SGOTM 11 - Barley Demons

I decided that since I was starting to get tired, I'd better stop after almost an hour and a half of careful play. Here are the highlights:

Inherited T88: Started moving warriors to combat barb spear

T89: Masonry in, start Writing. Founded Patal... (Stone city). Switched Delhi to Stonehenge and Bombay to Pyramids

T90:

T91: Lost Warrior 11 (on forested hill) while defending against barb spear. Spear down to 2.6/4.0.

T92: Alfred (Woodsman I, defending in the forest) loses to barb spear. Spear down to 1.1/4.0 (Combat I). Warrior 9 attacks barb spear at 85% odds...and wins! (and is promptly renamed Spearslayer).

Also here on T92: The entire island is spawnbusted!

T93:

T94:

T95: Zara completes Stonehenge! (What the ...? He's already Creativ.e?!)

Also on T95: We have completely fogbusted the entire continent (well...our 2/3rds anyway).

T96: Recent warrior in Delhi heads to explore ice-silver peninsula

T97: Judaism fiadl

T98:

T99: Writing in. Switched Delhi to Library. Stopped from weariness; don't want to make silly error(s).

I think we're in good shape for both the Oracle (7T away working 2 plains hill mines with 9T of food) and the Pyramids (no-stone Zara built Stonehenge!).

I've put Fishing as our next tech at 0%, but only because I'd like to get workboats out exploring/meeting after we finish the Oracle.

I don't mind running the last few turns to see if we get the Oracle, but don't want to do so while so sleepy. More thoughts--including pictures and Zara's espionage numbers--tomorrow.

The Save is online for your viewing pleasure.
 
I would put a Settler in Delhi for the uberfood city as a higher priority than a Library. Agree with Fishing for WB scouts next. Not sure about monument in Pataliputra (which really brings in only one more FP) but I guess we let it complete now; just don't whip it.
 
I would put a Settler in Delhi for the uberfood city as a higher priority than a Library.

Usually the way I handle situations like this is to start building the library, letting the city grow, then at size 6 triple-whip the settler and overflow back onto the library. Whipping a settler is more efficient than slow-building it, even without a granary, if the regrowths happen at size 5 or less. (size 3 is 26 food -> 30 hammers.)
 
Usually the way I handle situations like this is to start building the library, letting the city grow, then at size 6 triple-whip the settler and overflow back onto the library. Whipping a settler is more efficient than slow-building it, even without a granary, if the regrowths happen at size 5 or less. (size 3 is 26 food -> 30 hammers.)

It so happens that Delhi is size 6 with its whipping penalty about to expire:)
Yes, after whipping putting hammers into Library while regrowing is fine.

Also, who is up given that Swiss is away for the moment?
 
...

Also, who is up given that Swiss is away for the moment?

Since it's only about 6T until we know if we have the Oracle, why don't I just continue and run a short set. I'll stop it with 1T left on the Oracle so we can postpone the decision of what to get with it. I'm assuming we want Metalcasting, but I guess Code of Laws is also a possibility. Since we'll likely get the Pyramids, Monarchy is less appealing.

We could also take Math with Oracle thus improving our forest efficiency in chopping the Pyramids.

Research is likely to be slow for a while as we can expand quickly now.

Re. the monument in Patal (stone city): A border pop will free up a fogbusting warrior that's costing us 2gpt. But you're probably right...a granary would be a better first build. It's only 10H in so far. So, I'll switch to a granary, work the horses when they're available and whip the granary when possible.

A couple questions before a micro-turnset:

1) Should we OB with Zara? Maybe trade a corn for his clam or cow? All those will help relations a bit, though I think we'll need a common religion to get him to Pleased and remove him completely as a threat.

2) Tech from Oracle?

3) Research after Fishing?

I'll plan to play this small continuation of a turnset Friday night late. Then we can go to the "regular" rotation with timmy next.

(And some time before then, I'll update the "progress post" #3 of this thread.)
 
1) OK with OB (with usual caveat of closing if he tries to send a settler past) and the resource swap.

2) Meh, just bank gold (I see it's 5 turns at breakeven) so no need to decide this now. I think Sailing is a possibility though, depends on how tempting settling the island looks.

3) Metal Casting still has my vote.
 
Good news: We're a lock for the Oracle; and only 3T away from Pyramids at 1400BC.

Microturnset report in brief:

1525BC (T99): Delhi to settler; Patal to Granary; Open Borders and Corn-for-his-Clam with Zara. (Note: this dropped his research time for Ironworking from 16T to 14T.)

Also, we've pretty much finished exploring the continent. Here's the silver-ice peninsula (nothing of interest):
Spoiler :


1500BC: Research back to 100% for Fishing (due in 2T).

An update on the world's culture...
Spoiler :



Since Zara is third on the list and just recently completed Stonehenge, I think this probably means that the founders of Buddhism and Hinduism (a) built the Great Wall and (b) founded Judaism. Haven't thought deeply about this though; more confident about (a) than (b).

1475BC: Finally enough hammers in Delhi to whip the settler for the uberfood site.

1450BC: Fishing in. Research set to Sailing at 0%. Minimal beaker overflow since it took 100% research to finish Fishing this turn.

1425BC: Horses connected at Stone city. Roading toward uberfood with 2 workers so they can quickly improve cow there.

1400BC: After holding my breath this entire turnset, I finally release it. Oracle due next turn in Vijay! Pyramids due in 3T in Bombay.

Here's a current overview of the known world:

Spoiler :


The only known Ethiopian unit is a scout near the middle of our territory. Haven't seen anything else other than an archer that was poking around Vijay several turns ago.

Thoughts/Suggestions:

Oracle: Metalcasting, presumably. Pyramids will give access to Hereditary Rule.

Settler ready to found uberfood next turn with two workers in range to improve cows. Monument first here to bring in 3 more food sources?

Two workers set to create a cottage (or chop a forest) for stone city.

Farm for Bombay due next turn. Maybe take back corn from Delhi and mine the last hill? (Not sure of micro here.)

Workboat(s) in Vijay. One east to see who Zara knows; one west (north?) to explore islands.

Our research rate is going to plummet with the founding of the uberfood site.

I think it's time to start thinking how quickly we want to expand.

Zara's espionage count was essentially all building Stonehenge on the previous turnset. Here, he finished a build:

Code:
Turn    Esp Ratio     InvCity    SabProd  Hmmrs(calc)
 99       338/384       998       478        70H
100       341/388      1014        -       (build)
101       344/392      1021       193        28H
102       347/396      1028       262        38H
103       (oops)                            (50H?)
104       352/404      1048       431        62H

The hammer counts are un-corrected for his 15% discount. Maybe he whipped a settler on T100? He was only making 10H/turn and so must have whipped or chopped to get overflow to T101. (Let me know if you guys think this is still worth doing.)

I'd forgotten that timmy ran the turnset before mine. Given that we have a lot of dropouts and that Swiss is out until Tuesday, it's probably best to put SilentConfusion up next. Let me know how that works for all.

The latest savegame.
 
I am pretty busy with the BtS MTDG going on right now as our team is a little short on active players at the moment (I might have RL issues too if I had a RL), but I can make time to run a turnset. Give me a little bit to look at the save. Then I can take it. Sunday's Father's Day so probably not able to run it then. Maybe tomorrow if I can get my head wrapped around it by then. I'll try for Saturday anyway, but quite possibly not until Monday.

I say we can give up on the Production analysis pretty soon. He's got multiple cities now. He's not going to beat us to our Wonders. If we are attacking him at some point and want to see if he's going to get out another unit before we get there, it might make sense to resume it. But for the most part what he's building won't affect us overly much.

Glad to hear we're about to get a couple of wonders. Turnsets looked good. I'll look at the save today and give my thoughts about it.
 
Hi folks,

As part of getting the RB PBEM4 save to work yesterday, I installed the HOF mod, to see if it could lend any help in checking problems with assets. It actually did. So I'm now able to download the save here and could play turns too. My biggest worry was that I'd do something to invalidate the game by the HOF's draconian standards... I see now how the mod itself checks and validates.

SilentConfusion, was that actually a "got it"? I am free all day today to play. I live 400 miles from my father so a quick phone call and I'm off the hook. :)

On the Oracle, I'd like to rethink the choice of Metal Casting. What would we actually DO with the tech? Forges as non-Industrious and just +1 happy are not very compelling - we will be building settlers and workers instead of forges for a long time. Metal Casting is the highest beaker prize, but I would like to advocate going for Monarchy instead. Our biggest problem is the happy cap and Monarchy is an immediate big fix. Delhi could add cottages very rapidly with HR.

One other note: I think we should build Work Boats out of Vijayanagara right away (whipping one after the Oracle) and start looking for contacts. I think we are committed to going for the diplo victory now, so the earlier we start OB and resource trades, the better.

Next research I think should be Mathematics. We'll be chopping a lot (the Uberfood site needs work boats), plus I'd like to stack the Hanging Gardens on top of the Pyramids for probably two guaranteed Great Engineers throughout the game. Bombay is a great city for the HG - landlocked so it needs an aqueduct anyway.
 
T-hawk, glad to hear to you can contribute more.

On the Oracle, I'd like to rethink the choice of Metal Casting. What would we actually DO with the tech? Forges as non-Industrious and just +1 happy are not very compelling - we will be building settlers and workers instead of forges for a long time. Metal Casting is the highest beaker prize, but I would like to advocate going for Monarchy instead. Our biggest problem is the happy cap and Monarchy is an immediate big fix. Delhi could add cottages very rapidly with HR.

But Monarchy is useless because we will have Pyramids in 3 turns (And since we don't have 4 spare units per city, we're taking Representation). Perhaps CoL? Caste synergizes well with Pyramids, if we found the religion it's likely to keep it's trade value longer than anything else, and a religion is a decent happiness source for our Spiritual civ.

Re: aqueduct + HG in Bombay - it has 8 health once we finish clearing the forests, will have 7 more once we fill the island (rice, pigs, clams, fish, deer, crab). Given its lack of food it does not ever need an aqueduct (we are not getting to factories in this game). Not saying Hanging Gardens is a bad idea with Stone on hand, but I have to point out any uncharacteristic mistakes by the micro expert :)

Agree we want WB soon, but do we really want to whip Vijay w/o a granary?

Compromise - agree on monument first in Uberfood (assuming we don't get lucky with Conf founded there)
 
Thanks for the corrections. Yeah Monarchy is useless. Code of Laws is a great idea though. The religion is another happy, a tool to pop borders, and we can spread it to Zara right away to make a friend. I think Code of Laws gives us much more than Metal Casting.

The free missionary is a good question. Uberfood to pop its border or Zara? It'll accelerate Uberfood by a lot, bringing the forests into culture range and fish much sooner. But it will be a while until we can make any more missionaries. A monastery will not be worth it in Bombay (which will be the holy city), and Org Rel is some time away if we go Mathematics next.

Ok the aqueduct in Bombay isn't so great, but HG with stone is still worth it. And Bombay is definitely the city. Whip Vijay without granary - regrettable but IMO necessary - if we are going to get the fastest diplo win, we need to make some contacts!
 
If you can take the turnset T-Hawk, that'd be great. But I can sit down and do it on Monday otherwise. I'm a bit busy at the moment. I'm still here and will comment, but to not have to set aside a chunk of hours to play a turnset in the next couple days would help me get other things done. So if you are willing to play it, that's fine by me.

I like the suggestion of CoL, too.

As for Free Missionary, the only reason to send to Zara immediately is to start building the diplo bonus. It might help him not declare on us, but maybe we want him too. If he declares we don't get a neg diplo bonus for declaring war on them and we could maybe take his capitol (with SH) or at least buy peace. I'd lean towards using Missionary on UberFood to avoid having to build a monument there. Getting that city up and running faster is important, and the religious diplo bonuses grow pretty rapidly in my recollection, so we shouldn't miss out too much on diplo bonuses with ZY. Also he will probably never have a very significant population. We can hope once we have sailing or a route to ZY that our religion will spread naturally.

I would probably go Mathematics, too.

And I agree with HG in Bombay. We save 1 GE for the UN (which has no resource doublers) for sure. I would guess we would want the GLib in our UberFood city if possible for added Scientist GPP. I think ideally we get 1-2 GEs during the game and as many GS as possible. Much of the path to the UN is bulbable by GScientists and we might want a couple of Academies. I assume an Academy over time will be more beakers in our commerce cities than bulbing.

EDIT: What about Corporations? I still haven't got the hang of those, but is there one that might be useful to us. If so it would be nice if it was one that was founded by a type of GP we're going to be creating.

Question about religion founding: does it just pick at random or does it have a specific set of factors it looks at. From my experience it seems that it will choose a city without a religion already in it before it will make a double Holy City. This could be wrong, but are there other things that determine where it goes like Population or is it strictly random?
 
I want to look at our requirements again just to remind ourselves and re-evaluate from the perspective of where we are now.

Cultural or UN victory.
On the turn of victory:
1. Every AI is still alive and running a state religion.
2. All of our cities have access to fur, dye, silk, and ivory
3. 4 Great People and 4 warriors standing on the only Fur in the world.
4. You are running a state religion which has been spread to every city in your empire.
5. No more than 2 AI have a "you declared war on us" modifier.

We're going UN victory.
1. means we can't kill anyone and have to protect others from being eliminated. And we must also keep them in a state religion, so out of Free Religion. This might mean taking the SPaya out of the equation by building it ourselves and some espionage civic switchs or bribes.
2. mean we have to locate those resources and either settle them or trade for them. In the case of Fur, since there is only one, an AI probably won't trade it with us unless they are our Vassel. None of these resources are to be found on our continent so perhaps overseas colonization will be needed to obtain the resources without starting a bunch of wars to conquer them.
3. means we need to keep at least 4 of our warriors around until the end. What obsoletes them? You can still sometimes build them after you hook up copper. And it also means that we can't use 4 of the GP we produce. GGs count so I say if we do fight a war with another player we not stop the war until we've gotten a GG, this allows us use one more GSci to bulb.
4. I'm pretty sure they said in the technical thread that we just have to have the conditions on the same turn as the victory is announced and we can hit "keep playing" move some units then stop playing before we end the turn. This means that gifting away some cities the same turn that we win a diplo victory (after the vote result but before the final save) can help us complete this goal and the resource one, if for some reason we can't get the city hooked up or converted. We can switch to a religion after the vote is in, I think, although do you convert instantly or on the next turn after anarchy?
5. means that we can't declare war on more than 2 opponents, although if they declare on us there is no penalty for attacking them.
 
I would like to take a turnset, but I'd like to get Compromise's official OK before I jump in.

Confucian free missionary - good point, we don't need to make friends with Zara right away. If he does declare war, we will see it coming and have plenty of ability to defend. So it can go to Uberfood. Another option to pop the border is a Caste System artist, but even that takes 4 turns of not working land tiles. And the first GEng for Great Library at Uberfood sounds like a great idea to me.


EDIT: What about Corporations? I still haven't got the hang of those, but is there one that might be useful to us. If so it would be nice if it was one that was founded by a type of GP we're going to be creating.

For diplo, the only ones we'd care about would be food corps. And we have lots of seafood for Sushi. But the tech is Medicine which is off the Mass Media beeline. The GP required is a Merchant, which we can probably pick up at Economics, or if need be from Uberfood after the Great Library expires.


Question about religion founding: does it just pick at random or does it have a specific set of factors it looks at.

It is random, but with strong weights in favor of fewest religions already in a city, higher population, and non-capital. Most likely it would be Bombay. It can't be Uberfood at all unless we delay the Oracle by a turn, and even then it's unlikely.

I wouldn't worry about monopolizing Shwed Paya. On Emperor, the AIs will get Liberalism by the time we get to Mass Media. And getting them back into a religion just requires a spy and a few EP.


3. What obsoletes them? You can still sometimes build them after you hook up copper.

Warriors are obsolete if you can build axes and spears (the two units a warrior upgrades to). With copper, you can build warriors if you don't have Hunting. It's also possible to cut off our own copper and iron (can't pillage in your own territory, but can replace the mine with a cottage, or trade away the resource.) Warriors go obsolete forever regardless of metal once you get Rifling.
 
Whoa! And I was expecting to check in briefly and not find much. (Still have to be brief though.)

Great discussion! I like CoL.

Go for it, T-Hawk. I haven't had time to fully digest everything that's been written, but nothing strikes me as "oh no no no."
 
And so here we go. On the inherited turn, I change 1-beaker research to Math. No need for full research until we can afford the deficit the whole way. I also assign the corn to Bombay, we want to bring it up to size in accordance with Rep happiness, and it does not cost a turn on the Pyramids. Delhi switches off the silver and shared corn to two cottages, it also needs to grow. Bombay wants to be at size 6 working cow, farm, and four hills. In the west, I pull two warriors back towards our borders; we are paying supply costs and once Uberfood is founded we can fully barb-bust with only two warriors.

Then I hit enter. :) The Oracle completes, and Code of Laws is even recommended by the advisor. Done.



The Confucian holy city is Bombay, as anticipated. I do not adopt the religion right away - no need until a city actually needs the happy.

T105 / 1375 BC: The Uberfood site of Varanasi is founded. Starts a work boat. I check the mod help and find Alt-X to get rid of the dotmap dot underneath it. :crazyeye: Shaggy the easternmost warrior goes exploring into Zara's lands since we have OB.



T107 / 1325 BC: We now own a Huge Triangular Cube. (50 points for that reference.)

Confucianism arrives in Varanasi by missionary, and also random-spreads to Delhi! A turn later it also random-spreads to Vijayanagara! And on T114 Pataliputra! Man I'm good at this game. All our cities have Confucianism. :jive:

And I whip Vijay's work boat. Sorry city, but you are a fringe player. The core of our game is diplomacy and we must have contacts. 8 turns of contacts and exploration are worth more than 1 city size in this fishing village.

I didn't notice that Bombay doesn't have anything to build now after the Pyramids. No Aqueduct until Mathematics. Don't want to build a worker/settler when it wants to be growing instead. I guess I'll just put it on warriors since we'd like to have extras.

T111 / 1225 BC: Great Lighthouse built in a faraway land. Not Zara. But Aksum had 85 hammers last turn and now it doesn't. No other building is visible in the city, so either a settler or he failed the GLH.

I adopt Representation now since Bombay grew into unhappiness and Delhi soon will. But Bombay really has nothing to build now. I don't even want more warriors since unit costs are hurting. I don't want to stop its growth with a worker or settler, since if it builds population now it can whip the aqueduct later. (Also we already have enough workers, and costs from another settled city would be severe.) Library doesn't help in a beakerless city. Ditto for monastery, and enabling missionaries doesn't help either since we'll have Math by the time the monastery finishes and Org Rel shortly thereafter. So this may sound silly, but I put Bombay on a stone-doubled Chichen Itza. We'll get some fail gold in about a millennium.

T113 / 1175 BC: Big news!



Isabella signs Open Borders! She is the Buddhist founder, of course. I put all EP on Isabella since we have plenty on Zara.

T114: Our warrior spots an Ethiopian settler. Let's see where it goes. Yes, next turn it built a city in the river area between our civs.

T118 / 1050 BC: Vijay builds a second work boat to go exploring northwest. (No I didn't whip it.) It finally starts a granary.

Also Varanasi (Uberfood) chopped its work boat (I used a forest in third-ring from the city that will not come within its border anytime soon.) The boat has a few turns to explore before it needs to come back and net the fish. It finds MORE big news!



He also signs OB. He is the Hinduism founder. I leave EP on Isabella until we get her graphs.

T121 / 975 BC: Bombay has hit size 8. If it grows any more, it'll work bad tiles (bare grass or plains forest), and it's still going to be a while until we get Mathematics, so I start it on a worker.

T122 / 950 BC: This seems like a good place to hand over. I went 18 turns which is a bit long for a turnset, but it was pretty quiet and nothing was happening.

Delhi has finished its library. We are in position to knock to max research on Mathematics, which will take 8 turns and almost exactly burn our gold.

Bombay is doing a worker now. When we get Math, it can 2-whip the aqueduct and build the Gardens at size 6 working cow and 4 hills. It has three forests available to go into the wonder, two pre-chopped (the one due south of the city is actually pre-MINED.) We should get it.

Varanasi (Uberfood) just popped its border this turn and is happily working two fish. Pigs pasture is timed to complete just as the city grows. It wants to whip the granary sometime. Probably library next in anticipation for the Nat Epic and Great Library.

With the Hanging Gardens coming in about 20 turns, we want to start planning settlers now to get the growth boost. Delhi can do one, and so can Pataliputra; the timing and whipping is up to the next leader. Varanasi can probably also whip the granary then whip a settler if we want.

The biggest question right now is what to make our first Great Person. We have many choices.

1. If we do nothing, we'll get a Prophet from the Oracle city in 20 turns.

2. If we can build the Hanging Gardens quickly enough, Bombay will birth an Engineer first. I calculate that we can if we chop all three forests.

2a. If we don't build the HG quickly, we could go Caste and hire a specialist in Bombay for two turns. This would make Bombay pop before the Oracle city, and risk 8% pollution of the other type for 92% Engineer.

3. Delhi could hire two scientists now to birth a Scientist.

4. Varanasi (Uberfood) could pop the first GP as a merchant or scientist, if we go Caste System.
 

Attachments

  • barley-demons-950bc.jpg
    barley-demons-950bc.jpg
    144.1 KB · Views: 206
  • barley-demons-isabella.jpg
    barley-demons-isabella.jpg
    40.3 KB · Views: 221
  • barley-demons-oracle.jpg
    barley-demons-oracle.jpg
    29.5 KB · Views: 188
  • barley-demons-pyramids.jpg
    barley-demons-pyramids.jpg
    24.3 KB · Views: 209
  • barley-demons-saladin.jpg
    barley-demons-saladin.jpg
    29.7 KB · Views: 176


I don't know which way the work boat up north wants to go. It could go north, or west to Arabia. The island appears to be small, but it could be a peninsula of a larger landmass, don't know for sure. It has two sugars, which are fairly uncommon for a small island, but of course this map was custom made so we don't know.

Note that Zara is researching Alphabet - good news for trading!

Also note that we are barb-busted in the west. Barbs cannot spawn within two tiles of a military unit, even if the outer tiles are not visible. The two warriors over there are spawnbusting every tile. Keep the other warriors within our borders to save supply cost.

We have not adopted Confucianism, and we may never want to, now seeing two religious nuts on either side.

Save is here, I think I uploaded to the right place:
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm11/Barley_Demons_SG011_BC0950_01.CivBeyondSwordSave
 
Wow, lots of stuff of interest. Thoughts:

What would we do with a GE? Pocket for UN or hope for another? The wonders are not going too fast on this map; I might actually want to wait on the HG so that we get more free pop.

It's tempting to detour to Sailing now for traderoutes, getting extra +1 or +2 (overseas, Izzy) commerce per city would mean a decent amount. I can live with that after Math though. Don't have time to look up WFYABTA right now, would there be any chance of trading for Math?

Anyone want to run the math on Varanasi? Not sure offhand if granary should be whipped as soon as size 4, or if it's better to keep working all 4 food all the time

I would round the northern island with the WB first.

Why the sign suggestion to wait until size 8 for Delhi-settler? The next city is presumably ClamCowMarble, which is also highly desirable.
 
Top Bottom