SGOTM 15 - Plastic Ducks

Duckweed said:

Not sure about the 0% land means, from T0 sceenshot, AIs' capitals has 6 land tiles at least.

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Yeah you're right , I had forgotten about that. So I'm even more puzzled by this.

The warrior is on the grass 2N of the bananas, so the answer to your question is yes, but barely (he should be able to come back ~T25 if all goes well, i.e. a barb doesn't stand in the way)

kossin said:

About Tokugawa:
I have no clue, my guess is a display bug as the tile under cities is added to land total.

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Maybe, it may be the most reasonable explanation, but it never happened to me before. Did neil mess something up during the mapmaking?

Well we shall see, it's not like it's the most important thing on our hands right now.

I'm pretty sure opponent % for land/population as shown in the F8 screen is always rounded down to the nearest %. Nothing particularly interesting there. There's no reason to suppose he started on an island (especially since his Scout met us). He'll just have a few coast tiles in his capital, that's all. You could check this by looking for the "Rival Worst" in "Land Area" demographics.

So, Tokugawa... definitely looking like AP victory is out the window then. Probably diplomatic too, if it wasn't already. Looks like military, culture or space are the options in this game.

I'm going to highly recommend the Pigs-Gems spot for our second city. Research is really quite slow, and getting the Gems online would provide a huge boost for us.

Good, move the warrior to see what's around Deer, 1NE and 1E of the deer looks like forests, right? through tiles inside culture border to 1S of the deer and then 1SE should reveal the most tiles and still have time to come back for the Gem site.

Stopped at T18.

Before showing you why, look who I met on T14 :

So I guess we now know where this map is going, and where we can put our diplo plans...

Good news is we did found Hinduism, so the game is not already over
Bad news is since we had to convert immediately, we went straight to Annoyed with both Gawas (but then back to Cautious the next turn )

Now, the real reason why I stopped :


That's got to be a serious candidate for city 2.
On a strict tile output perspective, I'd say that Pigs > Deer *and* Riverside gems >= Gold, but the Deer/Gold is blocking Toku, and Pigs/Gems is lacking in production, so ...

I'm going to bed now so that leaves you a good 6 hours to discuss this and I'll check in in the morning.

Lord Parkin said:

I'm pretty sure opponent % for land/population as shown in the F8 screen is always rounded down to the nearest %. Nothing particularly interesting there. There's no reason to suppose he started on an island (especially since his Scout met us). He'll just have a few coast tiles in his capital, that's all. You could check this by looking for the "Rival Worst" in "Land Area" demographics.

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You're right about the rounding down thing.
In fact, since there are 1784 land tiles in the live game, it means that Toku has *at most* 8 land tiles in his whole BFC. I don't know if that's good/bad/irrelevant for us though...probably the latter

That's the worst possible diplomatic environment. The good side is that the global tech speed will be slower.

For the 2nd city, I'd say Gem site 1st. T6 contact from Toku means that his capital is 6~12 tiles away from where our warrior stands, AI will usually settle his 2nd city 3~4 tiles away from his capital, so the gold site is safe for 3rd city. We should have no problem of getting 3rd settler out earlier than Toku.

Duckweed said:

That's the worst possible diplomatic environment.

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Very amusing.

Duckweed said:

The good side is that the global tech speed will be slower.

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Well, maybe not for the dude/dudette with the Buddhist Shrine. They'll be teching like the wind, especially later on.

Duckweed said:

For the 2nd city, I'd say Gem site 1st. T6 contact from Toku means that his capital is 6~12 tiles away from where our warrior stands, AI will usually settle his 2nd city 3~4 tiles away from his capital, so the gold site is safe for 3rd city. We should have no problem of getting 3rd settler out earlier than Toku.

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I'd go for Gems first too. Can always forcefully take the Gold city from Toku in the unlikely event that he gets to it first.

Incidentally, we should explore a bit more around that Gold tile so we can decide on the optimal settling location. If there's another food resource in reach then that could even tip the scales to make it worth settling before the Gems.

Lord Parkin said:

Well, maybe not for the dude/dudette with the Buddhist Shrine. They'll be teching like the wind, especially later on.

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That's for sure, he is likely hiding in the other continent or at least far away from us to reach easily.

Lord Parkin said:

Incidentally, we should explore a bit more around that Gold tile so we can decide on the optimal settling location. If there's another food resource in reach then that could even tip the scales to make it worth settling before the Gems.

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Unfortunately, we don't have enough turns to scout further east, the warrior has to go back now to secure the Gem site. The next warrior from Delhi could continue the scouting and help to determine the optimal site to claim the Gold.

Duckweed said:

Unfortunately, we don't have enough turns to scout further east, the warrior has to go back now to secure the Gem site. The next warrior from Delhi could continue the scouting and help to determine the optimal site to claim the Gold.

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Fair point. Okay, let's head back that way then.

Guess we're planning on settling so that both the Pig and Gems are in the first ring, since we're not going for Stonehenge?

Seems good, and another generous map. (despite the many Tokus)... we probably want to kill them before they reach Samurais

Lord Parkin said:

Guess we're planning on settling so that both the Pig and Gems are in the first ring, since we're not going for Stonehenge?

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It seems the best choice in terms of resources.
The city will have next to no production (1H from the pigs and 1H from the gems) but since we're spiritual we can alternate to slavery easily plus it's not going to need much infrastructure anyway (Granary + LH, what else?).

Moving on now.

Turnset 1 report :

T0-4000BC : the warrior makes his first exploratory move and the settler is moved on the Marble :


T1-3960BC : despite the risks of losing some seafood, we settle on the Marble.
Fun fact #1 : prebuilding the Mahabodhi allows the owner to pop his borders on T1, so we know he's 100% landlocked :


T6-3760BC : We meet our first neighbour : Tokugawa of Japan :

Mmmh, where are the unrestricted leaders we were told about?. Anyways, he came from the east, and he put all his EP on us right away, so he doesn't know anyone else.

About the land, not bad actually. The fish will be grabbed by another city, while working the crabs would require to settle on the bananas, so we'll manage.
Also, on this turn we discover a very desirable city site, as well as two possible islands (though the latter shows only high mountains for now) :


T11-3560BC : Worker 1 is out and starts mining the riverside hill 1E. Here is an overview of the land around us at this moment :


T14-3440BC : We found Hinduism and convert immediately, so the winning condition is now completed
Something quite interesting happened as well : coming from the north, we meet our second neighbour : Hammuragawa of Babylon !!

So there we have it, we'll be facing an army of fake buddhist grumpy Tokus (as well as the regular Toku) all game long. And of course, they will hate us all game long, so we can forget about open borders, trade routes, trades of all sorts, etc....

T18-3280BC : we pulled back our warrior East in order to scout the Deer area. And we found a good surprise :

Since we agreed on settling the gems first anyway, the warrior goes back towards the gems to protect the settler.

T24-3040BC : Several minor things :
- The 2nd border pop from Delhi reveals *more* high mountains on the southern island....

- The border pop also provided me with a glimpse of a bear being pushed back 1NE of the gems. Since we couldn't afford to meet him on flat land, I took a little detour and sent the warrior West then North.

- Look, we've made some good progress diplo-wise !!


T26-2960BC : The settler is out. Here's the overview of the situation :


End of turnset.

Remarks :
- The warrior is 1 turn "late" compared to what we expected but that's because of the bear, which as you can see is still hanging around. So we have to be careful on how we manage that.
- The log is completely uneventful so I didn't bother to paste it : No Judaism, no wonders, no civic switch from other AIs, nothing
- I focused EPs on Toku because of i/ the EPs already invested, ii/ Hammu started putting 10 EP/turn the moment we met him, so there was no point in trying to compete with that, iii/ he's closer in case we want to steal something
- I don't have a picture of the demo screen but you can see in the shots above that Agressive AIs is already in motion : the military build-up of our opponents is faster than usual, all AIs have between 6 and 11 times our power rating ....
- I think that's all for now....


Now, I still have some time to participate/play until the end of next week, so if that's okay with everyone, I'd be glad to play a few more turns before RL overwhelms me , since these 26 turns were pretty uneventful, to say the least...

Looks like there's a potential Fish-Gold city, although it'd require a border expansion.

Also, glad we didn't lose any seafood... we can still get the Crab by settling on the Banana if we wish (which isn't entirely a bad idea if we're limited in room early on).

Weird with the stack of peaks in the sea. That looks a little too deliberate to be a coincidence. Wonder what they're shielding?

Fine with me on all accounts.

The tiles the bear has moved on indicates no hidden resources are under those.

kossin said:

The tiles the bear has moved on indicates no hidden resources are under those.

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How do you figure that?

Speaking of the bear, let's hope he doesn't move in the wrong direction and/or get lucky. Would be a huge setback to lose the Warrior and have to delay the Settler (or send it elsewhere). Moving the Warrior onto the forest 1N is the safest bet, I guess.

EDIT: Also, I just noticed the flips between English and French text mid turn set. How did you manage that? Playing on two separate computers? Confusing...

Lord Parkin said:

EDIT: Also, I just noticed the flips between English and French text mid turn set. How did you manage that? Playing on two separate computers? Confusing...

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I'm not sure what you're talking about, but no, I'm always playing on the same computer, it's just that not everything is in French :
The Vanilla GUI is in French
Some but not all of the features of BUG/BUFFY have been translated in French
Everything that is "written" in the save file (i.e. logs, name of units, ...) is written in the language currently played in. So when you get your hands on the save, all the logs will be in French for the first 26 turns, but in English (probably) afterwards.

This can lead to two kind of confusions :
- The counter of units (in their name) is reset when you switch language.
So for instance here, the first worker will be called "Ouvrier rapide 1" in everybody's game. But the next one, assuming the turn is played on the English version, will be called "Fast Worker 1", not "Fast Worker 2".
It can be a trouble when the number of units of the same type increase and you try to write a PPP.
For instance, in SGOTM 14, there was a time when we had a Galleon 11, a Galion 11, and even a Galeone 11 (cause Snaaty was playing in German...). Try to make sense after that...
- The battle log in French is bugged, the attacker and defender are reversed, so it's hard to read it properly, in case you ever want to.


Wow, that 's a long answer for such a casual question....

@LP
About hidden resources: that's from code digging. Animals will not normally step on resources - the exception being when they want to attack a unit nearby who happens to be on one.
It's better documented in OSS's threads somewhere.

kossin said:

@LP
About hidden resources: that's from code digging. Animals will not normally step on resources - the exception being when they want to attack a unit nearby who happens to be on one.
It's better documented in OSS's threads somewhere.

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From looking at the code, I cannot confirm this. When patrolling, barbarians have a preference for owned plots and plots next to owned plots. Other AI have a preference for visible goodies and plots next to owned plots.

I believe that copper/horse should be close to handle the hostile environment.

@Bebekija
When you post the screenshot, especially the map, could you include information as much as you can, like the whole map (resize the display ratio) including the tech progress.

Lord Parkin said:

Looks like there's a potential Fish-Gold city, although it'd require a border expansion.

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We can't use Fish if we want to bulb Engineering, also we want to include Gold in the 1st ring to work on it as soon as possible to speed up the Oracle techs.