SGOTM 11 - Smurkz

I've updated the Reference page with the latest test games and screenshot.

Very impressive, Niklas! Sorry I haven't been able to do any real testing. Chris's alternative eastern site is interesting, but clearly an inferior site long-term (edit) and we still have the likely problem that Zara will beat us to it. Maybe it would better to just let Zara claim the better tile (2E 2W of the cows) so we can capture it later (assuming he doesn't settle somewhere stupid ). Or maybe we'll get lucky and can settle it ourselves for our 3rd city.

What about the grass tile next to the cows to our NNE? It would have 4 forests within cultural borders (assuming one more Deli pop but none for the city itself), cows, fresh water, and eventually the oasis. There's one 1 more forest in the BFC. More hills than optimal, but it could grow decently [eh, not so much] and would have good placement for blocking Zara. The tile 1W of there is still fogged--maybe something good, although it's probably bare plains. Cultural borders would soon include the incense, which we probably don't want to include in any city's BFC since it's likely desert up there.

There is one more thing that may significantly affect our choice of location for the second city - copper. I think our test games so far have shown that what we're planning is definitely feasible, in various forms. Maybe the best option for now is to play on until BW? That's 12 more turns of scouting, and copper will be revealed.

I could play those turns, or someone else may pick it up from here. Regardless, the plan should be simple:

Deli: Build warrior, work Corns when applicable.
Worker: Farm Corn (8), move to second Corn (1), start farming there too (4/8).
Research: BW

The only thing we need a decision on is what to do with our wounded explorer. I say give him Wood I (87 hp), heal one turn (97 hp), then move to make a circle around Aksum.

Yup, that all sounds good to me. BL, do you want to take over? If not, can you play more today, Niklas?

So, the Oracle-MC-Pgramids gambit is feasible.

Do we agree that it is still a good idea? We want pyramids for a specialist economy. Could we build/chop them from scratch instead? I am not especially enamored of the fur site. Is or
worth taking a less than optimal second city location + oracle in "wrong" city to get pyramids via oracle?

So far, we have built a worker and researched agriculture and starting bronze working. Those would be good choices for any strategy.

I'm not arguing directly against the gambit, just pointing out that this is a good time to
confirm that it is still our best plan.

If I take over, it'd have to be today since tomorrow and Friday are likely shot. As it is I'm surprised to be home now to do anything... Anyway, on the plan I'm not convinced warrior next is best. I'd almost prefer to get the second worker out now (will finish 16 turns from now if built). Niklas - what's your build after the warrior, and what pop is the city at once we start building whatever that is (is there an updated spreadsheet I'm missing?)? Basically I'm asking if it makes sense to grow the city now by building a warrior. Barbs at this stage do not appear to be a problem in any tests I've run nor is happy cap going to be an immediate problem.

I'm now going to test Chris's other cows site. If at all possible I'd love to get our second city settled somewhere in here to block Zara and build Oracle there. This area screams cottage spam though after the forests are chopped is hammer poor. Zara's culture pops turn 38 (correct me if I'm wrong), so the floodplains tile will be covered along with one of the forests so it is limited.

Edit: On warrior move: Give him woody I, but do not heal as Zara's creative fueled culture is going to pop pretty soon, thus limiting our LoS into Zara's lands. Don't wait any to encircle Zara's capital.

Oracle in a city 2W and 1N of the cows is not feasible. Looking at turn 140 something for Oracle there. Problem is Zara's capital's borders cover up the tiles I mentioned earlier, and whipping a monument so overflow from it goes into Oracle doesn't do squat to retake the tiles. Since there's no hills to work, building the Oracle manually is not possible. Plus to get the trade route up, four roaded tiles are needed for the hookup.

There is another site that's probably doable, but I suspect there will be resistance to it. 2W 1 S of the cows would put two hills and two forests into the immediate settled area, but there's a catch: once the border pops, we also gain 3 coastal tiles and another tundra tile in the BFC. It'll block Zara, but it won't use any of the floodplains available. It's not great, but it at least has a legitimate shot at Oracle within a reasonable time frame.

The one thing I am starting to agree on is capital build path: worker ->warrior -> settler ->worker seems to be the best. I can get another worker out sooner, but it stunts the ensuing warrior and settler builds. Getting the capital to pop 4 builds the settler quicker, plus allows for a 2 pop whip vs a 1 pop whip at three pop.

Backwards Logic said:

The one thing I am starting to agree on is capital build path: worker ->warrior -> settler ->worker seems to be the best. I can get another worker out sooner, but it stunts the ensuing warrior and settler builds. Getting the capital to pop 4 builds the settler quicker, plus allows for a 2 pop whip vs a 1 pop whip at three pop.

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In that case, you could proceed with the next 12 turns to reveal copper, and we could then stop for final analysis and a decision on what to do. If we don't go (directly) for Oracle/Pyramids, then I'd advocate REXing like crazy, preferably aided by Stonehenge and the Great Wall for speed and safety.

I think we're stopping after 12 turns no matter what. Just I've been flipping back and forth on what would be better: worker -> worker or worker -> warrior.

EDIT: site I mentioned above is doable, though nothing comparable with what Niklas can put up with Oracle in the capital. If we do the gambit, Oracle probably has to go in the capital. I'm not thrilled with Niklas' other site where he settles on the only hill in a 4-5 tile radius.

Overall I'm starting to have doubts with this Oracle gambit since optimally we can't stick Oracle in a 'good' spot. I'm tempted to can the idea and go Great Wall and maybe Stonehenge. We have to keep in mind archers are out for defense and we have no idea if we have any metal to kill barbs. AH is not on our immediate priority list of things to tech, so horses are out in the interim. I'd probably push to build back to back settlers for the stone site then for the deer site, then have the capital start on the GW or Mids. 'Wasting' precious beakers on meditation and priesthood for a gain we can probably achieve the old-fashioned way seems a bit sub-optimal.

I think early Pyramids are an absolute killer with this setup. If we don't do the gambit, we need to make plans for building them brick by brick instead, and make them now. GWall and Henge are total wastes in comparison. With the gambit, we're going to snag Pyramids before T110, which is really early. If we can achieve something similar the "old-fashioned" way, then I'm all for doing that. Show me the money.

In my latest games I built Worker -> Warrior (until one turn left) -> Worker (at size 3) -> finish Warrior -> Warrior -> switch to Settler at size 5.

I should point out that the site I've used, 4W of the capital, is definitely nothing special. The only things needed to make this work, with any site, is that 1) it has three or more forests to chop, and 2) it can share one of the Corns with the capital.

I honestly don't see what the problem with putting Oracle in the capital is. Why is that a bad thing? If Zara will settle towards us, having a ton of early culture in the capital could be perfect, IMO.

Is Mids by turn 85 any good?

Oh, and then afterward Stonehenge in 6 turns, or GW in 7?

Here's a link to the spreadsheet for the T81 scheme: http://www.box.net/shared/d62tcn1jxh

Looking at possible sites, there aren't that many that could fit the bill. 2S of the Stone would work well. The plains hill 3N of the capital might as well, though it's not really a good position.

Regarding "the stone site", where are we talking then? That stone tile itself is really crappy, only 3P with Quarry, so it's typically not a tile we want in a BFC. Stone tiles are only good if placed on top of hills. That's another reason why I hesitate to make plans to build the Mids "by hand".

Backwards Logic said:

Is Mids by turn 85 any good?

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It's definitely good, unless you've sacrificed everything else to achieve it. But I doubt you would do that - care to show?

Yea, I'll show the save. Tech situation is pretty solid (I went pottery->writing after getting the prerequisites in for mids), have four workers and three warriors (two as garrisons). Two cities which is a bit light, but mids could be stalled to get another settler out before building them. I had stone hooked by T 66 which really boosted the set up and chops that went to the mids were stone fueled chops. Capital still has three forests for additional chopping (save has four, but one of them grew) and could spit another settler out in 9 turns if we wanted. The micro I'm a tad sketchy on, but rest assured it was nothing overly complicated. Redoing the scheme will not be difficult.

EDIT: Dumb question... How do I open the spreadsheet you posted?

Save:

Niklas said:

I honestly don't see what the problem with putting Oracle in the capital is. Why is that a bad thing? If Zara will settle towards us, having a ton of early culture in the capital could be perfect, IMO.

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At some point, someone was advocating for Oracle in the second city and the forge in the capital, presumably under the theory that a forge in the capital will be better for us in the long run. So I think the problem wasn't so much "Oracle is in the capital" as it was "forge is not in capital."

Very interesting. No Oracle/free tech, but getting Representation and +3 around 40 turns earlier is certainly worth thinking about, to put it mildly. I also like the idea of having the stone hooked up early so we could take a shot at Stonehenge and the Great Wall. In fact, having the Pyramids at turn 85 might be a little too early to make good use of Representation since we may not have the food and population to spare to run enough specialists. I haven't looked at the save to see if it's possible, but in my dream scenario we'd get Henge and the Great Wall in the 2nd city and then the Pyramids in Deli. Delaying the Pyramids by a dozen or so turns should be very low risk, and getting the other two Wonders would really help with REXing.

Really nice work, guys! On the off chance that someone else could help contribute to the testing, could you tell us what you've found works best regarding tech order, builds, etc? (Yes, I know we have Niklas's spreadsheet, but BL's orders must differ in some ways.)

And not to poke, but we still need to know where that copper is.

I really don't think GWall and Henge are worth the trouble. Henge maybe, GWall no (awaiting BL's obligatory comment about barbarian axemen and capitals).

In fact, with a plan to get Pyramids the old-fashioned way, and so early too, I'd be more tempted to try for a different slingshot with the Oracle. CoL would seem the sensible choice then, Monarchy would be useless thanks to Mids, but MC is still an interesting option. No way we would manage CS.

Do we have any test games at all where we've tried out when Oracle usually falls with these settings? That's probably what would be most helpful at this point, and is something anyone could do. Just start a random test map and play sloppy until Oracle and Mids are both built.

I like MC for the forges, especially with silver so close.

Mmm. Remember SANCTA and their hammer economy?

SANCTA also had the luxury of being FIN, and made good use of the Colossus from MC. But yes, early hammers are good hammers, regardless.

The main attraction with CoL is obviously that Caste goes so well together with Rep...

Niklas said:

I really don't think GWall and Henge are worth the trouble.

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Good point about the Oracle still having some use. But I would not underestimate the Henge and Wall. Border expansions would not require wasting hammers on monuments or waiting until we can get libraries up, making more and better tiles available earlier. And with earlier border pops keeping out the barbs (with the Wall), it would be much safer to send workers and settlers around without needing to waste hammers on military units for escorts and garrisons (as long as we get those 4+ warriors ); a couple units for fogbusting and to suppress barb spawning is all we need.

In general, I think our playing style hasn't given enough emphasis to expansion. Think of Murky et al. and their land gobbling in previous SGOTMs. We did pretty well in SGOTM10 largely because we REXed more than usual, and we would have done even better if we'd pursued that more (with island settling). In this game, capturing cities has been handicapped (not that we shouldn't do a lot of that, too), and peaceful growth will be even more important. Lastly, we can easily get stone, making the Henge and Wall cheap. I'd still love to get the Oracle, too, but we could get two other very valuable wonders in the same time, and depending on what our tests show, we may have time for the Oracle, too. One last point is that if we want a cultural victory as our backup, having several really old (double-culture) Wonders will do, um, wonders.

Niklas said:

Just start a random test map and play sloppy until Oracle and Mids are both built.

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Now there's something I can handle!