SGOTM 15 - Kakumeika

I agree, one of the teams consists of 2 players, so 10 players (including us) and 9 teams (-> 8 rivals).

The number 9 for teams can be derived from the percentage of land required to win Domination.
Formula is: max(78 - 2*NumTeams, 51) = 60.

IIUC a minor nation would probably need its own team (can't test right now).

So if the AI has a religion and has meditation (do they all have meditation?) I'm thinking Poly is the last thing they'd be interested in. We'd have to test it, but maybe we don't have to get Poly first.

WastinTime said:

So if the AI has a religion and has meditation (do they all have meditation?) I'm thinking Poly is the last thing they'd be interested in. We'd have to test it, but maybe we don't have to get Poly first.

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In this case where no AI has meditation, but has an keen interest for Poly (gunning), then the tests have been made under normal conditions (which have been confirmed by DanF). All the chosen AI's were zealots in these 10 tests. It was impossible to get another tech first.

I understand the need of squeezing in a useful worker tech, but it suffices of a religion hogger like Gandhi or Pacal II to ruin completely the game. We might take the risk, but nobody has to wail thereafter.

Those tests show that some AI go for Med and some go for Poly as we'd expect from a normal game, but the new situation is that they already have a religion at the start, so this may change their tech choices. Let's give it another look.

Here is an attempt at another test game (with 8 rivals, 1 team of 2 AI, Buddhism already founded). I totally randomized the AI leaders and civilizations (I took mysticism from the random civilizations that had it and gave them agriculture instead).

Hmmm seems to be a problem with the test game. I gave buddhism to the team AI and the other member of the team seems to have founded Christianity without teching theology (or any other religious tech).

So it seems if you give an AI both meditation and the buddhist holy city, they found Christianity the moment they settle another city.

If you give an AI just the buddhist holy city and do NOT give them meditation, then the first AI to get meditation founds another religion (Hinduism in one test!). See 2nd attached save (if you open up worldbuilder you can see Montezuma has founded Hinduism but teched meditation). The next AI who teched Polytheism founded Judaism.

Are we sure that "choose religions" isn't somehow enabled?

WastinTime said:

Are we sure that "choose religions" isn't somehow enabled?

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I ran the 1st test game from bcool's recent post through the HOF "Start File" checker. It indicated that the "Choose Religions" option was unchecked.

Sun Tzu Wu

bcool said:

If you give an AI just the buddhist holy city and do NOT give them meditation, then the first AI to get meditation founds another religion (Hinduism in one test!)

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As if because Buddism taken, the engine won't allow two holy cities, thus passing to another founding religion.

I'm not sure the real game will behave in the same way or not.

Perhaps there is a way to edit the worldbuilder file, so the game doesn't link founding a religion to the completion of a specific tech.

Regardless of how it works in the real game, I think the risk of losing the race to found Hinduism is just as much as before or there is a slightly greater risk since they might be able to found it by researching either meditation or polytheism.

An AI starting with the Buddhist holy city building will also likely cause Buddhism to spread far and wide (double the random religion spreading rate starting form turn 1 or at least from first AI contact with the Buddhist AI?)

Did a bit of basic testing

If we settle on the Stone (and find nothing exciting in the initial city radius)
T5 warrior
T10 warrior & Pop 2
T14 found Hinduism
T19 worker finishes (2 turns on a mine, then start on farming corn T21

If we settle 1E
T8 stop warrior at 8 hammers and start worker at Pop 2
T12 found Hinduism
T20 worker finishes and can start farming the corn T20, resume warrior having lost 1 hammer to decay

It seems that settling on the marble or stone is significantly better based on what we know now.

Advantages of settling on stone/marble
lots of scouting (3 warriors wandering about)
Continues to produce +2 hammers more than not settling on stone or marble for quite some time

Disadvantages
Slower founding of Hinduism (which I doubt is a problem and if it is we have lots of spare time for the next 4 months )
Start improving the corn 1 turn slower
less overall research (~25?)

The extra scouting possible with warriors built with the hammers from settling on stone/marble (and possible worker stealing) is very valuable I think. This is worth more than any slight advantage settling 1E might have long term in hammer production.

I'm finding it hard to imagine what our warrior might find that would encourage us not to settle on stone or marble.

We should keep in mind that in case all Buddhist love-fest participants already established contact with each other on T0, worker stealing from one AI might give us a -1 "Declared War on a Friend" with all other AIs. Right now I'm not sure whether early contact is that good at all ... Given the tricky religious setup, perhaps approaching this game with an 'always war'-like mindset is the way to go?

bcool, did you also try Settler first?

I didn't try settler first.

I can see how a settler first might be interesting start, especially if we start on the stone/marble and settle the other city on the other resource.

We would take a significant research hit and delay the first worker significantly, but we would double our early hammer output.

That will take some deeper games to explore the advantages and disadvantages, and I have time to explore this in about 8 hours unless someone else gets to it before I do.

I don't think we can risk researching anything but polytheism first. But we could research masonry after polytheism and then agriculture which would likely time well for the first worker.

I tried creating a test save, but not knowing how to create a team, I didn't put much effort into it. How does one create a team from the Custom Game window? I didn't see a way to do that; there were no # teams listed; maybe its a BUFFY option?

I selected all BtS AI leaders with a Religion flavor, except Hatshepsut. I also selected the Mali Empire for all opponents. That could get confusing and assuming Skirmishers for all opponent's defensive archery unit is probably over kill.

The 4000 BC save is attached. It needs more more. All suggestions are welcome.

Sun Tzu Wu

You can't create a team unless the 3.19.003 Buffy mod is not loaded.

So to create test game, you must unload the mod, create the team game, then save the worldbuilder file. Then load the Buffy Mod and load up the worldbuilder save as a scenario.

Sorry for not chiming in sooner, but I was rather busy during the weekend. I see Tachy took the initial screenshots, so no need for that from my part. I downloaded the save last night, and tried to make some fog-gazing, but I seem to be bad at it, so I better leave it to someone of the more experienced team mates. Is it needed at all? Aren't we settling one of the quarry resources anyway? Speaking of which …

I understand settling on stone is (at least partially) agreed upon – early hammer boost, a „centralized“ location, and instant access to stone after researching Masonry, so as mabraham points out, there is no need to scout in that direction with our initial warrior. That would make scouting 1S1E or 1S1W the only two options , so we can evaluate the location and eventually change our mind about settling on marble instead. The tile 2W of marble looks like a G hill, so the only thing that could lead to settle there is a GH gems tile (that would be a big penalty for SIP teams). Scouting 1S1E reveals more terrain as the tile 2E of marble seems like a grassland.

I could make the warrior move today, in 13 – 14 hours from now, or tomorrow at the same time of the day … in 37 – 38 hours if the majority agrees so we can kick start the gameplay.

I like the „settle on stone, settler first, put him on marble, and gun for an early wonder after a worker / warrior or two“ plan. I will try it out tonight and see how it goes. I wonder if we'll have a 3 production + commerce tile for the +1 research before the border pop. Will we sacrifice production or research if there isn't any?

cheers

bcool said:

You can't create a team unless the 3.19.003 Buffy mod is not loaded.

So to create test game, you must unload the mod, create the team game, then save the worldbuilder file. Then load the Buffy Mod and load up the worldbuilder save as a scenario.

Click to expand...

Thanks, now I have a test save worth sharing:

The Team with two AIs has The Mahabodhi. All opponents have a settled capital with Buddhism, 2 Archers and 2 Scouts. They all have knowledge of Meditation. All AIs that normally would have started with Mysticism have had that technology replaced with Agriculture.

Again, I choose the AIs to be 9 of the 10 BtS leaders that have a Religious Flavor that ranges from 10 (Isabella) to 5 and 2 in magnitude. This time, I decided to let BtS pick the Unrestricted Leader Empire randomly rather than penalize military options by giving all opponents the Mali Empire and thus skirmisher defenders (I don't believe the scenario designer would have done this, though he certainly could have.)

Here are the AI leaders:

Asoka - Ottoman Empire
Brennus - Greek Empire
Charlemagne - French Empire
Isabella - Portuguese Empire
Justinian I - Byzantine Empire
Mansa Musa - Ethiopian Empire
Montezuma - Aztec Empire
Saladin - Japanese Empire
Zara Yaqob - Native American Empire

Please let me know of any suggestions for improvement. (BTW, I have not yet tried it myself, but I have "god-like" knowledge of the map and the two AI allies which would _not_ be fair.)

Sun Tzu Wu

We can probably afford to use our Settler to scout for 1-2 turns and then settle. Sometimes the delay in scouting is made up for with a better BFC. If the other side of the northern hills is all desert, we may reconsider settling on Stone. Just making the point that moving the settler to Stone or Marble for that matter is necessarily a commitment to settle there. We may need to scout around and a Warrior is rather slow for that task.

Sun Tzu Wu

Walter_Wolf said:

Sorry for not chiming in sooner, but I was rather busy during the weekend. I see Tachy took the initial screenshots, so no need for that from my part. I downloaded the save last night, and tried to make some fog-gazing, but I seem to be bad at it, so I better leave it to someone of the more experienced team mates. Is it needed at all? Aren't we settling one of the quarry resources anyway? Speaking of which …

Click to expand...

You can sometimes glean clues about tile types and terrain by changing the viewpoint - Alt-arrow can be useful. Practice on an non-real save, or with the game paused, as usual. Screenshots can benefit from Alt-I or Alt-F views (toggle on and off).

Walter_Wolf said:

I understand settling on stone is (at least partially) agreed upon – early hammer boost, a „centralized“ location, and instant access to stone after researching Masonry, so as mabraham points out, there is no need to scout in that direction with our initial warrior. That would make scouting 1S1E or 1S1W the only two options , so we can evaluate the location and eventually change our mind about settling on marble instead. The tile 2W of marble looks like a G hill, so the only thing that could lead to settle there is a GH gems tile (that would be a big penalty for SIP teams). Scouting 1S1E reveals more terrain as the tile 2E of marble seems like a grassland.

Click to expand...

Note that the southern river stops next to the marble, so settling on marble would be capped at 8 BFC river tiles from the river we know about. Settling on stone would be at least that many river tiles.

I think scouting 1S1E has slightly more going for it than any other choice. Note that we could find natural pigs on the Ghill 2W of marble (or anything worldbuilt in), so it's not sure that only gems could be found there.

Walter_Wolf said:

I could make the warrior move today, in 13 – 14 hours from now, or tomorrow at the same time of the day … in 37 – 38 hours if the majority agrees so we can kick start the gameplay.

Click to expand...

I'm good with the warrior move, but we should program a pause for the new information. If there's nothing much we learn, then I think settler 2N is the way to go.

Walter_Wolf said:

I like the „settle on stone, settler first, put him on marble, and gun for an early wonder after a worker / warrior or two“ plan. I will try it out tonight and see how it goes. I wonder if we'll have a 3 production + commerce tile for the +1 research before the border pop. Will we sacrifice production or research if there isn't any?

Click to expand...

I'll do some play testing once we've moved the settler. There's too many unknowns otherwise (and this week is busy with a bridge tournament!).

I think scouting 1S1E has slightly more going for it than any other choice. Note that we could find natural pigs on the Ghill 2W of marble (or anything worldbuilt in), so it's not sure that only gems could be found there.

Click to expand...

I can clearly see the hill 2W of the marble, but I'm not sure there is a hill 2E of the marble.
Wouldn't it be better to move 1S1W on T0 so that on T1 we can move onto the hill 2W of the marble before we make settling decisions?


I agree that the stone now looks a bit better, I didn't notice before in the real game save the river near the marble stops.

The hill 2W of Marble is new compared to the picture in the maintenance thread ... I believe it is worth exploring -> At the moment I'd also vote for Warrior SW.

I'm surprised by the numbers shown when mousing over the score info. As Tachy already mentioned, 1784 land tiles is a lot (barb danger)! But the more irritating aspect is the MaxPopulation = 1165 which indicates an approximate food yield of not much more than 1 per land tile, in spite of the tropical climate ... hmmm, many peaks again, perhaps to protect the Buddhist shrine?

As far as I can see, there should be at least 10 river tiles in the Stone-BFC, which is nice. But I also think the need of a 'centralized' capital for optimized auto-spread of Hinduism has significantly decreased with the new religious setup. That is regarding foreign policy, it is probably still favourable with respect to our own economy.

BTW Brennus shouldn't be in the game and the AI hasn't converted to Buddhism yet.

I haven't downloaded the official starting save yet -- am I even allowed to do that as a non-playing team member?