SGOTM 11 - Smurkz

Looks like things are going great! I'm still at my conference through Thursday so can't play right now, but I will be available for turnset planning Thursday/Friday and then up for playing at set on the weekend or shortly thereafter.

I'm not remotely caught up, but just want to say I *can* play a turnset if needed/desired, provided it falls during the week. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings are good for me.

Renata, I would be absolutely delighted if you would step in and play a turnset. Let's see if we can have a plan up before Thursday morning then! It's late for me now though, but tomorrow I'll have more time.

I compared the real game vs the Test game in post 259, basically everything South from 1 tile N of Deli, extending East a little into Zara's land and West of Deli about 5 tiles. The differences I see are:
5W1N of Deli--the test game is missing a forest
1E2S of Deli--ditto
2E2S of Oraclia--ditto (although this is in Zara's cultural boundaries so it won't do us any good.

Ok, here are some loose thoughts on our current situation.

First of all, regarding what to build in Argentina, I'm more and more leaning towards Xcal's position of building Henge or GWall for the consolation gold. With the stone bonus we'd get a significant amount of gold out of our hammers, which would really speed up our research. We already have 9 gold "banked" in GWall in Oraclia, which should be enough to get us Writing that one turn earlier should it be built "in time". Hence I'm leaning towards Henge in Argentina.

The alternatives: Warriors for cheap spawnbusting (and we still need 4 for the final reception), Axes for aggressive barb control, or city improvements. Of the latter category we don't have all that many to choose from, and none that seems really useful at this stage (neither Library, Granary or Lighthouse). The two axes we get out of Estonia should keep us covered from barbs, so I'm (as always) keen to go for the high-reward alternative.

Second, we're coming close to our end-of-the-road for current research plans. We haven't decided what to go for after Writing is in, and there are many options here. Fishing would obviously help Argentina, and might let us get a boat in the water for exploration. It seems more and more likely that we're going to need that to meet the opposition. Pottery would be very nice to have for Granaries, and Oraclia is just begging to be cottaged. AH allows us to settle that Pigs/Cow site, and lets us use the Cows we're about to steal from Zara (when I say use, I mean the health resource, not the tile). And just to put it out there, there's also the possibility to go for Maths -> CS assuming the Oracle gives us CoL.

It seems to me that we have a solid plan for the next 12-13 turns up to the Oracle. The only questionmarks with the plan concern that little uncertainty about whether we could actually get Writing, and thus Oracle as well, on T93. I need to post the updated worker plan for the current situation.

Yeah, have Argentina start on Henge to get maybe a dozen gold. Either Henge or GWall could drop at any moment (see our test results). A couple axes to safely explore the rest of our land would be good, and then some warriors. How many warriors are we planning to build? Maybe 6?

Techwise, I favor going for Pottery next so we can build granaries (and cottages) ASAP. After that our tech rate should be great with the extra happiness and specialist bonus care of Pyramids-->Representation so we can crank out the other techs, in whatever order, quite fast.

Haven't looked at the specific situation, but I am a huge fan of pottery. It will be much more useful for us at this point than fishing. If other AI are in workboat range, let them come to us for now.

Xcalibrator said:

I compared the real game vs the Test game in post 259, basically everything South from 1 tile N of Deli, extending East a little into Zara's land and West of Deli about 5 tiles. The differences I see are:
5W1N of Deli--the test game is missing a forest
1E2S of Deli--ditto
2E2S of Oraclia--ditto (although this is in Zara's cultural boundaries so it won't do us any good.

Click to expand...

Yeah, you're right... except the opposite. Those three forests are all in the test game, but not in the real one. I've updated the test game to remove those forests.

The other obvious discrepancy is Zara's southern city, which is not in the right place and has expanded borders in the real game.

Will post the uptodate worker plan shortly.

Intended worker plan

This is all detailed in the latest version of the spreadsheet: http://www.box.net/shared/i4an4o2qhs

Worker #1
Currently: 2N of Deli, chopping the forest on the hill.
Intention: Should chop and mine the hill he is on, then chop the forest S of him.


Worker #2
Currently: Chopping the forest W-NW of Oraclia.
Intention: Complete all the necessary chops for the Oracle. First the forest he's on, then the forest SE of Oraclia, then (with correct timing) the forest 1E of Oraclia.


Worker #3
Currently: Farming by Estonia.
Intention: Improve around Estonia.


Worker #4
Currently: On the pHill 1S of Deli.
Intention: Dance to the Silver, mine it, then dance back, mine the two pHills in Deli's BFC, then chop forest(s) for Pyramids.


Worker #5
Currently: In production in Deli (Complete T85)
Intention: Dance to the Silver, mine it, then dance back, mine the two pHills in Deli's BFC, then chop forest(s) for Pyramids.

Regarding the spreadsheet in the previous post:

Oraclia is detailed as if to complete Oracle on T93, i.e. the optimistic approach, in case we get enough consolation gold in time to get Writing T93. If we don't, then nothing needs to be changed in Oraclia, we just complete the chop one turn later to delay the Oracle that one turn.

Estonia on the other hand is detailed as if Oracle completes T94. The second whip should be done on the turn before we complete Oracle, i.e. T92 if it looks like we'll complete Writing/Oracle on T93.

Argentina is just set to build Stonehenge, I didn't even add the +100% stone bonus. If Henge completes early and Argentina can't continue building it, I suggest we build GWall next if possible, and then Warriors once both Henge and GWall are gone.

Got it; starting play in a couple minutes.

Also, don't worry; Niklas is here to hold my hand.

The Save

Done through Oracle. Confucianism founded in Oraclia.

Setbacks were minor: no consolation gold yet (much less on time), so Oracle was turn 94; and we lost one warrior to a barb. Two axes now out patrolling, though one was just injured. The other one should circle down to the Argentina area ASAP. Zara founded a third city, by the wheat/oasis.

Good stuff, besides Oracle/confu: I found another clam up in the northwest, which sets us up for a 3 clam/cow/marble city just north of a rice/pig/floodplains city provided we can get there fast enough. Oh, and I didn't screw anything up.

I'll extract a turnlog shortly but that's really everything.

Excellent work Renata, and no hand-holding necessary either!

Nice (and fast!) work, Renata! Confu founded in Oraclia!! And nice sites out west. Great presentation of the worker plan, BTW, Niklas.

Now what do we do (other than finish the Pyramids)? My general inclination is REX REX REX, but do we want our next city to go to the NE to bottle up Zara or head to the nicer sites out west? We might even need 2 cities in the NE to really stuff Zara (the 2nd one being in the desert with fish offshore). Unless someone can quantitatively argue that Zara won't be able to build another settler to beat us, I guess I'd put precedence on bottling him up.

Can't wait to see the save!

Zara is very nearly bottled up already -- any culture in Estonia would do it, provided we don't open borders. It would allow Zara the incense/cows to the north of Deli, but nothing else short of him building some galleys and sailing around, and certainly we could get a city to the multi-clam site fast enough to prevent that.

Edit: Although I suppose it depends somewhat on your definition of "bottled up"!

My instinct says REX, too, but then it always does.

Son of edit: I liked the worker presentation also. It's much less prone to error than following the spreadsheet is, where it's easy to confuse one worker for another. I found myself flipping back and forth between spreadsheet for cities and game thread for workers.

I finally had time to check out the save, which is really surprising, but it'd been a while and curiosity beat out real-life obligations... Anyway...

Things look very good . I'd even try to finish Stonehenge in Argentina to pop borders for the REX which I'm now advocating. I'd really, really like to stuff Zara with a city 1 NW of the plains cows. We block him there and he's pretty much stuck until he goes galley settling. Land is always going to be power here, so the more we have and the less he has the better we'll be. I think it's a foregone conclusion we share our own landmass with Zara, so we could then be able to settle the rest of it at leisure. Anyone notice the GP farm site west of Argentina? A source of fish is visible 3 W of the city, so with Pigs and Cows we're looking at some serious specialists. Yay team! We're doing well so far.

There are some incredible city sites out west, in terms of food, which is everything. Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous city sites.

My instinct also tells me to REX, but there are also some other things we really want to have. Building settlers and running scientists are clearly non-synergistic concepts, and yet we definitely want to start running those scientists soon enough.

Let's see what our cities can do.

- Oraclia just finished the Oracle, and now has only 1 moderately powerful tile to work, until we can steal those Cows from Zara. Borders expand in two turns to give us a forest to work, so we could potentially let it slow-build a settler at size 2 while waiting for those Cows.

- Estonia will probably want to grow to size 3 before chop-whipping a settler there. Build warriors in the mean time?

- Argentina is on Stonehenge, could chop out a settler there as well perhaps?

- Deli is obviously the best place to build settlers, but it's also the best place to build Library, and Granary, and run scientists. But settlers probably take precedence, what with those incredible city sites we can see.

Tech-wise we clearly need Pottery, AH and Fishing. In that order?

I played on from the test save, rather sloppily, just to see what could be done in terms of REX. By T120 I had expanded by 4 more cities: One to block Zara near the cows and oasis, one by the three clams and marble, one W of Argentina by the cows and fish, and one by the western river outlet with rice and pigs. At that point I was down to -2 gpt at 0% research, and had just started running scientists in the capital for some research.

Having done this, I think heavy REX is definitely feasible, though obviously it needs to be planned far more carefully than what I did here. And it should be weighed against running scientists in the capital far earlier, for better chances at a GS and Academy if nothing else. We also probably want to whip a lot more than what I've done here.

To answer the question Xcal posted a while back, which I didn't have time to answer then: The reason we've used the whip so little in this game so far is because we've been able to grow onto (relative) power tiles. Deli had two Corn, the Copper and two riverside mined hills to work for a long time, and it was far from clear that whipping a pop would be worth it there. Right now is quite a different matter though, I'll probably push for more whips in the near future.

I probably won't post much tomorrow, will be around Saturday for more input though. Chris, are you playing next?