situation allows us to adopt some religion. Theocracy would be nice.

About adopting Gandhi's religion... Would give him and us the penalty of being at was with brothers of same faith... not good.

Ideally Gandhi's friends will be pleased/friendly with us whilst we have no religion. And G's friends will have the same religion....

we don't need to switch to that religion!
only to build a monastery and loads of missionaries

First there were the Seven Samurai....

Then there was the Magnificent Seven.....

And at last, when you thought things just couldn't get any better,

We Proudly Present (fanfare, drumroll) The Trash Seven!

Patagonia is joining us!!

Re religion spreading and brothers of faith; if we felt extravagent we could spread Gandhi's religion without joining it ourselves (and foregoing religious civix?).

Re religion spreading and brothers of faith; if we felt extravagent we could spread Gandhi's religion without joining it ourselves (and foregoing religious civix?).

we could even be worse and adopt another religion :eek:

We should be religionless (rush for liberalism?) and stay friends with Gandhi's friends who are the same religion.

Pigswill, oh great one, can you please post the roster?

So, are you sitting comfortably?

Then we shall begin....

Once upon a time in a far off land there lived a fearless leader of warriors and vikings, Ragnar the Bold.

For each person there is a doppleganger, a shadow, the opposite of all they embody. For Ragnar this was Gandhi the Timid, a fearful leader of workers and cowards.

Between these two there is a bond of eternal emnity which would last until the stars. Death could not break their mystical link.

This is the story of their intertwined destinies.

List of raconteurs in order of appearance:

Pigswill
Remconius
Cabert
Stuge
Cam_H
MrMahk
Patagonia

Go, Ragnar, travel bold and with honor.

Report back what you discover after 30 years (1 turn ;))

Well here's what's revealed after settler moves 2 north and worker moves 1 south east:-

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g166/pigswill-2006/t4t010000.jpg

Does this raise more questions than answers?

Very interesting moves right there. These are my initial views:


http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f271/MrMahk66/possiblestartrevised.jpg

Site A would be great for production (as discussed), and we could possibly throw some cottages in there and make it a hybrid.

Site B would obviously be a commercial powerhouse. 13 visible grassland/jungle/forest tiles (not including the resources), with 3 of them being on a river. Barring some resource in the unknown, however, it would not have much food and thus be slow to grow.


Anyway, those are my initial opinions, and I'm sure you guys may differ, so I look forward to hearing what you think.

Hey Team Trash, I'm a bit of a late arrival :blush:
but have just caught up on the thread and have a few ideas regarding the variant (apologies if this is rehashing what's already been said, but it's quite late here).

The first thing to note is that we need to be powerful enough until late enough to affect the outcome of the game. Gandhi needs to get to space first, but that's several hundred turns away so he doesn't need to be much of a factor early on. It's having a large, powerful India in the late game that's important. For this reason I'd advocate something similar to the "independence day" scenario that was mentioned earlier - develop a powerbase on our own continent, then launch an oceanic invasion and bait Gandhi to capture our original lands and cities.

Ideally, we want to have a clear tech and power lead by the time we get Renaissance units, then do something like a cavalry rampage through the civ likely to be Gandhi's main space race rival. Depending on the map, this'll make optics and astronomy reasonably high mid-term goals to work towards.

As far as cottages are concerned, I fear that pillaging isn't the only factor that'll complicate our abandonment of commerce cities to the AI. Post biology, the 2.08 version loves to farm. It runs a decent enough specialist economy, but that can't compare to a cottage one at that stage.

This sounds like a fun variant. Looking forward to seeing how it plays out!

So much discussion!

OK ... I am still advocating more test games because there's no grand strategy. If Cabert doesn't want to play a test game that's his prerogative ;) but I still don't think that we should undertake the 'real' version yet. I'm suspecting I will be playing a test game this weekend ... and trying to get my P666-04 game done!

We are going to need a bucket-load of boats in order to pull off Independence Day given we're not fighting a large island of Barbarians and want to stay powerful throughout. Given that we don't know the map, timing might be a huge issue ... there might be a large island where we can settle pre-Astronomy with Galleys rather than Galleons (?).

I am happy to go along with Bronze Working > Sailing if that's considered better than Animal Husbandry and/or Agriculture for the reason above, plus 'whip-ability'. Pottery would be handy, but we can work the water for a while for the commerce.

Welcome on board Patagonia! :)

I think we should work on the water with site 'B' (i.e. shift two to the east rather than as proposed), but site 'A' looks OK to me.

So much discussion!

OK ... I am still advocating more test games because there's no grand strategy. If Cabert doesn't want to play a test game that's his prerogative ;)
:p
Don't you like the independance day strat? Patagonia made it quite clear, and it's definitely what I see as best overall strat.Seems strong enough for me.
I'd just go a bit further in the deal, saying that we need to remove every neighbour on our own island before going away.
It's simply in order to avoid another civ taking our cities.

but I still don't think that we should undertake the 'real' version yet. I'm suspecting I will be playing a test game this weekend ... and trying to get my P666-04 game done!
in other words, you're late and try to slow us down to get some time to test a bit more?
That's OK for me.;) .
We can explore a bit without too much interference with the grand strategy.


We are going to need a bucket-load of boats in order to pull off Independence Day given we're not fighting a large island of Barbarians and want to stay powerful throughout. Given that we don't know the map, timing might be a huge issue ... there might be a large island where we can settle pre-Astronomy with Galleys rather than Galleons (?).

I am happy to go along with Bronze Working > Sailing if that's considered better than Animal Husbandry and/or Agriculture for the reason above, plus 'whip-ability'. Pottery would be handy, but we can work the water for a while for the commerce.
the more I think of it, the more I think we won't be able to give our cottages to gandhi. Meaning we really should use the coast + colossus.

Welcome on board Patagonia! :)
yep!
your first post is showing you already gave this variant some thoughts, so double welcome.

I think we should work on the water with site 'B' (i.e. shift two to the east rather than as proposed), but site 'A' looks OK to me.
exactly what I was going to say, so I 100% agree with cam (as usual, when it's not about trading techs :lol: ).

Let's not worry too much about locations of cities #2 and #3 because we ain't done that much exploring (one turn's worth in fact). First question is location of city #1 folowed by initial research and initial build. Once those are decided we can explore a bit more.

We've already got fishing for easy food production, I'd reckon we start with mining/BW and build a workboat while exploring further. Settle on settler's current location, still got food tiles available and hills for mining.

Let's not worry too much about locations of cities #2 and #3 because we ain't done that much exploring (one turn's worth in fact). First question is location of city #1 folowed by initial research and initial build. Once those are decided we can explore a bit more.

We've already got fishing for easy food production, I'd reckon we start with mining/BW and build a workboat while exploring further. Settle on settler's current location, still got food tiles available and hills for mining.

I second this. workboat first, then warrior, then possibly worker or settler (to be whipped)

^^^^ Sounds good to me.

Welcome Patagonia, and solid strat!

I like it very much, build a powerful base, and give it away. Basically we land on another island, take cities from whoever is there and gradually let Gandhi take our cities.

It's like a Nomad strategy.

Let's teach G how to wage war ;). As soon as we have new cities we abandon the old ones near Gandhi and move on. We could even take over another civs core and be there for a while. Only tricky part is to make sure we have relevant resources at all time. So we dont abandon our iron/copper site until we have a new one.

With regards to boats, we dont need that many. In independence day we only had 5-6. We dont have to be sailing all units at the same time. We can easily move some units and ferry the rest while we explore, capture, settle.

Playing a nomad strategy will keep us moving across the map, while Gandhi's empire continues to grow and gain power. How's that for a Grand Strategy.

It will be a very different game than other games I reckon.

I agree to settle where we are now and to start mining/BW. Meanwhile building a workboat, then worker.

Any contrary views re opening moves (settle in place, build workboat, research mining/BW) ?

Nope ... happy enough with that. I'm wary of Work Boat > Worker, and would like to pause to look at whether Work Boat > Warror might be the better option.

I have played a bit from my earlier save ... clearing the continent I feel is the right approach, although I am really frustrated that Gandhi doesn't seem to be able to do anything other than send in pillaging Horse Archers, and doesn't want to expand despite ample opportunity to do so. I was not ready to give up the 5x Ivory 2x Clam 1x Copper 1x Wheat site quite yet when his Horse Archer arrived! I keep having to declare war on more ambitious tribes who keep settling in the free spaces that I have created by beating up Hannibal just to continue to protect the vacant land that Gandhi never seems to want to settle in.

Any contrary views re opening moves (settle in place, build workboat, research mining/BW) ?
Sounds good to me.

Zee Grund Stretegy!

OK ... Independence Day it seems to be.

In contrast to earlier posts, I think that we're going to be so preoccupied with clearing any 'third parties' off our landmass (provided we get a semi-reasonable map) that spreading a religion may well have to take a 'back seat'. If Cap'n Pigswill still wants to focus on religion, then we'll possibly have to take things very much in stages or we'll possibly be spread too thin.

Gandhi in my test game was hopeless in taking unprotected cities let alone settling on empty pockets of land. I jumped back to an old save and captured rather than razed cities. As Patagonia says, I had to "bait" Gandhi's troops with Warriors, Scouts, and Explorers towards unprotected cities.

Zee Grund Stretegy!

OK ... Independence Day it seems to be.

:woohoo:
we have a strat!
that's a nice change ;)

In contrast to earlier posts, I think that we're going to be so preoccupied with clearing any 'third parties' off our landmass (provided we get a semi-reasonable map) that spreading a religion may well have to take a 'back seat'. If Cap'n Pigswill still wants to focus on religion, then we'll possibly have to take things very much in stages or we'll possibly be spread too thin.

we'll have to watch closely relations.
If it's a trading partner for gandhi, we should feed him missionaries.
If it isn't it should die.

Gandhi in my test game was hopeless in taking unprotected cities let alone settling on empty pockets of land. I jumped back to an old save and captured rather than razed cities. As Patagonia says, I had to "bait" Gandhi's troops with Warriors, Scouts, and Explorers towards unprotected cities.
:lol:
good to know
In my test game, I didn't even have to empty the city.
I left a lone warrior in there, and it worked.
But the city I tried with was really on gandhi's borders.

Seems like we're getting close to a strategy:
Develop our continent. Build/capture bait cities near Gandhi and encourage him to capture them. Try and snag Gandhi's religion and spread it. Meanwhile build ourselves a reasonable economic/military base while going for an astronomy beeline (possibly involving multiple GS). Build Colossus. Push off to pastures new (or second-hand!), Rinse and repeat.
Also keep Gandhi's pals/trade partners fairly intact and stomp his enemies.

All we have to do now is make it work.

Seems like we're getting close to a strategy:
Develop our continent. Build/capture bait cities near Gandhi and encourage him to capture them. Try and snag Gandhi's religion and spread it. Meanwhile build ourselves a reasonable economic/military base while going for an astronomy beeline (possibly involving multiple GS). Build Colossus. Push off to pastures new (or second-hand!), Rinse and repeat.
Also keep Gandhi's pals/trade partners fairly intact and stomp his enemies.

All we have to do now is make it work.Making it work's bound to be the easy part :mischief:

It's worth considering the astronomy beeline some teams used in SGOTM 2, but that does mean we'll have to avoid some potentially useful techs (meditation and civil service if I remember correctly) until we've teched to galleons. Thinking about it, maybe that's why the Vikings have been chosen for this strat...

Beeline astronomy whilst settling your own landmass.
Get caravels out ASAP to identify a good target for colonisation.
Pop Astronomy.
Research CS while building a fleet of galleons.
Mass whipping and drafting (if we get that far), or upgrading of Berzerkers.
Amphibious invasion!
We won't need to worry about WW etc in our old cities since we'll be encouraging Gandhi to capture them as we take new ones for ourselves.

In the run up to that we'll hopefully be able to get a few CR3 axes/swords primied for upgrade by trimming back India's neighbours.

Do you think this is what they were planning when they came up with the variant?

All we have to do now is make it work.

Best-laid plans and all that... ;)

I think that our principle is sound. We just have to be ready to adapt, if, say, the map is a pangaea or something similiar. So let's all sing together:

Exploration!

Exploration!

The lifeblood of civilization!

I like the thinking - vague on execution!

It's worth considering the astronomy beeline some teams used in SGOTM 2, but that does mean we'll have to avoid some potentially useful techs (meditation and civil service if I remember correctly) until we've teched to galleons.

Do we want The Colossus therefore if we're actively pursuing the technology that obsoletes it, and would we be better off with The Great Lighthouse ... or is the thinking that The Colossus's very role is simply to get us to Astronomy and hopefully pop a Great Merchant? The Colossus city is later abandoned by us before Gandhi gets to Astonomy himself so he can use it?

Sorry - I missed SGOTM2's threads and have yet to go through them - how 'pure' is this bee-line that you're proposing? For instance we miss Alphabet, so no technology trading?

Sorry for the delay chaps, I got caught up playing a shadow of ALC13.

I've run three practice starts from Cam_H's epic save. I went for mining, BW, agric while building workboat, warrior, worker. Fastest time to worker was 2800bc working food tile to pop 2 then lake and clams, once BW was in whipped WB with one turn overflow to worker, then warrior whipping again once up to pop 2 again.

It then occured to me that an alternative path might be mining, BW, sailing with build order of WB, warrior, TP (trading post).

I don't know if anyone else has experimented with different starts. All ideas welcome.

I reckon that starting with WB, mining, BW is pretty much agreed so I may as well make a start up to discovering BW.

City founded on top of the plains hill, starting to build a workboat while working corn (bonus hammer will come in useful). Scout scurries around happily discovering extensive gold deposits, checking out a range of impassable mountains, pondering if there's an isolated peninsula behind them or if he's been following the shores of a large lake. Then he disturbs a sleeping bear!

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g166/pigswill-2006/tt010000.jpg

'Yikes' he exclaims muttering quick prayers to Loki god of tricksters and Thor god of war. His prayers are answered.

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g166/pigswill-2006/tt020001.jpg

He thanks his lucky star and rests up to heal.

The Frozen North:
http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g166/pigswill-2006/tto30000.jpg

The Gilded South:
http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g166/pigswill-2006/tt040000.jpg

Still nine turns from BW. I'd be happy to play these nine turns or equally happy to hand over to remconius.

Gandhi is bound to be behind those mountains, I can feel it in my water...

Go ahead and play the nine. We can then practice the fine art of dot-mapping. (At least get some early scrawls together.) Hopefully copper shows up nearby.
(Like in a recent game of mine as Rome. I popped BW from a hut and then copper popped up under my capital. :lol: Earliest axe-rush I've ever had.)

MC will be the early priority, now with forges granting +2 happy faces. And that gold site makes me drool.

Good stuff Pigswill!

We have fish, clams, pigs, sheep, corn. Looks like a good supply of food already. With both gems and gold we can grow some reasonably sized cities early on.

Play the other 9, let's see where the copper is!

Play the other 9, let's see where the copper is!Aye.

*prays for copper*

At the moment the site 4W of the capital looks promising. 3 gold to finance some early rex/war and fish for food, plus it can borrow pigs from the capital to quickly grow on to all those tiles.

============

In terms of potential astronomy beelines, here are a couple of useful links:

VoU's beelining thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=203790) shows the bare minimum required.
The Great People Tech Preferences thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=140952) shows who will lightbulb what and when.

To pop astronomy with GS we have to avoid CS as it'll open up the Paper > Education etc branch. Avoiding meditation means we'll avoid opening up philosophy too, potentially saving us a scientist. As a financial civ with 3 gold nearby, 4 would probably be plenty (compass, optics and 2 for astronomy itself). With all the food at our disposal, caste system would be an easy way to generate them and having 2 cities on the project would yield fastest results.

Whether any of that's worthwhile depends a bit on when we want Gandhi to take over our original core cities and how accessible our two empires turn out to be.

Our valiant and star-blessed scout adopts the name of Rupert after skinning and eating the bear (yum yum, grizzlyburgers). Westward he heads after healing, he meets Clarence the Cross Eyed Lion and after a quick tussle disposes of the poor beast.

After another short break he continues his mission. 'Indians :eek: :eek: . What's that strange looking hut to the north? Let's go check it out'.

Its a hut full of encyclopedias on hunting and advanced reconnaisance. Given that Rupert can't read its a good job that they're full of pictures and diagrams. What experience shall he obtain? Maybe first aid?

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g166/pigswill-2006/tt050000.jpg

Meanwhile back at the ranch the thralls have been busy building a workboat and harvesting the fruits of the sea, hoping they avoid food poisoning in the process. The skalds have been pondering the mysteries of earth and metal, they discover a deposit of copper to the north east of Nidaros!

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g166/pigswill-2006/tt060000.jpg

Chaos and anarchy ensue. Bronze means chains, chains means slaves, everyone is deliriously happy [party] :cheers: (apart from the slaves :sad: ).

The skalds consider attaching sails to the fishing boats, maybe extending them a bit, carve dragonheads on the bows etc etc but maybe when they sober up they'll consider agriculture :food: or maybe even animal husbandry :confused:

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm4/Trash_Team_SG004_BC3190_01.CivWarlordsSave

everyone is deliriously happy [party] :cheers:

Well I know I am deliriously happy! :D A super start! Good work Cap'n!

We sure are going to have some busy Workers!

I agree with Patagonia - the Fish-Pigs-Gold-Gold-Gold spot looks 'oresome' :rolleyes:

Great fortune with the Copper - could easily have not got it by settling at 4000AD. The Colossus is one step closer.

Great fortune also with the Bear and the Scout! :)

Nice to see Gandhi's got some high-:commerce: tiles too. There's hope for him yet.

Best of luck Remco!

i vote for agri > AH, while building a warrior then a worker, then a settler.
We can start building axes and kill India! hum no better not :lol:.
No one else in sight = more exploration needed = 1 more wb to build.

We also need to fit in the wheel sooner rather than later; not much point in having an unattached copper mine.

Let's spend a day or so pondering over our strategy in view of what's been revealed so far (and also what hasn't been revealed (horses, iron, other neighbours, other lands etc.)).

Got it, will review later and post a plan.

How many turns should I play? The coming turns will be rather uneventful, so we could have largish turnsets until stuff starts to happen. Or should I play until the next milestone (like, settler completed?)

:wow: at Gandhi's capital. Wanna wanna axe-rush...

Let's give the scout woodsman promos, as he'll be heading south to the jungle now.

Here are my thoughts on city placement.

http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n266/stuge_T/Trash/Trash1.jpg

Blue dot is patagonia's suggestion. It incurs lower maintenance costs and can share the piggies for faster growth. Red dot is an alternative. Maintenance will be higher but long-term there's more food available for the city and Nidaros.

http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n266/stuge_T/Trash/Trash3.jpg

As for the north, blue dot looks like a good site to build the colossus in. It has a nice amount of forests and a decent number of hills.

Red dot could be a commerce city, or a GP farm if we farm the grasslands.

In terms of dot maps, I like the Pigs-Fish-Gold-Gold-Gold spot for our second city. It's a shame about the overlap, but Nidaros will have ample food with the Corn and Clams plus an irrigatable Grassland (more post- Civil Service).

In terms of technology, I'm inclined to go with;
Sailing (Trading Post) > The Wheel (Hook up Copper) > Animal Husbandry (Pig Pasture, Horsies?) > Pottery (Granary) > Agriculture (Corn Farm) > Writing (Libraries)
A Trading Post adds food to key tiles without requiring a Worker, allowing Nidaros to continue to grow. I'm nervous about defending our empire with Warriors for too long, and pillaging Barbarians will probably be a real pain once we start getting our Mines up given no close neighbours - so the hooked-up Copper mine would be my first Worker action.

I think we need to nab the gold asap. It would also be nice to see if we've got horses around because chariots are better axe-bashers than axes. While we won't need them for a while it would be good to have a city placed to access them.

My thoughts would be build warrior, worker, warrior, settler. Research wheel, AH, agric. Worker builds mine, connects copper, pasturises pig (maybe a chop thrown in to speed settler?).

At the moment a second city is more important than a trading post so I think that sailing can wait for the next set.

In terms of Wonders I reckon we can give Colossus a miss and go for Great Lib. Three gold mines will give us good commerce. If we're going for astronomy using GS to lightbulb I'd rather not have GM points muddying the pool.

We'll probably need mysticism for monumental border pops. Longer term maybe go for agric, sailing, writing, IW then argue about MC vs alphabet.

In regard to length of sets I reckon we don't need to be too rigid at the start. So maybe remconius plays until next two techs are in then see where we are regarding exploration and resources.

First of all, great turns Pigswill (and gj Rupert the scout)!

Here are my thoughts on technology and what to build (I haven't looked at research times or anything so these are estimates):

If we had a worker right now (which we don't), he could mine the copper and the hills and chop the forests. That is plenty for him to do, so there is really no need to research worker technologies for that sole purpose. I think we should go for sailing while finishing that warrior, and when the warrior is finished, build a worker. When the worker's done, we could build a trading post; which would give us 1 more :food: for the clam tile, and the 3:food:, 3:commerce: lake tile, not to mention +1 movement for a scouting WB/galley that we will build later. When sailing is done, I think wheel/animal husbandry would be good objectives, because our worker would probably be done/almost finished with mining the copper tile and would then be able to road that and move on to his next project- and eventually pasture the pigs (or horses! :please:)

Overall, this would give us plenty of time for our capital to grow, and give us more improved, food-rich tiles for when we would build our first settler. There is really no need to get that settler out earlier anyway, because there is a lot of open space between us and Gandhi.

I think pigs/fish/gold should be our next site too, because of what has already been mentioned and that it is also on a river.

nidaros is size 3 right now.
Let's grow it to size 4 and whip a worker. Then grow back while building a warrior or 2 (we're at war!) and go settler.
The 2 WB is due for exploration and should be finished asap, it can hopefully find a way to the fish of our 2nd city.

techwise, i'd go agri> AH>wheel>sailing>pottery

Had a look at the save and the posts so far. I roughly grouped views into two plans. These plans are not set in stone and we could go for variants.

Plan A: (Exploration)
Tech: Sailing > wheel > AH
Build: Warrior > Worker > Trading Post > Galley > Settler/Galley

Plan B: (Expansion/defense)
Tech: Agriculture > AH > wheel
Build: Warrior > Warrior > Worker > Settler

It's not a matter of picking one, but more of which one to do first. Do we use our naval advantages immediately to build navigation I galleys and get extra food from lake/clams. Or do we build a second city first and then build boats.

Currently it is 3 for plan A (Me, Cam_H, MrMahk) and 2 for plan B (Pigswill, Cabert).

I'll play tomorrow. About 20 hours from now.

We know that Gandhi is somewhat detached from us (unless its a very strange map). We know that we haven't met any other explorers yet. We don't know that its just us and Gandhi on this island. So more exploration south with the scout should help on that.

There's no real race for exploration but there is a potential race for settling prime sites so that's why I'm keen on that. Also the sooner we start working gold mines the sooner we improve our commerce for faster teching. Building a tradepost and a galley/trireme next doesn't really help us develop.

Edit: We're also awaiting views from patagonia and stuge.

Based on the map we can see now, I favour fish, pigs, 3 gold for city number 2 still. I don't think we should worry too much about overlap if we're considering a nomad strategy as we're unlikely to grow our cities big enough to work all their tiles before persuading Gandhi to take possession of them.

Since we already have copper as a military resource and have a prime second city location already identified, I'd be inclined to follow plan B in the post from remconius above. Agri > AH > wheel (possibly with wheel inserted earlier depending on the timing of worker and mine) is the most beaker-efficient way of getting those techs, and I think that settling city 2 and growing it so that it can work a goldmine will give a greater payoff than using our initial production on a trading post and scouting vessel. Nidaros could get busy with those once a settler and axe or two are built.

The proposed side for city 2 will be able to work pigs plus 2 gold before a border pop, but we'll definitely want Mysticism sooner rather than later.

If we're thinking GLib for GS generation, stuge's northern blue dot looks a good location: forests to chop for the wonder and a large food surplus for running as many scientists as possible.

Image removed

Tech' Order

I am not so keen on Agriculture immediately because really it will be good for only one tile, essentially taking the Corn from 3:food: to 6:food: with the effort of a Worker that we don't have, and who I think should get Copper on-line as a priority anyway. If we didn't already have the Clams being worked with the Fishing Boat I would be more keen on a high-:food: tile, but the Clams and the Lake with a Trading Post to my mind will deliver more and more quickly. Obviously we'll get a +1 movement bonus for our navy with the Trading Post, so exploration will be a smidge quicker.

Building a Trading Post will still allow us to queue swap with useful builds, so we can whip out Workers and a Settler while growing with the Trading Post ... admittedly this queue swapping can also be done with Barracks.

I think that we could use Libraries for border pops?

Second City (Part I)

I would really like to get that Gold city up quickly too, so I guess that I would deviate a little from 'Plan A' in that I wouldn't prioritise the first Galley before the Settler, but it would depend to some extent on where we were with the population and our capacity to whip out the Settler in an optimal fashion.

Exploring the Coast

I can very much appreciate where Cabert's coming from with regard to getting out a Work Boat to scratch around a bit, but we've got a load of competing priorities and I think a Worker and a second city will do more for our capacity to influence the game than bumping into the borders of our rivals when we can't do anything other than declare war on them. I too want a Boat out there, but not as much as getting our Gold city up.

The Colossus

I also hear what Pigswill's saying about the 'muddied' :gp: pool, although I would really like The Colossus. Perhaps we put it in the Gold city if the risk of popping a Great Merchant is considered to be too disadvantageous?

Second City (Part II)

I am not necessarily advocating the dot map below, but we could split the Golds across two cities, with the 'Z' city also picking up Gems and a lot of river tiles, while 'Y' city would leave Nidaros with the Pigs (both on Plains Hills):

agri is a prereq for AH
that's why I favour agri>ah over ah>agri

I don't like splitting the gold.
At size 4, a fish gold gold gold could work the 3 gold and being stagnant (requires trading post)

Agriculture or Hunting for Animal Husbandry.

Agriculture is the weakest of our four immediate 'priority' technologies in my humble opinion. Its benefit is to improve the Corn - as before, I think there are better choices.

I am OK if the team verdict is not to split the gold, but I think that it's an option that should be debated. "Y" will give us the extra :hammers: and allow a Plains River tile to be worked, which is not a bad option. If we move "Y" back to our agreed sweet-spot, we can still do "Z", but there will be loads of overlap or shift "Z" to the west.

btw ... I'm not wanting to disregard Stuges's proposals - just throwing extras in the mix.

Agriculture or Hunting for Animal Husbandry.

Agriculture is the weakest of our four immediate 'priority' technologies in my humble opinion. Its benefit is to improve the Corn - as before, I think there are better choices.

I am OK if the team verdict is not to split the gold, but I think that it's an option that should be debated. "Y" will give us the extra :hammers: and allow a Plains River tile to be worked, which is not a bad option. If we move "Y" back to our agreed sweet-spot, we can still do "Z", but there will be loads of overlap or shift "Z" to the west.

btw ... I'm not wanting to disregard Stuges's proposals - just throwing extras in the mix.

Z is too low on food IMHO.
It would be good in 1700 AD :mischief:

Well you're the one so keen on Agriculture ;) :lol:, there are two immediately irrigatable Grassland tiles there already, which covers one Gold Mine, and that's before we start knocking over the River Jungle. It's 'Commerce Heaven'!

I'd rather have the Colossus than the Great library, the reason being, we can achieve G.lib's effect by running 4 scientists under caste system, whereas the Colossus allows us to totally forgo cottages and gives our GNP a big jolt if we're planning on going all coastal. Besides, we've got copper, but ain't got marble.

I'd go agri ->AH next, allowing us to see one more strategic resource and letting us grow rapidly. Exploration is important, but now we should expand. As for the jungle choise sites, settling them requires IW, which is still ways off.

And as for the expansion, we've got a couple of good sites in the north, so let's not settle in the jungle.
It takes an awful lot of worker turns to get such cities up and running. If there's another civ down there,
it's much more efficient to capture cities they settle.

:nono: to Agriculture until someone can give me a good reason why ...

... or I'll 'spit the dummy' ...

... again!

I'm a fan of The Colossus too ... it's on our Astronomy bee-line apart from anything else.

Image removed of tech' choices.

:nono: to Agriculture until someone can give me a good reason why ...

A. It makes researching AH cheaper.

B. We'll need it anyway.

C. If Nidaros is going to share the piggies with patagonia's gold site, it needs the farm to work those hills.

D. We could research sailing instead, but what's the point if we're going to be building settlers, workers and military for a while?

A. Is Animal Husbandry cheaper to research with Agriculture?

B. Look - I'm not saying that we should avoid it ... but we also need Sailing, The Wheel, and Animal Husbandry. We haven't got a Worker to start with, but with Sailing > Trading Post then our best two tiles at the moment will get even better without slowing our population growth let alone reducing our population (as would be the case with getting a Worker).

C. By the time we get a second city built, I too expect that we'll have either Animal Husbandry or Agriculture - if not both. That aside, the Clams and the Lake with a Trading Post should be more than fine in the 'food provision' department for Nidaros.

D. Sailing will improve our best tile; the Clams ... and one of our 'next best tiles'; the Lake ... plus give our Boats +1 movement for the exploration that Cabert's been advocating. So even keeping other coastal tiles out of the equasion, that's +2:food: on tiles that are delivering +7:commerce:... Agriculture will require a Worker to be built, then time to Farm the Corn, for +3:food: on a tile that delivers +0:commerce:.

Seems like there's almost a consensus on the next three techs: wheel, AH, sailing. Research sequence will depend on whether we want Nidaros to build a TP or a settler. If we want copper on line then we obviously need worker before either.

Good point from stuge re caste system, its a civic I rarely use in my solo games so I tend to forget about it.

Decisions about wonders are at least a set away but its good to debate them anyway.

I'm not 100% sure about which techs to avoid when aiming to lightbulb astronomy.

Also a good point about using library instead of monument for culture, more hammers so takes longer to get in place but much better long term benefits.

Really it boils down to if we want settler before TP research AH before sailing and vica versa.

Edit: I typed this at the same time as the previous two posts, seems consensus is not as close as I thought.

In response to Cam_H's post #122.
1) AH will be slightly cheaper if we have agric first (is it 10% with prereqs, I'm not sure)

2) Yes, we're likely to pick up agric sooner rather than later.

3) Its not sailing that gives us extra food, its the trading post which needs to be built.

Overall I'm still favouring settler before TP.

It's A to D ... but nevermind, we'll go 1) to 3) if that helps :rolleyes:

(Cam starts to suspect that there's some conspiracy to wind him up ... pick a dumb technology choice and then say there's a 10% :science: bonus).

1) I'm not saying you're wrong ... I've just never known that there was a 10%:science: bonus on researching Animal Husbandry if you have acquired both Hunting and Agriculture.

2) Yes ... preferably after The Wheel and Sailing ... and Pottery.

3) Yes ... like I don't know that. ;)

and the supplementary

3b) I think that there's room to queue swap between the two, but I'll be the first to admit that I haven't tested the progress.

Okay, did some testing, what about this?

Ditch the warrior, start worker working clams, lake, corn -> ETA 15 turns. Meanwhile start sailing, ETA 12 turns.

After sailing comes in, start on the wheel (9turns). Whip the worker when one turn from completion, apply overflow to the trading post. Worker goes to mine&road the copper.

After TP, build two axes and a settler. Research agri. -> AH.

I know this strat is a "bit" light on defence, but I think we can pull this one off during the barb grace period.

(Cam starts to suspect that there's some conspiracy to wind him up ... pick a dumb technology choice and then say there's a 10% :science: bonus).Each prerequisite you have for a tech definitely reduces the beaker cost when it comes to researching it.

Cabert and stuge have summed up my reasons for favouring agri first so I won't restate them. If that's too "controversial" a tech to research next, wheel would be a reasonable compromise since we'll all be agreed we need that soon to connect the bronze.

Because of the bronze, I think we definitely need a worker sooner rather than later, and a rax would be a reasonable queue-swapping option in between that and a settler to allow Nidaros to grow again. A TP will be a big help, but it's quite a lot of hammers to invest at this early stage.

Having said that, is it worth thinking about the Great Lighthouse if we're going to build TPs so early in the game? As long as we generate GS elsewhere we wouldn't need to worry about contamination of our GPP (merchants always have their uses anyway so they aren't the worst to get unbidden).

I tried and failed to amend Cam_H's tester to change city tile to plains hill and add copper grassland to its north. If anyone's clever enough to do this then we could test the options.

It does seem that we're mucking about a bit and squabbling a bit as well but that's all part of us settling down as a team. I'd rather lose the time now than play quickly ahead and then start squabbling about what we should have done at the start.

It's not squabbling, it's sharing conflicting opinions. ;)

In my testing, I failed to remember that Nidaros lies on a plains hill. Oh well, it just means that the ETAs are a bit shorter.

What do you think of my plan? It would give us a worker, a TP, mined copper and even agriculture in a reasonable time frame. And everything would snap pretty seamlessly together. At least in theory.

It's not squabbling, it's sharing conflicting opinions. ;)

In my testing, I failed to remember that Nidaros lies on a plains hill. Oh well, it just means that the ETAs are a bit shorter.

What do you think of my plan? It would give us a worker, a TP, mined copper and even agriculture in a reasonable time frame. And everything would snap pretty seamlessly together. At least in theory.As long as we've got 3 axes and 2 cities by the time the barbs start entering our territory, I'm happy with any approach :)

I think it would be quicker to whip warrior, 1 turn overflow to worker then back to warrior until Nidaros grows back to pop3. Whip worker asap on getting to pop3. This takes 13 turns, shaving a couple of turns off straight build and gives as a warrior (maybe two) at the expense of increased unhappiness.
Once worker is built then its six turns to mine copper before we need a road.

Looking at 12 turns to research sailing, 12 turns to research AH, 6 turns to research wheel at 17 beakers per turn.

So we can research either sailing+wheel or AH+wheel without losing worker turns.

This still doesn't resolve debate about TP or settler.

Here is a summary of the AStronomy Beeline and Great Scientist prefs.

Astronomy Beeline:
Fishing (Check)
The Wheel
Mining (Check)
Sailing
Pottery
Bronze Working (Check)
Writing
Metal Casting
Iron Working
Mathematics
Compass
Calendar
Machinery
Optics
Astronomy

Great Scientist preferences:
(underlined we need, bold we need to avoid)

Writing (own Research)
Mathematics (own Research or GS)
Scientific Method (later)
Physics (later)
Education (later)
Printing Press (later)
Fiber Optics (later)
Computers (later)
The Wheel (own Research)
Philosophy (avoid by avoiding CoL and Drama)
Chemistry (later)
Fission (later)
Fusion (later)
Optics (GS?)
Paper (avoid by avoiding CS and Theology)
Astronomy (2 x GS?)
Biology (later)
Electricity (later)
Flight (later)
Genetics (later)
Compass (GS?)
Satellites (later)
Sailing (own Research)

What it means is we need to avoid CoL, Drama, CS and Theology. We can use Great Scientists for Mathematics, Compass, Optics and Astronomy (2x).


I edited the Trash Tester. It is now at 3190 BC in the same situation as our game. Test away!!

149177

We don't need to avoid CoL or drama if we avoid meditation (a prereq for philosophy).

I think a beeline that pure would be pretty risky too. Construction (for cats) and CoL (for caste system and courthouses) are just two additional techs that'd benefit us.

So to answer cam, yes each prereq makes researching a tech cheaper.
And AFAIK it's more than 10%.
And we're going to research agri not a lot later, making this a waste.

I agree that the wheel may have a superior effect in the next few turns (copper! gold!), so I suggest the following path
wheel>agri>AH>sailing>pottery.

Did a few test runs and this is the best result:
-Set research to Sailing.
-Finish warrior at max food.
-When Nidaros at 4 and warrior completed: switch to worker.
-Can whip worker when Sailing is due in 1... When completed build Trading Post.
-Settler next.
-Then Axe.
-By turn 65 we should have these complete, ready to settle city 2 and produce axes/galleys fast.

So to answer cam, yes each prereq makes researching a tech cheaper.
And AFAIK it's more than 10%.
And we're going to research agri not a lot later, making this a waste.

I agree that the wheel may have a superior effect in the next few turns (copper! gold!), so I suggest the following path
wheel>agri>AH>sailing>pottery.

No point in wheel first, we dont have a worker for at least 12 turns and when we get him he'll be building a copper mine first.
Sailing > Wheel > Agri > AH would not waste any worker turns and give 10% bonus for AH.

I've also been testing quite a bit with the aim of producing a settler rather than TP.
My dry run: switch research to wheel after anarchy (9T), then AH (11T) then Sailing (12T) then tech of choice (pottery? agric?)
Immediately after anarchy whip warrior, work lake and clams, switch to worker (12 T). After worker build warrior while worker builds mine then a road c