SGOTM 22 - Anti-TSR

I see what you mean. Hm...without Fish, Darius becomes a lightning rod for Raging Barbs. That leads back to wanting a worker for the farms for quick growth to pop8. Okay, like Pollina, I'm seeing a need to get a clearer picture of the whole timeline here.

In general, though, I think we're making great progress. This seemed untenable last night. Now it seems like it's all coming together.

WastinTime said:

I couldn't find the details on how to document settling. Just screens? Or upload saves b4 and after? Or both?

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I don't think he specified any. Weird. Reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllllllyyyyyyyyyyyy wweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrrrrdddddddd.

The one thing that immediately pops out in my mind is that there is a sizable time period between settling Gems and re-capturing it. I've been thinking all along that we ROme meets the requirements for the 4th city in that period. HC will be cranking pretty quickly.

Sizeable time? I thought u whittled it down to 5t?

WastinTime said:

Sizeable time? I thought u whittled it down to 5t?

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After we gift it, the point being we minimize his chances of building archers.

T1 Settler built
T6 settled, worker camping
T11 move wkr to gems
T12 gift gems+worker+warrior
T16 DoW, steal worker
T17 Re-capture Gems.
~~~
T21 gems mined
T23 pop2, working deer and gems mine

So we re-capture 17t after completing the settler build.

Compare with us teching BW:
T1 Settler built
T6 settled, worker camping
T10 deer camped
T11 move to gems
T13 pop2
T19 pop3
T20 gems mined

We lose 3t of working the gems mine. Not bad.

.

Yeah, but in the BW example, Gems City is at pop 3 and humming away... plus we have had many more turns into a granary. In the gift and recapture plan, we have a 1 pop city with no hammers.

What worries me is we'll be at 2 cities at T60 while all of this develops. Is it worth it?

Would it be better to settle gems and keep it? Or settle some other city instead?

Building an early wonder is a sacrifice to REX. Can we afford to sacrifice it even more by giving away/delaying cities 3 and 4?

Just playing devil's advocate...

My notion is to develop both Fish and Gems at the same time, without having 4 cities. Two for the price of one. Gems is junk anyway, after pop2. Junk in her trunk. It's soul purpose is gems commerce and happiness.

Ok, so if the city is that bad, do we have a better use for that settler instead.... or those hammers? It just seems expensive to give up/delay our third AND fourth settlers after having sacrificed REX for the GW already. Especially for a junky city.

In other words, can we try to catch an AI pants down by building units instead of settlers?

I don't have answers, just a lot of questions to ensure we're on the right path here.

WastinTime said:

I'm counting on trading for a happy resource(s) and getting gems. But even if we don't, we can grow to size 8 on a couple farms.

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It will require some careful planning to balance building 1 worker, 3 settlers, 1 library, x defenders/explorers with city growth. With 5 happy citizens, we can work the pigs and 4 farms, but then we would not be working any mines, which could make it difficult to finish the library in time. A 4th city by ~t85 should be possible without any extra happiness. I don't think we can afford to build more than 2 chariots/warriors in Rome, unless we can trade for happiness resources.

LowtherCastle said:

Your new plan is missing defender#6, if I'm not mistaken. 3S2W building it is too late as a Rome defender for 3S2W In my latest plan, we can settle 3S2W on T60 after the exploring chariot or T57 fastest possible.

Your plan: granary(5t=71h)-settler2(1t=38fh)-ExploringChariot1(3t=39h)-settler(3t=77fh)-defendchar5(2t=41h)-defendchar6(2t=37h); settles 3S2W on T63, if I'm not mistaken, not building any more warriors.

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We can't settle on t60. We need a few more turns to grow to size 6. That would be t62-t64 depending on how much production we are willing to sacrifice by working grass tiles instead of mines.

LowtherCastle said:

After we gift it, the point being we minimize his chances of building archers.

T1 Settler built
T6 settled, worker camping
T11 move wkr to gems
T12 gift gems+worker+warrior
T16 DoW, steal worker
T17 Re-capture Gems.
~~~
T21 gems mined
T23 pop2, working deer and gems mine

.

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So this means that the gems would be online around the time we steal Monarchy. How much is the gems happiness worth once we are in HR? How much do we rely on the extra commerce from working a gems tile?

I’m starting to like the cows spot. I really want to know what’s in the fog north of the cows. Maybe that would be a better option for a 3rd or 4th city. Lots of green tiles, forests, hills. Closer to AI. Should be a much better spot for building military, and with the wine, the long term commerce yield could be comparable to the gems spot.

WastinTime said:

I couldn't find the details on how to document settling. Just screens? Or upload saves b4 and after? Or both?

Click to expand...

Quote from the pregame discussion thread:

BSPollux said:

That's it. I actually don't care how we do it, whatever you like. Either screens or saves works best.

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Teching Mysticism and building a monument in Rome is an option, to grow Rome faster.

Pollina, have you put anything into a chart? It seems like there are too many variables to do this in one's head.

I can see WT jumping with glee about monuments. Ha ha

Regarding gems, Polina seems to be on a similar page as me. Our REX is severely hampered in this game. Every city we keep must provide some significant advantage, whether it be a production powerhouse or a key resource. Is gems considered a key resource or is the output of this city significant enough in this scenario to tie up one of our 4 early city slots?

Pollina said:

I’m starting to like the cows spot. I really want to know what’s in the fog north of the cows. Maybe that would be a better option for a 3rd or 4th city. Lots of green tiles, forests, hills. Closer to AI. Should be a much better spot for building military, and with the wine, the long term commerce yield could be comparable to the gems spot.

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+1

If we could REX as much as we wanted, gems would be a good spot. But we can't, of course. Since our city count is limited, every city must provide one or more of the following:

1. Strategic resource
2. Massive production for units (either raw hammers or whips)
3. Settle toward the AI
4. Research (although this is somewhat mitigated since we'll be getting a ton of techs via espionage, right?)

LC himself said that Gems City is a junk. I hadn't really thought much about the city and I was on board until I heard this. I admit that I haven't been actively looking at the save the last week or so but looking more closely, that tundra city is junk. It has lots of forests but after that, growth is slow, production isn't awesome, it's far away from the direction we want to expand, etc.

Pollina brought up the fact that we'll have Monarchy (and HR) about the same time we could get the gems online, so the happiness of the gems is somewhat minimized, especially given the fact that in this scenario, we HAVE to have a ton of MP units in or around Rome anyway. won't be an issue because we'll likely have a bunch of archers in Rome.

Gems city was a cool idea but it will tie up a lot of our early-game resources (settler, worker + warrior gift, chariots to take the city back, units to keep the city safe while the AI controls it, etc.). We must be able to come up with a better use for all of these hammers.

I would love to take down an AI or two with chariots if possible.

Regarding research, does HBR soon make any sense? Maybe after Alphabet? I'm not sure how long chariots will be viable with the AI being so far away...

LowtherCastle said:

Pollina, have you put anything into a chart? It seems like there are too many variables to do this in one's head.

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I did a quick and not very optimized spreadsheet calculation to get a feeling for timings. What I got was:

t52 granary
t56 chariot
t59 settler (too early)
t60 warrior (another chariot might delay library)
t60-t64 hammers into library while growing
t64 pop6 (settle DariusGift)
t69 settler (for city#3)
t73 worker
t78 or t79 settler (too early depending on where we want to settle city#4)
t80 pop7
t83 library
t85 pop8 (settle city#4)

Mitchum said:

I can see WT jumping with glee about monuments. Ha ha

Regarding gems, Polina seems to be on a similar page as me. Our REX is severely hampered in this game. Every city we keep must provide some significant advantage, whether it be a production powerhouse or a key resource. Is gems considered a key resource or is the output of this city significant enough in this scenario to tie up one of our 4 early city slots?

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Gems, the tile, is 2h7c. <=Seven.
The city has 6 forests for us (not counting deer and gems which we're not cutting down)
Then it has more 3rd ring forests.
It also has 2 river grass which means it can be at a nice +4 food even when working gems. I think this city is a fine addition to our core. And giving it away is only a temporary speed bump for the city.

HC will grow to size 3 in 18 turns.
It can build a settler in only 6 turns.
That's settler moving on T72.

Or it could make a worker, 5 turns (T71)

Or both.

This should relieve Rome quite a bit so it can grow while doing units and library.

I can also see HC putting out a worker at size 2.
It takes 6 turns and start work on T66

Ok, I think Pollina's point that HR pretty much cancels out the value of gems happy has me considering dropping the city. I hate losing that commerce tho.

If cowscity has Ivory, then it is a no-brainer. Ivory gives us a wonder and happy.

We had been planning on Mids for HR and no Monarchy, but now we're getting Monarchy for sure, so I hadn't counted on wine giving +1 food, so now Cows is looking better. So is fish city. It's tempting to consider not settling on the wine in fish city. Loses a few forests.