Important correction:
The factor three is not only for over the ocean but also if the target is not a neighbour with at least 8 adjacent tiles.
So that restricts the cheap wars quite a bit.
SGOTM 07 - Murky Waters
- Thread starter AlanH
- Start date
Important correction:
The factor three is not only for over the ocean but also if the target is not a neighbour with at least 8 adjacent tiles.
So that restricts the cheap wars quite a bit.
You have coast to the east, where the original has a river.
Hi, checking in.
Thanks for joining, FiveAces and morpheus11!
Cultural victories are feasible. The worst thing about them is watching how your partner does every possible effort to avoid victory. Given the domination dates that have been achieved in the test games, I don't think a cultural victory will be faster.
I'd like to see a very early Alphabet, in order to start influencing the world. And I'd like to know if our continent is big enough for domination asap. This two reasons make me want to meet our neighbours asap, and probably OB with some of them asap too. In general I prefer the Pottery way to the AH way, but I can be convinced otherwise.
Erkon, in the PA rules you might want to add that you can get a PA with 40 turns of DP too. And that 10 turns of common war and 30 turns of DP won't do, it is 40 turns of one or the other.
Also our GP can be used in the partner cities only by settling them as superspecialists. Any other use requieres our gifting the GP and hoping the AI will know what to do with them.
Thanks for joining, FiveAces and morpheus11!
Cultural victories are feasible. The worst thing about them is watching how your partner does every possible effort to avoid victory. Given the domination dates that have been achieved in the test games, I don't think a cultural victory will be faster.
I'd like to see a very early Alphabet, in order to start influencing the world. And I'd like to know if our continent is big enough for domination asap. This two reasons make me want to meet our neighbours asap, and probably OB with some of them asap too. In general I prefer the Pottery way to the AH way, but I can be convinced otherwise.
Erkon, in the PA rules you might want to add that you can get a PA with 40 turns of DP too. And that 10 turns of common war and 30 turns of DP won't do, it is 40 turns of one or the other.
Also our GP can be used in the partner cities only by settling them as superspecialists. Any other use requieres our gifting the GP and hoping the AI will know what to do with them.
I am aware of that. I didn't want to add more land to the east on the map since I didn't want to remove any tiles elsewhere, and to avoid too large continent I ignored the river. And I didn't want to respawn map to end up in NW corner...
This is my impression to be the best way to play early on as well, although I have not yet tried a test game. Does anyone volunteer to write down the general strategy for this game? And a candidate tech path? I.e. what techs shall we research? The build queue will then be easier to decide on.
Well, test games are nice for extreme strategies, but do we want that in the real game.
I died 2 of about 10 times before alphabet because one of the peaceful neighbours (Hatty and Washington) decided to come with a 4-5 axe stack against my 2 warriors.
Some archers could help against that. Obviously this would mean archery (after AH or even after writing) and supporting the hunting-AH route.
Short of that the best strategy is bee-line alphabet.
Fishing-hunting-AH-writing-alphabet or directly Fishing-AH don't differ much as you can have the high commerce fur tile.
The pottery route is similar, but doesn't really help as there is no real time to build and fill the granary. And cottaging our only non forest tile (where everybody expects to be a resource) is also not much benefit. The tile is still worse than the furs then for a long time.
From alphabet (trading for all basic techs + IW and sometimes math), I had the best results with literature (GLib) and drama. Good chances to trade for CoL then (meaning CS isn't delayed by much) and happiness is already becoming an issue.
Then CS-paper-education. It was always possible to trade for all techs up to optics plus some other techs. Sometimes one can also get philosophy (depends on who has it - it isn't wide spread), otherwise one has to research it.
I did build a scout shortly before writing, made OB with everybody (even the bad guys, until somebody demanded I quit trading with them) and then scouted the whole continent. I don't see any downside - we cannot avoid OB between the AI and their scouts will come to us sooner or later. Better we know where they are and what land they have.
I died 2 of about 10 times before alphabet because one of the peaceful neighbours (Hatty and Washington) decided to come with a 4-5 axe stack against my 2 warriors.
Some archers could help against that. Obviously this would mean archery (after AH or even after writing) and supporting the hunting-AH route.
Short of that the best strategy is bee-line alphabet.
Fishing-hunting-AH-writing-alphabet or directly Fishing-AH don't differ much as you can have the high commerce fur tile.
The pottery route is similar, but doesn't really help as there is no real time to build and fill the granary. And cottaging our only non forest tile (where everybody expects to be a resource) is also not much benefit. The tile is still worse than the furs then for a long time.
From alphabet (trading for all basic techs + IW and sometimes math), I had the best results with literature (GLib) and drama. Good chances to trade for CoL then (meaning CS isn't delayed by much) and happiness is already becoming an issue.
Then CS-paper-education. It was always possible to trade for all techs up to optics plus some other techs. Sometimes one can also get philosophy (depends on who has it - it isn't wide spread), otherwise one has to research it.
I did build a scout shortly before writing, made OB with everybody (even the bad guys, until somebody demanded I quit trading with them) and then scouted the whole continent. I don't see any downside - we cannot avoid OB between the AI and their scouts will come to us sooner or later. Better we know where they are and what land they have.
Hello all. Checking in. Thanks for letting me join the team.
A couple of clarifications on jesusin's statement about great persons - you can use a GS to build an academy in a PA's city. This one might be useful - they don't always build their academy in the right city, and their beakers are better than ours. Other nuances that might not be so helpful - You can also use a GE to rush-build as well - but obviously the AI controls the queue so the have to be building whatever before you can rush it. Along these lines, I would guess you could also use a GP to build a shrine if they had a holy city but I haven't tried this before so not sure.
I support early alpha through hunting/AH. Early pottery is of limited use since we're not fin and there aren't any FP's and the visible non-forest square is plains and I also think it will have a resource (FWIW my guess is iron). Early wheel only allows us to hook up the furs earlier since we don't have masonry (I do not support the pyramids). However since our growth is by seafood we have to build workboats to grow; in my test games the happy cap was reached only a few turns before alpha - not enough to justify self-research of the wheel.
Detouring to wheel/pottery and/or archery means when we get to alpha it will be more likely that most AI's have writing, which limits the trading we can do before we need to break alpha.
As for needing archery, in my many deity OCC HoF games, I cannot recall a single instance where I was DOW'd on before alpha. I'm very surprised it happened twice to klarius. Perhaps the crowded map had something to do with it. I am more concerned about the need for archery for barb defence. There won't be many as the map is so crowded, but there appears to be an icy area to the NE which will resist initial AI expansion. Even in my test game on klarius's map where he's got Mansa nearby, barbs still spawned (warrior+archer). I manuvered my 2 warriors to engage on forest hills and won, but I would rather not have to sweat the RNG on turn 20-something.
That being said, we're virtually guaranteed to be able to trade writing for archery with someone the turn we get alpha. I'm not sure what my recommendation on self-researching archery is. I would rather avoid it, but I don't want to die early either.
Also given the barb threat, whoever plays the early turns needs to make sure the starting warrior doesn't get trapped behind AI borders. We can't afford to wait for writing/OB to get him back.
I am not sure that we need to prioritize knowledge of sufficient domination size early on. I would rather not spend hammers on exploratory workboats, scouts, or wandering warriors. I think the general education beeline we have been discussing applies to all VC's. Paper is on this beeline, and any AI we trade with should have run those scouts around in the early turns so that we can see the whole continent the turn we get paper. In summary, I don't think we are going to do anything differently because we know the continent size during say research of CS instead of waiting until after paper.
EDIT: klarius made a good point about knowing where the AI's are and what resources they have and making OB's initially. I have one question about this strategy though - is the AI DOW decision based solely on the power graph, or do they also take into account how many units are in a city and where that city is? Since we're surrounded by forest, those scouts can't ever see our city unles we OB. So if the AI will never DOW unless it knows exactly where a city is, then we don't want to OB early. Can anyone clarify this?
I support early self-researching of drama. In my test games, it took forever for monarchy to be tradeable. Plus, to use HR effectively you have to build warriors as you grow - they are cheap but their hammers could be better used for say the GL. And it's trade ammo for backfilling and bribing - which is both offensive for the PA and defensive if we are attacked.
I've bolded my key points to make them stand out from the support in the post, but if this is annoying/confusing please just let me know and I'll stop.
A couple of clarifications on jesusin's statement about great persons - you can use a GS to build an academy in a PA's city. This one might be useful - they don't always build their academy in the right city, and their beakers are better than ours. Other nuances that might not be so helpful - You can also use a GE to rush-build as well - but obviously the AI controls the queue so the have to be building whatever before you can rush it. Along these lines, I would guess you could also use a GP to build a shrine if they had a holy city but I haven't tried this before so not sure.
I support early alpha through hunting/AH. Early pottery is of limited use since we're not fin and there aren't any FP's and the visible non-forest square is plains and I also think it will have a resource (FWIW my guess is iron). Early wheel only allows us to hook up the furs earlier since we don't have masonry (I do not support the pyramids). However since our growth is by seafood we have to build workboats to grow; in my test games the happy cap was reached only a few turns before alpha - not enough to justify self-research of the wheel.
Detouring to wheel/pottery and/or archery means when we get to alpha it will be more likely that most AI's have writing, which limits the trading we can do before we need to break alpha.
As for needing archery, in my many deity OCC HoF games, I cannot recall a single instance where I was DOW'd on before alpha. I'm very surprised it happened twice to klarius. Perhaps the crowded map had something to do with it. I am more concerned about the need for archery for barb defence. There won't be many as the map is so crowded, but there appears to be an icy area to the NE which will resist initial AI expansion. Even in my test game on klarius's map where he's got Mansa nearby, barbs still spawned (warrior+archer). I manuvered my 2 warriors to engage on forest hills and won, but I would rather not have to sweat the RNG on turn 20-something.
That being said, we're virtually guaranteed to be able to trade writing for archery with someone the turn we get alpha. I'm not sure what my recommendation on self-researching archery is. I would rather avoid it, but I don't want to die early either.
Also given the barb threat, whoever plays the early turns needs to make sure the starting warrior doesn't get trapped behind AI borders. We can't afford to wait for writing/OB to get him back.
I am not sure that we need to prioritize knowledge of sufficient domination size early on. I would rather not spend hammers on exploratory workboats, scouts, or wandering warriors. I think the general education beeline we have been discussing applies to all VC's. Paper is on this beeline, and any AI we trade with should have run those scouts around in the early turns so that we can see the whole continent the turn we get paper. In summary, I don't think we are going to do anything differently because we know the continent size during say research of CS instead of waiting until after paper.
EDIT: klarius made a good point about knowing where the AI's are and what resources they have and making OB's initially. I have one question about this strategy though - is the AI DOW decision based solely on the power graph, or do they also take into account how many units are in a city and where that city is? Since we're surrounded by forest, those scouts can't ever see our city unles we OB. So if the AI will never DOW unless it knows exactly where a city is, then we don't want to OB early. Can anyone clarify this?
I support early self-researching of drama. In my test games, it took forever for monarchy to be tradeable. Plus, to use HR effectively you have to build warriors as you grow - they are cheap but their hammers could be better used for say the GL. And it's trade ammo for backfilling and bribing - which is both offensive for the PA and defensive if we are attacked.
I've bolded my key points to make them stand out from the support in the post, but if this is annoying/confusing please just let me know and I'll stop.
LowtherCastle
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@klarius: There is some folklore about what prompts an AI to DoW us, such as having OBs with them, so they can find out our capital is guarded by only a warrior. Do you know the actual code for this?
In playing your save, I got clobbered at least once. In ShannonCT's, I got clobbered a couple of times. And I didn't play either ten times.
Not true. In PA the beakers of both partners are applied with the average of the difficulty levels. So we both play monarch then for beakers.
We are financial. But still agree.
I want to use alpha on the first turn (or second at most) anyway. You will not be able to trade for BW, masonry, poly, IW w/o alpha. In my tests myst, wheel and archery maybe sailing or pottery is all you can get with writing. There isn't anybody lacking a lot basic techs as in lower difficulty levels.
We are a very juicy target with our resources that many of the people lack and our low power. If somebody gets a RNG roll to go to war early they will war us.
Barbs shouldn't be a problem. I only once had a barb enter my land (note an average of 3 cities per civ needed for that). That was well after alpha so I could have easily handled it and even then it was killed by a friendly American.
The question is really: do we take a risk for a better chance for gold. The risk is certainly there (though maybe Gyathaar managed to make it lower than in our tests).
I'm building a warrior first in my tests. No use to build a worker early just for some minings. So depending on with or w/o hunting, I'm building the worker after first or second workboat. I rather have the first warrior behind the lines doing some more scouting if possible.
The AI is cheating. They know where the cities are. They still need to scout a route. But we cannot avoid that by not doing OB. They just need OB with our neighbors.
And BTW war declaration has nothing to do with knowledge of cities. It's based on RNG, proximity of border tiles and power ratio.
The AI first decides to go to war at all by a RNG roll. This is low probability for the peaceful civs, but not impossible.
Then it checks another RNG against it's attitude thresholds. That means the other peaceful teams are out of the game already, because they are pleased with them from the beginning (but we will not manage pleased before alphabet).
Then they check against the power threshold. That probably leaves only us for the peaceful concurrents as the bad boys probably have too much power.
If more than one should be possible then the proximity is taken into account.
That's it, the decision is taken and the preparation starts. Several turns later a stack we cannot handle will enter our land.
All in all: if one of the peaceful civs gets the unlikely early war roll, they will go for us most likely.
It's less of a problem with the bad boys, if they aren't directly adjacent to our border. They might find a different target.
Getting an early religion can be helpful in gaining some powerful friends. In my test games I tried to get OB with every AI of a particular religious block (and only them), and then adopt that religion as soon as it spread.
Once we get to Alphabet we should be relatively safe. What is the earliest turn we can get it, and what is the earliest after contact that an AI may DoW us?
Once we get to Alphabet we should be relatively safe. What is the earliest turn we can get it, and what is the earliest after contact that an AI may DoW us?
LowtherCastle
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Seems like we have a fairly clear plan until we see our full fat cross.
Here is a list of the 6 creative leaders and their plusses and minuses as PA partners for us. Ranked from best (1) to worst (4), in my judgment:
Rank. AI--other trait--RazeCityProb--Favorite Civic--DoWAtt Us/Enemy--UnitAIWeightModifier
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Kubla--Aggressv--00 RazeCityProb--HereditaryRule--Pleased/Cautiou--100 on AttackCity
1. Catty--Financal--00 RazeCityProb--HereditaryRule--Cautiou/Pleased--100 on AttackCounter
2. Louis--Industry--00 RazeCityProb--HereditaryRule--Cautiou/Cautiou--100 on AttackCity
3. Hatty--Religios--50 RazeCityProb--HereditaryRule--Pleased/Annoyed--no special weight
3. Fredd--Philosop--50 RazeCityProb--UniversalSuffr--Pleased/Annoyed--100 on worker
4. Cyrus--Expansiv--00 RazeCityProb--Representation--Friendl/Furious--100 on Attack
positive characteristics
negative characteristics
Kubla, Catty, and Louis seem to have the best features. Kubla is probably the best war machine. Catty is financial and is the only AI we can bribe to DoW someone she's pleased with.
Hatty and Cyrus will raze cities. Cyrus won't be bribed to DoW till we're friendly with him and he's furious with the target.
klarius, please advise if any of this requires a more sophisticated understanding of the code (such as the raze city probability)
Here is a list of the 6 creative leaders and their plusses and minuses as PA partners for us. Ranked from best (1) to worst (4), in my judgment:
Rank. AI--other trait--RazeCityProb--Favorite Civic--DoWAtt Us/Enemy--UnitAIWeightModifier
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Kubla--Aggressv--00 RazeCityProb--HereditaryRule--Pleased/Cautiou--100 on AttackCity
1. Catty--Financal--00 RazeCityProb--HereditaryRule--Cautiou/Pleased--100 on AttackCounter
2. Louis--Industry--00 RazeCityProb--HereditaryRule--Cautiou/Cautiou--100 on AttackCity
3. Hatty--Religios--50 RazeCityProb--HereditaryRule--Pleased/Annoyed--no special weight
3. Fredd--Philosop--50 RazeCityProb--UniversalSuffr--Pleased/Annoyed--100 on worker
4. Cyrus--Expansiv--00 RazeCityProb--Representation--Friendl/Furious--100 on Attack
positive characteristics
negative characteristics
Kubla, Catty, and Louis seem to have the best features. Kubla is probably the best war machine. Catty is financial and is the only AI we can bribe to DoW someone she's pleased with.
Hatty and Cyrus will raze cities. Cyrus won't be bribed to DoW till we're friendly with him and he's furious with the target.
klarius, please advise if any of this requires a more sophisticated understanding of the code (such as the raze city probability)
LowtherCastle
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klarius got Alphabet on T45 and Communism on T132, so we have some leeway there in terms of getting the 40 turns of common war with our ally. Researching Archery may not slow us down all that much. But we still need to see our FC first and find out how close our neighbors are. Furthermore, AH may give us horses on the plains tile or under the settler.
If I were Gyathaar and I wanted to give the weaker teams every chance of surviving, I'd put horses on the plains tile, copper under the settler and iron in the extended FC. And I'd not give any adjacent neighbors copper or horses. Only iron.
If I were Gyathaar and I wanted to give the weaker teams every chance of surviving, I'd put horses on the plains tile, copper under the settler and iron in the extended FC. And I'd not give any adjacent neighbors copper or horses. Only iron.
Well getting an religion can be difficult.
I just played Erkons map (pretty sloppy) and didn't have a religion spread by the time of PA. A lot worse science than my map (communism in 1000AD only), because the AI was not really helpful and I got 3 artists.
Also a bit of war (after alphabet) with some pillaging.
But OTOH heroic epic is already built and I have 4 PA partners to chose from.
I cannot say what the earliest they can DoW. They can do the decision right away. Then it depends how long it takes them to assemble their initial stack. But the 2 bad games I had, it was before alphabet came in (which comes around turn 45-50). I'm anyway always beelining it, for sure not wasting more than 2-3 turns. Difference is more if there are luxes to trade once I hit the happiness limit.
I am wondering if we should throw in BW to let us chop a bit and, with luck, get us copper. In my first test game I was DoWed by Catherine just as I hooked up the copper. Despite her sending 15 units into my land I didn't lose a single improvement and even got Priesthood from her in return for peace. Defending axes in a hill city are that good before catapults are around.
FiveAces, have you read klarius korner from SGOTM6? There's a lot of stuff there from our previous game where klarius explained the mechanism for a great many things. Once or twice he's wrong, but only in details.
Barbs wont cross our border unless there are three cities per civ on average OR there is an improved tile adjacent to a neutral tile. Or did I remember wrong?
Barbs wont cross our border unless there are three cities per civ on average OR there is an improved tile adjacent to a neutral tile. Or did I remember wrong?
The UnitAiWeight doesn't do much, so shouldn't drive any decision. At the time of real war, these will anyway all be the same units (grens, rifles) and the strategies don't differ much. Also the modifier only slightly modifies the mix of UnitAIs present as there are other factors which take precedence.
The attitudes for declaring are also no big deal. We need them at friendly with us in the end anyway so the attitude towards us has to be worked on anyway. Just the ones who need to be friendly first are no use.
And we should find targets for them they don't like to much as otherwise the bribing gets very expensive. Another point I just had with Cathy is that she gave me a -1 for declaring on her friend (which means pleased) Isa, though she happily joined in then (for a juicy bribe).
There is another problem with Cathy. She asks for help (techs) all the time. If you give in for good relations you soon have nothing to bribe her. If you refuse she gives you a -2 (instead of the usual -1).
LowtherCastle
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Not sure that comes across quite the way you meant it.
I think the mechanisms described in klarius korner are right, including all the details. As I recall, klarius goofed up once or twice with some detail, but then reviewed the code when he got home and corrected himself. Hopefully any clarifications are also in klarius korner.One more thing to watch for is that some of what klarius describes is tailored to the difficulty level and may be different for deity.
That's why I prefer to make a fool of myself and ask klarius again on points I'm not certain about. 
No to BW. Definitely.
That slows us down far too much.
And no to chops w/o math. I always have health problems in the end (you shouldn't take all the health resources of your partner). So we have just a few forests which should be used wisely.
And BTW archers in a hill city are also very strong on defense (about as strong or even stronger than axes depending on what's coming up), while our land isn't suited very well for counter attacks.
Some early chops isn't a problem as the forests will eventually regrow. I also don't think we should concern ourselves with our health, as our PA partner will be gifting us more than enough health resources once they start capturing more land. I haven't had any health problems once the partner has assimilated 2-3 other AIs. And even if we have, what does it matter? The PA partner is the one doing 2/3rds of the research and 90% of the unit production. It doesn't matter if we lose out on working 2-3 additional tiles then...
Though I agree on the delay in researching BW being problematic. But we regain some of the time from being able to chop a library and prechop for the GL and NE.
LowtherCastle
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A couple thoughts:
1. Do we need the stone quarry before Oxford (instead of a mine)? Unless we want to risk trading it to a potential ally, I guess, so he can build the Pyramids or Hanging Gardens.
2. As soon as we hook up the second clams, we should look to trade or gift it. It can get us up to Pleased with a future ally before Alpha. Otherwise someone's likely to extort it anyway.
1. Do we need the stone quarry before Oxford (instead of a mine)? Unless we want to risk trading it to a potential ally, I guess, so he can build the Pyramids or Hanging Gardens.
2. As soon as we hook up the second clams, we should look to trade or gift it. It can get us up to Pleased with a future ally before Alpha. Otherwise someone's likely to extort it anyway.
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