SGOTM 07 - Smurkz

Niklas said:

Looks like we will be in a contention with Washington over the Cows and Silver down the line though.

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I've never had a problem with culture wars in my OCC games. I typically hit legendary without trying.

Renata said:

Poor New York is not long for this world. Assuming we last in the game, it won't!

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One of the nice things about OCC games is watching all of those cities fall due to our culture.

I'm at work, so can't look at the save, but it looks good so far!

Methos said:

I've never had a problem with culture wars in my OCC games. I typically hit legendary without trying.

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Yeah, my comment wasn't to say that we'd risk losing those resources so much as it was a statement that we'd have a few close border tension negatives with Washington. But he's a generally nice chap, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem (I hope ).

A few things that I would like to see some discussion on. Neither affect the immediate future, but definitely the mid-range (i.e. before turn 100):

* Granary? We don't have one planned, but it seems to me that we can't grow much faster than we do without getting happiness problems. But if we want to start whipping it will be good to have. But do we? My gut feeling says our population is more worth than the hammers from a whip.

* Second worker? Would be very helpful to chop forests once we get Maths, and possibly we could even help chop-complete that second worker with the first, and then both could chop for GLib afterwards to catch up the lost time. I assume we will wait until Maths with chopping, hopefully we'll get it for Alphabet. Having a second worker will also allow us to quickly hook up any new resources like the cow and silver. Though with only one town, the risk is that we'll have idle workers after a while.

* Workboat for scouting? Right now we have contact with 4/17 other civs, and the chances of meeting more before Writing are rather small, and only slightly better with Writing (that's not *our* writing though, rather it's Washington who needs OB agreements with others who can send their scouts to find us). And it seems the waters to our north extend westwards so a workboat could sail out there to meet people, which means more trading opportunities.

Hmm, I was sure there was one more thing but I can't recall it now. I'll have to come back to it if I remember.

Given our current plan, a granary is a low priority until we get some luxuries, either through cultural expansion or trading.

A second worker seems to me to be a very bad investment. We lose both early hammers and growth for a unit that will almost certainly be sitting idle for much of the game. This is especially true if we are going for a diplomatic victory. If we are doing a PA culture/space/domination victory, then the extra worker can be sent to develop our ally's land.

The workboat wouldn't get far without open borders. I don't think it's worth the investment. Others will use open borders and come to us. This map is *crowded* to the point that some AI probably won't even be able to use their free extra starting settler because they won't have a legal place to build a city. Also, the fewer people we know, the more tech trading we will be able to do, because the unknown AI won't get IFYABTA penalties when we make our earliest trades.

I say yes on all three.

Granary: whether we decide to chop or not, we will want to grow very quickly once our happy issues are resolved, whether by HR or the Globe Theater. Granary helps us do that.

Worker: Having only one for what's going to be a large and (eventually) fast-growing town seems very inefficient to me.

Scouting: (by workboat or otherwise): We need to get to know all civs that have contact with one another *before* we start serious trading. Else we risk ruining our "reputation" with civs we want to befriend due to tripping over "worst enemy" penalties left and right. The faster we meet everyone on the continent, the better our chances.

Oh, and one comment on chopping: I want us to be a little bit cautious before cutting down trees in our BFC. Our health cap is going to be a serious limitation eventually -- assuming no trees, it'll only be at 7 before buildings, given just the resources in our first three rings. (I think.) I don't think we can count on trading for much of anything, given the parameters of the game.

I played up to the next workboat. Nothing of interest to report -- not even worth taking a picture.

3480 BC (preturn): Workboat to crabs.

3440 BC: Elizabeth is to our southwest. Crabs netted, start working them.

3400 BC: I guess there's nowhere else to go with our warrior other than back home, as per Niklas's comment. I would like to get explorers out soonish, though -- maybe after Pyramids?

3360 BC: Masonry done one turn later than scheduled, start Wheel. Washington has bronze-working (slavery).

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3280 BC: Worker done. Warrior's back home, but may as well explore that little bit of land to our east.

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3200 BC: Tokugawa adopts slavery.

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3120 BC: Wheel in (back on schedule), start Hunting. Land to the east dead-ends in a mountain. Warrior will come back for garrison duty.

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3040 BC: Asoka has slavery. Quarry's done. We're still a little off on the research, because hunting will be one turn late again. Workboat's now due in 2; I'll stop there.

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2960 BC: Warrior's back home, and the workboat is in place.

SAVE

Have fun!

Niklas said:

But if we want to start whipping it will be good to have. But do we? My gut feeling says our population is more worth than the hammers from a whip.

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OCC games are bad for whipping. Population is everything, so losing it to both and the happiness factor isn't worth it IMO.

* Second worker?

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Second workers are always good, even if they spend most of the game just sitting. When you do need work done, it's nice to get it done quickly. Plus it'll allow us to chop faster and/or chop more tiles at once.

* Workboat for scouting?

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If borders don't obstruct or exploring, then yes. Or if we'll finish the WB just as Writing is learned, then yes. We definitely need to meet as many AI's as possible.

We're mostly blocked in by borders, ice, and mountains already. (Elizabeth is blocking our sea route out.) If we build a scout right now, we could get it out past Washington -- we have a few turns yet before the second border pop. Otherwise, we have to wait for open borders, in which case we may as well finish the Pyramids first. My first impression is not to delay the 'mids, but I'm tempted. I hate not exploring; it makes me twitchy.

Looking good Renata!

The delay of Hunting is not surprising, we had a very tight margin and it only took one contact with TW for us to miss it. So it would have been rather surprising if we had gotten it on time. But it matters not at all, we won't start camping until two turns from now anyway.

If we want a scout, which I am not opposed to, then I definitely think we should delay it until after the Pyramids.

Actually, with only Washington as neighbor, who is generally a reliable fellow, I'm more of a mind to play it risky and perhaps skip the barracks and/or archer after the library. But we'll discuss that more when we get closer of course.

Now I remembered what it was I wanted to ask about - IFYABTA! I've seen this in some games but I never knew the cause or mechanics behind it. Does anyone know? I tried finding something on it in the war academy but couldn't.

I know that it's a set limit beyond which an AI won't trade techs. The higher the difficulty level, the fewer techs you can trade before you hit the limit. Some AIs have higher limits than others (Mansa Musa is the only one who never hits it), but (I'm pretty sure) all trades are taken into account when calculating if you've hit the limit yet, not just trades with the civ in question. Getting an AI to friendly raises the limit slightly.

I've seen people in succession games being very choosy as to which techs they'll trade for because of this. For example, if you have Alphabet and you can get Math + Polytheism for it, the player might take the cheap Polytheism off the table in hopes that doing so will allow one more trade for a more important tech later on.

I don't know anything about the hard numbers involved, though.

That's really interesting, thanks for that Renata! It just made me even more curious though , so I did some more digging and came upon this excellent explanation. Thanks a lot VoiceOfUnreason.

Some goodies:
- Every leader counts how many techs he has seen you trade. Depending on which leader, after reaching a certain number he'll go into WFYABTA mode.
- As long as we are on the bottom half in score, we can always trade with others on the bottom half, regardless of their count.
- We can always trade with those who are friendly with us.
- The counter doesn't start until we meet someone, so someone we meet late will trade with us longer (so Chris' point about not scouting is very valid).
- We will hit the cap really fast for some leaders, especially here on Deity.
- The cap affects AI-AI trade as well, though I'm not sure if their cap is the same as ours, or if they have the equivalent of Settler level caps.
- The counter will decay, with a probability of 1 in 20 each turn that the counter drops by one. The roll is made separately for each leader.

The Deity modifier is 20%, meaning Alex et al will hit WFYABTA after 6, Asoka after 12, Elizabeth after 18 and Mansa after 24. That's not a lot.

This all means we really really need to be very picky about what techs we trade for. All in all there are 85 techs in the game, we'll likely want/need at least 70 of those. That's a lot of techs to research on our own. But since the counter doesn't start if we don't know someone particular, we could try to maximize our trade advantage early on with few contacts, then go on with a tabula rasa towards the next (batch of) AIs. We can even hope there's a second continent that can't reach us before Optics.

Looking at the early techs, I really think we shouldn't trade for anything with a modified cost of <=120, unless it would really really improve our situation. By modified I mean actual cost/modifier, so we value techs with many prereq bonuses (and known-to-others bonuses) lower, i.e. they are cheaper for us to research on our own.

AH is ~100 modified (1.4 modifier there), but I think we might want to trade for that anyway, to get access to the Sheep (and find horses?). On the other hand, Archery is only ~70, a really cheap tech in comparison. So I strongly suggest we do not trade for it, we could get research it ourselves in 2 turns after Alphabet if we really want it. Mysticism (71), Meditation (95), Polytheism (~120), Priesthood (~70) and Sailing (~120) are other techs we likely want to skip or research on our own.

So for early trades, we want BW (~140), possibly AH (~100), and Maths (~300) if possible. IW (~240) would also be nice to trade for if the chance appears. And it would be really really nice to make those trades before we meet anyone else. In fact, if the chance appears, we might as well trade for Sailing (~120) as well, if we can do it before meeting anyone else. But it's likely too much to hope for to get all these techs for research up to Alphabet alone.

On a side note, the fact that we can't trade to backfill means bulbing would be much less worth than otherwise, and settling GS is clearly better.

I also think we should keep close track of all trades we make and what leaders we knew at the time - count up their counters that is - to stay clear of ending up in a hole.

As Niklas says, we should delay meeting new people. The more we can delay WFYABTA the better - to maximize tech trading opportunities. Exploring units, either workboats or scouts, are wasted effort at this point. I'm pretty sure the AI treat each other at noble difficulty, while treating us at deity.

It's too bad Washington is chopping down the forests by New York.

Hunting delay isn't a big problem - the worker won't lose a turn.

I think both the second worker and the granary should be delayed until after the crucial wonders - Pyramids and Great Library. Neither is important enough to delay the wonders.

We have 1.68% of population. If the world were evenly divided, each remaining nation would have 1/17 of 98.32%, which is 5.78%. Asoka has 7% of the world's population, so clearly some of the AI failed to establish their second city.

We have 2.89% of the land, but with water it's much harder to figure out how much each nation might have. However, we can figure out that each land square is 0.18625% of the total, so there are between 537 and 555 land spaces on the map.

EDIT - wow, the AI range from 86,882 to 233,000 in population. We have 6,000.

I also note that we are 14 in GNP and 15 in manufactured goods - so several AI are producing less than we are.

I think when the time comes, we should stop and discuss each negotiation with the AI. Something as simple as signing open borders could have negative consequences. For example, Tokugawa is already annoyed with Washington, and Asoka is already annoyed with Tokugawa. Meanwhile, Elizabeth and Washington are pleased with each other.

Have we decided on our preferred victory method?

Diplo, I thought -- and that's a big reason I'm antsy about not exploring. As you note, the AIs already have various differing opinions about one another. If there are other civs on our continent besides the ones we've already met, we might wind up really putting our foot in it diplomatically without even knowing about it. Say we decide to trade with Washington and snub Tokugawa, only later to find that everyone else on the continent loves Tokugawa and hates Washington?

Your point is taken, but the thought of everyone on the continent loving Tokugawa made me laugh out loud.

The tough part with diplo is getting everyone to hate one specific AI and getting that AI to be the largest civ (our UN opponent).

Edit: Since we're going Diplo (I believe that was our choice), then we can figure out exactly what techs we need/want and figure out which ones we'll research and which we'll trade for.

That's an official got it.
Will check plan and probably play tonight, unless there are some open issues.
I feel strongly on no scouting, and also on no 2nd worker, but this I could check in case it improves our chances on wonders.