SGOTM 13 - Gypsy Kings

adrianj said:

If I were betting, I would bet there is NO copper to be seen.

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Yeah, me too.

adrianj said:

If I were betting, I would bet there is NO copper to be seen.

Sounds like most are in agreement with the PPP. I'll play around with the test save for a little while to get a feel for it. Will probably play Sunday evening NZ time (about 30 hours from this post)

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Any chance you could play on Saturday so I can get a chance to work with the save on Sunday when I have more time.

Not that we are in a hurry at all adrian...and if we pause with the discovery of Copper, that will give everyone part of the weekend to work with it also. I guess Sunday morning for you gives everyone state side all day on Sunday.

Even if 3E is copper, the case for not settling on it is the case for settling off-island 1N of stone.

Settling on it gets +1, which is not the end of the world.

Settling off-island puts a serious speed-bump into the development race - and there's no knowledge of whether that site has any food supply. This also wastes one of our on-island hills.

PPP looks good to me.
@Grifftavian- An evil mapmaker wouldn't put copper near us at all!

So if it's not our turn I'm assuming we can download OUR team's current save on the Progress Page? If I understand the rules we can download the save and look at it but not change anything? I haven't done anything yet for fear of violating some Prime Directive.

Thorn said:

So if it's not our turn I'm assuming we can download OUR team's current save on the Progress Page? If I understand the rules we can download the save and look at it but not change anything? I haven't done anything yet for fear of violating some Prime Directive.

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Yes, that's fine. See the reference thread for rules and further links - though I realise they're silent on this question. The principle is that you can download and view, but you must not do anything irreversible (e.g. whip, press end-of-turn, combat, give unit orders, conduct diplomacy). Were you to do so accidentally, the team is bound by that as if it was your turn to play. For example, LowtherCastle (I think) once accidentally whipped a building in a fairly expensive manner when it was not his turn set, and his team played on, wearing the consequences!

LowtherCastle accidently traded away a city when it was not his turn set!

I've accidently ended a turn when it wasn't my turn. I highly recommend we do not end turn set at the end of a turn, since it is so easy to accidently end the turn with the save in that condition.

bcool said:

LowtherCastle accidently traded away a city when it was not his turn set!

I've accidently ended a turn when it wasn't my turn. I highly recommend we do not end turn set at the end of a turn, since it is so easy to accidently end the turn with the save in that condition.

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I agree with bc here....I often times pause the game before I save it. This forces an un-pause before you can actually do anything. Some people don't like the paused game, I'm not sure why. The easiest thing to do is save the game at the START of the new turn so there are unit actions to complete before the turn ends. Early in the game, like now, I often DO NOT fortify my unit(s) so I am forced to pay attention very carefully to actually end the turn.

I don't like the pause feature because if you do accidently enter a command with the game paused, the game will take that action when you unpause it. If you realize that you entered a command then it isn't a big deal--you close the game and reload it, however if you didn't realize you entered a command then it could be a problem when you unpause it.

Hi guys. Something came up tonight, and I won't be playing. Hopefully tomorrow night - ~24 hours from this post. Sorry to keep you in suspense

I played out much of the end of this game:

mabraham said:

11 cities, 61 pop, 235/-53 and 90/+78 at the respective max slider positions (However, I'm currently building a National Epic and some settlers. If I were not, 261 and +83 are more representative maximum numbers.) 840 spread over four cities. GNP 352 at 100% in science mode, 59 prod, 147 crop. I have a Great Artist on ice.

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I teched down Astronomy, Guilds and Chemistry, backfill-traded Medi, CS, Paper, and Nationalism, bulbed Edu and researched Lib-Steel. I didn't need to take Lib to get Steel, but it seemed wisest to avoid the AI getting a bulb on something chompy. In retrospect, I should have delayed teching Drama and Music until after I had Chemistry, so that the capital's workshops are full-value before I switch off a few scientists to get the Globe Theatre built.

Meanwhile the AIs had beelined SciMeth, Joao had gotten Physics and most went for PPr. Two had MilTrad. So while I didn't have a tech lead per se, I had it in military tech.

I got Lib T263 (1180AD), used a Great Artist to revolt and DOWed Joao shortly after that. I razed his AP capital. Amusingly he spent the next bunch of turns while I was cleaning out his empire hovering with a settler to rebuild the site... I eventually did it for him. J had a couple of Cuirassiers which were mildly irritating, and he managed to build a musket, but otherwise life was cruisy. I made sure I took out J's island cities too, so that I got the clean kill, so I'd be able to get drafting in his mainland cities ASAP. I'd brought two pikes to help with horse-work but lost one accidentally early

The economy was going down the tubes (10% 90%), so I opened a second front T281 to capture GLH and that worked a treat. This was made easy by the fact that Ragnar was beating up on Freddy on the other side of the continent. He had a couple of irritating knights, and did the usual AI cheat of knowing when a single knight will take out a healthy fortified musket defending a city. Later he brought back his city-busting stack, and I lost a bunch of units defending to it. I should have walked out of some crappy city, and taken his stack on offense!

I opened a third front on Cathy T293 (1365AD). She sent her city-busting stack to the first front, so I lost lots more units before getting a brain. No serious opposition in her homeland, though. Cathy brought in Izzy, who recaptured a Joao city before I even saw her knights+HA+treb stack, but I retook that city on offense and Izzy is toast. Freddy was AI-dogpiled long ago, and I had planned to open a new island-hopping front on him shortly.

In 1465AD, the game was grinding away slowly to victory when I stopped wasting my time. Vicky was the only AI who had serious possibilities of slowing me down, but she is off teching Biology when she doesn't have RepParts yet! (No other AIs got these or MilSci either!) So after suitable grind I'd reckon winning about 1600AD. I'd long had the population for Dom, but nowhere near the land.

All my cities were usefully producing stuff. Late cities with a few food resources and (now) lots of workshops were valued members of the empire. Capital had been drafted down to 6, and now drafts about a unit every second turn (maybe 2 in 3 turns, which was the theoretical expectation). Meanwhile the 20-odd cities large enough for drafting are settling down into a nice rotation. Civics Police/Nation/Caste/first one/FreeRel (since I had no useful religion for Theo).

Take-home lessons

• let AI city-busting stacks bust cities cheaply, then re-take them on offense
• spies would have made the opening wonder-busting phase run faster
• taking out the AP has to be right - we won't get enough votes fast enough to make it worth trying to control (and who cares about the dribble of ?)
• GLH is a big-ticket item - so long as it keeps its lighthouse, you get the benefit even while the city is still in revolt
• if you make sure you do a clean kill on the first AI, their culture goes away and you can start drafting out of their cities fairly soon.
• leave two city defenders to stop surgical strikes by knights - we want 5-10% of the stacks to be pikes for this kind of purpose
• caste has been good for getting fast border pops in captured cities, to keep the population up so we can draft it later - I've built workshops over hamlets, but left the more-mature improvements.
• the captured cities rebuild granary, courthouse, barracks and then spam longbows for city defence while drafting more muskets.
• Forbidden Palace has not been necessary, but I'd pick up Versailles if someone built it for me...
• depending on the scenario, late-game island spam might speed up domination (crunch numbers at the time)
• once you start taking land, resource problems solve themselves - so I have more and than I could need

Tried to add screenshots of the empire as the wars started, but they wouldn't upload. Here's a zip archive instead. The forum has been having problems with attachments in the last few days, I understand.

I've played up until the end of Pottery, which coincided with the final turn where a 2 pop whip of the settler is available, ie, max overflow.

Game is uploaded here.

Absolutely nothing interesting to report. No copper was revealed. No AI sailed over to meet us. I moved the warrior to the capital because I started imagining a barb galley sailing in and dropping off a warrior into our undefended capital

I had a problem taking screenshots of the first few turns - I think something to do with running in window mode. I switched out to fullscreen and they were working again. I also forgot to take a few save games. I'll just go off and compile the zip file with the saves/images now.

Autolog:

Turn Log:

Forum is still having attachment issues. You can see a couple of screenshots of the empire on the final turn at these links:
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/E0BXUC3xI4FNPW_BoVcAIcciIrme4hwoDxeswGvc90k?feat=directlink
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/177hqlQXNKW-yeqC35HHocciIrme4hwoDxeswGvc90k?feat=directlink

Edit: FYI test game updaters - Overflow from Pottery is 12. Ie, the turn before it was at 179/186, increasing at 19/turn.

Edit2: A Zip file with the saves and images is here.

Looking through the demographics (that you can't see, because attachment aren't working and I'm too lazy to put them all on Picasa edit - see above post) an AI's borders expanded by 8 tiles on T38. This works out just right for the 2nd creative leader we were expecting. No other border pops by anyone during the set, which confirms that the Buddhism founder also founded Hinduism, so yeah, still pretty sure that is Izzy.

Exports/Imports are still 0 across the board. Either no AIs have met eachother, or more likely, they don't have trade route connections, eg, Sailing tech and Writing for OB.

No big leaps in Power, so no AI has learned Bronze Working it would seem. And at no point did anyone have only 1 GNP that might indicate a revolution (like it did for us when we revolted) Edit - I tried in a test save to see if AI GNP was affected by them changing religion/civic. It is not. But they DO still lose a turn of city output, so Buddhism founder we can still be confident is Spiritual

Good job aj. We won the copper bet

We learned much of nothing, except there was no AI on our doorstep who moved a unit our way fast.

Note that we haven't put any real beakers on Mysticism yet, so we still have the option of picking up Sailing now if someone thinks that's right.

OTOH if we're after the free pile o' beakers from the Oracle, now's the time we have to gear the plan in that direction.

Suggested empire-wide MM for fast Oracle to follow soon.

Nice solid uneventful set aj!

The Roster order is

mabraham = waiting
adrianj = just played
Ronnie1 = UP NOW...got it, not opened yet
bcool = on deck
grifftavian = in the hole
Thorn = waiting
da_Vinci = waiting

So we are at a strategic decision point....Oracle now, or Sailing for REX'ing off island?

I have updated a test game to T51 conditions. I think it is right,(fingers crossed).
I have also played that test out to T71 as my preliminary target PPP.

Those 2 saves are

Updated test
T71 PPP Test

Please tell me what you think.

What I propose in those 20 turns...


Techs
Mysticism -> Polytheism

Civic Changes
None

Builds...
Clam Chowder
Settler gets whipped when save is opened
Overflow from Settler whip goes into worker > worker whipped T53
Resume WB#3
After WB#3 we have basically 2 choices, 1) Granary or 2) WB#4...I think Granary to allow more efficient whipping.

City#2 Founded T54
Starts Granary

Unit Moves
Settler > moves to 3E site > Settles on T54
Worker moves and farms corn > roads corn > moves FPH > roads FPH > starts mine FPH

Tile Management
2 pop whip to size 2 on T51
T51 Size 2: 2 clams (building settler)
T52 Size 2: 2 clams (building worker)
T53 1 pop whip worker
T53 size 1: 1 clam
T54 size 1: 1 clam (building WB#3)
T63 size 2: 1 clam + FPH to speed WB#3
T68 Size 2: 2 clams when avaiable

City #2
T54 Size 1: 1 clam (building Granary)
When Corn Farm is complete (T61)(still size 1) switch to farm to speed growth by 1 turn. Alternate choice is to have CC work farm and grow 1st.
T62 now size 2: 1 clam + corn farm
T68 now size 3: 1 clam + corn farm + FPH

Stop Criteria
Meeting an AI.
Barb galleys. (shouldn't happen )

Other Stuff / General Thoughts

Ronnie1 said:

What I propose in those 20 turns...

Techs
Mysticism -> Polytheism

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This assumes we're trying for the Oracle. I haven't heard any arguments against that, so I guess this turnset is where we have to make that decision.

As soon as we found Fish Hills, I think we need to be doing binary research (i.e. run at 0% until we have a sufficient lump of cash, then run at 100%). This avoids rounding (which is never favourable), and gives us a free on the turn(s) we run at zero. We also get to avoid committing to a track that we might want to abort in a few turns (e.g. barb galley appears, AI does zomg-early Oracle). Especially when there's so little else to manage early in the game, it seems a no-brainer to me.

Making sure we get Priesthood on the turn after we have 44 on our granary to 2-whip onto the Oracle is critically important. Two turns at 0% just after we found Fish Hills gives us enough for a clean PH run with only a couple of spare. We'd rather get our now when we're running a smaller number of tiles than we will be later, because excess can't be converted to relevant pre-Priesthood , and we can never get away with only one turn at 0%.

Ronnie1 said:

Civic Changes
None

Builds...
Clam Chowder
Settler gets whipped when save is opened
Overflow from Settler whip goes into worker > worker whipped T53
Resume WB#3
After WB#3 we have basically 2 choices, 1) Granary or 2) WB#4...I think Granary to allow more efficient whipping.

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I agree on the details, and about the granary next.

Ronnie1 said:

City#2 Founded T54
Starts Granary

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Yep

Ronnie1 said:

Unit Moves
Settler > moves to 3E site > Settles on T54

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Yep

Ronnie1 said:

Worker moves and farms corn > roads corn > moves FPH > roads FPH > starts mine FPH

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I think we should do corn farm, corn road, move FPH, one turn on the road, mine FPH (does the chop T77, which is when we whip the granary and finish teching Priesthood, which is the earliest that can all work), move GH, mine GH, etc. This gets the mine on the GH two turns earlier, which is four on the Oracle. Meanwhile, we don't need the road at all yet - we have coastal trade routes and no unit traffic.

Note that the road on the corn is useful - it keeps Clam Chowder healthy at size 5 and Fish Hills healthy at size 4. There's no way to skip it and get the mines up faster to make a positive difference on the Oracle. Because we need the FPH chop to go onto the Oracle, we're limited by the tech rate on Priesthood, and also limited by the T75 culture border pop for mining the other hill. The worker does not have enough useful work to do at the right times That said, getting the corn farm ASAP is worth the double-whip.

Ronnie1 said:

Tile Management
2 pop whip to size 2 on T51
T51 Size 2: 2 clams (building settler)
T52 Size 2: 2 clams (building worker)
T53 1 pop whip worker
T53 size 1: 1 clam
T54 size 1: 1 clam (building WB#3)
T63 size 2: 1 clam + FPH to speed WB#3
T68 Size 2: 2 clams when avaiable

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Agreed. Also we should work FPH T67 (i.e. after WB is built, since we shouldn't pass up our best tile if all our good tiles are being worked). It so happens that if we don't the growths at about T90 are one turn earlier and I think that will be inconvenient at that time. The extra retain their value better than the extra pre-granary , too.

Ronnie1 said:

City #2
T54 Size 1: 1 clam (building Granary)
When Corn Farm is complete (T61)(still size 1) switch to farm to speed growth by 1 turn. Alternate choice is to have CC work farm and grow 1st.
T62 now size 2: 1 clam + corn farm
T68 now size 3: 1 clam + corn farm + FPH

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Agreed.

We do want faster growth in Fish Hills to get the Oracle faster, but there's a whole bunch of effects in play that will have to be managed later. In particular, Fish Hills only wants to put 44 on the granary before whipping on the turn before we tech Priesthood (T77), and next turn set that means running some coast tiles (for lack of anything better to do). The 44 come from seven turns on the FPH, and 23 from central tile (T77-T54=23), and the timing juggles to suit the capital and grow Fish Hills fastest. Also, while building the Oracle, Fish Hills wishes to regrow to size 4 only when it will be happy there. Since we don't have a second MP available, and we don't want to make the capital unhappy at about that time either, and we don't have a good Fish Hills tile to work at size 4 (i.e. one with on it), then we actually want to grow Fish Hills to 4 only on T92 (when the whip- expires) and then run citizens as needed to finish the Oracle ASAP.

If anyone cares to test or improve, I have a fully-detailed T95 Oracle plan on my spreadsheet. The above will achieve this, but there is no room for error. The capital is free to suit itself after about T67 (so long as it gives over tiles when wanted). My plan gets granary, WB, Galley, Lighthouse, Settler (in that order) with one chop and 2-pop whips at T80, T93 (just when sailing comes up), and T99 (or later if you want more overflow off the Settler). There's a turn or two where a food resource goes unused (T83 IIRC), so there is probably scope for improvement.

If anyone cares to test or improve, I have a fully-detailed T95 Oracle plan on my spreadsheet. The above will achieve this, but there is no room for error. The capital is free to suit itself after about T67 (so long as it gives over tiles when wanted). My plan gets granary, WB, Galley, Lighthouse, Settler (in that order) with one chop and 2-pop whips at T80, T93 (just when sailing comes up), and T99 (or later if you want more overflow off the Settler). There's a turn or two where a food resource goes unused (T83 IIRC), so there is probably scope for improvement.

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I will look over the plan in more detail tonight, but I'm just wondering right now if we want to look a bit ahead to the 5th workboat. Since we probably want to put nets on 2nd city's fish asap.

Too risky to delay Oracle a turn or 2 and max overflow from Oracle whip?