SGOTM 11 - Who Dat?

I'm happy to go ahead and play - the next few turns have been well defined by Fluro's micro plan, and there aren't any big decisions. I'll be taking a chance on barb warriors not entering our borders ... hope this isn't a function of # of cities.

BTW, at the time Oracle comes in on T78:

6 warriors
4 workers
1 Confucian missionary

Delhi is size 5, but working on a Settler for the third city (104/149 hammers completed, 3 turns to go). Could be accelerated by chopping more (I chopped the grassland hills forests into grassland hills mines).

Okay, I played a completely boring turnset.

T44. Checking the victory settings, we have 12% of world pop as does Zara. We lead the world! 2.24% land. World pop is 17 (votes in the UN victory data).

T46 Warrior 3 complete, starts heading NE. There's a barb warrior in the one unbusted space east of Bombay, but he moves off to the east and we will be able to sneak our workers through safely.

T50 Settler complete. Build Warrior 4 from overflow.

T51 Priesthood complete, start AH.

T56. Warrior 3 moves west and defeats a barb warrior.
Our glorious victory

T61. We meet another AI - it's Justinian! He doesn't have a religion yet. Can we get one to him in time?
- Finished worker.
- Warrior 4 moves SW-ish and reveals food rich lands (some tiles SW of Delhi are still fogged and my gut feeling is that there's more seafood there).
- We also see western shore so perhaps we really are isolated on a continent with Zara.
Southwest lands

T62. A forest grows near Delhi! Finished Warrior 5. Need to figure out what to build next, and what to do with Warrior 5. I think heading SW is a good idea to finish mapping the lakey-shorey lands. Our next settler will come out soon and we need to know where to put him. Oracle is at 66/225 hammers with 60 about to come in from two forest chops.

Demographics

Turnset log

smooth.

Do we have any idea which direction Justinian is?

I'm still for settling the stone next (either inland or coastal) - Pyramids/Rep will be a real boost

pnp_dredd said:

smooth.

Do we have any idea which direction Justinian is?

I'm still for settling the stone next (either inland or coastal) - Pyramids/Rep will be a real boost

Click to expand...

I think it's still a little early to say whether we have enough food to make Pyramids worth the hammer investment...even with stone. Hangning Gardens, yes.

cas

Don't complain about the boring turnset! Yours was the most eventful yet

I think we need to grow more, and we should try to get any overflow/chops into settler/workers so we can keep growing. What we could do is to build library and grow to size 6 or 7, then build settler-> whip 3 pop-> resume library. Unless we need more warriors first of course. We may want to keep the latest for MPing.

How did we meet Justinian? A workboat or land unit or unknown? Getting him to join the confu block could be important. If he is on the continent, then we must have some snaky continent, and should look for a way to block him off too.
Alphabet gains priority with tech trading available before we can get Zara friendly.

Looks like a good GP farm spot with fish+pig. Looks like several FPs to the north, so we may want to settle it 1W of pigs. We will know more soon I guess.
I like pyramids enough now with what looks to be a decent stretch of land around the river+a good GP farm spot. If there is more seafood closer to Delhi, we may have a good moai site too.

Interesting that Zara has not founded a 2nd city yet..

Sorry, forgot to explain. Justinian came from a workboat to the northwest. I think he's probably on a different continent but separated only by coastal tiles, as otherwise Zara's scout would have met him earlier.

I like the lake tiles that are separated from coast by only 1 tile. Plant a city there and, with a lighthouse, you immediately get 3F2C. Beats a grassland riverside farrm. In the long run other things are better, but those are decent food tiles. The GP farm has one lake tile, but there's that larger lake SW of Delhi which would be strong if there's a resource there as well.

Justinian on a different landmass means that we have yet another reason to get a coastal city next. Him having trade routes to us will let Confucianism spread. It is also likely that there are more AI within galley reach, so a couple of exploring workboats are needed fast.

We should also be wary that Justinian or someone else will settle on our landmass if we do not fill out the land quickly enough.

I do not get the same results in the testgame. What did you do with the workers after chopping the two forests north of Delhi?

The new forest near Bombay can be chopped by the closest worker, and the other can return to help Delhi after finishing its chop. We are working unimproved tiles!!

T50 Settler complete. Build Warrior 4 from overflow.

Click to expand...

Should have been a worker here

Hmm, I may have reversed the order of worker and warrior - sorry. We do have a 3rd worker floating around Delhi and finishing that farm 2N of Delhi won't take long

For the next turnset's micro: in my tests I chopped the grassland hills forests to get the hammers ASAP, and then mined them into grassland hills mines which then got worked. We actually don't have that many improvements available to us in Delhi, just farms and mines.

After those mines are done, the workers can either mine the copper (for a Stone City) or head to Bombay to make pastures, because Oracle will have popped Bombay's borders around then.

What's after Writing - Alphabet? Pottery?

We do have a 3rd worker floating around Delhi and finishing that farm 2N of Delhi won't take long

Click to expand...

I think we should begin farming the other grass tile next, and get help from the free Bombay worker. Growth is our main production tool at this point, and mines are plan bad to work if we can run scientists instead.
In fact, I don't think we need to chop any more at Delhi before maths, where we can get great outputs towards stone wonders. We can prebuild mines (to be ready for the wonders) if there is time, but once we have wheel, roads should take priority. Mining the copper can also be done, so we can build axes, but I would heavily object to an inland city at this point that could actually work it.

What's after Writing - Alphabet? Pottery?

Click to expand...

Wheel should be highest priority after writing, to get routes for religion spread and commerce. I think we want to get fishing next, at least in time for the 3rd city+monument if its build order is going to be monument-workboat. Then we have three techs that are needed, but will not necessarily be worth teching before alphabet since we can count on tech trades now with more than one AI around. Those three techs are pottery/sailing/masonry.

Thoughts on techs

-Pottery: Will allow granaries and cottages. Granaries are nice in our auxillary cities, but we can probably manage a few more turns without them. Cottages will be hard to find time to build before alphabet, and our capital will be running scientists a bit anyway.

-Sailing: We want this for overseas trade, but for lighthouses it can wait, and for galleys it is probably going to be missionaries we want to transport.

-Masonry: We want to improve the stone, and masonry is hard to trade for, since the AI is really stingy with it. But teching it before actually needed, and possibly before getting the academy bonus may just be wasting beakers.

So I like (after writing): Wheel-fishing-0% until academy-alphabet/masonry (depending)-trade for pottery+sailing+whatever (IW, monarchy, monotheism)-maths-mono (if not traded).

I'm in general agreement with Fluro on the techs and placing the 3rd city coastal.

If you can get the test save to match closely to the actual...I will start looking at it in detail since my turnset is up next.

I have not looked at the save, but did we go into the screen with EP points and assign them all to Zara ? Or are they splitting between Just / Zara right now ? I think we need to pick one AI and devote all EP to it...although it may change to someone other than Zara if we meet a lot of AI quickly in the next 50 turns.

cas

Splitting right now.

beestar said:

Splitting right now.

Click to expand...

Er...I was trying to make the point NOT to split. Devote all EP to Zara.

cas

We need to make sure that Zara and Justinian know each other before we plan to trade techs!

I agree that Pottery, Masonry and Sailing can wait till after we get an Academy, which should now be the main priority along with settling the third city.

cas said:

Er...I was trying to make the point NOT to split. Devote all EP to Zara.

cas

Click to expand...

Oh, I just meant that in my turnset I hadn't done anything to the EP, so the current state is 'splitting'. I thought you were asking about where I had left it ... Next time tell me before the turnset starts

Since Zara is easiest to get to friendly, we should focus our EP on him for now. Knowing his tech choice, and that we can definitely trade for it will help greatly. If we meet Mansa Musa soon, then we can switch, but I don't see any other reason to do it.

We need to make sure that Zara and Justinian know each other before we plan to trade techs!

Click to expand...

Justins wb is travelling along the northern coastline and should encounter Zara soon.

@beestar, do you think you could try to replay your set in the testgame to update it? I cannot seem to match your results and you know what you did

Next set goals:

-Focus EPs

-Manage slider to get writing asap, begin wheel after.

-Get workers to complete two farms at Delhi asap. And chop the last forest at Bombay, but make sure not to finish Oracle before writing.

-Grow Delhi as much as possible while spamming warriors for scouting/MPing/fogbusting. Once writing is done, build library. Once we grow past size 5, we can whip either a settler or library. (This is the point that really warrants testing first)

-Finish Oracle

Okay guys, I've attached an updated test game.

The land has been modified to match what we can see so far, except the test save is missing a continent where Justinian would be. Instead I gave Joao a workboat and let him meet us (since he's the last AI with no religion).

The builds are correct, and the tile improvements are correct with one exception, you have to promise not to finish the forest chops this turn - just hold the workers this turn. (As I recall in the real game, the lurking barb warrior caused a 1 turn delay in moving the workers to Bombay)

I'll look at the test game tonight or tomorrow and get comfortable with it before posting a more detailed turnset plan of action.

Any disagreement or additions to Fluro's general outline, speak up.

cas

was a little lazy this weekend, finally looked at the test save.

This is my general outline...need some clarification on the red questions. Fairly straightforward turnset, I think.
Tech path:
finish AH, research writing.
Should I move the slider to 0 then 100, then back to 0 when we run out of gold ? I think this is what ppl mean with "binary research", but I don't usually do that in my games. Does it help with some rounding errors ?

builds:
Bombay continues Oracle, don't finish before writing.
Dehli continues warriors until happiness cap ? Then what ? Worker ? Settler ? I agree we probably shouldn't chop more forests in Dehli until we have Math.

worker actions:
The two workers at Bombay finish chopping the two forests in the city radius. One worker goes south to help with Dehli farming. The other worker does what ? Mine the recently deforested plains hill ? Chop the forest to the east of the wheat (outside city borders) ?
The worker by Dehli continues to farm grasslands.
There are only 3 grasslands near Dehli to farm....I guess pre-chop some forests if we don't have wheel or Bombay border popped yet for pasturing cows.

warriors: continue to scout and fogbust. The one furthest west should obviously head north along the coastal area. The one between Dehli/Bombay is needed for fogbusting and safe worker transit pre border-pops. Next warrior goes southwest from Dehli toward the gp-farmish area to look for another seafood...then probably to the forest 1E of the cow in that area for fogbusting a good chunk of land.

How many turns am I playing ? Until writing is done ?

cas

Should I move the slider to 0 then 100, then back to 0 when we run out of gold ? I think this is what ppl mean with "binary research", but I don't usually do that in my games. Does it help with some rounding errors ?

Click to expand...

AFAIK, if the split between gold and beakers from a non0%/100% slider results in a decimal number of beakers, then the game will round it down, potentially losing us a beaker. This is of course minor, but still.
Binary research matters more as a tool to maximize returns when waiting for multipliers to be built. i.e. stockpile gold while waiting for academy.

Dehli continues warriors until happiness cap ? Then what ? Worker ? Settler ?

Click to expand...

The things we need are a library and a settler. It is true that we can use castes to run scientists for an academy before we complete the library. I think we should build a settler at the cap, and then evaluate at the end of the set whether we whip a settler or library.

The other worker does what ? Mine the recently deforested plains hill ? Chop the forest to the east of the wheat (outside city borders) ?

Click to expand...

Fortunately, an additional forest has grown inside the culture borders in the real game . The worker should chop that one. Afterwards, it can go back to Delhi too.
When we have chopped and farmed the grasses, the workers can spend time prechopping/premining/mining copper while making sure they can reach the appropriate tiles when techs/border pops become available.

How many turns am I playing ? Until writing is done ?

Click to expand...

Go ahead and finish Oracle->CoL. Start us on The Wheel when writing is done.