SGOTM 15 - One Short Straw

AlanH

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ROSTER

bbp Played 1t: T0-1
Mitch Played 17t: T1-18
Dhoom swap
LC Played 14t: T18-32
ZPV UP Played 7t: T32-39
beestar ON DECK
magnus

GAME SUMMARY

4000 - 3960 BC played by bbp - report
We settled on stone and sent the warrior to marble.

3960 - 3760 BC played by Mitchum - report
We started on a worker and Meditation (ZPV having discovered that we can get Hinduism that way). Mitchum paused after we met Toku's scout SE of Delhi.

3760 - 3560 BC played by Mitchum - report
Played through Meditation, founded Hinduism and switched to it. Met Hamurragawa!

3560 - 3280 BC played by Mitchum - report
Another 7 turns, building a warrior and starting on another, while the worker mined two hills. Researching Agriculture. Initial warrior went to scout Japan and see if there could be easy worker-stealing opportunities.

3280 - 3200 BC played by LowtherCastle - report

3200 - 2800 BC played by LowtherCastle - report
Researching Animal Husbandry and built a settler at size 2. We intend to settle gold/sheep/corn towards Toku. Our initial warrior was hanging out by Toku's sheep for a while, hoping for a worker steal, but no luck. Done some more scouting towards Hammy at last.

2720 - 2560 BC played by ZPV - report
 
Previous discussion on QT, Part 1:
Spoiler :

Dhoom 12-23-2011 1:27
Typical AP cheese (cheese I think is used since it sounds like "cheap" or "cheat" but isn't quite cheating, just abusing a poorly-designed game mechanic) works best if you can switch State Religions.

Here, I see us doing some variant of it:
Hinduism is our State Religion but we want the AP to be built in a different, poorly-spread Religion, such as Christianity. So, we generate a Great Engineer (Oracle Metal Casting for a whipped Forge) and gift it to an AI, along with gifting them Theology and Christianity.

Gifting them Christianity would imply spreading it via Missionaries or gifting a City with Christanity in it. The AI just needs to be running Christianity (or a poorly-spread Buddhism or a poorly-spread Judaism) as their State Religion, and whatever State Religion they are running at the time of the AP's completion will be the AI's Religion.

We would then need to conquest the AP so that we could become the Resident through ownership of the AP.

The idea would be to have as many AIs running Hinduism as their State Religion as possible while giving them only a bit of Christianity.

It does get a lot trickier if we are isolated, but a Great Engineer and Missionaries can be transported via Caravels (Optics)... yet I guess if we are 100% isolated we'd still need Astronomy to capture the AP City.

If we aren't COMPLETELY isolated, then the idea will work... if we are completely isolated, that might be the only case where it would be worth it to go for a different victory condition, since we'd need to tech up to Astronomy ANYWAY and just going for Domination might be easier in such a case.


I haven't looked too closely at the game's settings, but no Vassals and no City Razing will make a military game tough and will make Domination seem more realistic than Conquest... I mean, you can't "not" capture the Cities, so you'd probably better plan for a Domination economy that can withstand keeping a ton of Cities.

At least with no Vassals, we shouldn't have to worry about Colonial Maintenance Costs, if I recall correctly.


Going for the UN instead of the AP is unlikely to be faster, and with military victories potentially being challenging, an AP win will probably be our best bet.
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bbp 12-23-2011 1:48

Thanks for the lesson. :D

I mean, the thing about this is that it needs to be decided fairly early. Correct? Committing to a GE and self-teching Theo early are big investments.

So, once again, early Demo reading and exploration are quite important, I guess.
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LC 12-23-2011 4:56

I'm thinking neil might have set this one up for cultural.
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ZPV 12-23-2011 8:14

Hi guys.

The settings are intriguing. From the preview text at the start, I suspect we are isolated. The Polytheism requirement suggests a settler-first opening to me. Else possibly settling on the stone and building stonehenge for an ultra-quick GP (although I doubt this is better than a settler).

For an AP win, we either need someone else to vote for us, or else someone else be the AP resident and they call the religious victory resolution. We'll have to see, but I don't think neil will have made it easy to spread a religion to everyone - possibly even selecting zealot leaders who favour Theology.

How soon to we have to commit to one path or other? I think we at least have time to clear the basic techs, and see if there are nearby rivals.
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Mitch 12-23-2011 12:14

I've never won an AP victory. I recall reading a spoiler in a BOTM game about a year ago where Jesusin had a very early (i.e. BC years) AP win. If we think this may be the way to go, I think we all need to understand the mechanics (it appears that some of us already do). I'll have to dig into it and see what I can find out.
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bbp 12-23-2011 12:18

ZPV: "The settings are intriguing. From the preview text at the start, I suspect we are isolated."

I expect us to be completely isolated for now. With stone, marble and PHI an isolation game is quite fun.

ZPV: "The Polytheism requirement suggests a settler-first opening to me. Else possibly settling on the stone and building stonehenge for an ultra-quick GP (although I doubt this is better than a settler)."

Why? Can't a fast worker climb up a hill with a pickaxe?
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ZPV 12-23-2011 12:55

@MB: yes, we could settle on one of the hills and build a worker in 10 turns, but spending its first ~11 turns mining hills isn't my idea of productive - the whole reason we build a worker first is to improve food so we can grow.
Worker first isn't completely out the window, but a 17-turn settler with the religion possibly founded in the second city is very tempting, giving us a production advantage early on (especially if we found cities on the stone and the marble), making it easier to build explorer/fogbusters, etc.
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LC 12-23-2011 13:13

I was thinking:
0. Probably settle on marble since it has so much river, although Neil probably made some trade-offs.
1. BUild settler + research Poly to (1t) then research agri (partial)
2. Settle on other rock, then complete Poly then agri.
3. Build 1 or two settlers, etc.

Poly will take 12-13t depending on whether we have a 3f-h1c tile next to the marble. Then agri takes another 10t or less, so the worker isn't desparately late and the second worker or build comes radically soon.

Then there's this from the King of Cultural:

QUOTE=Lexad ( http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/game_info.php?entryID=14527 )

"If the mine does not contain gold or gems - well, that's the hint for you it ain't worth working."

I'm not saying we're definitely going cultural. Obviously AP can be faster under the right conditions, but I don't see why we would build a worker first just so it can mine hills. If you look at the common denominator for how the Ducks outplay us in every opening, it's simple: faster settling.
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bbp 12-23-2011 13:15

How long is Poly-Agri? 20-ish turns or so?
Cities on both stone and marble right away sounds kinda appealing, sure. Assuming there's more food available beyond the corn, ofc.
Edit: xpost w LC
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bbp 12-23-2011 13:18

What's with the partial Poly research? For holy city? Are we even allowed to do that?
Edit: I guess we are, provided we manage to found it.
Edit2: It's a pretty significant delay, though. We'll take 17t for the settler build + 2t to settle + 1t to settle Delhi + 1t to finish research. That's 21t for an Emperor AI to nab it.
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LC 12-23-2011 13:21

As for our slow beginnings and playstyle, I think we should just focus on fastest REX in the beginning. To me, settling on both rocks is a no-brainer, regardless of how much food those sites have. In my limited HOF experience I always started on 3h hills and got first place. Having two such cities to start out is double orgasm. Just try out a game with these settings and two such hills 4 tiles apart. It's like you're cheating.

Throw in the quick border expansion for the second city and it's freaky.

xpost w/bbp: I say we just go for it and if we miss Hinduism, big deal, we quit. I don't think it's likely to happen.
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LC 12-23-2011 13:29

I don't believe any AI starts with Mysticism, btw. Whether they choose Meditation or Polytheism is partially on the RNG, so theoretically every team could miss it since the AIs are going to start a turn sooner and pay less for it on Emperor...
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ZPV 12-23-2011 13:31

It's possible to choose the AIs' tech paths in debug mode, although I don't know if neil will have done this, and they don't always stick to it.
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LC 12-23-2011 13:34

Wouldn't they have to have settled first?
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ZPV 12-23-2011 13:38

No - there's a keyboard shortcut to switch player - I'll remember it once I play around a bit, whence you can go into the Science Advisor to do it
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bbp 12-23-2011 13:38

No, I don't think they start with Myst, but 20+ turns seems like enough for Myst-Poly. I don't see the point, tbh. We can build a monument in 8t minimum, maybe even 5-6t. That's a T36-38 border pop. We won't even have a single worker 'till T27, which is corn on T32, plus there will be other improvements in the capital. Obviously it's better to get the free border pop and maybe even two workers, but I don't think it's worth risking an instant loss.

Hindu doesn't start with a missionary, right? It's been a while since I founded it. :p

xpost w both
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LC 12-23-2011 15:59

I tested Hinduism. I got a T11 completion with an AI starting with Mysticism. I got a T16 completion starting without, so I guess that plan is out of the question. We can't assume Neil doctored the tech paths. We can assume that he tried all the standard possible variants that teams might try to see if any AIs get Hinduism before us using the random seed in the REAL SAVE. We'll have to accept it landing in our capital.
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Dhoom 12-23-2011 23:19

As for Hinduism, no team really SHOULD risk not beelining Polytheism. The potential gain over other teams isn't worth the risk of losing the game--at least if you beeline it and an AI founds it, Neilmeister would likely take pity on said team, but if you don't beeline it, he'll be more than happy to laugh at said team ending up in last place.


If we are isolated, an AP win could still work, but it would be a lot harder. In that case, I think that we'd just build a Hindu AP, hope that the other Religions spread really well, and then try not to meet any of the AIs until within a few turns of each other, when we already have 3 Hindu Missionaries on Caravels and some Caravel-chains or at least partial chains set up... the idea is that you don't want to wait too long for Heathen Religions to kick in.

We wouldn't necessarily need to get a Great Engineer, but it is a useful Wonder to use a Great Engineer on, since it's a Wonder that won't benefit from Stone/Marble/Copper/Gold/etc, so you will get the full value out of the Great Engineer no matter how many Wonder-build-speed Resources you already have access to.

Also, you get free Hammers from the AP Religion's Temples and Monasteries, meaning that you can spend the cost of the AP in terms of Hammers into Temples and Monastaries and start getting a lot of free Hammer output everywhere. Such an approach would still be relatively compatible with a Cultural Victory, as one of the primary bottlenecks in a Cultural Victory is getting sufficient Hammer output in your 3 Legendary-to-be Cities.

If we can spread Hindu Missionaries quickly after meeting many AIs, we might only see -2, -3, or -4 from Heathen Religion penalties... which is still steep to overcome... probably what's harder is requiring Astronomy before being able to gift Resources, meaning no bonus for shared Resources.

In such an isolation game, we'd probably still have an easier time with a different Victory Condition--the beauty of the AP cheese comes in if we are able to get AIs to convert to Hinduism while having the AP Religion be in a different Religion, and the only way to make such a strategy really work is to have an AI convert to Christianity (or a different Religion), build the AP, and then capture the AP from said AI.

Since we'd need Galleons to capture an overseas AI's City, the cheese part won't work if we're isolated, so for an isolation game we really should pursue a different Victory Condition.

I agree that the setup seems to favour a Cultural Victory and if we are isolated then this point will be very true. One thing that will hurt is not having access to the AIs' Resources, which is one factor that normally powers you through a Cultural Victory, since it's all about getting 3 large, productive Cities, and Happiness + Healthiness Resources help a lot toward that goal.

Neilmeister did say that he wouldn't be as generous as last game in terms of Resources, so going for Cultural without Astronomy may not actually be a winning path, and if we have to get Astronomy anyway, then the only major advantage to going for Cultural is that you don't have to deal with having no Vassals and needing to keep every AI-built City in wartime.

Such a scenario could still end up being best won by war, sad to say.
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LC 12-25-2011 5:10

Maybe this SG is all about RV after all:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php...720642&postcount=72
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Dhoom 12-26-2011 1:07

The title of this SGOTM is also not-so-cryptically called "The Missionary."

Regardless, if we want a strategy that we're just going to work toward, we could aim to go for an Apostolic Palace Victory from Turn 0...

That said, it will be pretty tough to pull off if we are isolated, but by the time that we find that fact out, we could feasibly still switch course to a different Victory Condition--or else we could just stick to going for an AP win even if it turns out not to be the fastest Victory Condition possible, so as to stick with the theme of picking a path ahead of time and focusing most of our discussions around that specific path.

Alternatively, we could do the same for a Cultural Victory (i.e. aim to go Cultural from Turn 0, but I'm pretty convinced that doing so will not win us a set of Gold Laurels).
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LC 12-26-2011 4:23

For an isolated start, I'm thinking the fastest RV would be:

0. Explore to find AIs and coastal settling sites, especially east and west.
1.a. Oracle Theology, build AP (Hindu).
1.b. Beeline Writing>Optics with GS bulbing.
1.c Settle at least 1 coastal city east and west, to whip caravels.
2. Insta-meet AIs with caravels+scouts/HinduMisses.
3. Select an AI-friend who will vote for us and build plusmods. This must be someone who will switch to Free Religion when possible, so preferably didn't found a religion.
4. Beeline Liberalism (more bulbing) and gift to our AI-friend.

Did I miss anything here?

Testing isolated starts is probably the key here, but I'm thinking the only way to prevent RV from winning is to wall-in some AI in an isolated area. I doubt Neil is interested in doing that, because he was proud that three different VCs took awards, so he's probably looking for VC-competitive scenarios. A wall-in guarantees that cultural wins if someone starts it soon enough.

It does seem, on the other hand, that he's gone out of his way to impede military VCs, giving RV a chance. I think the Hindu requirement is an attempt at making cultural competitive. No Brokering may help Cultural since that's a beeline that kind of off the AI tech path, so it's a bit solo anyway.

I think isolated RV is going to be faster than Cultural, because Cultural also goes for Liberalism and then still has 20 or more turns afterwards to spam culture.

Thoughts?
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Dhoom 12-26-2011 13:56

Normal Speed: No bonus to warring but also no real disadvantage to warring. Good timing is pretty important for a Religious Victory.

No City Razing: Now that I think about it, it's not really all that harder for the top teams. It's only really going to be harder for the middle-of-the-pack teams that tend to get started on their warring later. A military victory could still take the Gold here.

City Flip After Conquest: Will be a pretty much meaningless setting in terms of the game.

Aggressive AI: Unlike Vanilla Civ 4, the AIs don't hate you any extra, so no real penalty for Religious or Diplo Victories. I'm not convinced that it helps much, but I forget what it does in BtS... does it simply make an AI more likely to build a unit? If so, it could HURT the AIs relative to a top warring team, as the AIs will be burdened with additional units, which could slow down their research rate. Once you get warring momentum, as long as there are no Longbowmen, it doesn't REALLY matter if AI Cities are defended with 2 units versus 5 units, as you'll have Collateral Damage anyway and your competition (the other teams) will be facing the same issue.

No Tech Brokering: One way to look at it is that Cultural and Religious Victories involve beelines, but so does an Astronomy military game. Either way, you're beelining techs. All that this setting will really serve to do is slow down the AIs and make it harder to support each other (there being no way for them to realistically bribe each other to go to war with us). If anything, this setting will extend the era of Archers, making a militaristic Victory even easier... it's like giving the 'Ducks the advantage of backwards-AIs that we worked so hard to get in SGOTM 14, but they would get said advantage for free.

No Vassal States: Makes Conquest under the "No City Razing" more challenging, but doesn't really make Domination any harder. In fact, it can be said to make Domination easier as you won't have to worry about facing off against an AI Superpower. In SGOTM 14, this option made sense, since each AI Team was already a Superpower. Here, other than stopping chaining capitulations, this setting will only serve to make the militaristic game LIGHTYEARS easier: NO COLONIAL MAINTENANCE for the "No City Razing" option makes the game a lot easier and, as I said, no AIs teaming up with each other leaves all of the AIs weak and vulnerable... and with Domination, you can pick and choose your targets.

Unrestricted Leaders: I didn't see this setting earlier but unlike the Random Personalities, it doesn't really make Religious or Diplo Victories any harder, since you will still know the personality of each AI. It is feasible that "tough combos" could have been made, by combining strong Leader Traits with strong Unique Units, but even then, it's still just the AIs that we're talking about here, not fellow competitors in a multiplayer game.

8 AIs: Conquest gets harder but Domination gets easier, as we'll have EVEN MORE juicy AI capitals (with extra Resources, extra Buildings, extra settled Great People/Academies, etc).


Neilmeister DID make Domination tougher last game by adding in clumps of Peaks, but he would be unlikely to make such a Victory Condition unwinnable, either.


The must-be-Hindu restriction seems to serve two purposes:
a) Delay the time when teams can start to differentiate themselves by picking a good selection of early techs
AND
b) Make Religious and Diplo Victories HARDER

I don't see this restriction really messing up militaristic games--you won't expect to do much trading if we're isolated and end up teching up to Optics or Astronomy before we can meet any of the AIs--at most, the AIs will not trade with you and you can simply get techs by declaring war and demanding techs as part of the peace deal after leaving them with their Tundra Cities.


There is a heck of a lot of trickiness and randomness in going for a Religious (or even a Diplo) Victory when being locked into a Religion, not even being able to switch to No State Religion. In other words, these Victory Conditions have a big disadvantage.


However, Conquest and Domination Victories aren't really handicapped and are likely to be easier than normal due to:
a) backwards AIs
b) AIs that won't be able to support each other
c) more juicy AI capitals to capture (helps Domination more than Conquest as Conquest is balanced out by needing to capture additional junky Cities from additional AI players)



If we learn Theology, won't Great Scientists be wanting to Lightbulb Paper instead of down the Astronomy path? I'm not sure if we can get Optics or Machinery, but I seem to recall Paper having a very high Lightbulbing preference, so building the Apostolic Palace could actually mess up our Lightbulbing of naval techs.


If we're isolated, we will almost certainly have a faster game going for Domination than any other Victory Condition.

The Religious Victory possibility could come in if we can trick an adjacent AI to build the Apostolic Palace for us in a different Religion than Hinduism--but even doing so is tricky as said AI might prefer to build the Hagia Sophia, meaning that we'd have to build that Wonder and other Wonders unless we had an AI with a high Religious flavour for their personality that might be inclined to build the Apostolic Palace even if other Wonders are available. I.e. To make my cheese trick work, we might have to spam a lot of Wonders. So, even then, Domination might be the optimal path.


The only real trick is whether there are a ton of Peaks that can't be settled, making achieving the Land Area condition harder, but then any team that goes for the same Victory Condition would also be similarly handicapped.
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ZPV 12-26-2011 14:21

If we're isolated:
Cultural will be slow due to non-spread of religion.
Religious could be difficult due to Theocracy being available before we can infect AIs with Hinduism.
It also takes time after first contact to build up relations. (That's why that quick speed gauntlet LC linked took until 400BC, when on epic 1500BC is possible, and 2000BC on marathon)
It might not even be possible, if there is enough religious hatred + worst enemy negmods.
Diplomatic suffers the same fate, except we need to please even more of the AIs.
Conquest will probably trigger Domination first.
I'll go digging for the effects of Aggressive AI. The most obvious one is they'll go to war more often, but when they make peace, the cities will start to flip back.
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LC 12-26-2011 15:38

As I recall, the main effect of Aggressive AI now is that the barbs attack your cities after many fewer cities have been built. I think it's 1.5 per player, but ZPV can check that.
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ZPV 12-26-2011 18:23

LC - that's Raging Barbarians
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ZPV 12-26-2011 20:37

Effects of Aggressive AI:


----PlayerAI----
Less likely to ban nukes with UN.
They will use spies to hurt you even if they like you.
Less likely to choose diplo-boosting random event choices.
Less likely to pursue a cultural victory.
More likely to pursue nuke strategy (i.e. greater chance of building nukes).
Slightly less likely to pursue dagger strategy on high levels.
More likely to pursue crush strategy.
Wants more floating defenders.
----TeamAI----
More likely to use AREAAI_MASSING rather than AREAAI_DEFENSIVE
More likely to go to war to get over domination threshold.
Less likely to end a war when threatening more enemy cities, than own cities are threatened.
Much more likely to start a Max War
----CityAI----
AI willing to spend more gpt on units.
----UnitAI----
Settlers don't retreat to city
Units very occasionally conisder to worker-steal :o
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LC 12-27-2011 7:52

On ZPV's question how soon we have to commit ourselves:

Obviously, all our discussion is heavily dependent on our FCs. That said, I'm toying with the idea of beelining Optics. This would:

1. Leverage Alpha
2. Give us early knowledge of our scenario for VC determination, prior to committing ourselves
3. Give us a high-commerce empire (this beeline would require lots of cottages most likely), useful for Domination and quickly researching (Mono)-Theology or CoL-CS

I don't know how early we can get optics, though. We need 17t for 2 GSes and we need a lot of beakers. We could use Oracle for MC or even Machinery if feasible. Both Machinery and Optics are GS-bulbable. Optics requires researching math and alpha. Machinery requires NOT researching Fishing and additionally researching Aesthetics. Better would be to slingshot Machinery, of course.

It would be nice to know early on if this is a military VC scenario or a trap instead.
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LC 12-27-2011 8:53

Seems like Aggressive AI again assists warmongering VCs, because AIs will slow down their teching when putting more gpt into units and building roamers.

Another thought: The world size is not specified. I assume Large or Huge will slow down military VCs, right? We'll be able to figure that out when we get the save.
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beestar 12-27-2011 11:15

Hey guys, thanks for inviting me to OSS. Haven't thought much about S-GOTM over X-MAS yet, but I'm happy to contribute whatever I can.
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LC 12-27-2011 13:01

If anyone has time to make an isolated start with what we see, that would be great. I'd not put excessive resources around the start, but no need to be frugal either. Maybe use a Large map, since there are 8 AIs.
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Mitch 12-27-2011 13:01

A well-executed Religious Victory is hard to beat based on comparing HOF dates. Of course, these games didn't have the constraint of running a single religion the entire game either.

Since we know that we're beelining Hinduism followed by several worker techs, we shouldn't have to commit ourselves to any specific VC until we're trying to decide what to Oracle, right? Plus, if we are isolated pre-Optics, we have even more time to figure it out as we'd likely follow a very similar tech path until Optics regardless of our chosen VC.

EDIT: Welcome to the team, Beestar!!
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LC 12-27-2011 15:18

Here's a test save, isolated, very frugal set-up.

I got the machinery slingshot in 925BC on my first try, but the problem is we still need Math and Alphabet before we can bulb Optics. Since our GPs come out fast, I assume bulbing Machinery and Optics will be faster. Not sure though, because that adds Aesthetics to the mix.

EDIT: If you downloaded the test save before you saw this edit, download it again, please, cuz I uploaded the wrong file... :)

EDIT2: Note that the save is a Large map, which translates to about 7.5% slower teching or 5.5t at T77. On a Standard map, the Machinery slingshot would be about 1160 or 1120BC.
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ZPV 12-27-2011 19:42

I'll play around a bit, and watch the AI behaviour.
edit: you weren't kidding about it being frugal.
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LC 12-28-2011 9:23

Part of my thinking on beelining Optics if we're isolated is that we give ourselves a chance to find AIs that either don't have religion yet or not well spread. Secondly, with 8 AIs, if it's a standard-sized map, there's some chance we'll find an AI with only three cities, giving us the opportunity to GIFT HIM A CITY on our landmass!!! :D

Early Optics carries a number of potential solutions.
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ZPV 12-28-2011 6:26

Perhaps some variant of early Optics which doesn't sacrifice growth too much is in order - it isn't really until after we meet the other AIs that we'll know for sure if a quick religious victory is possible, or if we'll have to slog out a domination win.
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bbp 12-28-2011 21:42

I agree with ZPV. I don't think we should go all out for a Religous Victory until we know the lay of the land. For all we know, we may not even be isolated. At what point to we have to pull the trigger on the Optics beeline?
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beestar 12-29-2011 1:34

Not a lot for me to add to the discussion so far. Trying to define the difference between Religious vs. Domination paths sounds like a good next step - maybe draw up a tech path for each VC?

From the flavour text, it sounds like there's an ocean coast (as opposed to a lake) if we follow the river downstream, presumably not too many moves away. However, I'm not sure this knowledge helps us very much!
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LC 12-29-2011 13:59

ZPV, do you know where the code is for calculating the captured gold when capturing an AI city? I found docitycapturegold in CvPlayer but it says python does it. Is there no other info on that? I also noticed in GlobalDefines various CAPTURE_GOLD specifications. Have you ever figured out how it's calculated?
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ZPV 12-29-2011 17:36

@LC: It's in CvGameUtils.py
Call X = 20 + 10*pop + rand(50) + rand(50).
If the previous owner has had the city for 50 turns, then we get X gold.
If they acquired it more recently than that, then we get X/50 * (# of turns since they acquired the city)
 
Previous discussion on QT, Part 2:
Spoiler :

LC 12-30-2011 11:29

ZPV, I'm studying maintenance. Is this explanation:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php...027284&postcount=13

correct? Do you know of any available spreadsheet that automates all the calculations?
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ZPV 12-30-2011 14:25

CityMaint = DistanceMaintenance + NumCitiesMaintenance + ColonyMaintenance + CorporationMaintenance (before inflation, which is then applied to the costs of the empire and is based on the turn number/game speed).
These are held to 2 decimal places (truncated to such after each calculation), and only rounded to an integer empirewide (contrary to vanilla where each term is rounded down to an integer individually).

The descriptions in that post for the first two summands are correct - I'll repeat them here for clarity:

DistanceMaintenance = 25 * distance * (pop+7)/10 * dworldsize/100 * dhandicap/100 / maxplotdistance

distance counts diagonal steps as 1.5, but is rounded down to an integer if necessary, and maxplotdistance is the largest distance between two tiles on the map.
distance is measured to the nearest government centre (capital/forbidden palace/versailles)
dworldsize = 50/60/70/80/90/100 for Duel/.../Huge
dhandicap = 45/55/65/75/85/90/95/100/100 for Settler/.../Deity
(or 0 in State Property)

NumCitiesMaintenance = (#cities + #vassalcities/#teammembers) * (100 * (pop+17)/18 * cworldsize/100 * chandicap/100)

This is capped at 4/4/5/5/6/6/7/7/8 for Settler/.../Deity
cworldsize = 45/40/35/30/25/20 for Duel/.../Huge
chandicap = 40/50/60/70/80/85/90/95/100 for Settler/.../Deity

ColonyMaintenance = ((pop+17)/18 * lworldsize/100 * lhandicap/100 * (#cities on the landmass - 1))^2

It applies only to cities not on the same landmass as the capital, and when "No Vassals" is unchecked.
It is capped at 2*DistanceMaintenance.
lworldsize = 67/60/52/45/37/30 for Duel/.../Huge
lhandicap = 60/80/90/100/110/120/130/140/150 for Settler/.../Deity

CorporationMaintenance = (4*(#corps) + (#resources * pworldsize/100)) * (pop+17)/18 * phandicap/100 * (playermod+100)/100 * 100/Inflation

pworldsize = 400/200/150/100/75/50 for Duel/.../Huge
phandicap = 60/80/90/100/110/120/130/140/150 for Settler/.../Deity
playermod accounts for civics like Free Market and Environmentalism.
-------------------------------------------------
Maintenance is zero if the city is in revolt, the civ is in anarchy, or the city is celebrating We Love the King Day.

I don't know of a spreadsheet to summarize this, but it shouldn't be too difficult to do.
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LC 12-30-2011 16:37

Thank you very much, ZPV.

Question: I can't get my distance calcs to match the game. I'm getting 1.04 and the game gives 1.05. I putting ROUNDDOWN before every calculation (both * and /). Got any ideas? I had a similar problem with the #ofCitiesMaint until I realized you meant EVERY calculation (when you said it... :))
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Dhoom 12-31-2011 2:25

Show us your formulae, LC. It's hard to guess what you might need to change without seeing what it is that you have done.
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LC 12-31-2011 3:05

=ROUNDDOWN(
ROUNDDOWN(
ROUNDDOWN(
ROUNDDOWN(
ROUNDDOWN(25*CityDist,2)
*(CityPop+7)/10,2)
*VLOOKUP(Map_size,A32:C37,3),2)
*VLOOKUP(Difficulty,A40:C48,3),2)
/MaxPlotDistance,2)

CityDist = 4
CityPop = 4
Map_size(Large) = .9
Difficulty(Emporer) = .95
MaxPlotDistance(104x64) = 90
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ZPV 12-31-2011 3:12

I get 1.05(MaxPlotDistance should be 89 for a normal cylindrical Large map)
edit: wait a minute. I'll check that again.
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LC 12-31-2011 3:17

Okay, I just did those calcs again and noticed they go lilke this:

25*4=100.00
100*1.1=110.00
110*.9=99.00
99*.95=94.05
94.05/90=104.50

So if I ROUND instead of ROUNDDOWN on the very last operation, I get 1.05 instead of 1.04. Is that the problem? When do I ROUND and when do I ROUNDDOWN("TRUNC" to 2 decimals)?
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LC 12-31-2011 3:32

I vaguely remember in my distant amateur memory of c that rounding is the default operation rather than truncating. Is that incorrect?
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ZPV 12-31-2011 3:41

Everything else truncates in Civ code...
I don't know about the behaviour of C or C++ in general.
and MaxPlotDistance is definitely 89 and not 90 - (0,0) and (52,63) are examples of the most distant pairs of tiles.
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LC 12-31-2011 8:52

Okay. I think I got it now. Thanks, ZPV. So if the X and/or Y coordinates wrap, you divide by 2, if not, you subtract 1. Then for MaxPlotDistance you can take the smaller of the two numbers, multiply by 1.5, then add the absolute value of the difference of the two numbers. (In other words, count up the diagonal of the square, then count the remaining tiles in the longer direction.)

= S*1.5 + abs[L-S]

E.g., 104x64, 104 wrapping => (52,63) => 52*1.5 + 63 - 52 = 78 + 11 = 89.

Also cool is that the inverse holds. Starting with the distance cost, we can derive the MaxPlotDistance. For 1.05, we get 89, with 1.0599 giving 88, so there is a 1 tile possibility of error.
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ZPV 12-31-2011 9:32

Well, the game does it trunc(L + S/2), but it's the same result. The way you describe is the easiest way to think about it, in terms of tiles.
The article you linked to describes this as the "civ-metric" (although technically it's not a metric as the triangle inequality doesn't hold with that trunc in there...)
Yes, it's divide by 2 if they wrap, and subtract 1 if they don't.

There is 1 tile possibility of error from just the one observation, but remember the game generates the map in 4x4 blocks, so we can almost certainly work out the MaxPlotDistance (and possibly the dimensions) of the map just from this.
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bbp 12-31-2011 19:21

neil confirmed that it's a standard size map.

Why are you interested in all this, LC? General interest or something specific about this game?
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LC 01-01-2012 7:17

This SG will present some interesting challenges in the opening game. We basically start with 2 settlers, so our empire has a lot of potential. The preferable VC is very hard to determine without exploration. It's clear that Neil wants to bring RV into the mix, but not necessarily to make it the better VC. It's also clear that Neil likes RV since he plays it a lot at the HoF. Neil lets slip certain comments, like guarding his fortress, and when talking about maps, he seemed to have bigger on the mind... :) ...which makes sense if you want to make the military VCs tougher. Neil was proud of the multiple VCs in the last game. Kossin made a big deal about having an unreachable AI and others have mentioned it, so Neil might be bold enough to do that. All in all, it's a big mystery.

Plus, I've got a bit of a bad aftertaste from SG14. We keep letting the Ducks outstart us. I'm studying why that happens and working, with ZPV's invaluable help, on some things to pre-empt it.
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Dhoom 01-01-2012 18:45

If we are going for a Polytheism (for Hinduism) beeline while building a Settler first, then we'll need to be cautious of Barb Animals.

In particular, we will want to send our initial Warrior to explore the immediate area around the 3-Hammer-square that we did not settle on with our initial Settler, just to see if there is a slightly better location to settle that isn't on top of the 3-Hammer-square. After that, we'll want to stay in that area in order to spawn-bust that area, then be prepared to guard our Settler when it leaves our Cultural Borders.

The expanded Cultural Borders from Hinduism, however, might or might not expand in time to help with this effort, which is probably worth running a quick test to determine.
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bbp 01-02-2012 15:48

Don't like the test file. It's far too frugal, which makes it difficult to evaluate early investments in workers and settlers, IMHO. Stuff like gpp, wonders and libraries will gain more, by comparison. I don't think the map will suck, if we are really assuming that neil wants to balance VCs like culture. Can we change it?
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LC 01-02-2012 16:50

That was just a quick and dirty test save. I didn't intend for it to be so sparse, but it happened. It answers questions like Dhoom's about when the borders pop and what to do with the initial workers. Change it all you want. :) I tend to not test too much on hypotheticals.
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bbp 01-03-2012 1:44

Ok, I'll do a new save tmr then.
I think we get the second border pop on T25 +/- 1t, which is 7t after the second city. I'll check.
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LC 01-03-2012 3:32

My test is wrong anyway, because I used the Large map setting.
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bbp 01-03-2012 10:47

Ok, I did a new test save. It's here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php...80468&postcount=193

This is a tricky opening. With two early cities you get fogbust warriors pretty quickly, and there's not much else to build. Especially as we spend early research on Poly. In the test save, we also need AH. This forces a delay in BW, I think. It actually feels a bit slow, but I haven't done enough testing to really know how to play it. I'll have to mess around with it a bit.

The second border pop comes on T24, btw.
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ZPV 01-03-2012 13:04

I've done a little bit of messing around, too.
I've tried Settler-Worker and Worker-Settler, and I like the latter a little better.
The start seems custom-built for a very fast cultural victory via ancient wonderspam in both the stone and marble cities, plus a GP farm which gets culture bombed. I'm considering Poly-Ag-Masonry, because stonehenge becomes so quick to build.
Tech is slow, and production isn't. Skip/delay BW and go for pottery or writing - possibly via priesthood.
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LC 01-03-2012 14:10

Guys, save any tests you consider representative of certain strategies/paths (~1000BC?). They might be useful for comparison. I've focused only on Delhi: settler-worker, Bombay: worker and poly-ag-TW-pottery and I find research to pick up rapidly. The problem, of course, is not knowing what else will be in the two FCs.

Once we see the two FCs, I think it would make sense to run a couple tests on fastest cultural, because that's a significantly different tech path, even at the beginning. Lexad clearly showed that the traditional cultural path is non-optimal. With enough hammers, optimal is clearly going for max religions and spamming 50% cultural modifiers (cathedrals, etc.). I wouldn't be surprised if we're looking at 500AD or better. The only question is the research pace with no AI help.
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Mitch 01-03-2012 14:37

If we're thinking about going Cultural, is there any chance we can get Jesusin on our team? :) He's still playing BOTMs these days...

As LC said, it's hard to test too far into the game until we know the BFCs for the two proposed city locations. I think the first turnset can be played quite soon once we decide on Settler -> Worker or Worker -> Settler. Then, our testing can be much more focused once we know the BFCs...
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LC 01-03-2012 14:51

Btw, bbp, teh river runs south of the fp/corn. Makes a difference in Marble City in terms of cottages and two roads instead of one to connect Bombay.
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Mitch 01-03-2012 15:39

Ribannah gets the best cultural date maximizing production in BOTM 04 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=270494)

Duckweed wins culture via Sushi in BOTM 31 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=369739) and BOTM 34 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=386116)

Both of these go against the typical cottage / liberalize Nationalism / GA bomb strategy.

@LC - Where does Lexad show that a hammer approach similar to Ribannah's BOTM 04 is better than the traditional approach? HOF or an xOTM game?
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ZPV 01-03-2012 16:21

Mitchum - the last pages of this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=278350 (G-Major 29 - Culture/Deity/Normal speed)
and this one: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=232250 (HoF Cultural strategy discussion) are relevant.

Lexad's game is a study on Inca/Marathon, so the dates won't quite match up to what's possible here - in particular his expansion will be decidedly faster and cheaper than normal (although we have a similar albeit not comparable effect due to 3-hammer tiles), but his comments do, on the whole, apply.

The gauntlet was won in 1230 with a hammer-ish strategy, and the main conclusion was that the focus should be on getting three good cities, building wonders+stuff for the doubled culture in them and maximizing the base culture there, rather than rushing for a faster liberalism date.
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LC 01-03-2012 19:02

When I played and won the cultural game in the first HOF Challenge Series, I set a record for those HOF settings that still stands. I don't think it's that good of a time, but it was difficult settings (Toku, etc.). I also blew away the competition despite that being my only completed CIV cultural game ever... :) All I did was follow Lexad's strategy, along with knowing the basics of the other standard cultural strategies (I had been following jesusin's 1000AD thread fora while).

The key concept to me is that hammers are good. That is, you don't necessarily need 3 cities full of floodplains and tons of towns. Yes, you still build some cottages and grow them, and you still spam GAs, but the basic key to the fastest time is the cultural multipliers, along with the early religious buildings that double their cpt after a 1000 years (for a 500AD win, they'd need to be completed well before 500BC). But those buildings are a lot easier to build than towns, because towns take 70t on Normal, each. So the key in this game, I assume, would be to try to grab Hinduism, Judaism, Confuciansim, and Taosim, at the least. That's why I say the tech path diverges quite early from the Optics beeline.
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bbp 01-03-2012 21:09

There is simply no way you can win culture by 500 AD. I very seriously doubt you can do it by 1000 AD on these settings. Lexad's 700's game is Inca marathon, which doesn't even remotely count. On normal, no one's ever done pre-1200 on Emp+, as far as I know, and Duckweed's 1400's game in BOTM 34 was bloody perfect (on Epic, no less). There's no way culture is the fastest VC on any map ever, IMO. I just don't buy it. We showed why in SG11. It's simple - to get fast culture you need a leader and quality of land and resources that also translates into very fast research towards other VC's. SG11 was a pretty perfect culture setup, and PD creamed HOF culture dates by some 30t. I love playing fast culture, and would love to be proven wrong, but I'm pretty certain that won't happen.

I like hammers in culture, btw. Two of my previous best culture games didn't have cottages.
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LC 01-04-2012 3:33

If one or more AIs are mountain/ice/culture-blocked, then I don't see how cultural could be beaten by any VC, given a remotely decent cultural set-up and Gandhi is good for it. That's the catch: Is there a blocked AI?
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bbp 01-04-2012 10:15

LC: "Btw, bbp, teh river runs south of the fp/corn."
Fixed. Same link.
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bbp 01-04-2012 10:18

Btw, one thing to note about settler first is protection. Wolves can move two tiles at once, which isn't the case with later barbs. If we go with that move, we need to make sure our warrior is in place. It can't wander too far, in case it gets attacked and has to heal for some turns.
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Mitch 01-04-2012 11:52

As we've all guessed, we think Neil made an attempt to level the different VCs. Forcing us to research a religious tech first is one way to give Culture a slight advantage. Forcing us to stay in the same religion all game is a handicap to both Religous and Diplo. No city razing is a handicap to Conquest. I assume is that he's done other things (e.g. isolated, semi-isolated, hard-to-reach AI, etc.) to handicap military VCs even more. My guess is that a military VC will not win the gold. I'd bet on either Cultural or Religious.

So, is there anything we can learn in the first two or three turn sets that would allow us to eliminate certain VCs? At what point do the different VCs start to diverge? I assume that we would research very similar initial techs regardless of which VC we pursue.

From a pure enjoyment standpoint, I wouldn't mind going for something other than a military VC since we've gone military the last two games.
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bbp 01-04-2012 15:38

Looked at recent BOTM's. Too lazy to go further. Learned a few things:
1) Culture is closer to military than I would have thought.
2) jesusin needs to get a life.

Military wins:

BOTM 48
Dom 1360 (evil_spock) / Culture 1595 (Jovan Kukic)

BOTM 47
Conquest 1375 (Jovan Kukic) / Culture 1724 (jesusin)

BOTM 45
Dom 1560 (lymond) / Culture 1695 (jesusin)

BOTM 44
Conquest 1295 (srad) / Culture 1710 (jesusin)

BOTM 42
Conquest 1310 (Conquistador63) / 1370 (jesusin)

BOTM 41
Conquest 890 (Jovan Kukic) / Culture 1445 (jesusin)

BOTM 39
Conquest 1220 (Jovan Kukic) / Culture 1635 (jesusin)

BOTM 38
Conquest 880 (Jovan Kukic) / Culture 1600 (jesusin)

BOTM 36
Conquest 980 (Jovan Kukic) / Culture 1575 (jesusin)

Cultural wins:

BOTM 46
1525 (Kaitzilla) / 1455 (jesusin) Deity normal with Babylon, Religious was done 325 AD

BOTM 43
Conquest 1640 (euripides) / Culture 1620 (jesusin) Very awkward map for warfare (small islands), religious won in 1510 (zamint13)
This one's a good example of how it might work...

BOTM 40
Dom 1770 (Duckweed) / Culture 1765 (evil_spock) Deity normal on archipelago - Duckweed is a bit insane; religious 1430 (kcd_swede)

BOTM 37
Domination 1535 (Kaitzilla) / Culture 1400 (jesusin) This was the Santa game. Duckweed won by space in the 1600's. His domination might have been much faster.
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Dhoom 01-04-2012 23:21

Quote:
---
If one or more AIs are mountain/ice/culture-blocked, then I don't see how cultural could be beaten by any VC
---

Plain and simple: Domination is unaffected by one or more AIs being mountain/ice/culture-blocked.

I mean, sure, if 25% of the world's Land Area is blocked off, then Domination would start to get tricky, but other than having a nearby AI neighbour who is able to build a non-Hindu AP for us on a map where we can reach every AI at Optics, I don't see Domination really being beaten by another Victory Condition.

As I said, being forced to keep Cities and not being able to Vassal any AIs can still work fine for Domination--it's Conquest where those factors are the real stumbling block. If an AI built too many Iceball Cities, let the AI keep them... or capture them at the end for minimal City Revolt times due to the Cities not being able to grow much. If there are no Vassals and no AI Teams, there will be no AI Superpowers to contend with.


Even a Religious Victory gets a lot easier by playing it like a militaristic game if there are sufficient nearby opponents to go warring against early on. If you own sufficient population points, you only really need to get 1 AI to vote for you and the rest can vote against you. The trickiest part about a Religious Victory is that the AI that likes you normally shares your State Religion, and if the AP Religion is your State Religion, then that AI will be your opponent and will be forced to vote for themselves instead of voting for you. Hence, if the AP Religion is not Hinduism, we can get one AI to be our Hindu buddy who will vote for us and we can still get elected as leader of the game due to having captured the Apostolic Palace (which would have been built by an AI running a non-Hindu State Religion at the time of the Apostolic Palace's completion).


What we discussed earlier was the possibility of just going for a fun Victory Condition and going all out for it. For example, we COULD go for a Cultural Victory and have our fun trying to figure out how to optimize such a game. The good part is that a test game, other than possibly missing out on some Religions, can very quickly be a predictor of when we'll finish, as we really only need to have an idea of our nearby surroundings and what they will look like.

Good Cultural games usually involve an Academy as your first Great Person, so that you can tech up to Liberalism without much warring. There is the idea of skipping Liberalism entirely but I don't see us gaining sufficient Religions this way to make skipping Liberalism be the most effective approach (unless we're on a Pangaea map, where we could capture the missing Religions, in which case we'll be abandoning a Cultural Victory since all of the AIs can just be killed off). In other words, we can still play a relatively normal opening (although I admit that diverging for Masonry would be different than most openings).

I don't see Cultural Victory being the best Victory Condition. But, it will be a fun one and a nice change of pace.

What if we just set our sights on a goal such as "as fast of a Cultural Victory as we can manage" and don't look back, even if we do end up being on a Pangaea map with no Peak ranges to make Domination's Land Area harder to reach? What if instead of just going for the Gold, we intentionally set out to play a Cultural Victory as best as we possibly can?

Unlike other Victory Conditions that require being able to reach all of the AIs (Conquest and Religious), we CAN say that we're going for a Cultural Victory and be confident that we can win with a decent time... even if the Resources are mediocre, it'll be winnable.

Note that a (UN) Diplo Victory can be accomplished even if an AI is completely blocked off since the builder of the United Nations (or is it every player who gets this benefit?) instantly meets every unmet player upon completion of the United Nations. So, you can win the game even if an AI is isolated--a contrast to last game, where a completely isolated Wizard (say, a Wizard surrounded by Peaks) would have required us reaching him, since the condition was to kill the Wizard. Here, without any such condition, a (UN) Diplo Victory will be possible, just not nearly as feasible as normal due to the Hinduism State Religion restriction (and the inability to manipulate AIs' Religions to non-Hindu Religions via bribery and/or Spies, since you can only bribe an AI or use Espionage on an AI to switch them into your own State Religion).


A Religious Victory we couldn't set out to play from the beginning (unless we were willing to suck up the delay from waiting to meet a relatively-unreachable AI) and won't be an easy game unless we can sucker a nearby AI victim into building the AP for us.


Domination will be the clear winner minus a scenario with a completely-blocked-off AI, and Neilmeister seemed to imply that he wouldn't set up such a situation. Yet, nothing stops us from targeting a Cultural Victory right from the get go and never altering our course.


Some of the best XOTM games are played by picking a Victory Condition at the start and sticking to it. We'd be doing the same, just that we'd be aiming for the equivalent of a Fastest Finish Cultural Victory Award, which may not even end up mapping to any of the Laurels. So be it. If that's our motivation for playing and having fun, there's nothing wrong with that.

LC said that last game's motivation was trying to get me a Gold Laurel. Well, this game we can just ignore that goal, since it was a goal from last game, and set a new one of trying to achieve a kick-butt Cultural Victory date.


If founding most of the Religions is the way that we want to go, then go and take a look at the SGOTM 11 Fifth Element game. There, we founded everything but Buddhism. Sure, the world will hate us and will be united with each other. Sure, they'll trade their way into having a decent amount of techs. But, we won't care, since we'll just worry about our own little corner of the world.

The disadvantage of the SGOTM 11 game (besides missing out on the Silver Resource in our capital that nearly every other team got) was due to having to start on Polytheism at the start, while other teams went for Worker techs. Here, EVERYONE will have to go for Polytheism, so they won't get as big of a jump on us.

Note that my own rule of thumb from having played many Religious Races games is that if you want to found Judaism, you can't research Priesthood before you research Monotheism.

In other words, we'll probably go for Polytheism (for Hinduism) -> 1 or 2 Worker techs at max -> Masonry -> Monotheism (for Judaism) -> Possibly a Worker tech -> Priesthood -> Take a Religious Tech using the Oracle.

The trickiest part is that an early-built Stonehenge will encourage AIs to race us for completing The Oracle, but if Neilmeister has given us a map where everyone should feasibly be able to get Hinduism, then Judaism can easily be ours. As long as we do a decent job of timing when we get Stonehenge, we can also pick up The Oracle, snag a third Religion, then aim for self-teching the other Religions.

Note that Philosophical = an early Great Prophet = the non-Oracled Religion out of Confucianism (Code of Laws) and Christianity (Theology). Sure, I said above that you'd ideally want a Great Scientist as your first Great Person in a Cultural game, but this restriction can be lifted to being our second Great Person in a game where we're Philosophical.


So, that's my take: let's not consider a Cultural Victory in terms of how we will rank on the podium, but instead flip it around and see how good of a Cultural Victory date that we can get. That's a cool, fun, and different-from-militaristic-games goal to chase after.
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Dhoom 01-04-2012 23:37

Gah, I can't edit my last message. A couple of corrections:
- In SGOTM 11, Fifth Element didn't found the last Religion (Islam) but could have done so if we'd chosen to do so
- Founding every Religion yourself is not going to be as ideal as a nearby AI founding a Religion and capturing said Religion (or having it peacefully spread to you), which is why I appear to have contradictory statements about possibly not founding every Religion being a reason why skipping Liberalism might not be the way to go and then later say that we COULD try to found 6 Religions... it won't be ideal to try and found so many Religions on an average map, but if we're sufficiently isolated, trying to found almost all of the Religions may be ideal for the map


It would be pretty neat to see (maybe from test games once we have enough of an idea of the local area to determine where our 3 Legendary-to-be Cities will be placed) if:
a) skipping Liberalism could lead to an awesome Cultural Victory date
OR
b) focusing on a couple of early Great Scientists (for Lightbulbing Philosophy, part of Education, and possibly the rest of Education or Paper) would lead to a more ideal Cultural Victory date than going for more Great Artists


We'd almost certainly want to try and cultivate a Great Engineer for a Hindu Apostolic Palace (since we'd want to build our 6 Hindu Temples and Monasteries early on for their Cultural-multiplication efforts with the Sistine Chapel and thus would benefit a lot from the AP being Hindu... think extra Hammers in your Legendary-to-be Cities, which is very important). It would be one of the few Wonders that wouldn't get a Resource bonus (although we're also unlikely to have Ivory for the Statue of Zeus and Gold for the Shwedagon Paya), and it would still pay off to manually build it, but we'd have to have a decent production City that wasn't one of our Legendary-to-be Cities if we were going to manually build it (since that Wonder's Cultural output does not warrant building it in a Legendary-to-be City).
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bbp 01-04-2012 23:54

I want gold laurels. Don't care what kind of game that entails.
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Dhoom 01-05-2012 2:26

If others mirror your sentiments, then Cultural is off of the table, as Cultural will only be a viable winner with some pretty unlikely circumstances.

Examples of said unlikely circumstances could include:
a) a blocked-off AI
OR
b) a really-well-built map that isolates us with a small amount of land and gives the AIs a ton of non-coastal areas to which to expand and only a few coastal drop-off points

If we're going for Gold, I'd say that we target going for Domination from Turn 0 and only consider a possible AP Victory if we have a nearby AI and if the conditions are right (i.e. if we can use The Oracle on Metal Casting or Machinery). The point there being we'd generate a Great Engineer for the nearby AI using a Forge's Engineer Specialist; getting Machinery from The Oracle implicitly means that we intentionally self-teched Metal Casting early, which would still give us the ability to build a Forge just as much as Oracling Metal Casting would have done.


I'm flexible... I'd be happy going for Cultural just to change things up (including our goal of not targeting Gold), but I'd also be fine with another Domination game.
 
Previous discussion on QT, Part 3:
Spoiler :

ZPV 01-05-2012 2:57

Dhoom - or
c) we have two awesome early wonder sites, and no iron. Overseas domination will be very very painful with no iron - no cannons, no knights/cuirs, so that means rifles/grens/muskets and possibly cavs, and classical siege - so we'd almost certainly need to tech to rifling+astro.

The start for either case should involve ReXing to about 6 cities - just for astro we start generating GS after that, for culture we start spamming temples in our outside cities and wonders in our future LCs.
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beestar 01-05-2012 3:11

I'd be in favour of going for gold - OSS is always up there in the top one or two and that's my expectation of the team :) Going all-out for culture isn't as novel for me as that's what Fifth Element did for SGOTM14.

(Of course, it might turn out that neilmeister really has crippled Dom/Conquest enough so that Culture is the path to gold ...)
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LC 01-05-2012 4:56

First--my idea of focusing on a VC was less about fun, more about winning. As Obormot said, CIV is always more fun when you win. :) In short, I ALWAYS play for gold.

Second--been re-thinking the scenario. Neil is a good SG mapmaker, so far anyway. The first priority of an SG mapmaker is that all teams can win the game. To me, that almost surely rules out a scenario that prevents Conq/Dom until accessing blocked off AIs, especially at Normal speed.

My hunch, for what it's worth, is that this game is just what we see on the surface. RV is slowed by the Hindu Requirement. Military VCs are supposedly slowed by certain Options and perhaps by spreading AIs out all over the map or otherwise making them turn-consuming to reach, or whatever. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if we can access many if not all AIs by galley, making this scenario a competition between RV and military VCs.

So I think RV will still be the fastest, as long as some team succeeds in doing the GE gambit.

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

It's important for us to be on the same page as to our team goals, but I don't see any point in belaboring this right now. We have a few significant landmarks before we'll really be able to discuss this:

1. FCs for Marble and Stone. Do they have commerce tiles? More food tiles? Which worker techs do they demand? Note: Those four carefully placed forests stop our settler from scouting when moving to either rock, which tells me that settling one rock or the other are probably significantly different starts. I wouldnt' be surprise if Stone-1NW is a hill with a commerce resource. I really hope Neil didn't give the Stone City a significant commerce advantage, because that would unbalance the game drastically, leaving it up to an ignorant or illicit decision (Marble's obviously better because of the river) to decide the game winner.
2. Are we Optics/Astro isolated? Culture-bridge isolated? Ragnar is likely to be reachable by galley, one way or another, based on the scenario description.
3. How many decent settling sites do we have?

If we are isolated, then I believe that regardless of VC, the winning game somehow manages to REX and beeline Optics fastest.

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

@Dhoom: What did you see from Neil that he implied he wouldn't block off AIs?
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ZPV 01-05-2012 5:10

The first few moves probably are VC-independent
i.e:
-Which resource to settle on.
-Settler first, Worker-Settler, or Worker-grow to 2-Settler
-Which worker techs we want to clear at the start
-A general inclination to ReX as soon as we have some commerce-generating tech.

I agree with your landmarks, but I don't agree Marble first is a no-brainer - Stone has a river too - we can see a little of it bordering the NE forest, and the stone tile has one commerce. I expect the two sites to be just about identical - so it's our decision on resource/scouting/etc for which one to settle first.

The original image that was posted in the sign-up thread contained just a little bit of spoiler info (and was corrected fairly quickly) - I'm not sure whether we want to consider that, though.
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LC 01-05-2012 5:59

Any spoiler info that was there is fair game, imo, corrected or not. I didn't see it, but other teams could have. In any case, there's no guarantees it's still there on the Real Save. Neil could change the save as much as he wants up till the release date. EDIT: Come to think of it, ZPV, you might pm AlanH and/or Neil about that spoiler. It seems to me that since you saw it, they should just reveal it to all, if they haven't changed it. There's no reason for you to feel obliged to not use it and it's not really fair to those who didn't see it. EDIT2: I pmed AlanH, Neil, and you on it...

It's hard for me to tell where the Stone river is, but I hadn't noticed that bit of river to the NE. Good spot, ZPV! That appears to add at least 4 river tiles, probably all grass. So you may be right, Neil might have tried to make the two sites comparable.

We know that Gandhi came up a river from the coast, so that would be from the S or W. I guess we can assume the coast is fairly close. It's all speculation, but I suppose we could hope for Stone being more centrally located. I suppose both are connected to rivers that will connedt other cities, questionable advantage there.

Another angle is in terms of protecting the second settler. If Marble is closer to the coast, then it's relatively safer, in terms of the spawning of animals. Other things being equal, it behooves us to scout open land in the first 6 turns before animals appear.
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bbp 01-05-2012 9:09

Yeah, those are the landmarks, LC.

The first thing is to establish the two city sites. Our warrior can stand on top of stone the same turn we settle on marble, which will help determine whether we go settler or worker first. So far I think I have a very slight preference for worker, but I think it depends on what's available in the two cities and we'll have to retest extensively after T1.

We will have to go to either marble or stone blind. I was assuming marble, but I also didn't spot the stone river. Good one, ZPV. I'm curious as to why stone-1E isn't fully symmetrical with marble-1E.

What was the spoiler info, ZPV?
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bbp 01-05-2012 10:35

The tightest early tech would presumably be Poly-Agri-Wheel-Pottery-Wtg. Since we're a bit research-limited at the start, I would really hope we don't need AH or Fishing right away. We'll have to really think about early Masonry, as well. SH and GW are attractive when you can have them cheap, but it is a significant early investment. I've been putting Masonry after Poly-Agri in my test games so far. BW, on the other hand, doesn't seem like it'll happen pre-T75, which is pretty painful for developing cities 3-4.

At least we don't need to think about tech for a good 20+ turns, since the first two are as straightforward as can be.
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ZPV 01-05-2012 11:20

I've run a comparison to t30 of Settler-first and Worker-first:

1) Worker-Settler
81b in Wheel, 8g, 1 worker, 12f, 6h in warrior, 34h in worker (4 turns). Farm, 2.75 mines.
2) Settler-Worker(in both)
85b in Wheel, 4g, 2 workers, 6f, 8h in warrior, 4/5 Farm

Option 2) has 22 more food-hammers, while option 1 has some improvements already. It's not enough to catch up before option 2 has its first farms and mines though.

i.e. Settler wins.
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Dhoom 01-05-2012 12:07

So, Settler-first is the way to go IF we can keep our Warrior alive and spawn-busting the Resource's area (out of Marble and Stone) that we don't initially settle on (as well as protecting the Settler when it leaves our Cultural Borders). It shouldn't be too hard to keep our Warrior alive but whoever plays first needs to be aware of how vital their job of keeping the Warrior alive will be.


If we're 100% going to settle on either Stone or Marble and plan to 100% settle on the other one of those two with a Settler-first build, then it doesn't matter too much which Resources exist at either location, with unexpanded Cultural Borders at the second location providing the only potential difference there.


Which one get settled first matters more in terms of the factors that LC mentioned, such as the Palace's location and the relative easy of settling the second City with less Barb Animals threatening our Settler.

Another factor could come into play if we choose NOT to settle our second City directly on top of the Marble or Stone... if it turns out that by settling slightly differently, we can pick up another Resource or two, we might settle our second City in a different location, which could have an impact on which of the first two locations is the better one to settle at the start. Again, I think that it'll be a blind choice unless we are willing to delay settling, but I don't really see a case for delaying settling.


Once we get the saved game, will there be any way to tell our relative latitude placement on the map? If so, that factor may help in deciding where to put our Palace.


I don't remember Neilmeister's quote about me getting the impression that he didn't block off any AIs, but it is a very valid point that these maps are designed for the average teams to be able to come away with a win, not for giving the top couple of teams a good run-for-the-Gold game. Having 1 AI blocked off without warning anyone about it WOULD end up being a stumbling block that top teams could probably get around but might trap other teams, which would lead to complaints and general dislike of the competition. I can't really see Neilmeister doing so.

That said, nothing stops him from making a path of Peaks that Galleons would have to navigate.


I'm not sure why not having Iron would be a big issue... no Iron and no Copper would suck, but Copper = Macemen, which are generally better than Musketmen. Trebs are often almost as good as Cannons and can be built without any Resources.

If the map has no Iron, no Copper, and no Ivory AND if we were isolated, then yeah, it wouldn't be an incredibly easy militaristic game, but then you'd simply have a first priority of capturing a metal Resource with your army of Galleon-sailing Horse Archers.

However, once again we're getting into not-so-easy-for-the-average-team territory by not having all of those Strategic Resources available, so, once again, it's probably too infeasible of an idea for the Game Designer to have implemented.


I still have the impression that Game Options such as No Vassals, City Flipping after Conquest, No City Razing, and extra AIs are probably going to end up being the major factors that make a militaristic game more difficult, while at the same time I would argue that while on the surface, those options seem to accomplish that goal, when you really think about it, those options hurt Conquest but don't really get much in the way of a Domination Victory at all.
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LC 01-05-2012 13:01

Copper is one of the three critical resources for Cultural, so I expect that to be nearby.
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beestar 01-05-2012 17:08

Probably as a result of LC's PM, AlanH has posted the original, erroneous full size image. It centers the map, and shows an unfogged area to the center-north (I can't quite make out what the heck it is though).

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/sgotm15clarge.jpg
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LC 01-05-2012 13:01

That's probably where Sid first placed us. Looks like it's about 12x3 NE. I don't think that shows the full map, though, does it? Too small.
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ZPV 01-05-2012 18:29

No, that's very unlikely to be the full map.
Anyway - that little bit of unfogged land was going to make me suggest Stone instead of Marble, just so we are (more likely) closer to the centre of the world.
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Dhoom 01-05-2012 20:29

The mini-map resizes relative to the explored boundaries of the "known world" until you build Stonehenge or learn Calendar. So, we're not sure if the revealed area to the north-east is at the northern edge of the world or is in the Southern Hemisphere.


If we're delaying Bronze Working, we'll also be delaying Forest Chopping. Forests can be a valuable REXing tool, so we may need to revisit that decision.


Copper is useful for Buddhism, Taoism, and Islam. Lacking it isn't all that bad in a game where we expect Buddhism to be founded on the opposite side of the world, since we'd only really be missing out on the bonus Hammers for Taoist Cathedrals. So, it's not infeasible to remove Copper, but it's more reasonable to leave us with Copper and no Iron if the goal is to make Cultural more viable while at the same time not handicapping the average team with no source of metal.


If we're going to settle on the Stone, should the Warrior head toward the Stone or Marble?

I guess the question is... a) if our Warrior were to reveal a Resource by the Marble, would we consider moving to the Marble on Turn 0 based on that info?

Alternatively, if on Turn 1, the Warrior were to reveal either:
b) better Resources around the Marble
OR
c) Resources around the Stone (if the Warrior went toward the Stone) that would have us settling off of the Stone slightly

would we alter our Settler's course?

I.e. which of those scenarios would we, if any, possibly decide to send the Settler elsewhere?


The answer to that question can help us to decide if our Warrior is free to go anywhere, such as directly to the south-west to see if there is Coast there before returning to spawn-bust the Marble.
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ZPV 01-05-2012 21:10

With those two 3 hammer city tiles, we can build workers and settlers faster than a roadrunner on speed - our workers will have other priorities than speeding that up even more.

Maces+Trebs vs Castles in an overseas war? Yeah, it's winnable, but it's not quick, and not loss-free. We can cross that bridge when we come to it, though.
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bbp 01-05-2012 22:21

Dhoom,
Copper speeds up Confu, not Islam. It's actually the most important one, since you can always get Confu and Tao if you're beelining for culture.
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bbp 01-05-2012 22:25

I fully expect the stone and marble sites to be equivalent. It wouldn't be a fair setup otherwise. So, I don't think the warrior can show us anything to change our mind. I think the warrior should go in the opposite direction of the settler.
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bbp 01-06-2012 00:29

Pixel counting gives me about 12 tiles north of stone and 5 tiles east of the settler for the lower left corner of the start location. The visible tiles were roughly in the following formation:
x
xxxx
xxxx
xxxx
x

Not really sure how accurate that is, but it should be in the ballpark.
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bbp 01-06-2012 10:11

I changed the test file to include the river north of stone, and replaced the stone sheep with a dry wheat. That makes the two sites equivalent and gets rid of the early AH requirement for now. In the same spot: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php...80468&postcount=193

ZPV's T30 settler-worker-worker test:
"85b in Wheel, 4g, 2 workers, 6f, 8h in warrior, 4/5 Farm"
My T30 worker-grow-settler test:
"93b in Wheel, 0g, 1 worker, no second city (settler in 1t), 2 extra warriors, farm done, 2/5 into second farm + 2 mines"

I ran tests to T50, following the same path (Poly-Agri-Maso-Wheel-Pott-Wtg / 3 cities - 2 workers - SH - warriors) for ease of comparison.

Settler - Worker - Worker
(matched ZPV @ T30, except Masonry instead of Wheel and that I'm 1b short but a few hammers high)

Population: 4 / 3 / 1
Builds: 2 Sett / 2 Work / SH / 5 Warr
Partial builds: 84h GW / 2h Warr / 4h Warr
Total production: 503h
Research: 10b Wtg
Improvements: Corn / Wheat / FP / 2 mines / 5 roads / 4/5 Wheat

Worker - Grow - Settler

Population 5 / 2 / 1
Builds: 2 Sett / 2 Work / SH / 6 Warr
Partial builds: 52h GW / 3h Warr
Total production: 499h
Research: 29b Wtg
Improvements: Corn / Wheat / FP / 3 mines / 4 roads / 1/5 Wheat

It's somewhat equivalent, IMO, except that worker-first gets massive extra warrior turns and settler-first gets SH 2t sooner and is slightly ahead in improvements (if you don't count the stupid PH mine in worker-first). I was able to completely fogbust the island in the second test, whereas the first one didn't have a second warrior out till about 2500 BC and felt unsafe.

I intend to do more extensive testing. I should at least try worker-settler, for one. The main thing, though, is that Masonry first gives me something to build in Bombay and eliminates the need for a monument. Also, having two extra Agri resources gives the two earlier workers in the first test enough to do. I wanna try testing settler-first against different land setups. (I realize that we could conceivably not settle the stone with settler-first, but that's a hard decision to make when we start the settler before scouting).

Edit:

Worker - Settler

Population 4 / 2 / 1
Builds: 2 Sett / 2 Work / SH / 5 Warr
Partial builds: 82h GW / 13h Warr
Total production: 512h
Research: 22b Wtg
Improvements: Corn / Wheat / FP / 3 mines / 6 roads / Wheat done / 1/5 third city FP
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ZPV 01-06-2012 11:42

bbp - my test built one worker in each city, rather than both in Delhi.
I'd rather not build stonehenge just yet, unless we really need to pop Bombay's borders right away - one tech this early is a very expensive price to pay, when we really need techs to improve the land and rex.
btw that's a grass hill, not a plains hill, west of marble, and stone appears to have two unforested grass hills too (which means it is feasible to work both in the worker-grow-settler scenario).
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bbp 01-06-2012 14:03

"bbp - my test built one worker in each city, rather than both in Delhi."
I know. I did that, too.
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bbp 01-07-2012 10:50

"btw that's a grass hill, not a plains hill, west of marble, and stone appears to have two unforested grass hills too (which means it is feasible to work both in the worker-grow-settler scenario)."
Fixed, yes that helps in the grow scenario.
 
That's enough reserved posts, I think :p
Hello everyone. Welcome, magnusmarcus.
 
Welcome magnusmarcus and beestar. :)

Since we have some new players, LC and I thought it would be good to post some team rules for once. I basically stole these from kossin, with slight revisions, as it's a very good post and I'm too lazy to do it myself from scratch.

Summarized Team Rules
  • Read the various Rule threads.
  • Check your ini files so that autosave is set to every turn.
  • No reloads from previous point, ever!
  • No reading of other team threads. The best way to resist temptation is to use the Subscribed threads tool under quick links! Similarily, do not download other team saves.
  • When looking at the save, do not perform any irreversible action! You can't trade, whip or move units.
  • If the game crashes, stop and pm AlanH with details of what happened. Wait for instructions.

Suggested:
  • Save often manually - I do every turn. Please keep your saves for every turn, in case we need to review diplo screens.
  • IMPORTANT: Do stop if an opportunity becomes available or something goes wrong. While we prepare a careful plan before each turnset, these games often hinge on how we deal with unexpected events. OSS has a history of playing very short sets and it has worked well for us.
  • Pause the game before uploading/examining it.
  • When testing the game, make sure you're using the test game! Markers will be added here and there to help.
  • Let us know when you can't make a deadline or RL becomes busy.

A few notes of etiquette:

1. Active participation -- Your contribution to every set is important, even if it's a 'I agree'. Although everyone might have real life issues sometimes, it's courteous to notify the team of your absence.

2. Pre-Play Plan -- The spirit of SG is to play the game following the consensus of the team decision. Therefore the player who is UP should post a clear plan for discussion. Guidelines have been posted for the contents of your plan in the next post. It might be that the team decides to head in a direction you were opposed to, it does not mean you are wrong but rather that the team believes the odds of winning are more likely with the decided approach.

3. Timing -- We would like to generally stick to a schedule, but it is more important to reach consensus and ensure quality of play. Some sets will take much longer than others. If the UP player cannot play within 48 hrs of consensus due to RL issues, please inform the team early.

4. Please include a report when you submit the save, complete with the autolog. You will receive the autolog when you upload to the server. You may submit your report later but it would be preferable to have it before the discussion on the next set starts.

5. Do not automate workers

5. Do not use city governors

6. Do not leave units on goto orders

7. Finish all your discussed turns and upload the game saved at the END of the discussed part.

8. Respect your team mates, and demand their respect. Take care of your writing style, accept that people whose first language is not English will use English in a different way than you are used to. Disagree by all means, but don't make it personal, and don't take it personally.

9. SG's are team games. Be a good team member. Post your ideas, argue your corner and encourage and praise your team mates. Don't be afraid to post in your game thread. That is what it's for.

10. Have fun

How a set will be played

There are 7 major parts to every set.

  • Pre-Play-Plan
  • Voting: everyone voices his opinion on the issues raised in 1.
  • Plan
  • Critique of the Plan: once the Plan is posted, players should try/read the plan and look for anything they'd like to change. This is where you must support your arguments!
  • Final Plan: tries to glue everything together.
  • Play the Set
  • Post the Report

What is the Pre-Play-Plan?

The Pre-Play-Plan is to initiate the discussion on the diverging possibilities at the start of a set. This includes, but not limited to, EP focus, general city micro, general worker micro, general techs. Basically, make an idea of what you want to do with your 10/15 turns.

What your plan should cover:

The plan must contain 2 detailed parts:


1. What you will check for every turn (EP, trades available, GPT available etc.) [this is easy]

2. Turn-by-turn worker moves, city micromanagement, unit movement and or general guidelines as to what we can't control via test game. [this is the hard part]

The team might at one point decide to slack on #2 once the game becomes well in hand. Only if you are the Plastic Ducks. Here we don't slack until there are only hours left before the deadline. ;)

How your set should go:
  • Do not play until there is a team consensus agreement on a detailed plan.
  • Play according to the agreed-upon plan.
  • If something unexpected (or an opportunity) comes up, STOP AND CHECK WITH THE TEAM! In case you missed that last part:
    Spoiler :

    STOP AND CHECK WITH THE TEAM!
  • You can add markers in game during and at the end of your set. It's a lot easier on team members to figure where units are going. Marking partially finished worker actions is especially important.

What your set report should cover:
  • WHEOOHRN alerts and possible/likely targets
  • GGs in distant lands and Great Engineers
  • When to renegotiate trades
  • What you were planning for the future
  • How the plan worked out/didn't
  • Anything unexpected
 
In this first week, it would be nice if we could decide where we want to settle (stone or marble) and where to move the warrior. Then we could do additional testing with more complete and accurate BFC info.
 
I agree. We should ideally play to T1 within a day of the save being published, after maybe taking some time to study demo screens and all. Then we can do more informed testing. Why I suggested I'd only play 1-2t initially.
 
RESERVED!

Welcome magnusmarcus. :)

My second post will be the active roster, based on check-in order on QT. I could only play the first couple of turns to get it started. We'll see. Let me know if you have any issues with availability. I'm not sure if Dhoom has Civ access yet, so maybe we need to slide him down.

Howdy!
 
In this first week, it would be nice if we could decide where we want to settle (stone or marble) and where to move the warrior. Then we could do additional testing with more complete and accurate BFC info.

I agree. We should ideally play to T1 within a day of the save being published, after maybe taking some time to study demo screens and all. Then we can do more informed testing. Why I suggested I'd only play 1-2t initially.

Yes - settler to one hill, warrior to the other. Then work out how fast we can/want to ReX.

Map position (from the minimap) suggests to settle the northern hill; ease of warrior exploration suggests the southern one. We shouldn't be building any wonders before we've connected the two cities, so which resource we settle on shouldn't make a difference.
 
The warrior has to be back on the unsettled rock by T19 at the latest, preferably earlier and healthy. If we settle the stone, then the warrior might have time to trace the river both south and west to the endpoints. Based on the scenario description, I think we can assume the river goes to the coast in one of those two directions.

If possible we'd prefer to settle along rivers, so that might be an optimal path for the warrior to T19, if nothing better presents itself along the way.

One other preference for the first 6 (pre-animal) turns of exploration is flat, unprotected land, but we can't see that right now.
 
Healing from a lion attack can take 6t easily, so I think we only have about 13-14t of exploration and some of that is backtracking. We can risk the attack injury a bit, I guess. It feels silly to sit the warrior for very long.
 
Which rock to settle first? One factor can be fog-gazing to see hills in the second border expansion that are likely to defog two tiles distant. Marble has one hill at 2E, I think, and may have one at 2W. Of course, that's going to be partly speculation since we cannot fog-gaze the northernmost and southernmost tiles. In any case, we need the REAL SAVE in hand to do this fog-gazing properly.

Yes - settler to one hill, warrior to the other.
I think we should move the settler first in any case, but assuming he goes to the stone, I'm thinking it's probably more useful to send the warrior SE-SE (to Marble-2E) because it appears that will expose only one less tile of the Marble-FC. Then the warrior could begin going SW to trace the southern river for a while.

That's assuming we want to defog the Marble FC for sure. If not, the warrior could go straight southwest and along that western river because that path looks flatter for the first 6 turns.

xpost
 
The warrior has to be back on the unsettled rock by T19 at the latest, preferably earlier and healthy. If we settle the stone, then the warrior might have time to trace the river both south and west to the endpoints. Based on the scenario description, I think we can assume the river goes to the coast in one of those two directions.

If possible we'd prefer to settle along rivers, so that might be an optimal path for the warrior to T19, if nothing better presents itself along the way.

One other preference for the first 6 (pre-animal) turns of exploration is flat, unprotected land, but we can't see that right now.

No animals will spawn after turns 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4.
They will spawn after our turn 5, but don't get to move. They have to be at least 3 tiles away from our units, so the turn 6 move is safe, except from wolves/panthers (the latter of which only spawn in jungle).

Similarly, human barbs will start to spawn after turn 20 (once there are 14 cities, that is).
 
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