SGOTM 08 - Smurkz

I think we have other places to go than slogging through the jungle. The r_rolo1 screenshots show land close enough to (I assume) reach by galley in several directions. An alternate possibility is making friends with Shaka and seeing what's on the other islands.

That said, my personal preference at this point is for taking Shaka out of the game first.

There is definitely land galley reachable south ( that one we can even see without tricks ) and north ( the jungle island is biiger than it looks at first sight and it only has jungle in few tiles ) . The land to the east may be within galley reach , but I wouldn't bet on it.

Like I said to niklas in MSN, my bet would be using the 3rd workboat to give a look at the jungle island while going to the clams and to use our galley ( we'll surely need at least one, beleive me..... ) that we'll do to unload the worker in the marble island to give a look to the south. If this is a Medium and small map , as I suspect, it will probably be more worthwhile to settle the islands than to wait for IW to make use of that jungle.

This is a Big and Small map, as can be seen from the game settings.

I don't think there's any question other islands will be better to settle than the jungle. The question is:

A) Attack Shaka and take his land;

or

B) Settle the islands.

That needs a nice scout of shaka lands before we can awnser that

Without knowing what Shaka's lands look like, we don't have enough info to make that decision.

I was trying to work on a spreadsheet when I realized I don't know how the hammer overflow works when you're whipping a building with a bonus (granary, library). Can anyone enlighten me? Testing it in-game didn't clear things up; I'm only more confused. Maybe it's an issue with overflow in general? I vaguely remember MW talking about that last game.

As an example of what I mean, I had a library being built, with a workboat to follow. The library had 12 hammers of 90, and would add 10 more (5x2) the next turn. I was able to whip for 2 pop, which suggests 60x2 hammers, for a total of 142. Subtract 90 from that, you get 52. I'd expect to see only half of that (26) to go towards the workboat, but instead I got 22.

Ack, nevermind, I got it. After the whip, production became only 2 hammers, for a total of 134; half of 44 is 22.

Renata, that's the reason I've switched from the old scheme I had of writing queue switches to the new one - e.g. I don't write 20-15-30 for building WB(part)-Axe-WB(rest), instead I write 20-35-10. That should get the overflows right.

In general, if you overflow X hammers from A to B, X*mod(B)/mod(A) is applied towards B. So if you overflow 3 hammers from settler to granary, you get 6 towards the granary, and if you overflow 3 from granary to settler you get 1 towards the settler.

But the sheet should take care of all that for you, if you follow the scheme I listed above.

That said, my personal preference at this point is for taking Shaka out of the game first.

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Instead of being worried about Shaka attacking us, we need to be figuring out how to conquer him quickly.

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Hold your horses there, my brave but impetuous friend. We can't conquer him while we're desperately trying to build the Pyramids before the AI. Agressive leaders get free Combat I promos for melees (and gunpowder) and double speed barracks. Shaka has the UB ikhanda for his barracks; it costs 50 hammers, but effectively 25 for being Aggressive, and the ikhanda gives +3 XP for all land units. So assuming he builds barracks (and he will), all his land units start off with +6 XP [edit: no, just +3 like normal barracks]. Add a Combat I for melees. On top of that, add an extra movement point for his impis (UU for spearmen).

Yes, Shaka will be our first target, but we won't be ready to take him on until we have catapults and elephants, or we might need to wait for macemen (or maybe crossbows) and trebs. Let's build our key wonders, get some some good production from our 3 core big happy cities, gain a big tech lead, THEN go after him. Meanwhile, we'll of course be exploring by sea and settling when appropriate. Definitely use the galley to explore while the worker handles the island marble and fort--maybe even build a scout to pop goodie huts.

I should have made it clearer I was asking about short term goals--next 50 turns or so. Are we all committed to going for the Pyramids? There could be an Industrious leader out there with stone. I think another worker or two would really help but can't ask Niklas to change the plan he's slaved over without some proof. I therefore propose the following challenge to myself and others:
Build 1 axe by turn 60.
Have 3 cities by turn 70.
Build Pyramids in non-capital.
Build Great Lib in capital.
Don't build extra boats for exploration (since it's just a test game).
Fastest to meet those criteria wins.

Any other constraints we should add?

[Edit: My apology on the ikhanda--it does NOT give an extra 3 XP--just has reduced maintenance. I've never played Shaka. OK, he's not quite as scary, but let's not rush things and get bogged down in a war of grinding attrition.]

On another topic, if anyone's thinking of delaying the settler for any purpose, don't. In the test game, barb cities are popping up within a few turns of when we plan to settle and any delay might find a city in the spot we want.

Methos said:

Without knowing what Shaka's lands look like, we don't have enough info to make that decision.

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Right - I was responding to Renata's post #280 which said there was 'nowhere else to go except through [Shaka]' - I wanted to be sure we were all agreed that there is another option.

I'm trying out a plan (on sheet) along the lines of what I suggested last night. Results are mixed so far, but I'll look at it some more. Need to take a dog walk now though, then I'll be back with more thoughts.

Xc, I think those are decent goals, and I'll pick you up on it (at least sheet-wise, hopefully I can test it too). But the reason I haven't wanted to state any extensive hard goals is that I think they limit creative thinking, and as such I would prefer less constraints. I want to see test games played, and I want to see the results presented. But e.g. if one game gets the GLib 3 turns later, but with more improvement overall, then it's not obvious which game is best. I think we want the Pyramids, I think we want the Great Library, but apart from that it's an open book. That said, some things will of course play a bigger role when we evaluate the games, and it's good to keep those in mind.

So you want creative thinking, eh? OK, what do people think about putting a settler on the island, just south of the marble. No messing with a fort--Bang! We've got our marble hooked up. And there are fish. Maybe make it our Maoi city?

Ok, here's an attempt. I didn't get all that far, thanks to toddler A. But you can look at what I have, see if there's anything useful. This scheme is actually played up through turn 54, with sailing due next turn. After that, I've continued the spreadsheet for the capital through turn 74. (There's also a spreadsheet for town 2, but there's not much to see yet.) It needs checking: see aforementioned distracta-toddler.

Xc, that's an interesting idea no doubt. I've had the thought a few times, but it's never seemed beneficial enough. We don't really need the Marble hooked up that early, so all we'd gain is 12 worker turns (not to be sneezed at of course). We'd get a town that has the fish, and could steal the Marble from the capitol, but not much else (that we can see now at least). It would So it seems to me that both Red and Green (as per Methos' dotmap) are better locations, and after that we'll have Marble hooked up anyway and used by the capitol.

If anything, I'd rather stick that town on the plains hill island, catching the fish anyway.

EDIT: Regarding Moai, it's a balance, you can never put it where it would make the most sense. It would take forever to build it with only the Marble (at best) to work. 250 hammers, 4 hpt...

I have also considered settling on the island, but don't feel its worth it. Granted, Niklas's island hill could be interesting based on what appears from the fog.

Didn't have time for test game tonight, but I've looked a lot at spreadsheets. As it turns out, the strategy I outlined above didn't pan out very well. On the other hand, Renata's approach is really good, I like how she manages to speed up the whip to 43 against what I thought possible.

I took hers and tweaked it a bit to work the clams for a few turns, allowing us to whip 4 pop on turn 63 instead of 3. I've attached the sheet below, my last sheet is the one named "another try". No time for more tonight though, got work to do tomorrow.

But all in all I think we should stick to that. I still want to play it out to see how we fare past turn 100 though.

It looks like a town 2 on red can get the Pyramids on turn 85, using four chops post-math and a 2-pop whip for 60 hammers at the end. Sound good? I still need to work out some of the details; for example, the third town will be founded by the time I'd want to start chopping, which will mean some of the forests in the BFC will give their yields to that town instead.

(I'm assuming the closer town gets the hammers -- correct? And the Pyramids are 500 hammers, right?)

At least one chop (of the forested plains hill) will necessarily go to town 3 -- if my estimate is right it should finish off a worker build there seven-ish turns after founding, which we will need in order to get the rest of the chops done in time. Sound reasonable? I'm pretty sure it'll work.

Edit: Niklas, in your start at a sheet for that town, you didn't take the granary into effect, so growth is much faster.

Hmm, forgot that whips are only half as good when building wonders. So it should be turn 86. Unless, can anyone tell me how many hammers you get from chopping one tile outside the BFC (it'd be 3N of town 2, the site of town 3, to be exact) pre-math? If it's more than 10, I can get back to turn 85 at the cost of a few worker turns, but without "wasting" any otherwise usable forests by chopping them pre-math.

I can either play this afternoon or I have to wait until Thursday. Does everyone feel comfortable enough with me playing today?

It's ok by me.