SGOTM 15 - Plastic Ducks

Welcome to your BtS SGOTM 15 Team Thread. Please use it for all internal team communication, turn logs and discussions. Subscribe to it to receive notifications, and do not visit the other team threads for this game until you have finished. Please also subscribe to the
Maintenance Thread for this game, where teams and staff may post non-spoiler information of general interest.

You can find the Game Details in the first post of the Maintenance Thread. If any changes occur in the game settings or rules, I shall post them in that thread, and edit that post.

Please wait until your team leader/administrator/scribe has reserved a couple of top posts in this thread for game admin information. Then post here to let your team know you have arrived.

Good luck, and have fun. Remember, it's just a GAME!

Insert usual blah blah here... reserving next post as well.

For now refer to here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10749634&postcount=4

Posts 1-99


Posts 100-199


Posts 200-299


Posts 300-399


Posts 400-499


Posts 500-599


Posts 600-699


Posts 700-799


Posts 800-899


Others.

All right, I'll shoot first !


First of all, welcome to our new members, dima42, LordParkin and soundjata !

~~~~

Now, random thoughts about the game :

I/ We are going to save a lot of time discussing the choice of first tech....

II/ AP victory is in.
The special condition on Hindu is here to prevent AP cheese, but still, in a normal game, a "genuine" AP victory would mean:
Found Hindu --> Bulb Theology (Oracle + PHI = early GPro) --> Focus on production for AP, Missionaries, (settlers for gift cities ?) --> Grow your cities + suck up to your neighbours --> Win.

This would make for a very dull SGOTM. So one has to wonder what the mapmaker has imagined to prevent this.

So I took a look at the settings of the game :
- 8 AIs :
that's 2 more than the regular setting, but without any knowledge of the map, it doesn't tell us much. SGOTM 14 had 8 AIs as well but it was far from being crowded (quite the opposite actually)
- No city razing + City flip after conquest :
definitely something to keep in mind IF we go to war, but war may not be mandatory here (again, depends on the map, do we have room to expand or not?)
- Aggressive AIs :
I don't have much experience with this, but iIrc it makes all AIs more inclined to go to war with anyone, not the player specifically. So while we would have to be extra careful with our diplo, it could make it easier to put them up against each other, which is good for a diplomatic victory
- No tech brokering :
this means that any tech acquired through a trade can *not* be traded back to other AIs. Very important if we want to climb the tech tree cause we would have to focus on researching "monopoly techs". In the context of an AP win, this is less important but it will make it a bit harder to get good diplo modifiers with our neighbours. Nothing dramatic though.
- No Vassal States :
very important if one's going for a "Diplomation" victory, but I guess we'll agree that an early AP victory is quite different, so this setting won't make any difference.
- No Goody Huts, No Events, Unrestricted Leaders :
Irrelevant.

Conclusion : I can't see anything here that would drastically modify the strategy for an early AP win.
However I'm convinced that the mapmaker wouldn't want that, so my guess is we're isolated.


III/ Settling :
NB : all the following is obviously based on what little we can see from the SS.
- There is a river running next to the stone, so it might be worth taking a look up there.
- I don't like wasting this FP by settling on it.
- I don't like losing those two PH with ressources either. While in general, having stone or marble in your BFC is not such a big deal, here once improved these tiles will be great : 5H from the stone and 4H3C from the marble (which might very well be our biggest source of commerce early on)
- There's been a discussion in the Phoenix's thread about whether to settle on the corn or not. While it seems obvious that this was a joke discussion, there's been a lot of foolishness these days on these forums (especially in S&T), so I just wanted to make sure that we're not seriously considering that. We will need the corn to feed these two hammer tiles anyway.
- So in the end, I'm considering moving 1E, if the warrior can see something good enough in the east to compensate for the loss of two GHs.

~~~~

That's all, for now....

Hey guys,

I noticed that you guys are 6 while most teams are 7 or 9. Would you mind if I join you?

I am a 31 year old software developer, emperor-level player and I seem to do better under constraints like the hof-type maps than random/random/anything-type maps. I don't know if I feel comfortable actually playing a set, but if anything I could provide some code-diving recon and/or be the watson to your sherlock.

Kind regards,
Huibert-Jan

I'd be glad to have you on board, but the signing-up process is now over, so you'd have to see with AlanH.
It may be too late now for you to be able to play a set, but maybe you can register as an "official lurker" or something, kind of like Compromise during SGOTM 13.
But keep in mind that in this case, you'd have to follow the rules just like any other member.

I've added HuibertJan as a player on your team.

Thank you AlanH and hello everybody

Hi all, Soundjata reporting in from Malaysia where I am taking a 2 weeks holiday with my wife and my daughter
Will be available for discussion/play around the time that is now (evening east -Asia time)
I'm a Frenchman btw. Hello Bebe ^_^

Settling on the stone could be a good alternative to SIP for a couple of reasons:
1. Improved production early in the game
2. Quicker access to stone once masonry is in. (11 worker turns quicker if I am counting right). Do we want an early stone wonder?

Drawbacks I can see:
- We loose 1 turn (Get Hindu asap! <gasp>)
- We loose 5 riverside tiles, 3 hills and the marble in the BFC. We loose Fresh water on the capitol.
- We don't know what we gain and the warrior can't give much information on that except if warrior goes NE.

A remark relative to the "revealed tiles": We probably have an AI starting less than 10 tiles away to the north east.

Cheers!

Stone is next to a river so we wouldn't lose the fresh water bonus.


The extra production + gained worker turns for the stone is interesting indeed, but like you said, losing one turn may lose us the game, so I'm going to be very reluctant to settle on T1 (or later).
If one of the religious nuts is in the game, Hinduism can go as early as T7 on emperor.
I have not tested it, but I don't think we can research it in 6 turns with only a 1C river tile to work.

NB : see neilmeister's warning in the maintenance thread, looks like fog-gazing is pointless before we get the actual save.

Making guesses on what was done to make this interesting is not useful atm, it could simply be the AP is pre-built in a barb city or even an AI city, meaning we'd have ->0 chance of winning via AP but would need to make sure AI are not in a good position.

The "logical" move is settle 1E to grab the fp, however I'd send the warrior west to see what we'd miss here, there's obviously some caveat for moving east.

Re: Hinduism
Even if there are no religious nuts, we are forced to go with Poly first. Ag>Poly leaves enough time for Emperor AI to go Myst>Poly before us.

I really really really doubt Neil would make it so it's a coin toss whether you lose Hinduism or not. Having half the teams lose after a week of a 4-months long game is pointless, so I'll go on a whim and say no AI starts with Myst.

Therefore one of the only useful things right now is to figure out whether growing to 2/3 on Polytheism is better than worker first.

Wonders: given the religious techs we will have, Oracle is a given (also with Marble).
Pyramids also likely with stone.

We are forest-starved, but early Math bulb can still be good here. (into Currency..?)

~~~

Welcome to the team soundjata and HuibertJan!

When you explore the previous 2 SGOTM I think Duckweed got it right when he said that Plastic Ducks won by overall superior strategy. Keypoints were rushing for Moscow with the great lighthouse prebuilt on a watery map in #13 and starting the war very early in #14.

By that reasoning we should explore what overall strategy we will execute and/or what is required to determine and implement said strategy.



From my experience reading the HOF-forum Neilmeister is only rivalled by Sun Tzu Wu when going for an AP win. This doesn't mean that an AP win is impossible, just that if anyone knows how to derail it, it's Neilmeister.

Just ran a short test for Worker first vs. growing.

Techs went Poly->Agri->BW->TW (this last one because no prerequisite => easier to compare beakers)

1. Worker first :
- Poly @T12
- Agri @T21
- Worker@T15 : mine GLH (for lack of better things to do) -> farm Corn -> farm FP -> prechops.
Overall 2 worker turns lost (1 from moving on the GLH, 1 because Agri comes 1 turn too late and nothing else to do in between)
- Builds : Worker -> Warrior x3 (synchro with growing to P3) -> Settler started @P3 comes out @T39


2. Grow first
-Poly @T12
-Agri @T20
- Worker @T20 : farm Corn -> farm FP -> mine GLH -> prechops.
No worker turns lost, but since the worker comes out later, this option is actually 3 worker turns late.
- Builds : Warrior -> Worker @T8 to synchronize with Agri -> finish Warrior -> Warrior x2 -> Settler started @P3 +1turn (waited to finish the 3rd warrior) comes out @T39

Compared to option 1 : +6F/+1H/+12C

The commerce increase is dued to growing sooner, hence working more riverside tiles.
The F/H advantage has to be considered lightly, because depending on the surroundings, the 3 more worker turns of option 1 could mean an earlier 4th improvement, so Option 1 would catch up quickly.

In case someone else is as noob as I am concerning AP: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/apostolicpalace.php

I don't understand why above some posts assume the game master allowed diplomatic victory but would try to prevent an AP win at the same time Seems a little bit over-sadistic to me.

With many civs on the map and the necessity to convert every one of them to Hindu sure it'll be challenging (open border with Toku etc...) But I would guess this game could actually be an AP race.

You don't need them to convert to Hindu, you only need to spread the religion to *one* of their cities (auto-spreading counts).

The problem with AP is that you don't need to actually run the religion yourself to win, you just need to own the AP. This can be easily exploited to win very early, and that's what is usually called "AP cheese".
Here the condition on Hindu will prevent this, but still AP victories are usually much earlier and easier than other conditions, hence "forcing" every competing team into a single VC.

So that's why we're assuming that neilmeister had something else in mind when allowing it.

But of course that's just what it is, an assumption.

Hum...not a lot of activity here...

Are Lord Parkin and Duckweed even aware that the threads are open?

Anyway, I went back to my tests, following the same approach than before, but this time growing to P3 first.
I wasn't expecting anything from it, and it is definitely no good. Small advantage in commerce, but production and improvements are centuries behind.
Unless we find that generating 12bpt instead of 11 bpt for a few turns is crucial, working unimproved tiles is too big of a penalty.

kossin said:

We are forest-starved, but early Math bulb can still be good here. (into Currency..?)

Click to expand...

I just catched that.

Just to be sure, you mean bulbing Maths in order to chop the Oracle into Currency?
With Gandhi and if we're aiming for the Mids (seems obvious indeed ), doesn't CoL make more sense once again? And then maybe using the forests for the Mids rather than the Oracle?

Sorry for the late checking in. I have been out of town for a while, should have time this weekend.

First, welcome to our new team members, I hope you are comfortable with our playing style and enjoy the discussions and the game.

Back to the game, some thoughts about the grand strategy and opening, but not that clear as last game.

Victory type

From the title implies, the map maker seems to want a game for AP competition, which has never been done in SGOTM history. I am not very familiar with AP, not like domination/conquest, which I know most of the tricks with eyes closed. I only did it once in BOTM35 (475AD), but the date was quite good from my view. The AP victory is easy to achieve, but NOT so easy to beat the date of military victory, especially with some restrains that the map maker will put in. We should have a better idea when we see the official save. We can always adjust the strategy when we proceed and see more information.

Critical techs

Let's assume that we will aim for AP. Theology for AP, which can be bulbed with a GPriest. However. this requires the Mediation, which also opens the Philosophy bulb. I'm not very sure about the bulb path for now. I guess there are at least some AIs need caravels to access, hence Optics is the final tech we want. Moreover, from the game description, Viking is probably already set to be in war with us and we are probably surrounded by warmongers, so certain military tech is probably needed.

Wonders

How to build Oracle in the fastest and safe way is always the hot issue in the opening. I don't see other wonders in demand for AP victory, except the AP, of course, which is rather tricky. The best time to complete it is 10 turns before you are ready for victory, but it largely depends on how to prevent AIs from building it. One necessary way is of course to learn Theology 1st, another way is war with someone with Theology, which is hard to control.

Opening

One thing that needs to be discussed now is the warrior move. Another thing is the capital site and the 1st few builds from capital. In order for Gandhi to beat emperor AIs to Hindu for sure, AIs have to start without Mys or like Izzy who will go for Buddhism (not very sure). Hence it does not matter to delay the founding the capital for a few turns. The PH stone and marble are sites of dream, which cannot be ignored. Since we have to go Hindu before Agri, so growing on 3F tile is not that appealing. I am thinking about 2 options of worker->settler and settler->worker. Settling on another 3H site as early as possible is a great gain in early stage. We can then compare the yield from 2 cities until ~T40.

@Bebekija

Could you upload the test save so that others can also run some tests for comparison on the same game?

Hi guys,

Sorry, had no idea this thread had been started. Anyway, to business.

Given the requirement to get Hinduism first on Emperor level, I highly suspect none of the AI civs will start with Mysticism. That's the way I'd design such a scenario, anyway. Thus, I expect it will be no big deal to move our Settler and settle on the second turn. If it turns out that this is not the case, then it's a bit of a silly (and cruel!) design to taunt the player with exceptional goodies for settling on turn two and then have them lose.

So that said, I definitely think we should move to either settle on the Stone or on the Marble. A 3-hammer capital tile is absolutely worth the turn it takes to move, and then some. The only question is which resource to settle on. Both of them would have fresh water - I can't see the river beside the Stone but there must be one because it's a 3h/1c yield. Both Stone and Marble sites would also claim the wet Corn and flood plain tile, which is neat. (Well, I guess that's not super-exciting, but I've been used to playing much crappier starts recently.)

I think our decision shouldn't change regardless of what our starting Warrior might reveal to the east (or west). I have to assume that the mapmaker planned on people potentially settling the capital at the Stone or Marble locations, so there shouldn't be any significant difference in the fogged territory we can't see. What I mean is that even if - for instance - there's a food resource 2E (or 2W) which would be lost by moving to the Stone or Marble, there's probably something else that we'd get e.g. 4N (or 4S) instead. Perhaps I'm projecting too much of my own expectations here, but that's the way I'd go about designing such a start anyway.

So in my opinion, it's settle on Stone vs settle on Marble. Both would be good - it probably depends on our early game priorities. I confess I'm a bit of a fan of Stonehenge, in which case settling on the Stone might be good... but then again, teching Masonry after the required Polytheism and Agriculture will take some time. Settling on the Marble would also be fine for an early Oracle... although we could probably claim the Marble with a second city before we needed to build it (if we settled on the Stone).

I guess both options are good. I'd probably lean towards settling on the Stone in my own games (especially since we have a Mysticism/Mining start... best possible combo for early Masonry and fastest Stonehenge), but I suspect others may prefer the idea of the Marble. Regardless, are we all convinced that settling on the flatland is the inferior choice vs the Stone or Marble sites?

Bebekija said:

Hum...not a lot of activity here...

Are Lord Parkin and Duckweed even aware that the threads are open?

Anyway, I went back to my tests, following the same approach than before, but this time growing to P3 first.
I wasn't expecting anything from it, and it is definitely no good. Small advantage in commerce, but production and improvements are centuries behind.
Unless we find that generating 12bpt instead of 11 bpt for a few turns is crucial, working unimproved tiles is too big of a penalty.

Click to expand...

Like I said, I'm not going to get that involved this time around. Life goes on...

Growth first is good for nothing unfortunately, we'd need a super growth-tile I'm afraid. (sorry)

Bebekija said:

I just catched that.

Just to be sure, you mean bulbing Maths in order to chop the Oracle into Currency?
With Gandhi and if we're aiming for the Mids (seems obvious indeed ), doesn't CoL make more sense once again? And then maybe using the forests for the Mids rather than the Oracle?

Click to expand...

Seeing as the early Math bulb got us so far ahead in terms of expansion last game, it'd only make sense to consider it again in this one. We will probably not require much teching (that bulbing can't afford us) and food/hammers will decide how fast we can spam missionaries.

The forest-starved comment was, in fact, referring to the building of the library itself. We chopped 3 forests last time, we'd be left barren here with that same approach. Currency is a suggestion if it turns out that AP is pre-built. CoL is another good suggestion if we plan short-term (mainly GPP, representation would be very late here, no forests!)

~~~

Warrior move: like I said, I'd go 1W, as the idea of keeping stone+marble+fp in the BFC warrants settler 1E. But then again, we can re-evaluate after the map is released.

Settling: I slightly prefer Marble over stone with the information we currently see.
From my experience with zealots, it can happen (but very rare) that they will not go for their usual religion, so it's not a bad assumption to say that no one starts with Mysticism.

Builds: settler first can work if we decide on stone+marble settling. Needs testing of course like Duckweed said.