SGOTM 11 - Barley Demons

The turnset is done. I will upload the save and write the turn report in the next hour or so. But I just wanted to say this: Archibald is still alive, but he now has a story to tell his grandchildren and Robert has been avenged.

I stopped in the middle of turn 48. The Settler can be whipped this turn and be complete next turn (T49).

More details to follow.

Looking forward to it SilentConfusion! Glad to hear about Archibald....

I read what T-Hawk wrote, and couldn't understand how that differed from how I understood the mechanic.

Then I read what I actually wrote and am now wondering what kind of weed that was....

To verify what T-Hawk wrote, I just did a quick test. I built a granary in a size 2 city. The granary competed with 23/24 left in the food bar. Then I starved the city down to 10/24 food. Then grew it back so that it would grow to size 3 with exactly 24/24 food.

Voila: Size 3 with 12 food--half of the size 2 full food bar--in the new (size 3) food bar.

So you can starve and then re-grow the city to get the granary bonus food on first growth.

Rudimentary Turnlog provided when uploading:

THIS WEEK IN TECHNOLOGICAL BREAKTHROUGHS

GO WEST YOUNG ARCHIE

A WARRIOR IS BORN

IF A TREE GETS CHOPPED TO DEATH IN THE FOREST DOES IT MAKE A SOUND?

The Nitty-Gritty

The Save Link
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm11/Barley_Demons_SG011_BC2800_01.CivBeyondSwordSave

Compromise said:

Looking forward to it SilentConfusion! Glad to hear about Archibald....

I read what T-Hawk wrote, and couldn't understand how that differed from how I understood the mechanic.

Then I read what I actually wrote and am now wondering what kind of weed that was....

To verify what T-Hawk wrote, I just did a quick test. I built a granary in a size 2 city. The granary competed with 23/24 left in the food bar. Then I starved the city down to 10/24 food. Then grew it back so that it would grow to size 3 with exactly 24/24 food.

Voila: Size 3 with 12 food--half of the size 2 full food bar--in the new (size 3) food bar.

So you can starve and then re-grow the city to get the granary bonus food on first growth.

Click to expand...

I didn't know what T-Hawk was saying that there was a cap on food stored the first time. I also didn't know about starving the city.

Great to have such knowledgeable players on our team. I've learned a lot already. Just thinking slowly about each set of turns forces you to learn. For instance I learned:
-overflow food from a worker/settler build goes into the next turn as overflow hammers not food.
-beaker overflow does not simply use the modifiers from the finished tech as I thought (I know I read this somewhere on CFC) and I wonder if a patch fixed it somewhere along the line. The overflow beakers are converted back to base beakers and the modifiers for the new tech are added, it seems like.

Good finish on the turnset, Silent.

Not exactly a superabundance of food here, is there?

Okay...opinions on city site(s)? I'd like to move Archibald NE to reveal the last few coastal tiles up there, but I'm not expecting much.

Right now, my top 4 choices--in no particular order--are: (a) 1S of the stone: Grabs stone, works copper , (b) 1SW of the wheat: Wheat, oasis, coastal, (c) 4E1N of the capital: Blocks Zara, (d) 2S of our cow: the best production site I see.

Compromise said:

Good finish on the turnset, Silent.

Not exactly a superabundance of food here, is there?

Okay...opinions on city site(s)? I'd like to move Archibald NE to reveal the last few coastal tiles up there, but I'm not expecting much.

Right now, my top 4 choices--in no particular order--are: (a) 1S of the stone: Grabs stone, works copper , (b) 1SW of the wheat: Wheat, oasis, coastal, (c) 4E1N of the capital: Blocks Zara, (d) 2S of our cow: the best production site I see.

Click to expand...

Do you mean 2N of Cow? 2N looks much better than 2S of cow. It's freshwater (because of oasis) with wheat and cow. I wish those desert hills were grassland or even plains, but eh. It also has an incense desert.

What about 4N of Delhi? I think someone mentioned that spot.

I still like the block Zara grassland river city. I know it has no resources, but I like the idea of all those riverside cottages boosting our tech rate. With farms we can figure out how to grow the city to best work cottages. It does force Zara into the tundra.

I think the northern city, either coastal or freshwater, can wait until our third city. As for the stone city for me it's only a question of whether having stone ASAP will help us and how much?

I need to be convinced that the stone would really help us, before I settled away from Zara and away from that cottage city site. I could be convinced. I'm just not yet. I'll do some calcs with hooking up stone.

Quick reply to show to the proposed--not necessarily preferred--production site. Since it conflicts with some Zara blockers, I thought I should mention it early:

Administrative and overview post:

Next up: regoarrarr. Since this is the first round and since both SilentConfusion and I had slight hiccups, please confirm that you can get the 2800BC save and open it without HoF warnings.

Thoughts about next turnset:

Goal: I expect we're going to settle our second city on this turnset.

Timeframe: I expect this turnset to run on Sunday or Monday. Possibly later, but probably not earlier.

Strategy: I don't hear a clear consensus on where to put the city. I think this is because we as a team (and I personally) don't have a clear strategy yet. I would like to hear rough outlines of how we're going to win this game.

Metagame opinion: To get the discussion started, here's my opinion: The winner of SGOTM11 will be a diplomatic victory, though at least some who choose to attempt it will be thwarted by events beyond their control.

Buddhism and Hinduism are both "in the wild" (i.e. not founded by us). I think these two will be the dominant faiths. By the time we meet the other four civs in the world--likely after an Astronomy beeline--we will need to decide which bloc to ally with. Best case scenario is that three of the civs line up behind one of the first two religions. More likely one of those civs will found its own religion and so the religious world will be fragmented. Sadly, this means religious diplo bonuses are likely to be more harmful than helpful.

So our options for increasing diplo relations will be gifts/liberations, shared civics, open borders, resource deals, and capitulations to their demands.

I think we'll be using many spies to adjust others' civics and religions.

If the world is roughly divided into even land areas for each civ, we will need three other civs to vote for us. If we do very well at expanding--or at getting land in war--maybe we can get the needed votes with just two other civs. Zara likely won't matter since we'll be trying to squeeze him out of his land.

I expect we will DoW one time for diplo/land reasons and one time for access to the world's fur supply. I hope those are linked. Note that if we are ever DoW'd on, we will probably want to keep it that way forever so that we don't get "join our struggle" requests that our variant prevents us from accepting.

(Please express opinions and thoughts about possible event wins!)

Knowledge and Ignorance:

• Zara: We know almost everything about Zara's land and short-term potential land on this continent. We know he hasn't met anyone else either. The only area we can't see consists of a few water tiles NE of his capital. Question: Is there a way to tell from espionage if those are resource tiles?
  
• Continent: We know can be pretty darn sure we share this continent with only Zara. We don't know if there are islands or other continents that can be reached either directly or after an over-water cultural expansion yet. Question: On the chance that there is a "workboat" path to our continent from one of the religion-founding AI's continent, can their religion spread to Delhi given our current tech situation and river/road/coast trade connection network? On this same note, we be able to see if Zara gets religion in Aksum, right?
  
• City sites: There simply isn't much food visible to us yet! I lean toward thinking we should decide on a location for a second city soon regardless, and I'd prefer that decision to derive from a strategic plan. Does anyone feel like we should delay our first settler and hold out for a better site?

On the chance that there is a "workboat" path to our continent from one of the religion-founding AI's continent, can their religion spread to Delhi given our current tech situation and river/road/coast trade connection network? On this same note, we be able to see if Zara gets religion in Aksum, right?

Click to expand...

An atheist city (Delhi) can randomly acquire religion if it can see a trade path to the holy city. Every tile along the way must either be 1) unfogged by us or 2) owned by somebody non-hostile. (Open Borders is irrelevant.) This is the same requirement for having a trade route with a target city (which does require OB.)

So the answer is probably no at the moment, but can become yes if either we unfog or Zara's culture owns the coastal tiles in question.

Yes we can see if Aksum gets religion. The city billboard religion display is always updated, you don't need to re-reveal the city tile to see it.

Compromise said:

I expect we will DoW one time for diplo/land reasons and one time for access to the world's fur supply. I hope those are linked. Note that if we are ever DoW'd on

Click to expand...

personal peeve: "DoW" isn't a verb, or even a word. "If we are ever declaration of war'ed on" doesn't even make sense. "Declared on" or even "attacked" work just fine.

When in Rome--or in this case, on Civfanatics....

It helps to think of it as "Decidedly overreact" as pronounced by an opposing diplomat with no 'r' sound in his native tongue.

For example: "they decidedly ove'weacted on us after our comments about the misshapen facial features of their womenfolk." Ove'weact is so awkward. DoW is much better.

In general I think it makes sense to do things like "link our next city to the longterm plan" but the question of the first settler, I'm not so sure. As I understand it, blocking Zara is highest priority pretty much no matter how we expect to win the game. I don't think there is anything about a diplo victory that really governs the dotmap. MAYBE it somewhat favors a denser build for more total population but I think that only really comes into play if you use a food corp, and that seems unlikely as that's significant added tech. And even if we eventually go culture, I really don't see any blocking location that looks like a Legendary city, even the strongest option (single city grabbing both wheat and cow).

Probably what I like best is Compromises "Production" site 2S of the cow, and the coastal plains hill, not sure which should be settled first. Let Zara have the river-but-no-food area between us.

The more I think about it, the more I like the production site 2S of the cow. It pushes Zara back a bit. It gives early production which is generally more valuable in the very early game. It is close and easy to connect. We can improve everything we want there right now.

Regoarrarr, are you around?

Compromise said:

The more I think about it, the more I like the production site 2S of the cow. It pushes Zara back a bit. It gives early production which is generally more valuable in the very early game. It is close and easy to connect. We can improve everything we want there right now.

Regoarrarr, are you around?

Click to expand...

I would not have picked that spot as a possible city location. I guess I have some things to learn still. When you guys say it's a good city site, I believe it, it just means I have to rearrange my perspective to a point where that doesn't seem weird to me.

So that city will be fed by the cow and grass farms and will work as many hills as possible? Do we have AH? It would be less maintenance, which I could buy into.

Is an early production city so valuable early because it means getting out workers and settlers faster? An early cottage city with cottages that grow that much sooner will be an advantage down the road. This would not be as valuable in the early game, but could it be as valuable in the long run?

K, just a quick note to say I hate that site.

Delhi doesn't have that much base production, and that site takes away it's only 2 glh mines.
Factor in that those grasslands you plan on farming will be getting wtfpwned by Zara's 2nd city culture, and the end result is you're f'ed.

The only thing you should be considering splitting off Delhi is possibly one of the corns.


Coastal wheat isn't bad, but if so, then please consider settling this production site 1W or on the ph (picks up a corn and the cow) 2W of the lake.

I still like the blocking site, but I sense the tide turning against the idea.
I see no reason to give up prime dual river grasslands to Zara, when we know that he's our only competitor for space.
Settling decent cottaging cities fits in with the strategy of emphasising tech over production.

The 'no food slow growth' argument makes no sense if you settle that currently proposed site. Plains cow is 3f, same as farmed gl tile, and the blocking site picks up multiple unique forests for an instant monument + granary + library.

I'd like to chime in on the settling discussions but I can't find a proper screenshot. Is there any good overview in this thread? SilentConfusion, do you always play with the camera zoomed in so far? I can't tell what anything looks like from your shots.

T-hawk said:

I'd like to chime in on the settling discussions but I can't find a proper screenshot. Is there any good overview in this thread? SilentConfusion, do you always play with the camera zoomed in so far? I can't tell what anything looks like from your shots.

Click to expand...

Here's a few T-Hawk.

Proposed production site:


Other screenshots around the capital:










Wheat site will likely be due North of the cows, on one of those hills.
Blocking site is proposed roughly 4E2N of capital.

Discussion of why we're even considering settling a no resource site is here
In short, it not only forced ZY to settle an inferior site, but he settled slower also.

T-hawk said:

I'd like to chime in on the settling discussions but I can't find a proper screenshot. Is there any good overview in this thread? SilentConfusion, do you always play with the camera zoomed in so far? I can't tell what anything looks like from your shots.

Click to expand...

I guess I do. I didn't zoom in for those shots, that's just the level I play at.

Apoligies for the latness, but i have updated the test as best i can, i have 1 extra sheild into a warrior than i should in production at Deli - however i cannot see where i went wrong using the turn sets provided, but i think it is workable atleast for now.

BTW, in WB Zara is producing a settler with approx 24 turns left on it so if we are planing a seal, now would be a good time if the real zara is acting anything like our test one.

I noticed that pocketbeetle's images used the previous (partial-turn) save. Here's our current view of the world:



Looking forward to comments from any and all!

Thanks pocketbeetle, but those were already the same zoomed-in shots that I didn't like. Compromise, yours help, though it's still a lot of looking back and forth between the pictures. This sort of overview is what I mean. Use flying camera mode (Ctrl-Shift-F, need to enable it in CivilizationIV.ini) and zoom out until everything is visible at once.

That said, enough whining from a non-player, I'll make do with Compromise's shots. I see the problems here. There's fairly few food resources anywhere, and the few that do exist do not mesh with blocking Zara in. Overall I agree with Timmy's plan. We can't block Zara from everywhere. He'll most likely go for the foodless river area first, so let him. Settle the cow (though I like 2S 1W from the cow, to share Delhi's corn), and next the plains hill on the north coast.

Oh and my hawk-eye spotted this: