SGOTM 16 - U'nu'sual S'us'pec'ts

With my paranoia radar switched on, I can't help but think that the horses to the north were put there deliberately, just in case a barb city popped in our Production site.

We have to keep an eye on Brennus, and the second chariot produced could/should have a quick scout of his territory, so we can keep an eye out for metals.

Obviously the chariot should not delay getting to the barb city with the others, but it should be able to have a few turns to explore Brennus' territory

The peace loving French people would never dream of starting wars.

neilmeister said:

With my paranoia radar switched on, I can't help but think that the horses to the north were put there deliberately, just in case a barb city popped in our Production site.

We have to keep an eye on Brennus, and the second chariot produced could/should have a quick scout of his territory, so we can keep an eye out for metals.

Obviously the chariot should not delay getting to the barb city with the others, but it should be able to have a few turns to explore Brennus' territory

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Couldn't we send Woody 2 through Brennus' territory? (After we get OB)

Yes, its poilitically harder to surrender if you started the war.

My in-laws are all french, they say all Australians are criminals...... so please don't get offended anyone

Yep, Woodie 2 could do that. Where is he now?

edit: thats a great idea actually. Woodie 2 could wander around the jungle, expolring Brennus and sort-of fogbusting while Chariot 1 moves to the west of the barb city.
It would be ideal if it was there to support the 'Sheep Island' city, just in case barbs are wandering around.

I am half-French, half-German. I am very conflicted.

Woody is 2 tiles NW of Brennus' border:

1) Woody two is somewhere in the jungle northwest of Celtia, but he could certainly come back towards Brennus and probably arrive just as writing is in. Should I do this? Do we want to prioritize exploring Brennus or exploring west of both of us.

2) Neil, I simply switched some of the cottages with the roads. We were a little cottage light at the beginning so wanted to make sure we were working un-cottaged flood plains for as few turns as possible.

3) I'm going to post a much more detailed micro sheet as soon as I get a chance. Hopefully sometime tomorrow (or possibly later tonight depending on how my current work goes).

4) We sound agreed on staying the course and hoping Brennus and Ramesses go at each other. I'll plan to do that.

5) I'm going to finish writing soon. At that point I will turn off the slider until we have enough gold to finish Alphabet in one go. Hopefully Ramesses gets it for us.

6) Neil, can you give me an example of the best way to whip chariots? At 30 hammers each, I'm not quite sure how to go about doing that? One-pop whip at the very end for max overflow? Or can I just kind of whip whenever? A turn by turn mock up of what you're looking for in Paris would be helpful.

7) The road to Brennus will come as soon as I finish the mine in clams. Alternatively we could scrap the mine, meaning Clams is useless for longer, but we'd get the trade routes sooner. I say go straight for the road, now that I think about it.

8) We should start talking about what to do if Brennus asks us to declare on Ramesses.

I'll come up with more questions later I'm sure. Keep up the good analysis team. This is a ton of fun!

Benginal said:

1) Woody two is somewhere in the jungle northwest of Celtia, but he could certainly come back towards Brennus and probably arrive just as writing is in. Should I do this? Do we want to prioritize exploring Brennus or exploring west of both of us.

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Tough call, but yes, I would rather know if Brennus has metal than explore with the warrior.

I say the Chariot should go here to support the galley/settler/worker:
which gives us a little exploring. Depending on how early he gets there before the galley, there is scope for a little more exploration west.

2) Neil, I simply switched some of the cottages with the roads. We were a little cottage light at the beginning so wanted to make sure we were working un-cottaged flood plains for as few turns as possible.

Click to expand...

No problems at all, it wasn't decided or suggested anywhere we road, its just what I did because I was focuusing on getting the settler to Production as soon as possible. Cottaging was just as valid.

3) I'm going to post a much more detailed micro sheet as soon as I get a chance. Hopefully sometime tomorrow (or possibly later tonight depending on how my current work goes).

4) We sound agreed on staying the course and hoping Brennus and Ramesses go at each other. I'll plan to do that.

5) I'm going to finish writing soon. At that point I will turn off the slider until we have enough gold to finish Alphabet in one go. Hopefully Ramesses gets it for us.

6) Neil, can you give me an example of the best way to whip chariots? At 30 hammers each, I'm not quite sure how to go about doing that? One-pop whip at the very end for max overflow? Or can I just kind of whip whenever? A turn by turn mock up of what you're looking for in Paris would be helpful.

Click to expand...

You are right, I was doing a 1 pop whips, the turn before it finishes for decent overflow. This means the next Chariot is produced in 1 turn. 2-3 turns later you can repeat the trick. Obviously Paris is a bit unhappy after this, but I don't think that is a problem. We get 4 chariots in 6 turns I think. (from the first whip that is). My test tab of the spreadsheet has all most of the details. I will try to expand on it here.... in a bit.

7) The road to Brennus will come as soon as I finish the mine in clams. Alternatively we could scrap the mine, meaning Clams is useless for longer, but we'd get the trade routes sooner. I say go straight for the road, now that I think about it.

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Agreed, seeing Brennus that close, the road is the priority. But we can be clever about using 2 workers so we get both the mine and road quickly.

8) We should start talking about what to do if Brennus asks us to declare on Ramesses.

I'll come up with more questions later I'm sure. Keep up the good analysis team. This is a ton of fun!

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We have to stay out of any war. Regardless of offending anyone for now. Ramesses has Copper.

I think that only matters if Ramesses attacks us, which seems unlikely.

If Brennus is in a war with Ramesses (he will not ask us otherwise) then we obviously don't have to worry about Brennus. He's already at war.

So I would rather offend someone already at war, who we are very likely to share a religion with to get +6 relations, than someone with Axes & Spears.

Getting interesting.

Benginal said:

1) Woody two is somewhere in the jungle northwest of Celtia, but he could certainly come back towards Brennus and probably arrive just as writing is in. Should I do this? Do we want to prioritize exploring Brennus or exploring west of both of us.

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yes explore brennus and find his stack. suspect he is plotting against Ramses, but if you see a stack on northern border we need to prepare. might as well find ramses while we are at it.

Benginal said:

4) We sound agreed on staying the course and hoping Brennus and Ramesses go at each other. I'll plan to do that.

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yes - but if we see a stack facing us. need to change plans.

Benginal said:

5) I'm going to finish writing soon. At that point I will turn off the slider until we have enough gold to finish Alphabet in one go. Hopefully Ramesses gets it for us.

Click to expand...

better would be brennus, but that is too much to hope for. would prefer not to get negative diplo points with brennus for trading with rams.

Benginal said:

8) We should start talking about what to do if Brennus asks us to declare on Ramesses.

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great question. getting diplo points for shared war is nice, but cuts off trading opportunities. so i agree, no war is probably best for us now. and we want trade routes.

@Neil: Ah yes, I see the Paris micro. I just wanted to verify we were okay with 1-pop whips. I think it's best in this case. Speed is of the essence.

I'll get some micro up for discussion soon.

SteelHorse said:

Getting interesting.
yes explore brennus and find his stack. suspect he is plotting against Ramses, but if you see a stack on northern border we need to prepare. might as well find ramses while we are at it.

yes - but if we see a stack facing us. need to change plans.

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Noooooooo, please no stacks, please be nice to us Brennus and DoW Ramesses right now.

Can't get to the micro easily through my corporate firewall, its an outrage really, they want me to work!

Road to Brennus
Worker 1: road (2t), after Worker3 road is manually finished move 2 SW (1t), road (2t), move 2 NE and mine (3t).
Worker 3: move SW (1t), road (2t), move NE to roaded hill mine & cancel (1t), after Worker1 manually finishes road move 3 SW (1t), road (2t).

So, in 7 turns we finish the road, with the mine 3/4 finished. It relies on you manually finishing roads so that the other worker can use them the same turn.

If we road with both workers, then move SW and repeat, it also takes 7 turns but the mine isn't started yet.

neilmeister said:

Agreed, seeing Brennus that close, the road is the priority. But we can be clever about using 2 workers so we get both the mine and road quickly.

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Yes, road is priority. But we also want mines (or roads) on the clam hills asap - before jungle spreads. (hopefully there is a resource there, but won't be on both of them)

The northen GH is safe, as the workers are there currently, and 1 will be roading immediately on the hill.

The southern hill must have a resource. In my test games I have had to worldbuild the jungle away several times.

As regards Brennus on the Whe Horn, I think we have to keep with the plan. Diverting production towards a win in the game for army will lose us the SGOTM even if he declares on us.

As the saying goes, might as well be hung for the sheep as for the lamb.

On another matter, in the unlikely event that the game comes around to me on the weekend (I'm 4 1/2 sets away so should be all right), please skip. I won't be available Saturday or Sunday, due to a prior engagement, viz the County Limerick Intermediate Football Final, Pallasgreen (me) vs Claughan, Bruff, 4p.m. Saturday 13th October (in case anyone's in the neighbourhood).

Either way I'll be drinking all weekend.

The spreadsheet has been updated to show what's actually already happened. I'm working on it now.

Attached is the test game I'm using

The tech is off, as is a lot of stuff a little bit. But it's close enough for trying to optimize the build order

Edit: NOPE. Lemme try that again.

Edit 2: Alright. The city builds/improvements and workers in the attached test game are exactly as they are in the real game.

Hey guys, here's some micro and some questions:



1) Is there any reason we aren't whipping the the Settler in Paris and the galley in Production? They're at 4 and 5 pop and both have unhappy faces. I think we should 2-pop whip the settler in Paris ASAP. Production finishes the galley too fast. So I think we should have it, as soon as it's able to 2-pop whip the galley, switch to building a settler using the sheep which is a better tile than the mine. I think we get to the island faster, which is better both for faster trade routes and for barb purposes. This will also allow us to start on the chariots in Paris faster.

Also, I haven't verified specifically, but we should have enough of the road done that the settler can make it from Paris to the galley 1W of production in 3 turns. He can be joined by worker 2 or the chariot from Paris. It sounds like you guys want to land the settler and the worker together as opposed to the settler and the chariot. Is that right? If we have the workboat there and ready to build the fishnet we won't need a worker since the city can work the fish for a few turns. That will give us time to make a second shipment. Or we could even have the new city build a worker, since it's first tile will be fish, which is fantastic for building workers.

2) Nice worker micro Neil on the road. I tried that out and it works fantastically!

3) I think I've figured out the best road from east to west in terms of minimizing worker turns. The road goes from 1NW of Paris to 1W of commerce. It then zigs up north going to 2S of Production and then 1SE of Production. This is also a good road since we're going to want to set up our chariot army 1 NE of the wine tile where the road will go. They can then go 1S2W to the forest hill and then take the barb city the next turn.

4) I'm worried about working the plains hill mines in GP farm. I forgot about the creative bonus we get when whipping the library, so I think those hammers are wasted. We ought to be able to spend some time on the GL hill or on the coast.

5) I have yet to spend time making sure of what else has to be done, but that's easier in game. We're going to want the chariot nearby in case we have island problems. We're going to want woody ready to explore Celtia. Should we bring the northwest exploring workboat back to build the fish net for the new city or have it keep exploring?

Sorry this turnset is taking so long, but I've got a feeling it could be a pretty crucial one and I'm trying hard not to mess up.

The idea is that the galley finishes enough before the settler that it can send a chariot over to scout and fogbust, return, and then take the settler/worker team.

Benginal said:

Should we bring the northwest exploring workboat back to build the fish net for the new city or have it keep exploring?

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Keep exploring!

Build another workboat for the new city.