SGOTM 15 - Kakumeika

PPP looks good WastinTime!

Maybe The Great Wall can be built in our second city, so we can have some influence on GP generation, maybe getting the Great Spy as the second or third GP.

Sun Tzu Wu

bcool said:

What will the Great Spy do for us in a Religious Diplo victory game?

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That's the question that bothers me the most.
The fastest way to AP-win is making everybody as happy with us as needed ASAP and race to the finish line peacefully - wars will impede us.

I'll play in a couple hours.

Not much to report. Animal combat went well. Amundsen is in some mild danger. Lots of animals. I flagged them every turn, but didn't flag the new ones, or move anyone, or do anything on t29.

Here is your Session Turn Log from 3080 BC to 2840 BC:


Autolog:


The Save

Looks good WastinTime, well done.

Looking back at the F8 victories screen, I can see T18-19 Toku produced 4 culture in his capital (72 to 76). His culture on T29 is 120, so he's built something else recently - monument? Anyway, of the original 4pt, 2 come from palace and 1 from Buddhism, so that clearly indicates the existence of a 1-culture building. The enhanced EP output suggests that this is indeed a castle. Might the existence of AI castle(s) explain the early discrepancies with AI power we were noticing?

Looking at the map, there seems to be another mountain range on the far side of the northern coastline, which may serve to make AI contacts difficult. Settling the NW deer-gold site will get some good visibility, and a border pop or two from there could be magic for making AI contacts across the double wall. That may be an argument for completing a wonder there. There's also a wall on the land mass SW of Toku, but I can see no evidence of one on the land mass W of us.

I was surprised to see Toku's borders pop after ours. I noted it in the log

I had a look at the micro for the next turn set.

Eiffel can put one more turn on the flood plain farm, and then head to the gold, to mine it. The new city works the deer building a worker until the mine is up, and then the commerce boost will allow Hunting to finish in time for Eiffel to improve the deer. Continuing to work the gold mine even when the camp is available seems best while building the worker, as the 3 earlier worker turns would cost 24. Keeping the commerce gets Wheel+BW done in time to chop out TGW, if that's the plan.

Meanwhile, the capital works the flood plain T30-31, starting warrior T30 and SH T31 which maximises growth to size 3 without slowing SH (which completes with zero overflow). Starting SH T30 is not faster, and loses a hammer to round-off when the overflow out of SH loses the stone bonus.

Ideally, we'd then grow to size 4 and build a settler which would be ready to move T47, except that the hammers on the warrior are rotting by then. Since barb archers have also appeared by then in the test game, it seems wisest to me that we complete the warrior after SH, which delays the settler only one turn.

Completing TGW could pay for itself in not having to worry about barb archers in the T55-70 window, as well as border pops across the water. We'll know more about the latter when we settle the city.

Originally Posted by bcool said:

What will the Great Spy do for us in a Religious Diplo victory game?

Click to expand...

DanF5771 said:

That's the question that bothers me the most.

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Provide the Espionage points to switch each opponent's Civics to match their Favorite Civic, in case they use a more profitable Civic instead.

We can also switch select Civs to Hinduism. We lose only the one who becomes our RL DV opponent. We need this opponent to be universally unpopular, thus losing only their vote.

DanF5771 said:

The fastest way to AP-win is making everybody as happy with us as needed ASAP and race to the finish line peacefully - wars will impede us.

Click to expand...

Yes, but I'm not sure that will be possible in SGOTM-15. Ignoring our military could become a fatal mistake. Not using that military could be a final ranking mistake.

We don't yet know the lay of the land. Nor do we know that Optics will suffice to contact all opponents. Flight, Radio, etc. might be required instead. Or Optics may not even be required. We just don't know enough yet to decide intelligently; we can only guess what might be required.

On the other hand, I'm willing to play RL DV peacefully, but the shared war diplomatic bonus may be the diplomatic edge we need to win over allies who will vote for us. There aren't that many diplomatic bonuses that we can invoke very early in the game. The shared war diplomatic bonus can go quite high, depending on the AIs affinity for it. I believe we should consider war as a tool to win RL DV more convincingly. A war against an opponent that can't reach us can be a great advantage diplomatically.

Sharing our technologies will be a very limited option due to No Tech Brokering (including stolen technologies). Gandhi and Peter will provide +1 on receiving just five technologies and some like Elizabeth, Frederick, and many others require seven, but that may be very difficult to do.

The key to controlling RL DV is controlling TAP religion spread via spreading it to our friends early and widely, often via giving away a TAP Religion Missionary, and by spreading it to our enemies later and to sparely populated cities (ideally Pop 1 with minimal Hammers or Food) which we must do without giving away our Missionaries.

There is also the option of a Holy War which I don't believe we used as effectively as we could have in SGOTM-14.

Sun Tzu Wu

Nice work WastinTime. Thanks for being patient with the discussion.

Walter_Wolf ... waiting
mabraham ... waiting
WastinTime ... waiting
Kaitzilla ... UP NOW
Tachywaxon ... on deck
shulec ... in the hole
bcool ... waiting
Sun Tzu Wu ... waiting

Re: Great wall and great spy

There is no doubt that a great spy would have some benefits, but I don't think it is significantly more than another great person.

I like the plan
1st great person holy city Hindu building
2nd great person great prophet bulb theology
Oracle for Metal Casting.
3rd & 4th great person bulb to optics.

With that said the value of the hindu holy city building might not be that high as well. I think SH's benefits will help us more than the great wall will. So if we are still debating between which one to build I think the SH is the way to go. If we were going for a military victory I think the great wall would be very helpful.

bcool said:

Re: Great wall and great spy

There is no doubt that a great spy would have some benefits, but I don't think it is significantly more than another great person.

I like the plan
1st great person holy city Hindu building
2nd great person great prophet bulb theology
Oracle for Metal Casting.
3rd & 4th great person bulb to optics.

With that said the value of the hindu holy city building might not be that high as well. I think SH's benefits will help us more than the great wall will. So if we are still debating between which one to build I think the SH is the way to go. If we were going for a military victory I think the great wall would be very helpful.

Click to expand...

I tend to agree with the above. I'm happy to aim at RLVC pending further information.

It is possible for us to finished BW before the issue of finishing the TGW in the second city arises. If we have bronze then the anti-barb value of TGW is almost certainly lower than the fail gold value. I don't mind having the GSpy or not having the GSpy. We can make either work and we don't have enough information to make a provably correct decision.

We should consider bulbing with both GPriests instead of building the Holy Temple. If we avoid monarchy (leads to Divine Right bulb) and have meditation, we can bulb both Theology and CoL. I would recommend bulbing CoL only after Confucionism has been founded elsewhere, in hopes of that AI getting out of Buddhism.

Thanks for your explanations, Sun Tzu Wu! Gonna think some more about GSpy / war in RL DV ...

mabraham said:

Looking back at the F8 victories screen, I can see T18-19 Toku produced 4 culture in his capital (72 to 76). His culture on T29 is 120, so he's built something else recently - monument? Anyway, of the original 4pt, 2 come from palace and 1 from Buddhism, so that clearly indicates the existence of a 1-culture building. The enhanced EP output suggests that this is indeed a castle. Might the existence of AI castle(s) explain the early discrepancies with AI power we were noticing?

Click to expand...

The 1cpt-thing (=Castle?) has doubled its culture after 1000 years. Normal Castles don't increase power, only the Spanish Citadel adds 3000 soldiers.

re micro:
I'd like to point out, that in the IBT research is handled before production -> even with Masonry 1 turn left, the Stone will be available when production is added.

I can't test right now, but how about letting Bombay grow to size 2 while improving Gold->Deer, build Worker @ size 2, helped by chopping. I'd also like to finish the FP-farm in Delhi first.

Sun Tzu Wu said:

A Great Spy has 2 movement points per turn versus Spy with only one. Also, the Great Spy is invisible to enemy units, including enemy Spies. The Great Spy can't be caught crossing borders without Open Borders in effect.S So the Great Spy can be very useful exploring in dangerous areas though he has other more beneficial things he can do such as an Infiltration, settling in a city (3B 12E), construct Scotland Yard or even start a GA.

In SGOTM-14, our 1st Great Spy was quite useful exploring. It could be the same for SGOTM-15.

Sun Tzu Wu

Click to expand...

I like that possibility. Looking at the most recent unfogged map, we likely have blocus by those Tokus. We need to know more about the others and the GSpy may be one solution given its higher speed. Perhaps, Neilmeister really try hard to impede us to make contacts with others.
With the present galleys, triremes and normal spies, it doesn't look good for farther explorations.

mabraham said:

starting warrior T30 and SH T31 which maximises growth to size 3 without slowing SH (which completes with zero overflow). Starting SH T30 is not faster, and loses a hammer to round-off when the overflow out of SH loses the stone bonus.

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I don't think you can lose a hammer this way, but the Warrior hammers will rot.
I'd rather have overflow into the next settler. Please explain if I'm wrong.

mabraham said:

The new city works the deer building a worker until the mine is up

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My instincts tell me to build TGW or a Warrior for 3 turns so city2 can gain food while building the gold mine. This minimizes the turns we spend without working the gold.

Similarly, when the deer is ready, I would switch back to TGW/Warrior to grow to size 2 before completing the worker.

I've not checked if this messes up the timing with the worker arrival, etc. I will test.

T29 test game. New land is not updated, but units and empire stuff are correct.

Thanks for updating the test game mabraham, and I sent a private message to Kaitzilla. If we don't hear from him soon, the turnset will pass to Tachy.

WastinTime said:

I don't think you can lose a hammer this way, but the Warrior hammers will rot.
I'd rather have overflow into the next settler. Please explain if I'm wrong.

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When calculating overflow, the multipliers that applied to the old thing get removed, and later the new multiplier gets used for the new thing. So if you put a turn of an odd number of hammers on a wonder without the resource, then acquire the resource so that all future hammers go on in even increments, the amount of multiplied overflow that goes out is odd. Then the multiplier gets removed, which loses a hammer in rounding. (I don't recall what happens if the next build has the same multiplier.) I just tested this in the game, and it is indeed how it works.

However, this is academic for us and Stonehenge, as DanF pointed out:

DanF5771 said:

re micro:
I'd like to point out, that in the IBT research is handled before production -> even with Masonry 1 turn left, the Stone will be available when production is added.

Click to expand...

Thanks!

That said, if we work both food tiles T30-1 to accelerate growth to size 3 and start SH T30, we put 3 base hammers on the wonder T30, and at the end we have 5 base hammers overflow, so that "extra" turn does not speed up the wonder. If we are committed to building a warrior next (and I don't see how it can be safe not to - Amundsen might die at any moment, a barb warrior might(?) invade by the time we finish SH, and two warriors to escort a settler to the gold-corn-sheep site are much more effective than one) then we may as well put T30 on the warrior. The hammers won't decay over the SH build, and if the world ends and we need a new warrior fast, we've already got 3 hammers on it. This gives us the option of working all three mines to finish that warrior in one turn.

DanF5771 said:

I can't test right now, but how about letting Bombay grow to size 2 while improving Gold->Deer, build Worker @ size 2, helped by chopping. I'd also like to finish the FP-farm in Delhi first.

Click to expand...

WastinTime said:

My instincts tell me to build TGW or a Warrior for 3 turns so city2 can gain food while building the gold mine. This minimizes the turns we spend without working the gold.

Similarly, when the deer is ready, I would switch back to TGW/Warrior to grow to size 2 before completing the worker.

I've not checked if this messes up the timing with the worker arrival, etc. I will test.

Click to expand...

Yeah I tried this out and chopping the delayed worker in the second city allows for an earlier chop of TGW, if we go that way. Tech Masonry-Hunting-BW-Wheel. Then workers have to rush over to the other gold site to get connectivity and gold mine up before it is marble quarry time.

Kaitzilla has notified me by private message that he is passing this turn set, so...

Walter_Wolf ... waiting
mabraham ... waiting
WastinTime ... waiting
Kaitzilla ... passing
Tachywaxon ... UP NOW
shulec ... on deck
bcool ... in the hole
Sun Tzu Wu ... waiting