SGOTM 21 - Plastic Ducks

Duckweed said:

I know that bulbing Math is a big waste of a GS, however, with Phi trait, we are able to produce enough GSs. The difference of Oracle from GLH was already proven in SGOTM14 by PD and OSS, around 10 turns to learn Astro+Eng.

Click to expand...

You are saying that it would be better to get Oracle -> Currency if we have to choose between that and building the GLH. What about building the GLH and Oracle -> CoL, maybe we could do both? There are many visible gem resources on the map that could help with that.

The map makers' judgement won't be dramatically wrong, so usually the #1 number tasks are likely all we need to know.

Click to expand...

Assuming that those tasks would still be available when we reach Astronomy...

Yamps said:

You are saying that it would be better to get Oracle -> Currency if we have to choose between that and building the GLH. What about building the GLH and Oracle -> CoL, maybe we could do both? There are many visible gem resources on the map that could help with that.

Click to expand...

As I proposed in post #24, the critical question is that whether we need to go through tech tree deeply after Astronomy+Engineering. If not then investing hammers on GLH would be totally a waste. We all know what's the fastest way to Astro. The critical part is GP production which relies on multiple mature GP farms in time. GLH=2 early GP farms plus some extra techs to detour.

In the worst case, the game turns out to be a beaker race. How much GLH could offer before we could capture it with Galleons + trebs. Assume T60 GLH and 10 cities around T110, GLH could offer 2 trade routes * 1~2C * 6 average cities * 50 turns = 600~1200 C. Are those gain better than 200H plus 2 earlier cities plus earlier start of war to take cities from AIs? Moreover, if the three tasks that we know could be completed in similar time, we could also start to farm workers or even take cities from William.


OTOH, Oracle is a wonder which is useless to capture. Look at the history of SGOTMs, at least for our team, we have never missed Oracle whenever it's available to build since it's always a very good wonder to pursue, while GLH is very situational. we totally skip it in SGOTM14, 15, and built it very late in SGOTM17.

Ok, I carefully opened our starting save and took some screenshots.

Turn 0, Real Game Screenshots!



Honestly nothing stands out too much.

We know Willem and have +3 relations already.
For some reason our Wheat appears that it will give us +6 like a Corn.
And there are some more grass hills west of the Cow.
Doshin already mentioned the strange coastal tile 3S2W of our Settler.

Map has 1133 land tiles.
Not sure we can make any conclusions about the number of water tiles, but the mapmaker said it is "like a continents map".
Map Guide - http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/reference/map_scripts_guide.php#continents
No religions, corps, or wonders built that I can see.
Worker, Settler, and Scout all have 2
Start with Fishing and Hunting just like we thought.

Didn't try the "health bar trick" yet to see if the map has any strong barbarian units.

Since we must have +1 relations or higher with Willem to buy information from him, we will not be able to massively farm workers from him if he is our neighbor.
Maybe 1 or even 2 DOW, but that is all.

Hey Doshin

~~~

I guess not building GLH ourselves is certainly a good option considering we might be able to speed up Astronomy a bit this way and offset the commerce difference. Pretty hard to call right now... but really, I'm against (at the moment) putting all of our eggs into the same basket and gambling that Astronomy+Engineering is all we need.

@Duckweed

Ok, nice analysis. There's also a question between Oracle -> CoL and Oracle -> Currency. The later would require spending one GS for Math and we'd also have to build a library to hire 2GS. That would be an expansion cost that delays another GP farm setup since we'd not use all food for settler production. Therefore, going for CoL instead should give us the required GP for Astronomy earlier. We could research Math->Currency manually and get it some 10 turns later than in the Oracle->Currency option. That's not a big difference, compared to expansion and great people costs.

Random thoughts to join speculations:

Luckily, we have some scouting turns researching Agriculture before we commit to anything. We also have a Scout so we'll know a lot of info by then.

The more the Pangaeaish map is. the less is GLH worth it, but it is continents-like map so I guess it is very probably worth it. On Immortal, GLH is very late if AI capital is not coastal since AI likes to build a bit of infra and Moai first. Late GLH (1000BC) is very good since it doesn't interfere with expansion in a bad way. Fail gold can be used to buy info.

We'll see how many AIs start by water from demos and plan our GLH, if we go that way, accordingly.

Early game research cannot be sped up later. Overly peacemongering Kakumeika always managed to stay in the tech race with us till the very end, usually with a decent head start, but just failed to capitalize on that and I wouldn't say because of high research orientation but simply because of lack of agression. Our 3 times bigger empires in the end didn't manage to close the gap because of 1T per tech limit and overall saturation, which we will come to if this is indeed deep in the tech tree game as stated by mapmakers.

We need something like 5 GSs for Astro+Engineering, right? You can get those without Caste if Marble is near. With all those gems, we might even get away with 4GSs. We need Astro only when we can use it. For contact, we need optics.

Maybe we don't need to hinder our production with Caste.
Maybe even without Marble since we are creative and our Libraries are super fast. I managed to get 4 GSs and 1GA (Music) from a crappy start with 225BC GLib (late, little effect), non-creative, non-PHI leader by 1AD in an unmicroed game yesterday.

Those gems actually make GLH less atractive since we'll have good research pace without GLH. But, if the land is abundant, we can peacefully settle crazy amount of cities with GLH.
Without 8 good peaceful cities, I wouldn't really go for it.

Astro + GLH is my favorite moment in the game, commerce explosion, and I am extremely biased towards that option.

Maybe mapmakers will finally be successful at enforcing Paratroopers, since that was a plan some time ago but cancel OB teleportation came around that, maybe we don't want to waste our gold on questions, maybe we want 100% slider.

Oracle --> MC, Colossus.
A lot of commerce if cities are coastal. Forge with, at least gems, is really nice with food rich capital and 2 good food cities.
MC is on our way to Astro.

Colossus always pays its debts with copper, even if going for Astro, especially if Oracled.
Again, with those BW available gems, we can actually self-tech Currency.

Oracle --> Currnecy, I still don't get it. I'd rather kill some workers. Production is not a problem with high food start.

If happy poor, Oracle --> Monarchy is m favorite.


So many paths and so little info. How about really discussing that scout?

shakabrade said:

We need something like 5 GSs for Astro+Engineering, right? You can get those without Caste if Marble is near. With all those gems, we might even get away with 4GSs. We need Astro only when we can use it. For contact, we need optics.

Maybe we don't need to hinder our production with Caste.
Maybe even without Marble since we are creative and our Libraries are super fast. I managed to get 4 GSs and 1GA (Music) from a crappy start with 225BC GLib (late, little effect), non-creative, non-PHI leader by 1AD in an unmicroed game yesterday.

Click to expand...

With a Philosophical leader, it should be faster to generate our great people from multiple cities than from one Marble based NE city. Also, I'd expect some combination of GM trade routes and GS bulbing to be the fastest approach, rather than using pure GS.

Oracle --> MC, Colossus.
A lot of commerce if cities are coastal. Forge with, at least gems, is really nice with food rich capital and 2 good food cities.
MC is on our way to Astro.

Colossus always pays its debts with copper, even if going for Astro, especially if Oracled.
Again, with those BW available gems, we can actually self-tech Currency.

Click to expand...

For now, I'm inclined to think Oracle -> CoL is better. Regarding the Colossus, it wouldn't yield that much till Astronomy if we won't work the coast due to whipping for production. On the other hand, if we'll want research, then GPP would be better than coast as well.

If happy poor, Oracle --> Monarchy is m favorite.

Click to expand...

Monarchy is not that attractive since the AI is always willing to trade it to us and other AI without any protection.

So many paths and so little info. How about really discussing that scout?

Click to expand...

Let's move the scout 1N,1NW and then along the coast to check those northern gems, like you said earlier. I vote for the active player to make those moves to get us going: worker 2S and scout to the north.

I might have overlooked that we are PHI...
:facepalm:

Still, the map should have a say in our plans. So state your preferences. Yamps and I would check the gems first.

I am doing some work for work and can't be active.
I can be active after 23.01. and, also, it seems that I have managed to nerf my graphics card just enough to avoid bsod from overheating. That means that I can take sets in the mid and maybe even late game if graphics card doesn't die on me.

Kaitzilla said:

Ok, I carefully opened our starting save and took some screenshots.
[...]
Honestly nothing stands out too much.

We know Willem and have +3 relations already.
For some reason our Wheat appears that it will give us +6 like a Corn.
And there are some more grass hills west of the Cow.
Doshin already mentioned the strange coastal tile 3S2W of our Settler.

Map has 1133 land tiles.
Not sure we can make any conclusions about the number of water tiles, but the mapmaker said it is "like a continents map".
Map Guide - http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/reference/map_scripts_guide.php#continents
No religions, corps, or wonders built that I can see.
Worker, Settler, and Scout all have 2
Start with Fishing and Hunting just like we thought.

Didn't try the "health bar trick" yet to see if the map has any strong barbarian units.

Since we must have +1 relations or higher with Willem to buy information from him, we will not be able to massively farm workers from him if he is our neighbor.
Maybe 1 or even 2 DOW, but that is all.

Click to expand...

Thanks for this.

Only 26% land tiles so we're not expecting Pangea-like land... possibly a lot of Ice though.

I looked around a bit with Field of View and screen rotation... looks like there are mountains in the NW. We might not have that much room over there.

~~~

We most certainly will want a few GM trade missions, no Engineering bulb is possible.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13633650&postcount=30

kossin said:

I guess not building GLH ourselves is certainly a good option considering we might be able to speed up Astronomy a bit this way and offset the commerce difference. Pretty hard to call right now... but really, I'm against (at the moment) putting all of our eggs into the same basket and gambling that Astronomy+Engineering is all we need.

Click to expand...

Again, let's back to the primary question: What's the probability of going deeply into the tech tree? Since it all depends on designers' mind, let's assume 50%. Therefore 50% chance, focusing on fastest Astronomy bulb gives us ~10 turns, the other way let us lose 10 turns and no way to rescue. Another 50%, it's a beaker race, my 1st rescue plan is Oracling Currency, with 225g (that's at most 1~2 turns delay to Astro), we can stop the plan immediately. Moreover, as I explained in post#42, the loss of GLH could be compensated by multiple ways.

There's no reason we should put all eggs on another basket with 50% since it slows down 10 turns with no way to correct in the middle.

Yamps said:

@Duckweed

Ok, nice analysis. There's also a question between Oracle -> CoL and Oracle -> Currency. The later would require spending one GS for Math and we'd also have to build a library to hire 2GS. That would be an expansion cost that delays another GP farm setup since we'd not use all food for settler production. Therefore, going for CoL instead should give us the required GP for Astronomy earlier. We could research Math->Currency manually and get it some 10 turns later than in the Oracle->Currency option. That's not a big difference, compared to expansion and great people costs.

Click to expand...

1st, as I said before, we are Phi, so we are able to produce enough GSs, we produced 8 GPs in SGOTM14 before T105. If we could, why do we need to save GS?

2nd, bulbing math is not that bad as you have thought, it also saves us hammers on Wonders and faster granaries. We learned a lesson in SGOTM19 of lacking Math.

3rd, CoL is unnecessary before all the GP farms are ready, we have plenty of time to researched it manually, while the gain from Currency is instant, it's at least half of GLH.

To conclude, your main concern is a GS, which is nothing when we could produce enough, while losing the bonus from Math and Currency can not be neglected.

@shakabrade
Our victory has been always grand strategy oriented. Everything serves for the key point -- in this game Astronomy for movement and Engineering for conquering. Better empire, better research potential are nonsense when the game does not require them. For instance, PR's researching Rifling in SGOTM20 and players researching MT in many other SGOTMs.

Therefore the key problem is -- read my reply to kossin in the 1st paragraph.

Edit: Since there are many GLH fans this time, I'd like to remind you again, please read my post #42 carefully, the GLH can at most offer you half of Astronomy with the cost of very important 200 early hammers.

BTW, I was undecided of the plan in the beginning, but now I start to convince myself since I generally consider myself a conservative player.

Doshin said:

Checking in, albeit a little late.

Initial thoughts:

• The tile 3S1W of our Settler has no reason to provide 2 . Hence, this is either adjacent to another island or is a leftover edit/mapmaker mistake.
  
  This is likely to be a left over edit, might be intentional like SGOTM17.
  
• We should scout 2S with the Worker to clarify the above.
  
  
• With our current map info, I'd favor settling 2E of the current location. Pericles' Creative trait means relatively swift access to the Deer. This coastal location is also very strong, since a Galley and two Workboats can be built and access the island almost immediately. This will be our 4th or 5th city, I think, and I can see OF from a Settler build being used to build our early navy.
  
  
• I prefer to have the capital fuel early expansion, hence the Gems can be left for later cities. In any case, the timing of TW + Mining + BW needs to be carefully considered, especially if we are also targeting early wonders.

Click to expand...

Basically I agree with above for opening.

Who is going to take the first set? I might have a movement late this month or next month, other time should be fine, but might not have very abundant time.

I agree with moving the Worker 2S to be our first move.

Settler 2E if nothing is found also seems best to me.
+10 surplus at Population 3 is pretty strong (without Lighthouse), and it will have a pair of hills and 4 riverside grasslands.

I will be out of town on vacation January 25th to February 5th, so I'd be happy to play the 1st or 2nd turnset if no one else wants to.


Shall I move our Worker 2S, place a couple REAL GAME signs, then upload?
I'll do it once I have 2 green lights




I don't have a good opinion on which direction to send the Scout.
We get (x,y) coordinates once we settle our 1st city right? (Domestic Advisor Screen sub-menu)

There is a nice river north of those gems.
Or the coastline west of cows might be a good direction.
Animals start appearing around turn 5 right?

Willem should pop borders of his capital on turn 3 since he is also Creative, so zooming out and checking the overlay should give an extra hint where he is.

Kaitzilla said:

I agree with moving the Worker 2S to be our first move.

Settler 2E if nothing is found also seems best to me.
+10 surplus at Population 3 is pretty strong (without Lighthouse), and it will have a pair of hills and 4 riverside grasslands.

I will be out of town on vacation January 25th to February 5th, so I'd be happy to play the 1st or 2nd turnset if no one else wants to.


Shall I move our Worker 2S, place a couple REAL GAME signs, then upload?

Spoiler :

Click to expand...

Yes, please. Green Light!

We don't need to upload so often, especially in the opening. If nothing special, you could upload when you are ready to hand over.

@Duckweed

I understand what you want to say.
Your analysis, which is well elaborated is still strongly related to this part:

Since it all depends on designers' mind, let's assume 50%.

Click to expand...

Which is your gut feeling.

It could, as well, be 15%. I think this one is going to Paratroopers/Destroyers or something like that, which is also a gut feeling based on mapmaker's words. What we always manage is outsmarting the mapmakers and that also has its chance which would add to your estimation. But mapmakers learn from their mistakes too. Chance that they'll finally be successful at pinning us down is higher than ever. So, as you see, I am more conservative.

26% of land mass makes me think that direction to ladies Willem has to offer could be literally directions through the ice maze. Anyway, I am not married to GLH. But with this little amount of land, there's a high probability we won't need too many settlers so those 200 won't matter as much, we'll either build wonders, or troops.

If mapmakers were truly evil, our first and only land target is Willem and we'll need to ask questions first and kill him later beacuse of +1 relations and willingness to talk at all. That favors Oracle -->Currency. That also prolongues the game.

One more thing: maybe, and please don't hit me, maybe military VC isn't optimal on this map?

shakabrade said:

One more thing: maybe, and please don't hit me, maybe military VC isn't optimal on this map?

Click to expand...

shakabrade said:

@Duckweed

I understand what you want to say.
Your analysis, which is well elaborated is still strongly related to this part:



Which is your gut feeling.

It could, as well, be 15%. I think this one is going to Paratroopers/Destroyers or something like that, which is also a gut feeling based on mapmaker's words. What we always manage is outsmarting the mapmakers and that also has its chance which would add to your estimation. But mapmakers learn from their mistakes too. Chance that they'll finally be successful at pinning us down is higher than ever. So, as you see, I am more conservative.

26% of land mass makes me think that direction to ladies Willem has to offer could be literally directions through the ice maze. Anyway, I am not married to GLH. But with this little amount of land, there's a high probability we won't need too many settlers so those 200 won't matter as much, we'll either build wonders, or troops.

If mapmakers were truly evil, our first and only land target is Willem and we'll need to ask questions first and kill him later beacuse of +1 relations and willingness to talk at all. That favors Oracle -->Currency. That also prolongues the game.

One more thing: maybe, and please don't hit me, maybe military VC isn't optimal on this map?

Click to expand...

You have not grasped the main point that I want to express

The GLH is NOT a critical wonder in this game even it's a beaker race since its gain can be compensated by early capturing. Therefore, going for GLH and delaying Astronomy is a more gambling approach. (Thanks for all those discussions, I become more clear.

It's too early to discuss the VC before we know the tasks, either AP or military. One thing I believe is that the tasks won't be easier than AP since AP is allowed. No matter what design, military success is always the key to win as it gives you more cities which is the foundation of any other actions.

BSPollux said:

Spoiler :

I didn't expect that! Do you consider being... peaceful?

Click to expand...

Only if that's at least 10T better since we are a happy mix of warmongers, so no mix at all. Except Yamps, who is, I have a feeling, more into Diplomatic, but that kind of Diplomatic when you kill people and make them vote for you.

Kaitzilla said:

I don't have a good opinion on which direction to send the Scout.
We get (x,y) coordinates once we settle our 1st city right? (Domestic Advisor Screen sub-menu)

There is a nice river north of those gems.
Or the coastline west of cows might be a good direction.
Animals start appearing around turn 5 right?

Willem should pop borders of his capital on turn 3 since he is also Creative, so zooming out and checking the overlay should give an extra hint where he is.

Click to expand...

We can't steal the worker, so there's no urgency of locating William. The major task of the scout is purely scouting along the coast, either westbound or northbound is fine.

Duckweed said:

You have not grasped the main point that I want to express

The GLH is NOT a critical wonder in this game even it's a beaker race since its gain can be compensated by early capturing. Therefore, going for GLH and delaying Astronomy is a more gambling approach. (Thanks for all those discussions, I become more clear.

Click to expand...

I never considered it a critical wonder. This isn't supposed to be an Archipelago map. The earlier the GLH, the more opportunity cost from delayed great people, which is the main opportunity cost when going for early Astro. I don't want super-safe 2000BC GLH. Although, GLH adds 2GPP, which is actually on track with our goals but we can keep ignoring that cause we probably don't want our capital to outrun other cities with GPP.

If we can get it later, as I mentioned around 1000BC when we have other cities to produce settlers and workers, that is still losing couple of turns from Astro, but is adding a lot in case of a long game. So, Duckweed, 50% or 15%, that's what defines the date of our GLH. If its merit is comparable to early Astro only at 500BC, then we have probably lost it and don't need to try and go for it. If it is 1000BC, we can make an attempt.