SGOTM 13 - Plastic Ducks

@BIC

Basically you delayed the 2nd WB from Lyons and did 1 more whip in Paris and Orleans, right?

The 1st action will cause the delay of improvement of the fish tile of Pig city, anything I missed?

1 more whip in Paris and Orleans lets the hammers go to axes, that's what I try to avoid. The reason is that we won't be short of Axes. Reserving the citizens and happiness in both cities is to leave the room for whipping the cats continually, which we want to produce as soon as possible. Moreover, building wealth indeed help you to manage the 2 pop whip, but on the other side, we are translating hammers to cash, but not the units, which is the real bottleneck for the 1st war.

Edit 1: 1 more small disadvantage of whipping harder, we lose some commerce from those whipped citizens.
Edit 2: SOD are ready to sail on T134, save attached. Note, the position of the last galley should be better if we could navigate, which is very likely to happen.

@ Duckweed :
Quite right about what I did.
Building wealth... puts me ahead in tech despite lower pops and it puts me behind in happy cap since it allows to whip at a higher frequency.
You're right that this loses some hammers from city production but whips at smaller sizes also are more efficient, which is a hammer gain...
Then again, more whips now means less whips later. However, to be fair, we should also say that you only "delay" the whips to after we get Construction We both need about as many whips if we want to ship the army before T140. At least, that is my understanding.

Another thing about building wealth :
You say it makes us put hammers into Axes but I don't really agree...
Whipping Paris on T123 and Orleans on T124, I get on T125 :
3 axes built, 58H in a Catapult in Paris and 56 overflow in Orleans (to Axe or Cat)
On the same turn, you have :
2 axes built + around 80H invested into Axes so...
If the overflow in Orleans goes to a Catapult, you actually put more hammers into Axes than I did !
If we overflow into an Axe, different story...


Well... That's just to say that I was at a loss before doing the following :

I've tested both approaches a little bit further and the army can be ready to sail on T137 using either save. So neither seems to really come out ahead / late (surely there are differences in tech / happy cap but a single test is irrelevant to assess them... Depends on how the T125-137 are played - e.g. we have the choice to whip more Paris or Orleans to complete the army depending on where we want our happies to be).

If we want to be cautious with whip anger for now, I've no complaints about Duckweed's micro.



ps : 2nd workboat in Lyons : it had slipped out of my mind so I haven't tried to time it with the border pop, yet.
Going WB->WB->Galley is probably best, as you did. Maybe store it a few turns in the queue to avoid paying maintenance unnecessarily.

pps : worker use : I really have no preference on that. We can have it road from Stone to Pigs or chop a forest and go to the Pigs, as mentionned Duckweed.
If left to myself... I've had it road but it really seems useless.


EDIT:
Just saw your save... T134... I'll bow down in awe
Wrong save ! I bow down regardless ! Ok, good save now...

Cross post, I could sail the SOD on T134.

I just saw that, that's very cool !

I guess I'll write up your plan to T125 so that I have everything I need in it

Better and better!

I should be able to start contributing a bit this weekend, but I still can't take a set until the 22nd.

T134...Impressive! I agree that the position will be better with circumnavigation.

I notice that you have MCasting as the next tech. Are you thinking of the Colossus? Of Forges?

Or is Monarchy a suitable next tech while we still have access to warriors?

Also, with two no-wonder cities with lots of food, is there any use for a Great Scientist or Great Merchant? The first could be 25T away with a Lib or Market and would help alleviate some whip anger.

I have thought about AH next, but then I realize that the food surplus in the pig city is already more than enough without the 3F from a pasture. The pig won't help much before we have monarchy. The most important reason I want MC next is for Trireme for the defense against barbarian galleys. Did you see the Destroyer?

Monarchy is one of the necessary tech we need in this game, however, it's one of the monopoly tech that AIs are willing to trade away. Emperor AIs will usually research it around the same time as Alpha.

GPs are not that important as I had imagined in the beginning, when I thought that we needed Astro to victory. Still I won't rule out the usage of GS to bulb Astro, Galleon has 2 more movements than galleys, it might contribute a bit in the last 1 or 2 wars. My thought of GP production is when we have the free GA from Music, we can then use it to launch a GA and run CS to produce 1 or 2 GS to push toward Astro.

Have you seen the progress graph of the new team TNT? They seems did pretty well regarding the score and power. I guess they got CS from Oracle. Is it possible on T119 without Math bulb?

heh. I like how you said...

'The New Team' TNT

9 more turns to tech through CoL from our save? I assume it can be done. Could be a ton of factors making it viable... like a gem pop early on or earlier open borders or etc.

Farming a GS is also viable but difficult. (119-25 = t94 Library)

They have the potential to be the black horse.

Or bleeeeehhhhhack sheep!

IMO, the power chart is the decisive indicator of this game. For now, only OSS, FE, and TNT have the potential to catch up our pace from their culture graph.

True enough... the earlier the war, the more points and earlier Domination. The trick here is obviously to start early enough and maintain production to keep the reinforcements going.

Anyway, did some map gazing...



White is land, red are peaks. There could be some other islands in the way, it's difficult to tell once again.

If things work out, we will have circumnavigation bonus on t113.

We could always play a mini-set until there (t112) to confirm boat micro for afterwards.

There are 933 land tiles in the game...

64% of that is 597.12 so 598 - I think getting Domination before Conquest would be quite difficult, depending on the layout of the land of course. If some stupid AI gets access to an overseas island via culture, it'll be a real PITA.

Nice fog-gazing. It will be frustrating if a barb galley interrupts our glorious circumnavigation.

I looked at Duckweed's impressive T134 invasion-ready date. Paris and Orleans have quite a lot of whip anger, which I suppose is unavoidable.

What is the plan for our core cities--especially the ones whipped into high unhappiness--after the invasion fleet sets sail? Are we looking to settle more cities of our own, or are we going to continue to try to produce units the next victim?

In order to whip, city needs to have sufficient happy cap to support at least 3 citizens, so that it can do the 2 pop whip when growing to size 4. Or a more general situation, the number of resource/good tiles + 1. Our core city will be exhausted after the preparing for the initial stack (Moscow deserves all effort), so the only way is to put them to sleep on settler and wait for the Alpha + Monarchy. We need new settlers to claim more resources regardless and the new cities can contribute for the late war.

im not overly worried about our happy situation... ...next city goes onto the fur and we are already in business again

we have to look at our cities like this:

1. important cities:
- can be whipped for war + can build settlers and/or workers (high food) - capital, gold, fishfishpig
- have high prod and can build units (we have exactly 0 of these)

2. decent helper cities:
- give us acces to certain ressouces (strat. / happy) - marble city, bronze city, later fur citiy + can be whipped a bit

3. crappy helper cities:
- only give access to certain ressources (no food, no hope, nothing)

-> with the glh, all cities will bring in cash... ...so whatever and wherever we feel we need a city, we plug one down (putting one on the elephants anytime soon would be nice, just because we can and because is will increase our income)

...

having said this, im totally happy with 3 fine whipping cities. these alone will bring in enough units to take out russia/holland if we can whip them enough.
the next helper cities will take ages to get online anyways, so better its best to plug them down onto any happy ressource we find and rely on the captured cities for new important cities...

Hi guys !
Sorry about the delay, I've had a very busy week-end veeeeeery far away from Civ4


Here's the plan to Construction :

T110 : Research 0%
Galley goes fetch the Worker.
Worker chops.
Tours is settled and starts Lighthouse.
Paris starts Barracks.
Orleans starts Galley.
Lyons starts and completes Workboat.

T111 : Switch to Judaism.
Workboat goes to Fish near Tours.
Lyons starts Workboat.

T113 :
Worker on Galley
Orleans whips Galley
Tours whips Monument

T114 : Research 100%
Galley unloads Worker on forest 3E1N of Orleans.
Paris whips Barracks (works 2 mines).
Orleans starts Axeman.
Tours starts Lighthouse.

T115 :
Worker chops
Paris starts and completes Monument.

T116 :
Paris starts Axeman, works 2mines + 1 coast

T117 :
Tours' seafood is improved.

T118 :
Not much

T119 :
Worker completes chop (24H in Orleans)
Orleans starts Barracks (Axeman 1 turn from completion)
Lyons starts Galley (WB done -> to fish)
Rheims whips Lighthouse

T120 :
Worker on galley (goes to road the pigs)
Orleans whips Barracks
Rheims starts Granary

T121 :
Orleans resumes and completes Axeman

T122 :
Paris starts Galley (1 axe done)
Orleans starts and completes Axeman
Tours whips Lighthouse

T123 :
Worker unloads on pigs
Paris whips Galley
Orleans starts Axeman
Lyons resumes Galley
Tours starts Granary

T124 :
Worker roads
Paris starts Axeman
Lyons whips galley

T125 :
Construction is in.

Click to expand...

@ Worker use :
I don't see the point of pre chopping a forest only as it seems you did, Duckweed...
Why not chop, simply ?

@ Workboat in Lyons :
We don't pay any maintenance for it, so there's no use timing it with Rheims' border pop. If ever religion spreads (little chances), better have it earlier.

@ Partial research :
We can get Construction on T124 instead of T125 if we do partial research for T122 and 123.
Can be useful if we want to 2pop whip an Axeman in Orleans, but seems useless if we want to 2pop whip Catapults instead. My understanding of Duckweed's whips is that Construction on T124 doesn't change anything.


ps : agreed with most of the above.
pps : I've done a Snaaty thing : Installing BULL mod a few days ago made me unable to read HoF files... Fortunately, I don't have saves I value very much so I'll be able to fix that easily...

BULL is installed in Custom Assets usually so that it doesn't interfere with HoF?

No time to look at plan today, sorry!

@BIC

I did send the worker to pre-chop a forest on the hill of the 3 tile-island, but did not chop it down. Because I figured that the production is enough in the gold city and better to save the forest for the new city.

Diplomacy starts to come to action from now, so that it's better to check the diplomacy screen ever turn.

1. Check for resource trade, Marble and 2 seafoods, 1g is enough to sell them.
2. Remember to gift 10g to Izzy in the 1st time you meet her to enable the OB, every turn delayed will cost more.
3. Stop when you see Alpha, We had it ~500BC in SGOTM11, but some teams got it ~1000BC. That's another reason why I don't choose AH next.

Regarding the 2 WBs' move. -- After they meet each other following kossin's route, sent one to scout the north Russian land and secure a route to home. Send another WB to scout the south of that continent to find Izzy.

Note: The circumnavigation bonus will make the WB arrive the copper city earlier, so that the whipping of LH could be earlier.

Last, the 1st galley from Gold city should be sent to scout the south of home, Viking is likely there.

I don't mind pre-chopping only

Otherwise, I agree with your post : circumnavigate, finding Moscow with 1 WB, going south with the other, stop if Alphabet is researched, make deals for money... Finding a safe route for a WB to go back home, errrr... we'll see about that...
Good point about giving gold to Izzy if she doesn't want to OB (could be Charlemagne as well, by the way).
Good point as well about scouting south with our first galley. I was pondering whether we could fogbust with galleys, which seems useless, and scouting had slipped out of my mind