SGOTM 15 - One Short Straw

Dhoomstriker · Feb 21, 2012

Mitchum said:
You're right on the mechanics of a culture flip in a normal game. However, my assumption was that since there is no city razing in this game, that we wouldn't have a choice on a culture flip... I guess we need to test this, but declining to take a city is like razing, right?

Going from memory, you aren't given the choice and must simply keep the City.

Of course, I could be remembering a different case, such as when you previously owned the City, but I think that we have to assume that we would be forced to keep the City.

beestar · Feb 21, 2012

Mitchum said:
Who's around besides the 3.5 of us (Dhoom counts as the 0.5)? I've seen some on-line but no posts for a while... Did we scare everyone off?

I'm here! It's hard to keep up with the flow without actually doing as much analysis and testing as everyone else, so I haven't had much to contribute.

It seems like the discussion is going well, and I'll chime in when I see something I can contribute with. My apologies for not being as involved as I wanted to. Let me know if you need more from me.

Mitchum · Feb 22, 2012

@ beestar

I'm glad that you're still around. It's really up to you how involved you want to get. I've found that the more I play with the test save, the more involved I am and the more I get out of it. I think this team enjoys the challenge of the small victories, like LC figuring out how to pasture the pigs or ZPV coming up with the SH idea and pulling it off. A lot of it is code diving and intense MM. It's not for everyone. Dhoom and I drove Blub and UT mad with our MM discussions. But it's not just about the MM. This team has a lot of good strategists and out-of-the-box thinkers (present company excluded). These discussions can lead to some great learning experiences too.

We all get it if you're not 100% into the game right now (not saying that are or aren't

). Every one of us has "checked out" at one time our another for various reasons (cough, cough, bbp, cough, cough). That's fine. I hope you and magnus feel like part of the team, that you can do as much or little as you want and that you're having fun.

LowtherCastle · Feb 22, 2012

Mitchum said:
You're right on the mechanics of a culture flip in a normal game. However, my assumption was that since there is no city razing in this game, that we wouldn't have a choice on a culture flip... I guess we need to test this, but declining to take a city is like razing, right?

Dhoomstriker said:
Going from memory, you aren't given the choice and must simply keep the City.

Of course, I could be remembering a different case, such as when you previously owned the City, but I think that we have to assume that we would be forced to keep the City.

We're asked whether to install a new governor or disband. Evidently, disbanding is not razing:

This could come in handy . . .

It also means, we need to think carefully in advance whether we want to keep a city or not, when it revolts the first time.

.

LowtherCastle · Feb 22, 2012

beestar said:
I'm here!

It seems like the discussion is going well, and I'll chime in when I see something I can contribute with.

Great!

Everyone contributes in their own way. All contributions are valuable.

LowtherCastle · Feb 22, 2012

Oracle slingshot write-up, taken from the autolog. Warning, this is a handful. It's entirely possible it has errors as well, though I tried to document every action I took. I'm also concerned that is hard to read. Any suggestions would be helpful. Please let me konw if this is useful at all. I'm not sure it is. Note that I have included some comments where I wasn't sure what we ought to do, or where I hadn't optimized things.

Also note that I tried to use the names of units as they appear in the REAL SAVE.

There is:
Fast Worker
Fast Worker 1
Fast Worker 2
Warrior 1
Warrior 2
etc.

EDITED with Mitch's corrections.
EDITED with Magnus' corrections.

Spoiler :

ZPV · Feb 22, 2012

Ooh, nice. It looks like the really tight bits are the hammers in Gold, and everything in Delhi.
Good idea 2popping the marble settler, and getting the stonehenge failgold.

I'll play it through in the test save in an hour or two, to see how it feels, and then put together a PPP.

btw: it's only Vanilla where you have to improve the marble before chopping. Since Warlords, chop hammers are added at the end of the turn, by when the marble should already be connected.

Mitchum · Feb 22, 2012

Like a glove, that plan fits together, it does. :goodjob:

I like how everything comes together on that final turn - GS pops, bulb Math, marble quarry done, 2 chops, Oracle completed.

In playing through it I had a few questions:

1. In moving the warrior built in Gold-E to the west, we could also move him through the forests along the coast to the south. This is better defensible terrain. There are still points of risk of course... BTW, Toku had two workers on the corn that could have been stolen by this warrior!!! Probably not worth the risk here since we must be able to settle marble city for this plan to work.

2. You have the details for T53 split into two blocks. The first time through, I hit end turn before seeing the "CRUCIAL!!" MM details for the turn above.

3. On T55 when we settle gems, should we work a 2F1H tile or a 2F2C tile? We're building a barracks which won't be completed until after the granary, so this 1H is not crucial to anything. I'm not sure if those 2C will make a difference either. Is 1H > 2C.

4. Nice work on the road so as not to waste worker movements to the pigs and later the marble! I knew if I challenged you to getting the pigs done you'd figure it out.

5. It's hard to say which is better, but it's possible that Fishing -> Pottery is better than Pottery -> Fishing. The 15 bonus beakers means we start the granaries one turn later. The cities in question are generating 3, 4 and 1 hammers for a total of 8 earlier hammers. Again, are 8H > 15 :science:

?

6. On T59, I lost a worker in our cultural borders to a barb warrior in Gold-E. We'll have to be very careful about when barbs can enter our borders. I wasn't even paying attention. EDIT: Maybe the warrior completed in Gold-E can hang around to protect these guys.

7. On T61, I'm assuming we switch from the gems mine to the pastured pigs, right?

8. On T62, we get access to Toku's corn. We could work this tile for one turn, growing 1 turn sooner which allows us to gain back the lost 3H by not working the gold. Probably not worth trading 8C3H for 5F though. Just thought I'd mention it as an option.

Mitchum · Feb 22, 2012

ZPV said:
I'll play it through in the test save in an hour or two, to see how it feels, and then put together a PPP.

Sounds good. Maybe play through the completion of SH??? Please include in your PPP anything that would make you pause play (i.e. Toku sends an archer our way, Toku won't talk, we lose a battle, a barb shows up, etc.).

LowtherCastle · Feb 22, 2012

Mitchum said:
a few questions:

1. In moving the warrior built in Gold-E to the west, we could also move him through the forests along the coast to the south. This is better defensible terrain. There are still points of risk of course... BTW, Toku had two workers on the corn that could have been stolen by this warrior!!! Probably not worth the risk here since we must be able to settle marble city for this plan to work.

2. You have the details for T53 split into two blocks. The first time through, I hit end turn before seeing the "CRUCIAL!!" MM details for the turn above.

3. On T55 when we settle gems, should we work a 2F1H tile or a 2F2C tile? We're building a barracks which won't be completed until after the granary, so this 1H is not crucial to anything. I'm not sure if those 2C will make a difference either. Is 1H > 2C.

4. Nice work on the road so as not to waste worker movements to the pigs and later the marble! I knew if I challenged you to getting the pigs done you'd figure it out.

5. It's hard to say which is better, but it's possible that Fishing -> Pottery is better than Pottery -> Fishing. The 15 bonus beakers means we start the granaries one turn later. The cities in question are generating 3, 4 and 1 hammers for a total of 8 earlier hammers. Again, are 8H > 15?

6. On T59, I lost a worker in our cultural borders to a barb warrior in Gold-E. We'll have to be very careful about when barbs can enter our borders. I wasn't even paying attention. EDIT: Maybe the warrior completed in Gold-E can hang around to protect these guys.

7. On T61, I'm assuming we switch from the gems mine to the pastured pigs, right?

8. On T62, we get access to Toku's corn. We could work this tile for one turn, growing 1 turn sooner which allows us to gain back the lost 3H by not working the gold. Probably not worth trading 8C3H for 5F though. Just thought I'd mention it as an option.

1. Originally I was moving him along the coast, but then he gets to that one spot where he has to move on the plain unprotected. My latest thinking is that maybe we shouldn't even risk him at all. He could stay somewhere just north of the marble and defog all but two tiles. Then after Gems is done, that warrior joins him to make the move to the hill as a pair, just before the Marble Crab settler has to move. Much more likely to encounter a barb unit, maybe even an archer, but less likely to fail to protect for the Settler. I don't know, but when I lost that warrior in the test game, I ended up with a barb archer and a barb warrior at the same time down there. It's problem.

2. FIxed, thanks.

3. We could try to see if this gets Fishing(1t)>Granary(1t) done as fast as Granary(2t) (>Fishing), because it's already close.

5. If Pottery first completes a granary a turn sooner or optimizes it better for a half-full granary, then you might have to add some food to the equation. Pure speculation without testing, but my hunch would be to go with the Pottery, just to get the granaries done asap for continuing war mobilization. At some point, our research is going to suddenly be unimportant for some period of turns.

6. Excellent observation. That's the danger of Test Saves. It's easy to lose sight of random possiblities.

7. Fixed, thanks.

8. In my tests, we automatically grab the corn when Toku doesn't build a library. It needs to be monitored to make sure we have enough hammers for the Oracle.

LowtherCastle · Feb 22, 2012

ZPV said:
I'll play it through in the test save in an hour or two, to see how it feels, and then put together a PPP.

WHen you test it, you might try Mitch's idea of working the 2f2c instead of 2f1h in Gems to see if it gets us Fishing(1t)-Pottery(1t). I doubt it's enough, but then again, I did optimize beakers toward the end, so I don't konw what's available.

.

LowtherCastle · Feb 22, 2012

One thing I haven't gotten around to is counting the number of worldwide cities to see if barb units are spawning yet. If we kill that lion this turn, it'd be nice to know if it's likely to be replaced by a unit or not. I'll do that now.

LowtherCastle · Feb 22, 2012

Top Five Cities Demo Screen

Anyone konw if it's possible to have pop6/pop3(Mahad)/pop4/pop4/pop4 on the Top 5 list while there is also a pop5 not on it?

Mitchum · Feb 22, 2012

Early on, it seems that the top 5 is driven by pop. As time goes on, other things come into play. I'm not 100% sure but I would think that a pop5 city would be ahead of any pop4 city, especially since all have a single religion in them.

I guess it's possible that the 3 pop4 cities are owned by Creative civs and have had an extra border pop while the pop 5 city is not... wild guess...

Are you sure that there is a pop5 city or are you speculating?

Dhoomstriker · Feb 22, 2012

LowtherCastle said:
It also means, we need to think carefully in advance whether we want to keep a city or not, when it revolts the first time.

Thanks for testing that we can disband a Culturally-captured City.

Let's just remember that if it's a Barb City, it will give us the choice the first time that the Barb City revolts, so we won't have an advance warning for such a City.

The implication, though, is that if a Barb City is in an inconvenient location, we will have a work-around for getting rid of it... it probably won't matter in most cases but it might if we, say, need to build a Culturual Bridge City without having Astronomy or whatever.

ZPV said:
btw: it's only Vanilla where you have to improve the marble before chopping. Since Warlords, chop hammers are added at the end of the turn, by when the marble should already be connected.

While true, Quarrying before Chopping reduces our loss if a misclick causes us to end the turn prematurely.

Mitchum said:
BTW, Toku had two workers on the corn that could have been stolen by this warrior!!!

Unless you have a Woodsman II Warrior, while we're at war, we're not going to be able to capture Toku's Workers in this manner, so worry not.

It will suck to have him Farm his Corn though, as that'll mean it'll be quicker for him to whip an Archer, which could cause his Power to rise sooner than we were hoping.

You're just talking about the test game, though, right? Or do we see 2 additional Workers in the real game, too?

Mitchum said:
5. It's hard to say which is better, but it's possible that Fishing -> Pottery is better than Pottery -> Fishing. The 15 bonus beakers means we start the granaries one turn later. The cities in question are generating 3, 4 and 1 hammers for a total of 8 earlier hammers. Again, are 8H > 15?

Another consideration: by delaying one of Fishing or Pottery, could another AI that does not know that tech learn it before we start research on it, thereby possibly gaining us a bonus Flask from piggy-back research?

I.e. Do we know if any of the AIs that we have met already know any of these techs? Do we know if one or more of said AIs knowing said techs would gain us any bonus Flasks?

LowtherCastle · Feb 22, 2012

Mitchum said:
Are you sure that there is a pop5 city or are you speculating?

Every so often I go braindead and can't figure out the number of cities on the map. That's happening. This is what I have:

Code:

Turn Wrld   MaxAI  AIAve  MinAI  Total   Change  CityPop         AI Cities              Our     Total  Hindu Hindu Budd Budd Non-Rel Barb       
     Pop    City   Pop    City   Points  in Pts  changes                                Cities  Cities %     Pop   %    pop  pop     CitPop         
---- ----   -----  ------ -----  ------  ------  --------------  ---------------------  ------  ------ ----- ----- ---- ---- ------- ------        
                                                                                                                             
32    39     150   48.111   7     433      42     p4,p3          6,5,4,4,3,3,3,3,2,2,1  2,1       13     5    2     82   32    5      0   
33    43     150   48.444   7     436       3     Osaka,p1,?,?   6,4,4,4,3,,,,,,1,1,    2,1       15+    4    2     76   33    8      0

In other words, the world pop increased 4 people, but the change in AI PopScore only changed by 3. The number of non-religious people increased by 3 and Mahad's got a non-Buddhist city that had pop3 on T32, so it might have grown by one or not. That means at least 2 new people are non-religious. Furthermore, those two had to be new cities, because the only other new cities are Zlatorog and another from 2 turns ago, so they couldn't have gorwn to pop2 yet. Osaka is one of those two or three new cities.

Furthermore, the Top Five Cities Screen lost a pop5 city between T32 and T33.

So, there are definitely at least two new pop1 cities. That gives +2 on the PopScore and +2 people. The new people are not OSS and not barbs. That leaves +1 on teh PopScore and +2 people. How to get that?

.

LowtherCastle · Feb 22, 2012

Okay. I figured it out.

Code:

City  Score Pop
p1      +1   +1
p1      +1   +1
p1      +1   +1
P5>p4  -42   -1
p3<p4  +27   +1
p2<p3  +15   +1

Total   +3   +4

or

City  Score Pop
p1      +1   +1
p1      +1   +1
p1      +1   +1
P5>p3  -69   -2
p3<p4  +27   +1
p3<p4  +27   +1
p2<p3  +15   +1

Total   +3   +4

Mitchum · Feb 22, 2012

Dhoomstriker said:
Unless you have a Woodsman II Warrior, while we're at war, we're not going to be able to capture Toku's Workers in this manner, so worry not.

This happend in the test game after we had signed a CF with Toku, not while we were at war with him...

Mitchum · Feb 22, 2012

LowtherCastle said:
Okay. I figured it out.

OK, so how many cities are there on the map and what does this mean with respect to human barbs and when they can enter our culture?

LowtherCastle · Feb 22, 2012

Mitchum said:
OK, so how many cities are there on the map and what does this mean with respect to human barbs and when they can enter our culture?

By my determination, on T33 we went from 13 to 16 cities, worldwide, thus starting the Age of Barb Unit Spawning.

We're now at 18 cities worldwide.

At 20 cities, the Age of Barb City Spawning begins.

At 30 cities, barbs will attack our cities. (If I'm not mistaken, they will attack 1 tile deep into our culture some time before then, but ZPV will have to verify that.)

------------

So, killing the barb lion means replacing it with a barb warrior or barb archer... :eek:

SGOTM 15 - One Short Straw

Girlie Builder

subdeity

Deity

Deity

Attachments

Deity

Deity

Short for ZPVCSPLFUIFDPEF

Deity

Deity

Deity

Deity

Deity

Deity

Deity

Girlie Builder

Deity

Deity

Deity

Deity

Deity

Similar threads