SGOTM 15 - Unusual Suspects

Wow, that's some good land. We definitely want to get cities out fast, and it's paramount to beat Toku to the gold.
Needless to say the gems are a priority too, but seemingly no competition for it so gold first.

IMO an early rush is off as the land is so good. Better to grab these luxurious spots and attack later (unless we find Kyoto and it's unreal).

ChrisShaffer said:

The cows are unfortunately wasted, until we pick them up from Bollywood culture expansion. Someone needs to dotmap for us.

Click to expand...

First thought is a city 1NE of the deer picking up cows+deer+grassland+hills. Could be a good production city. Would share a lot of tiles with capital and gold city, but that's no problem as it will simply get whipped.

Not one of the first cities though.

Rusten said:

First thought is a city 1NE of the deer picking up cows+deer+grassland+hills. Could be a good production city. Would share a lot of tiles with capital and gold city, but that's no problem as it will simply get whipped.

Not one of the first cities though.

Click to expand...

This sounds like a good plan. I was considering a gold/sheep/deer city 1N of the gold (for additional food to work those hills), but it might be better to settle 1W of the sheep so we can make use of the cows.

If we intend to go for the Oracle, we should probably pick up the marble (rather than the gems) with our 3rd city. A coastal crabs/bananas/marble city would get us the resource and let us get exploring WBs out.

Edit: Here's a preliminary attempt at a dot map:

Trystero, what would happen if you moved the gold/sheep and fish cities 1S of their proposed locations?

That would work too. The fish city would lose 3 hills and pick up more water tiles.

We could also put a marble city closer to Bollywood if we move the crab/marble/banana city 1W.

Two of those hills are shared already, and the gold city would save one forest for chopping. Though the fish city would lose a forest, unless we chopped it first.

Getting both gold and fish before Tokugawa gets there might prove difficult. I think moving the gold city 1S would be better for blocking in the event we don't get both locations.

Good point. Here's an updated dot map of the suggested changes. I'm not sure about the closer marble city site, but I put it in there.

Chris - Good work

Agree on healing warriors and sending to find Toku is a priority as well as getting settlers and workers quickly. Bronze Working for chops and slaving will also be needed soon.

Need to block Toku. I like the gold/sheep site for city 2 unless we see something better further SE.

1W of gems is also a great site - claims nearly all the remaining land, gets pigs+gems, and the city center is on the river.

What do you think of moving the marble city 1S? It would have 2 less hills, so not as good for production. However, it would have 4 forests to chop for The Oracle, and it saves one forest from being plowed under by the city center.

p.s. anyone who settled on marble has lost the crabs.

Moving 1S for the marble city would work. I was thinking that we'd chop that tile before settling when our cultural borders expand (should happen before we found a third city), and that it could borrow the corn from Bollywood. Although, given Bollywood's lack of food resources, maybe that's not a great idea. It would be a better production site where it is now, but we could have the gold and the crabs/bananas cities for production.

OK, no new test game from me tonight. I'll try to get one done tomorrow night before I leave.

Good job Chris!

Great discussion guys. Keep up the good work!

Trystero said:

Edit: Here's a preliminary attempt at a dot map:

Spoiler :

Click to expand...

I'd like to remind us that the minimum distance between cities is 2, even diagonally. This plan seems to have ignored that limitation with the cities NE of deer and NE of gold.

But I see that a later map no longer has this conflict.

I'd wait to explore more before deciding on the later city locations near the unexplored areas. Curious of what the northern reaches look like, at some point need to look on that too. Might be nice if we could trap Toku's scout north of capital with expanding borders, to serve as an unwilling fogbuster but might be unrealistic. The 2-legged barbs are going to come soon.

The mountain range appears to be coastal. Possibly to hinder making culture-bridging cities. Or just to hide something.

If we are isolated with Toku there is no point letting him live. Better to kill him before he meets his Bhudists brethren who will become friendly with him. But REX first.

Agri and worker next, right? Will that give us time to make a defender before barbs come, or should we keep Guru close by?

Even after the two legged barbarians appear, there is time before they will enter cultural borders. Continue exploring.

Our city. The borders will expand in 10 turns. I think the worker should mine the hill 1W, then irrigate corn, then irrigate floodplain.



Victory conditions. Can someone calculate how much land there is on this map? Anything else that can be gleaned from this information?



How are we going to get The Oracle? What technology will we take with it?

ChrisShaffer said:

... Neil is one evil genius ...

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I'll take that as a compliment.

ChrisShaffer said:

Our city. The borders will expand in 10 turns. I think the worker should mine the hill 1W, then irrigate corn, then irrigate floodplain.

Spoiler :

Victory conditions. Can someone calculate how much land there is on this map? Anything else that can be gleaned from this information?

Spoiler :

How are we going to get The Oracle? What technology will we take with it?

Click to expand...

We have 1.18% of the available land, which is 21tiles. That means there should be 1780 land tiles total, and we'd need 1068 land tiles for domination.

Note, if you hover over our score, you can check that the number of land tiles total is correct. The number of tiles we have that go to score only count after they have been under control 10 or 20 turns so should not be relied upon. But so far, counting them by hand is not a big chore.

Oracle Theo if we want to keep religion VC option open, or just ensure we get the bonus rather than the AI. Theo is also useful for warring.

Oracle Metal Casting if we know warring is what we want to do, maybe.

Oracle CoL if we want to keep culture VC on the priority list (though CoL can be manually teched in time, usually). Its also useful for sustained REX.

I don't know what we should do with Oracle until we know what we want to do with the game. But I think a CS-sling is not feasible given the REX plans.

What else do I see... well, Toku's 0.00% means at most he has 0.0049% of the land, which would translate to 9 tiles at most. So he's either on an island or coast/isthmus/penninsula, given the amount of culture he's making. He hasn't grown to pop2 yet, either, nor founded a second city. He's not either in a team with anyone else.

That's about all I can make of it. But don't worry, I'm sure the evil genius put Kyoto on a hill so those protective archers can withstand a bit of punishment.

If Toku is on a peninsula it might be worthwhile to choke him with the 2 warriors. Would depend on the terrain obviously.

High King J.J. said:

I'd like to remind us that the minimum distance between cities is 2, even diagonally. This plan seems to have ignored that limitation with the cities NE of deer and NE of gold.

Click to expand...

Drat! I knew that, but stuck in Rusten's proposed cow city and miscounted tiles. I guess that's another arguement in favor of Chris' proposed gold city site.