SGOTM 13 - Gypsy Kings

[Thorn]

It looks like I'm up next. I won't be able to do anything until tomorrow night so I should be able to post a PPP then. I'll need all the help I can get! And if you think this is a critical stage and would rather have me skip this turn set I would have no problem doing that either.

 

[adrianj]

Good point about the GS bcool - at this early stage, they really are immensely valuable. Right out to the 5th Great Person 1 might reasonably be equated to 3. That would put the GLib up to ~36/turn, which is more than Currency is worth in pretty much any scenario. Add in the risk of losing the GLib to AI, and I feel reasonably convinced that Literature before Currency is a better course of action.

With Stone, Moai I think is a great addition. Preferably in a city that 1) has many coastal tiles and 2) a few dedicated food tiles so that it can grow quickly and overcome later on. Because FH shares so many tiles with CC I don't think it is a great choice. Are there any other 2 food resource city sites around the place?

@Ron - My knowledge is only as good as that "Demographics Screen Explained" article. I have no reason to doubt what's there though

@Thorn - You'll be fine

 

[Ronnie1]

Well played Griff!

The Roster order is

mabraham = in the hole
adrianj = waiting
Ronnie1 = waiting
bcool = waiting
grifftavian = just played
Thorn = UP NOW
da_Vinci = on deck

We have contact, yea, no it starts to get interesting!

 

[mabraham]

Vicky has not put any EPs on us in these two turns. So she probably hates some other AI.

The copper site has no more seafood. This suggests we settle it on the NW corner of its land mass:

• to get instant access to fish,
• to have access to maximum land tiles,
• to later work the copper tile (once we tech IW to clear the jungle!),
• to have the option of sharing the fish from Stone Mountain, and
• to minimize maintenance.

It does reduce lone access to coast tiles in both cities, but still has 8 itself and SM has 6 itself and 6 shared - that's plenty.

I don't think it's right to settle on Copper to get fast access to metal.

Jungle on grassland bronze is unnatural, IIRC. That suggests the map-maker is hacking off our ability to make early war.

I made a settling plan screenshot from the latest save. It is not clear to me which of "Marbled Clam" and "Bronzed Fish" is a higher priority - and may depend when we prioritise IW for Colossus, against GLib. "Piggery" or "Crabby" seem the next priorities if we might want , though "Paired Clams" is a better site than either.

Paired Clams is the best Moai site, with 2 clams, 12 coast and 2 ocean, with a Pmine to get the thing built. That would push it up the settling order.

 

[adrianj]

If you don't mind Mab, I've taken your screenshot and put it on photobucket so it shows up in the thread. I prefer it this way - if anyone prefers to NOT have images come up in the main text of the thread please tell me, and I'll stop doing it.

 

[Ronnie1]

It looks like we need to go 4 turns @ 0% Science in order to get enough gold to get to Math full through. Another option would be to save gold until after we get our 1st Library up and then go 100% for a longer period.

As far as settling order, I kinda think we should get the 2 clam site up followed by the Marble site. The Copper site can wait until we actually have IW so we can chop jungle.

Exploring???? Do we want to circle the north island until we find London or at least English borders....or do we want to keep going E > SE in hopes of finding more AI's?

 

[adrianj]

Hmmm... I think it is more likely that Vicky knows > 4 AI - so her is split amongst more players than she has /turn. I thinks this does point toward some Map Maker trickery as Ron was expecting. It also makes Alphabet slightly more attractive, as there is a decent chance that Vicky will trade things to us. Depends on how good her capital is really - if we're at war with her then trading techs might not be so easy .

I like your city placements Mab - Crabby of course is dependent on what else is revealed up there. I would put Paired Clams higher up the settle list, as I agree it would make for a great Moai city site and will need some time to get going. Depending on how soon we need the Copper or Marble, perhaps even settle this city next?

Edit: XPost with Ron

 

[mabraham]

Good point about the GS bcool - at this early stage, they really are immensely valuable. Right out to the 5th Great Person 1 might reasonably be equated to 3. That would put the GLib up to ~36/turn, which is more than Currency is worth in pretty much any scenario. Add in the risk of losing the GLib to AI, and I feel reasonably convinced that Literature before Currency is a better course of action.

Yeah, Lit is sounding better than Currency.

@Thorn - You'll be fine

:yeahthat:

 

[mabraham]

If you don't mind Mab, I've taken your screenshot and put it on photobucket so it shows up in the thread. I prefer it this way - if anyone prefers to NOT have images come up in the main text of the thread please tell me, and I'll stop doing it.

I'm not bothered. I'm trained to open links in new browser tabs. In this case, that means I can still find the screenshot easily when the thread has moved on from the screenshot post.

 

[mabraham]

Thought I'd put this in here.

While I was playing through updating a test game, I noticed that our workboat exploring could have been a bit better. Two diagonal moves are more efficient for exploring in a straight horizontal or vertical line than two moves in the direction of that line. The T97 screenshot illustrates the point. The exploring workboat has moved E, NE, N, N, NE, NE, N. It should have moved E, NE, NE, NE, NW, NE. Once the player had moved E, NE and committed to moving around the Stone Mountain island, we do know that NW, NE are better than N, N. This would have found us the fish and copper back on T95. (Sorry Griff, not meaning to pick on you! )

Earlier knowledge of the location (and non-location!) of critical resources is very important, and we have to take all our chances to gather intelligence. So our local galley scouting should be focussed on making sure we see all tiles that are visible from all potential city sites, and finding island-island contacts by making sure we visit all three extremal coast tiles at the ends of peninsulas. The eastern workboat is so far away now that settling out there is not realistic in the time before we would send another scout that way, so it should focus on travelling east as fast as it can while maximizing fog busted.

 

[adrianj]

While we're on the subject of exploring boats - please don't cut corners. The galley that has gone around Copper Island missed out on revealing 4 tiles. These could reveal coastal links to further islands.

Exploring with the WB in general - I think keep heading as far east as possible. There might be a chance at circumnavigation - who knows? Same reasoning for another WB to head far west soon.

 

[adrianj]

Tech path - remind me what Maths is doing for us? Our immediate need isn't really for Aqueducts or HG - it will give us an extra 15 raw on the pending chop near CC. However, what if we went straight to Aesthetics->Literature from here? I would imagine that GLib something like 10 turns earlier would compensate for a one-off loss of 15? What if we built the Pyramids in FH, and saved that chop for the latter stages of GLib when we do have Maths?

If we do go for Literature so soon, then settling Marble city also becomes a higher priority, than the copper city for example.

Edit,Added: Until we have proper confirmation to the contrary, I still think we will need Caravels at least to meet all the AIs. What I think is possible, is the Map Maker has put just a lone English archer on that island, while her main empire is safe with the rest of Europe over the ocean. Consider:

Aesthetics -> Literature (GLib) -> Maths -> Currency -> Alphabet (maybe pick up IW?) -> Compass -> Machinery (bulbed) -> Optics (exploring caravels get circumnav) -> Astro (bulbed)

 

[mabraham]

Here is a pretty darn close test save for T108. It can have trade routes to Vicky. All the boxes have the right amount of stuff in them and the units are close enough to right.

 

[Grifftavian]

...(Sorry Griff, not meaning to pick on you! )...

No problem, always looking to learn something new from these games, and constructive feedback is appreciated!

Tech path - remind me what Maths is doing for us? Our immediate need isn't really for Aqueducts or HG - it will give us an extra 15 raw on the pending chop near CC. However, what if we went straight to Aesthetics->Literature from here? I would imagine that GLib something like 10 turns earlier would compensate for a one-off loss of 15? What if we built the Pyramids in FH, and saved that chop for the latter stages of GLib when we do have Maths?

If we do go for Literature so soon, then settling Marble city also becomes a higher priority, than the copper city for example.

Even with the minimize popups set, I still go the Choose Next Tech popup when Writing was completed. I put Math in just to get rid of the popup window. There shouldn't be any invested into Mathematics, so it can be changed at the start of the next turn set.

 

[mabraham]

Tech path - remind me what Maths is doing for us? Our immediate need isn't really for Aqueducts or HG - it will give us an extra 15 raw on the pending chop near CC. However, what if we went straight to Aesthetics->Literature from here? I would imagine that GLib something like 10 turns earlier would compensate for a one-off loss of 15? What if we built the Pyramids in FH, and saved that chop for the latter stages of GLib when we do have Maths?

If we do go for Literature so soon, then settling Marble city also becomes a higher priority, than the copper city for example.

Seems sensible to me. The tech path Aes->Lit is at least 50 turns, and that gives us time to finish Pyramids and Library.

Edit,Added: Until we have proper confirmation to the contrary, I still think we will need Caravels at least to meet all the AIs. What I think is possible, is the Map Maker has put just a lone English archer on that island, while her main empire is safe with the rest of Europe over the ocean. Consider:

Aesthetics -> Literature (GLib) -> Maths -> Currency -> Alphabet (maybe pick up IW?) -> Compass -> Machinery (bulbed) -> Optics (exploring caravels get circumnav) -> Astro (bulbed)

Good thought. We don't have enough data for committing to strategies, but we don't need to do that for 40+ turns anyway. That would suggest the fifth city be Paired Clams to get started on Moai sooner.

 

[adrianj]

@Mab - I can't access your test save. "Sorry, the page (or document) you have requested is not available."

 

[mabraham]

@Mab - I can't access your test save. "Sorry, the page (or document) you have requested is not available."

Probably a permissions thing. Not sure how the SGOTM13 shared folder was set up, but your jongy10@hotmail.com identity (of some sort) does have access permission.

 

[mabraham]

I played out a new game given the earlier access to Stone. I got Pyramids T143, so settling on the Stone was definitely a good thing to do for this, even if there'd been no other reason. I settled Marbled Clam and Paired Clams a while back. Piggery just went in, and Bronzed Fish is settling next turn. A second worker went to get a mine in PC, but now he needs to get to BF fast for the copper. I traded for IW a few turns back. Stone Mountain has not had time to get out a Granary. There's a pile of workboats and triremes to build, and someone's gotta do it. Fortunately we don't need to prioritise MPs for these things. Likewise Fish Hills hasn't had any real scope to think about wonders.

Got GLib about T168. Had finished Currency and CoL by then. Traded with an AI for Maths and Calendar. Settled GProphet. Moai in Paired Clam T189. Have been whipping things everywhere liberally. T191 finish NE, revolt to Caste, whip Forge in Fish Hills planning late Colossus, just to see if it's useful. First GScientist came about then.

 

[mabraham]

So for the next turn set we have to decide whether we want to try to get a GScientist out of Fish Hills (build lighthouse with overflow, build a 45 thing like a workboat or monument, then whip out a library and run the scientists), or whether we want to use its food for continuing to expand the empire.

Before the last turn set, I thought the scientists plan was better. We now know that we have AI contact, and do have a bunch of useful sites to settle, and they're worth settling fast. By my calculations, we only spend 3 turns on the library, whip it, and then 12 turns running the scientists. So this is only a single-whip cycle worth of delay in expanding. However, the early GProphet is not such a bad thing really, compared with a Gscientist we have to store for ages. Getting time to settle one more city to have it mature for 15 more turns before we need it to produce units for the war is quite useful too. Since we're no longer racing for Astro to get AI contact, does this combination of conditions suggest we don't bother with the scientists plan?

CC is easier to plan. It runs mines, two clams and Gforest (when possible), whips Forge on T113. It regrows slowly working Gmine and two clams, adding Pmine at size 4. At size 5, a mix of Gforest and a third clam (IMO 2 turns each) to grow to size 6 on T124, to switch to a settler for 1 turn for the whip (working mines and three clams). Fish Hills can have the Pmine when CC is not using it, and should stop working the corn farm to do so.

 

[bcool]

I think we can abandon the library in FH as long as we can efficiently use the food in FH. I assume we can manage the food with efficient whipping and settler/worker builds. There was some concern that it would run into happiness issues without the scientist outlet.

I would like to try test games both ways but I don't think I will have the time tonight. Or this week really. However the Great Prophet is looking okay to me.

The prophet would probably accelerate the pyramids and GLib as well. Those 2 bonus hammers are pretty useful I imagine.