SGOTM 15 - Kakumeika

Walter_Wolf said:
I have the honour of opening the game here :D. Thanks bcool's RNG machine (whatever that is).

I guess it's best to have a warrior move as a 1st thing to do, and then decide on the settling position. So, I would move the warrior in the desired direction, post a screenshot of the revealed area, and make some fog gazing (I wonder if it's the right word). I'd continue (start actually) the turnset after a fruitful debate.

Warrior movement options:

1. move 1N1E - probably reveals the river that flows near the stone tile. Important if we wish to settle there.
2. move 1S1E - doesn't reveal much if the tile 2S2E is a G hill (looks like one), but could reveal a resource or something in the potential marble site BFC.
3. move 1S1W - if we are lucky, it might open the view on a 2nd corn tile :D (maybe it's not a good idea to rely on luck), and a view on the mentioned marble site.
4. move 1N1W - more tiles of the stone site. Not the best option IMO.
Click to expand...

If we have an agreed default site for settling, then scouting towards that agreed site is often wasted effort. If we find something cool, then we still settle the agreed site. If we find nothing, then we still settle the default site. In these cases we want to uncover information that might lead to changing our default site.

So far, settling marble seems to be the consensus for that default. So scouting 1S1E or 1S1W would have to uncover a tile that would make us want to settle somewhere other than marble - i.e. on a Ghill 2S1E or 2S1W. Also, that discovery would have to be missed by scouting 1N1E or 1N1W (for example, finding a second corn 2W might make us settle in place, but we find that by scouting either 1N1W or 1S1W). So only uncovering the tiles 1S2W+2S2W+further hills (for scout 1S1W) or 1S2E+2S2E+further hills (for scout 1S1E) make a relevant difference. However (most)all of those (potential) tiles are in the BFC of settling on marble already, so I don't see there's anything to gain.

Scouting 1N1E should uncover two tiles on the northern river (2N1E and 2N2E) and at least two tiles of eastern grassland. Scouting 1N1W uncovers one tile on the southern river and at least two tiles of western grassland. Either could learn about more distant hills. Scouting 1N1E uncovers more of the relevant information for settling the stone site (because 2N1E is fogged), but scouting 1N1W uncovers more of the relevant information for settling in place or 1S (by unfogging the river tile 2W).

IMO that is narrowly in favour of scouting 1N1E, so that settling on stone for a fast stone-based wonder is more of an option (but note we still need fast Masonry if we wanted to get stone access for SH).

Walter_Wolf said:
Is moving in the 1N, E, W or S directions an option?
Click to expand...

I can see no advantage to them. Generally when scouting you want to make diagonal moves to unfog more tiles. For example, when heading east, alternating NE and SE reveals four rows of tiles (plus distant hills and mountains) whereas heading due east reveals only three rows.

Walter_Wolf said:
Other stuff of interest:

Take screenshots of the
1. Demographics screen,
2. Game settings screen,
3. Victory conditions screen,
4. Info from "mousing over" our score (for tiles count if we get one before settling).

Did I forget anything here.

A mini PPP is due after the warrior moves and the team makes some decisions.

cheers
Click to expand...

Looks good. In the early game, screen shots of the demographics screen every turn can lead to useful deductions.

We will want to program another stop after the settler moves to one of those plains hills (assuming that it does) in case the goodies in the fog warrant moving further still.
 
I thought there was a slight preference for the settling on the stone plains hill. I think that is the default settling site.

The stone site seems to be more centrally located (based on the unintentionally revealed tiles in the opening screen shot). The stone has roughly the same number of river tiles (as far as we can tell), and the early stone wonders that we might go for (SH and The Great Wall) would be available to us without spending our 1st settler on the stone. The Marble wonders we might consider usually come a bit later (Oracle primarily, although the TofA is possible depending on the victory condition I suppose). The Marble could possibly wait for the 2nd settler probably if we found better sites elsewhere. While it would be a bit more difficult perhaps to wait for the stone with the 2nd settler.

Of course I have yet to do any early testing to see what kind of results the stone or marble or 1E settling sites might yield. So these are just echoes of what other people have said.
 
I suggest make no warrior or settler moves until we get the opening save and re-evaluate the tiles on the edge of the fog. Neilmeister said he hadn't finished the tiles around those and they may look different on the starting save compared to the picture from the opening post.
 
I like bcool's arguments for settling on Stone. Also, settling either 1-E or 1-W will keep all visible plots of interest, including the Floodplains in the BFC.

I agree with shulec that we should examine the start file for a day or so, before discussing opening moves.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
shulec said:
I suggest make no warrior or settler moves until we get the opening save and re-evaluate the tiles on the edge of the fog. Neilmeister said he hadn't finished the tiles around those and they may look different on the starting save compared to the picture from the opening post.
Click to expand...

Indeed, I fully agree.

bcool said:
I thought there was a slight preference for the settling on the stone plains hill. I think that is the default settling site.

The stone site seems to be more centrally located (based on the unintentionally revealed tiles in the opening screen shot). The stone has roughly the same number of river tiles (as far as we can tell), and the early stone wonders that we might go for (SH and The Great Wall) would be available to us without spending our 1st settler on the stone. The Marble wonders we might consider usually come a bit later (Oracle primarily, although the TofA is possible depending on the victory condition I suppose). The Marble could possibly wait for the 2nd settler probably if we found better sites elsewhere. While it would be a bit more difficult perhaps to wait for the stone with the 2nd settler.
Click to expand...

Fair enough. Upon reflection, there should be a comparable number of river tiles for the medium term needs of a capital. We are not yet in position to estimate the number of Ghills.

We do need to tech Masonry to get access to Stone, even if we settle on it.

bcool said:
Of course I have yet to do any early testing to see what kind of results the stone or marble or 1E settling sites might yield. So these are just echoes of what other people have said.
Click to expand...

Yes, we'll want some comparisons once we have real data.
 
mabraham said:
Fair enough. Upon reflection, there should be a comparable number of river tiles for the medium term needs of a capital. We are not yet in position to estimate the number of Ghills.

We do need to tech Masonry to get access to Stone, even if we settle on it.
Click to expand...

Glad there is a change of mind.
 
mabraham said:
We do need to tech Masonry to get access to Stone, even if we settle on it.
Click to expand...
Yes, we do

Shulec's argument about the map being modified after the starting screenshot taken makes the no move option reasonable. neilmeister mentioned it in one of the SGOTM 15 threads a couple of days ago.
So fog gazing in the real save and this:
Walter_Wolf said:
Take screenshots of the
1. Demographics screen,
2. Game settings screen,
3. Victory conditions screen,
4. Info from "mousing over" our score (for tiles count if we get one before settling).
Click to expand...

will be my 1st task. No moves or anything, just a look at what might be hidden in the fog.
After that, we should decide the settling spot and the 1st build. I guess (from Tachy's tests results) Polytheism is our 1st tech after all?
 
ohoh ... SGOTM is already in my dreams, at some point between 2-4 am :sleep:, I had the following premonition:

Icy_Izzy.jpg

I can't help myself but think, the AP Victory is a red herring :splat: as in that it is allowed but impossible to achieve ... until attack submarines. :scan:

With 8 AI opponents, I believe 1 of them will be ice-locked and possibly land-locked as well to make double sure, that the cities cannot be connected for religion spread.
Something like Icy Izzy of the Heathen Vikings who might ironically stay without a faith throughout the whole game ... until a Missionary loaded on an attack sub can dive under the otherwise impassable ice.

The map can also be designed in a way that the unit-teleporting-via-closing-borders-trick (or by declaring war) won't succeed. Airports and airlifting will only work with vassals' cities, so no-go.

Would that be end of a blitz AP-win strategy or am I missing something and some of you can think of another way to spread Hindu to such a city?
 
Tachywaxon said:
Ha! Stone settling is good after all. I mentioned about centralizing the cap earlier.
Click to expand...
ah sorry I missed that.
However, is the majority really certain, we can afford to move the settler, found Delhi on turn 1 (on Stone or Marble) and still reach Hindu first? I mean with the tech-flexibility of the mapmakers, they could design the situation that it is required to settle on turn 0 and found Hindu on turn 11/12 3560 BC.

shulec said:
We can accumulate beakers toward any tech until the end of turn 5. They do not have to be committed to a specific tech if you "unchose" the tech you are researching each turn. You will be asked to chose a tech at the beginning of each turn, then click on the tech bar at the top of the screen and don't choose any techs. At the begining of turn 6, the Gov choses a tech for you (usually archery or hunting) and irreversibly commits the beakers to that tech.
Click to expand...
Great tip! We should do this in any case. IIUC the beakers will get accumulated as research overflow and then get multiplied by the prereq-modifiers (1.2 for Myst when teching Poly) -> due to rounding it is better to scale a larger amount than 5 small individual amounts.

with 11 beakers per turn (8 from palace,1 each from city-tile + worked FP, 1 free beaker):

floor(6*11*1.2) = 79 vs. 6*floor(11*1.2) = 78 -> 1 beaker gained :goodjob:

The effect would be more profitable if we would start with an Oasis and Masonry as first tech (modifier = 1.4):

floor(6*12*1.4) = 100 vs. 6*floor(12*1.4) = 96 -> 4 beakers gained :eek:
 
DanF5771 said:
ah sorry I missed that.
However, is the majority really certain, we can afford to move the settler, found Delhi on turn 1 (on Stone or Marble) and still reach Hindu first? I mean with the tech-flexibility of the mapmakers, they could design the situation that it is required to settle on turn 0 and found Hindu on turn 11/12 3560 BC.
Click to expand...

I am sure, based on other Xotms that if we had to settle on T0 to get hinduism, there would be a warning to do so.
 
DanF5771 said:
Great tip! We should do this in any case. IIUC the beakers will get accumulated as research overflow and then get multiplied by the prereq-modifiers (1.2 for Myst when teching Poly) -> due to rounding it is better to scale a larger amount than 5 small individual amounts.

with 11 beakers per turn (8 from palace,1 each from city-tile + worked FP, 1 free beaker):

floor(6*11*1.2) = 79 vs. 6*floor(11*1.2) = 78 -> 1 beaker gained :goodjob:

The effect would be more profitable if we would start with an Oasis and Masonry as first tech (modifier = 1.4):

floor(6*12*1.4) = 100 vs. 6*floor(12*1.4) = 96 -> 4 beakers gained :eek:
Click to expand...

Transforming a not very well known tip into another tip more not known at all. :eek:
All I can say is :goodjob:.

We should keep that in mind just like early binary research to preserve more lost beakers.
 
DanF5771 said:
ah sorry I missed that.
However, is the majority really certain, we can afford to move the settler, found Delhi on turn 1 (on Stone or Marble) and still reach Hindu first? I mean with the tech-flexibility of the mapmakers, they could design the situation that it is required to settle on turn 0 and found Hindu on turn 11/12 3560 BC.
Click to expand...

They could, but then the game reduces to a crapshoot about who dares take a risk doing something very normal (settling T1) that could lead to an instant loss.

DanF5771 said:
Great tip! We should do this in any case. IIUC the beakers will get accumulated as research overflow and then get multiplied by the prereq-modifiers (1.2 for Myst when teching Poly) -> due to rounding it is better to scale a larger amount than 5 small individual amounts.
Click to expand...

Actually the gain doesn't come from the larger amount, but from the shifted rounding.

(Sorry for the arithmetic side track!)
Spoiler :

DanF5771 said:
with 11 beakers per turn (8 from palace,1 each from city-tile + worked FP, 1 free beaker):

floor(6*11*1.2) = 79 vs. 6*floor(11*1.2) = 78 -> 1 beaker gained :goodjob:
Click to expand...

If we had some bad tile that gave us 10 base commerce:

floor(6*10*1.2) = 72 vs 6*floor(10*1.2) = 72

which gains nothing.
Consider 11 base commerce

Code: 
floor(6*11*1.2)
= floor(6*11*1 + 6*11*0.2)
= 66 + floor(13.2)
= 79
> 6*floor(11*1.2)
= 6*(11+floor(2.2))
= 78

which gains 1,
and 12 base commerce

Code: 
  floor(6*12*1.2)
= floor(6*12*1 + 6*12*0.2)
= 72 + floor(14.4)
= 86
> 6*floor(12*1.2)
= 6*(12+floor(2.4))
= 84

which gains 2,
and 13 base commerce

Code: 
floor(6*13*1.2)
= floor(6*13*1 + 6*13*0.2)
= 78 + floor(15.6)
= 93
> 6*floor(13*1.2)
= 6*(13+floor(2.6))
= 90

which gains 3,
and 14 base commerce

Code: 
floor(6*14*1.2)
= floor(6*14*1 + 6*14*0.2)
= 84 + floor(16.8)
= 100
> 6*floor(14*1.2)
= 6*(14+floor(2.8))
= 96

which gains 4!
So increasing the base commerce does not always lead to gains from this effect!

 
shulec said:
I am sure, based on other Xotms that if we had to settle on T0 to get hinduism, there would be a warning to do so.
Click to expand...
Okay, this is my 1st participation in SGOTM, so I am/was not familiar with what is common practice here and wanted to make sure.

@mabraham ^
Yeah my verbalisation might have been a bit unfortunate. Agreed on the gain resulting from shifted rounding or better rounding/losing just once vs rounding/losing 6 times.
I'm not sure, but did you mix the '<' '>' / 'gains' 'loses' up in your spoiler? You can never lose more with the accumulation method.
 
DanF5771 said:
Okay, this is my 1st participation in SGOTM, so I am/was not familiar with what is common practice here and wanted to make sure.

@mabraham ^
Yeah my verbalisation might have been a bit unfortunate. Agreed on the gain resulting from shifted rounding or better rounding/losing just once vs rounding/losing 6 times.
I'm not sure, but did you mix the '<' '>' / 'gains' 'loses' up in your spoiler? You can never lose more with the accumulation method.
Click to expand...

I did mix up the first three signs, sorry. That changes the conclusion.
 
Since my gut feeling is AP-Win == Red Herring, and my experience with Culture Wins is rather limited, I was looking more into the fast military approach (c'mon we are Gandhi ;)) -- mainly Domination.

If we have at least 2 other AIs on our landmass and the layout would be ...

India in west, AI A in the middle and AI B in the east,

... maybe the following city-swapping strategy to facilitate early war with the given game options might work:

1. DoW AI A, pillage all improvements except around capital + very few very good cities.
2. Conquer all cities except 1 in the east near AI B.
3. Make peace with A, extort techs.
4. Whip units in all pillaged cities until city size = 1.
5. Gift pillaged cities to AI B (needs thorough testing).
6. DoW AI B, proceed as above (pillage weak cities) but conquer all cities except of course the gifted ones.
7. Gift the pillaged + whipped cities of B to A.
8. Make peace with B, extort techs. (maybe conquer the last original city of A?)
8. Focus on culture (religious buildings + Sistene Chapel, spiritual caste Artists) in the few new good cities.
9. A and B should not be able to make any sort of successful comeback due to pillaged lands, size 1 cities and culture pressure.
10. Disband revolting junk cities, or keep the better ones, when they become affordable (forbidden palace built).
11. Redeclare at will and farm XP / GG (?)
11. In a finale sweep conquer all remaining cities to reach domination.

Vassals are off, so no problems with peace-vassaling of the weaklings (also no colonial expenses when repeating this on another continent).

Another crazy idea? Should I better go easy on the craziness-spam?
What do you think?
 
DanF5771 said:
3. Make peace with A, extort techs.
8. Make peace with B, extort techs. (maybe conquer the last original city of A?)
Click to expand...

I don't know about the extortion aspect. Being all aggressive AI's on emperor (where the higher number of units does have an effect on mainteance compared to a deity AI) and no brokering option enabled, I really wonder if we can get anything juicy out of them.

Personally, a shot towards engineering rush should do the job (plus Astro if water stripes are present, which is likely), then no more teching needed (perhaps Guild for Knights in extremis).

DanF5771 said:
5. Gift pillaged cities to AI B (needs thorough testing).
Click to expand...

As bcool pointed this out in the last SGOTM, conditions are applied when it comes to give cities.
IIRC, the AI must have three cities and lower and the gift city must be within 10-9 tiles.
Testing is something to do, or code digging, ideally. :mischief:

DanF5771 said:
Okay, this is my 1st participation in SGOTM
Click to expand...

I would also advised to put our team thread in your favorite if not done yet. Avoid misclicking into other teams' thread avoids any misunderstanding with AlanH. Better say it given you are participating very actively.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by DanF5771
5. Gift pillaged cities to AI B (needs thorough testing).
As bcool pointed this out in the last SGOTM, conditions are applied when it comes to give cities.
IIRC, the AI must have three cities and lower and the gift city must be within 10-9 tiles.
Testing is something to do, or code digging, ideally.
Click to expand...

conditions for city gifts.
1) civilization has to be willing to talk and not at war with us (of course) (well, you can gift a civilization at war with us cities as part of a peace deal... Hmm... this might be a way around some of the other conditions of a civilization taking city gifts).
2) If the civilization has 3 or fewer cities they will take any city gift anywhere in the world
3) If a civilization has 4 or more cities they will only take a city gift if it is within 9.5 tiles of another one of their cities and they are not in financial crisis. Financial crisis can be overcome by gifting the gold per turn, but may be expensive. And I don't think there is any way to tell how much gold they need.
4) Other factors I don't fully understand (civilizations are much more willing to take cities that still have some of their own culture for example).
 
I believe that the scenario designer has done his best to make all victory conditions equally competitive. It is our task to pick the best one with incomplete information.

While I don't agree that RL DV is a red herring, I do agree that Domination may be the fastest victory condition in this scenario. I like DanF5771's Domination Victory outline.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
DanF5771 said:
Great tip! We should do this in any case. IIUC the beakers will get accumulated as research overflow and then get multiplied by the prereq-modifiers (1.2 for Myst when teching Poly) -> due to rounding it is better to scale a larger amount than 5 small individual amounts....
Click to expand...

I'm trying to remember the danger of using this trick. I think there is a way to lose beakers. I want to say it happens when you meet another AI. If they know the tech you're researching, you get a boost, but if you're doing the trick, you don't.

I could be off, does anyone know off hand, or should I research?

EDIT: researched...conclusion, no losses, only gains!
 
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