SGOTM 07 - Smurkz

Fair enough. In the interest of keeping this game moving, and since I feel a definite matting of discussion lately (partly my fault), I will conduct the trade as decided, move the scout south, end the Anarchy and then reupload so we have something tangible to discuss.

>>The new Save<<

Turn 86/460 (725 BC) [22-May-2008 12:34:07]
Research begun: Meditation (87 Turns)

Tech learned: Currency

New Tech(s) to trade: Huayna Capac, Washington, Asoka, Elizabeth
Can Trade Open Borders with: Elizabeth
The anarchy is over! Your government is re-established.
Zu Chongzhi has been born in a far away land!

IBT:

Turn 87/460 (700 BC) [22-May-2008 12:40:57]
New Tech(s) to trade: Elizabeth

Unfortunately we don't seem to have a better second trade route target than Washington, who will only give us +2. I wonder why we can't trade with Cuzco, that should be a much better target. But since it seems we can't, I would seriously consider resigning the OB agreement with Lizzy, since London is sure to give us +3 (and it will help our scouting efforts too). An OB agreement with us is unlikely to be worth much for anyone, and thus not likely to incur any rival trade demerits. Your thoughts on this?

@Niklas: clearly not your fault
With Chris out (should be back in a matter of days if not hours), GNE not playing , Methos being sick, we have a shortage of players....
Not anything we cannot handle, but it clearly leaves us with 4 players trying to keep up
When one or two of them have a huge workday (my case in this period unfortunately), we are mostly commenting what others (you or Renata most of the time) are gathering from the save...

I agree on playing a very short set as you plan, and then pause for regroup.

Interesting to note: The Cows tile is down to 50% American, despite our recent revolution. Seems we'll retake that soon enough, not sure how long we'll keep it but good for the short run anyway.

Gosh you are playing while I am posting...

Indeed I was, needed to get back to work so I couldn't wait.

Roster:

• ChrisShaffer - UP!
• zyxy - On Deck!
• Niklas - Warming up
• Renata
• unkle
• Methos - Just played
• GeneralEuropean - Advisor

Chris reported that he would be on the road to Thursday 22nd, which happens to be today. We have some discussion ahead of us so he should have time to get back and back in the loop before the time comes to play.

I just forgot that in OCC you cannot know through diplo how many cities another civ has. That's bad, because we cannot really guess if Asoka has Tao or not (I can't if he has only one city for sure). Of course we'll know part of this next turn.

Noticed also that he is still not trading Music, and looking at his culture graph, he might have settled that Great Artist he may very well got when getting to Music. Could he be going for culture ???

Trade front on the wanted but not tradable techs
Lizz: MC (0|4), Compass (0|4), Calendar (1|3)
Asok: Calendar (1|3)
Wash: MC (0|4), Calendar (1|3)
HC: Calendar (1|3)

Remember threshold for removing the monopoly denial:
Liz 40% of her contacts have the tech, Wash/HC 30% and Asoka 20%.
We know HC at least and mayba all AIs have contact with at least 3 more AIs we do not know (see previous posts) (of course if it is a WB exploring, it is not sure eveyone knows the other AIs, but since we see a war going on south, I think they have continental access...). Anyway, that's 7 contacts per AI under my hypothesis. Given their threshold:

Asoka: would trade if 2 other AIs knows tech
HC/Wash/Liz : would trade if 3 other AIs knows tech

If there is another contact:
Asoka: would trade if 2 other AIs knows tech
HC/Wash : would trade if 3 other AIs knows tech
Liz: would trade if 4 other AIs knows the tech

The easiest scenario is the first one (less assumptions) so MC would be available from Asoka as soon as another AI has it. Compass is another story.

Next post I would like to check our number of trades to predict WFYBTA...

Could he be going for culture ???

Click to expand...

Not in vanilla.

I apologize for not contributing as much recently, too. What with chasing a toddler around, my game time is limited to a couple of minutes here and a couple of minutes there. It's been known to take me two hours to write a two paragraph post.

We have traded:

1680 BC (58): known W/A/L/T
Trade Alphabet to Lizzy for BW+AH

Turn 60/460 (1600 BC) known W/A/L/T
Trade Alpha for Maths with Asoka
Trade Alpha for IW with Washington

68 (1280 BC) known W/A/L/T/HC
Trade Poly+Masonry to HC for Sailing

86 (725 BC) W/A/L/T/HC
Trade Col+Lit for Currency+80gp to Wash

Which means that we have traded for 6 techs, of which HC has only seen 4.

Thresholds are 15 for Liz/Asoka, 10 for Asoka/Wash, 5 for Capac/Toku (HC will hit its limit next trade, so if we can make a single turn double trade which he is part of, better trade with him first...). Of course we may have seen decays, since as mentionned by Niklas, every 20 turns we "gain" ability to trade a new tech with each AI (on average of course).

Mpf just remebered that "Thou shalt not be wfybtaed if thou art in thy half-bottom (couting dead civs)"

Good summary unkle. Two things though, even on Deity there's a +20% bonus to the cap, so their caps are actually 18/12/6. Also, if you are in the bottom half, only AIs also on the bottom half will not wfyabta you. So it's still highly relevant to us.

I've been looking at fixing up a spreadsheet, but we're at a position where that seems more or less impossible. The reason is that we want to build a Forge as soon as we possibly can, since we can't grow without it, and since we want that production boost of course. The last posted spreadsheet would have us start a Forge in two turns, so unless we can trade for MC before that then we're looking at quite large changes. The current sheet has us grow aggressively to size 12, but obviously that won't work without a forge.

Hmm, I just realized that I haven't counted the Furs. That means we can go to size 11 at least. And 13 with the Forge.

Would we consider a temple? I think not.

Meeting new peoples might mean new trading opportunities. But what would we trade away? We obviously need our health resources.

Otherwise Drama is our long-term solution, of course. Should we make that our immediate goal after Meditation? I would still like to trade for it, and spend our own beakers to go "forwards", but maybe the lack of Drama and Globe is hampering us too much to pass up. Hmm, Theology is known, maybe we could trade for Paper instead?

Meeting new people is clearly getting new options for trade, as well as getting ourselves into "worst ennemy" trading imbroglio

Basically unless we are bound to meet with Mansa AND he is not the one involved in the current war, doubtful we'll find the tech we need available. Peter would also be valuable, he has a threshold of 10%...

I agree we need to change our options, we will not trade as fast as we want. We may also reconsider tech spamming, not to bring AIs to the WFYBTA point, but to gain relationship AND increase their tech rate...

I have to admit this is the part of the game where I most often flounder. I don't know the tech paths or wonders very well, and I'm not sure how much of a contribution I can make.

Well, Renata, that's what the online tech tree is for. As for wonders, I don't see a single one that we will want to build before UN, unless possibly if we get a GE (though likely not then either).

Tech spamming, well, we don't have that many techs to give away.

Seems to me we will have to play the upcoming turns on our toes, since every single trade opportunity will change our plans, in particular if trades for Philosophy, MC and/or Compass become available. So what we most of all need to decide on is our own tech path. Drama, or something else?

Do we have the furs back from Washington yet? I can't remember.

MC seems to be the critical tech in the very short term. It's good that it's at least out there; my guess is someone will be willing to trade it before too long. How much time do we have (roughly) before we need forge happiness, and how long does it take to build a forge?

No, the furs are still with Washington, we can call them back.

With them we can reach size 11 safely, and according to the latest plan we have 9 turns until we will grow to size 12. A forge should take 2 turns to build if we get some overflow, or 3 turns from scratch. So we need MC within 6 turns to be on the safe side.

Capac will give Calendar + some gold for Lit + CoL. We could also sell CoL to Asoka for 80 gold.
America seems in a terrible position geographically and I would give them copper or even iron to help their defense.

We can slow growth by hiring another scientist upon growth.

I am not very worried about health, but happiness is becoming troublesome. A temple or market would allow 1 extra happy, but Globe is the only real solution. Also because we need to trade/gift our resources away to score diplo points.

I'm back - got it. Will finish reading discussion later today and perhaps play that one-two turns mentioned later today. I've got a four day weekend beginning now - yea!

Edit - I see Niklas played the turns. Will post some ideas later today.

I'm really not sure what to do research-wise. We should start on one of our top research projects (compass, machinery and drama, right?), but if the one we pick shows up for trade soon, we'll probably kick ourselves.

MC we probably will be able to trade for in the near future; I'm not too worried about getting that.