SGOTM 07 - Murky Waters

Gnejs said:

Doesn't look like we will be fighting any culture battles, except over the sheep once an AI settles on the ice peninsula. Cleverly placed mountains by Gyathaar.

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Well there is still the cow and our fur. Together with a FP and lots of forest - a nice place to settle for the AI.

Gnejs said:

I don't think I dare to continue when LC has voiced his concern. <Remembers LC's wrath over the Oracle in Timbuktu last game> (shudder)

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I'm back. Go on ahead, Gnejs. We started this, might as well continue. (tonight or tomorrow, as you wish)

klarius said:

Which is why I didn't want the pyramids route.
Asoka and Washington don't attack at pleased (Liz does but with very low probability).
Pleased should be easy enough to achieve with alpha.

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RIght. The way I worded that it looked like I was giving an argument for Pyramids, but I was actually giving one against...

EDIT: I agree on not uploading.

klarius said:

Well there is still the cow and our fur. Together with a FP and lots of forest - a nice place to settle for the AI.

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Or between the marble and the furs. I woldn't be surprised if we get squeezed from all sides.

Blue dot - where Washington likes to settle
Pink dot - where Asoka likes to settle

Note plot distance 5 from the nearest city is very important. After that lots of resources in the fat cross, while enough food. Wood isn't hurting either.
Tiles owned by us is also counting negative, but far down the list.

Gnejs said:

No, unless you count a totally different research and build order...

I am not playing until at least one other team member has had a go at the Pyramids track....

FiveAces, will you play with the pointy buildings tonight?

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Yes I did last night and the result was interesting:

Well like Erkon suggested, I tried a game with the Pyramids on his map. I played fast (which showed) and I don&#8217;t usually build them (which also showed). I stopped after steel since it was getting late.

I figured I&#8217;d try something different &#8211; I didn&#8217;t chop them since we have that nice deer tile to work now.

Tech: mas-wheel-hunting-AH (t35)-writ(45)-alpha(61)-drama(1t)-lit(68)-drama-CoL(80)-CS-paper(100)-edu(225bc, forgot turn)-philo-Lib(122-150AD!!!)-PP(130)-sci meth-(131)-comm(142-620AD, Cathy ready, Izzy needed a few more turns)
Worker: Stone-deer-furs-sheep-marble
Build: war-wor-pyr-lib(t53)-barracks(4t)-wb-wb-GLib-barracks(1t, finished)-theater-Globe

I popped 4 GS &#8211; academy(t65), 1edu, 2 sci meth.

I got sci meth in 1 turn with 2GS. I didn&#8217;t optimize very well after Lib. I also made a major screwup and forgot to turn the sci slider from 90-100 after Globe. So the comm date could have been improved upon.

A couple significant things to note:

I didn&#8217;t research BW or fishing. Yet look at the turn/dates for the library, academy, edu and liberalism and to some extent communism &#8211; those all compare favorably with our non-pyramids games, even though I played fast, and made some mistakes. That really, really surprised me.

Gnejs said:

I know, and I am also in favour of our early Alpha strategy. But I would like to see how a successful Pyramids strategy compares with a successful Alpha strategy. As it is now we have many succesful Alpha trial games on a bunch of different maps and one single successful Pyramids game on one single map. If Pyramids in general beat Alpha then we are going to lose to those teams that avoid an early DoW due to either skill or luck. On the other hand, if both strategies equally good or even Alpha is better then we are doing the right thing going for the less risky strategy.

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Based on my experience I would say a good pyramids game would compare well with a good alpha game, but not be significantly faster in terms of getting the PA.

EDIT: ok got to the end of the thread. Looks like klarius and I had comparable results with the 'mids, but not better than the alpha route. Will be online until ~2PM GMT. Gnejs's turnset looking good so far.

Let's hope that Asoka founds Hinduism before he settles Pink Dot (if at all). Would be nice to get an early religion spread. Washington looks to be getting squeezed like orange juice in Madrid.

klarius said:

Well, they should bomb. But that doesn't solve the problem how we get them to get a holy or wonder city in the first place (other cities they will raze overseas unless it is the last city of that civ).
And if we get to this position it might still be that no tiles at all are gained by the bomb, because the enemy culture is so high (note: wonder or holy city).
But, OK we could kill this civ then after. That's a lot of ifs. I rather say we wait first and hope for our continent being enough .

If we get to the point needing overseas holdings it might well be faster if we just raze cities on our own and hope for a settler from our ally.

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Back in business again.

Has anywone tried a space victory? Are we sure it is the best option if the continent is not big enough?

I like it because it requires GSs, just like domination, sowe don't need to change gears, as would happen with a cultural victory. But I am not sure how fast we can get to space.

One benefit of the Alpha bee-line is earlier Writing/OBs/exploration of our continent. Gyathaar has cut us off. That means we'll have about 15 turns to meet everyone and explore our continent if we want that info before Alpha. How important is that? Do we want to make the scout klarius made in his first 450ad attempt?

We have an alternative. If we wait to meet people till we have Alpha, then gifting Writing will, in my experience, get us +4 with most AIs. Maybe klarius can fill us in on those mechanics. Using that with the right AI may be a golden pass to DoW with Alpha on the next turn.

First conclusion from the diplomacy screen:
Liz is cautious with Asoka, so she has less than +3 hidden modifier.
That means their PeaceWeight differs more than the standard 1.
So Liz has drawn a bigger random at game start than Asoka.

Asoka is pleased with Washington, but not the other way round. Considering Asokas BetterRankAttitudeChange of 3 and 18 players that means Asoka is at least 7 places ahead of Washington in the ranking.

BTW, so I don't have to repeat all this stuff:
Explanations in this thread.

jesusin said:

Back in business again.

Has anywone tried a space victory? Are we sure it is the best option if the continent is not big enough?

I like it because it requires GSs, just like domination, sowe don't need to change gears, as would happen with a cultural victory. But I am not sure how fast we can get to space.

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I have using klarius IIRC 450ad communism. Finished 1816 but I PA'd with Hatty (not a cottage builder) and didn't expand her further from the cities she had at the PA. I think that date can be significantly improved upon.

I'm not sure it's the best fallback option either. If our continent isn't big enough, it's going to be close (or at least we'll know that very quickly after OB) and I think we can find a holy/wonder city on the other continent and get that quicker than space. But we'll have to see. If we need something like 5 overseas cities for dom, then we're gonna have to consider space. Or conquest?

LowtherCastle said:

We have an alternative. If we wait to meet people till we have Alpha, then gifting Writing will, in my experience, get us +4 with most AIs. Maybe klarius can fill us in on those mechanics.

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Well, the information is already somewhere hidden in my posts in this thread .
Fair trade points is value of gifts divided by ((HasMetCounter+1)*5).
If you know somebody one turn a value of 40g is enough to get the full +4. That's a well known trick to get somebody to a good attitude on the first turn met.

The ~200 value of writing (if they haven't started to research it, which is unlikely for most ) is good enough for ~40 turns knowing them per point.

We should be OK still with starting to meet people with writing (our direct neighbors are a different story and Toku is probably already a lost cause).
But I still would like to know all at alphabet. That's indeed an argument for a scout to complete with writing as a single warrior will not be fast enough.

I support scout to know all at alpha. In addition to giving us full options for diplo-enhancing trades it will give us full options for tech trades, and much (exponentially?) better options in figuring out how to optimize between the two.

The library and academy will be delayed a few turns but hopefully that will be offset by enhanced trade value at alpha. EDIT: I mean if we're lucky we'll be able to trade for poly on turn alpha+1.

I think we may have met our target AI to beat up on too.

I have always managed to meet all AI with one warrior, so I don't see the need for building a scout...

We can leave out the second work boat and camp the deer first. This will delay alphabet 1 turn probably, but not the library.

Erkon said:

I have always managed to meet all AI with one warrior, so I don't see the need for building a scout...

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I didn't on your map when boxed in until writing.
At least you don't know that you met all w/o pre-knowledge.

klarius said:

I didn't on your map when boxed in until writing.

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Same here. In fact on your map I didn't meet Hatty for a long time since I was in a hurry to meet as many asap between OB and alpha and decided to take a risk that that there was no civ in that corner to save about 8 turns going up and back, and she got in a war with Cathy very early, meaning her units never found Beijing.

To know the periphery of our continent, hence domination tile count by Alpha, we need two units scouting. Somehow, I was thinking this has some relevance to our trading and DoWing but I can't remember what right now. Since no one repsonded to that part, I suppose no one else thinks it has any relevance, or?

klarius said:

Well, the information is already somewhere hidden in my posts in this thread .
Fair trade points is value of gifts divided by ((HasMetCounter+1)*5).
If you know somebody one turn a value of 40g is enough to get the full +4. That's a well known trick to get somebody to a good attitude on the first turn met.

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Sorry and thanks. I should have been able to figure that out. Not all that hidden.

LowtherCastle said:

To know the periphery of our continent, hence domination tile count by Alpha, we need two units scouting. Somehow, I was thinking this has some relevance to our trading and DoWing but I can't remember what right now. Since no one repsonded to that part, I suppose no one else thinks it has any relevance, or?

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I don't think it has relevance to trading/DOWing at alpha. I believe our trades and research will be the same at and for a while after alpha for all VC's. We need a PA anyway, and for dom/space/conquest we would work that similarly. Culture would be a bit different though as we don't need them to have >2 cities.

Also, if you bring 2 units down the edges to outline the continent by alpha, do you have time to bring them up the middle to meet any landlocked AI by then too?