SGOTM 15 - One Short Straw

I played through your plan and I have some comments:

T49: MM Delhi to work copper. I know that the governor does it in the test game. If the governor is not on in the real game, you may miss this. I think it's safer to put this in your plan just in case.
I was under the impression I already put this in the plan (I could be wrong)
T52: Don't move Jim (Gold-E Locks warrior) back to Gold-E Locks. We don't need a military police unit there yet and he's better served to spawn bust and keep an eye on Toku.
On the turn we pop oracle I had barbs entering our cultural zone. I ended up having to use the gold-e locks warrior to attack a barb warrior my last test game so I could finish a chop without losing a worker.
T55: I assume that you have the gems-W worker move 1N and help chop.

Not able to load the game right now... you mean gems E worker?

T55: Moving the warriors one tile SE is okay. But they shouldn't move any further until you've settled the marble city. We do have to worry about the banana-NW tile
Ok
T56: I think it's better to road -> pasture pigs -> mine gems than gems -> road -> pigs. I'll do a quick test in a bit.
I think pottery is late that way. (If I remember)

T58: Why do you work the copper (+7H -2F) rather than the corn (+5H -0F). In general food is better than hammers and those extra 2 food could help us grow a turn sooner down the road.

Timing the granary completion for more food

T58: I don't think it makes sense to have the second Zlatorog worker building roads south of Zlatorog. It seems that we could come up with more useful things for him to do.
I debated what to do with him but i wanted the chop for the granary. This is not a deal breaker with construction sling shot
T59: I'm assuming you don't do this, but don't gang your workers. It is faster at times but you risk the chance of losing worker turns when actions take an odd number of turns, like chopping forests.
I would never gang my workers and my assumption is that all worker orders need to be cancelled at the end of a turn
T60: Why do you move Jack back west? He should stay put or move east.
Jack was bored and lacked a sense of direction. Your welcome to give him one
T60: I get +27 gold, not +28.
hmmm interesting perhaps a typo?
T62: we learn Fishing on T62, not T63.
I was playing with the idea of building a cash reserve early in case of a need to upgrade a warrior. If I recall we dont really need fishing until turn 63
T62: "1NW Gold-E Locks worker Road" He's actually chopping. THis may have been a carryover from your last plan.
Quite possible
T62: "1NW Zlatarog worker S Chop" Another carryover?
now your concerning me. I'm wondering if my copy paste job fracked itself
T62: Start moving the Zlatorog warrior NW + W.

T63: I have 67 gold not 32 gold
I was getting tired at this point so I'll have to recheck all my work apparently
 
magnusmarcus said:
Mitchum said:
4. Move the warrior in Gold-E Locks to the hill E+NE rather than fortifying him in the city.
Ok and then move him back or wander around? Does anyone else have input?
Here's what I've been thinking about that area... there are times when we have a Worker that is to the north or north-east of Gold-E Locks. During those times, such a Worker is spawn-busting any square that is 2-squares-away from where the Worker is standing, which is a fact that could potentially be reducing Barb spawning.

When a Worker isn't in those areas, I could see how it would be of use to have a Warrior walk NE of Gold-E Locks, just to provide this extra bit of spawn-busting.


THAT SAID, Toku WILL pay attention to whether or not we leave Gold-E Locks defended with a Warrior or leave it empty. I've seen AIs that don't like us (Toku doesn't like us) opportunistically declare war when I emptied a border City of all of its defenders.

If I recall correctly, someone said that the AIs are coded to pay attention to the defences of border Cities.

Thus, it is a reasonably big risk to leave zero defenders in Gold-E Locks, since, now is a time that we really cannot afford to be at war with Toku (without messing up all of the micromanagement that you guys have been painstakingly working through--thanks for all of that, by the way!).

So, I am highly tempted to just leave the Warrior Fortified in Gold-E Locks for the entire turnset. Sure, another Barb unit may spawn that we might have otherwise prevented from spawning, but I'd rather have 1 more Barb unit than be at war with Mr. Protective Archers Toku.

Since we really aren't planning on settling another City to the north-east of Gold-E Locks (the Maintenance cost would be high and we eventually have to start building Catapults instead of Settlers), I'm not convinced that we even need to explore there just yet, since we really, really, really do not want to have Toku declare war on us, so reducing the chance of Toku declaring war is worth a little bit less exploration in an unimportant area, in my mind. Even if there turns out to be three Grassland Flood Plains Hills Silver squares up there, then I'd still rather not know about those awesome squares in exchange for having a higher chance of remaining at peace with Toku.


magnusmarcus said:
What I am unclear about is the role the borders play. Am I correct in thinking only visible tiles are busted by borders?
Correct. This point also applies to AIs' Cultural Borders. Basically, whatever square is visible by the human player or any AI won't get a Barb spawning there. In addition, Barb units will not spawn on squares that are not visible but are within a 2-square-radius of any of the human player's units or any of the AIs' units. Indeed, even Barb units have this 2-square-radius rule where other Barb units cannot spawn within that radius.

Nothing stops a Barb unit or an AI unit from wandering back and forth, though, which would alter the location of the 2-square-radius and thus might enable a Barb unit to appear "off to the side."


Then there's the consideration that Barb Cities can appear with a slightly different set of rules--from my understanding, Barb units do not prevent Barb Cities from appearing (so a Barb City could appear right next to or even on top of a Barb unit). In addition, from my understanding, the 2-square-radius spawn-busting rule does not affect Barb Cities from appearing.

We probably don't care too much about Barb Cities appearing except unless they appear in a location close to where we wanted to settle but not in exactly the right location, since, given this game's settings, we cannot raze such a City (unless we do something tricky like Culture Bomb the City and then disband it, which isn't a worthwhile investment).



magnusmarcus said:
Mitchum said:
12. Zlatorog warrior should head NW, not fortify in the city. In your test, you were still building a spear, so this didn't come up.
Still finalizing Military Unit movement. Looking for input
For a City like Zlatorog, it does make sense to keep a spawn-buster in a Forest (or possibly on a Hills square) outside of the City, as long as we can cut off all avenues of attack by Barbs, since the City is not considered to be a City that borders Toku (and it's hopefully far enough from Hammurabi not to be considered a "border City" with Hammurabi).

I don't have a map of the game open in front of me, but as long as Zlatorog City's Cultural Borders help to reveal all of the non-Peak squares to the north-east of the City, then no Barb units will be spawning up there and thus we won't have to worry about "cutting off" Barb units between their spawning point and Zlatorog, in which case we could send our Warrior to the north-west of the City towards Hammurabi a bit, just to get some additional spawn-busting in, while also putting a defender (the Warrior) between any Barb units that appear and Zlatorog.

On the other hand, if Zlatorog's Cultural Borders do not fully reveal the non-Peak squares to the north-east, then we either want to defend the City or, more likely, send the Warrior a bit to the north somewhere so that he can hopefully spawn-bust any unrevealed, non-Peak squares in both the north-east and north-west, while also still having sufficient time to react to a Barb unit that appears in the north-west such that the Warrior can beat the Barb unit to Zlatorog.


Mitchum said:
Sometimes, the city governor can get you into trouble. In general, it's better to leave it off and check each city manually every turn. I check each city multiple times because I'm paranoid...
The City Governor is consistent in how it works, so if you're using the City Governor in the test saved game and it does what you want it to do in a City (like auto-working the Copper), it will do the exact same thing in the real game.

Of course, just because a City Governor is enabled in the test game does not mean that it will also be enabled in the real game, which is where you are more likely to get tripped-up... expecting things to happen one way when they won't happen that way just because the real game and the test game did not match up in terms of whether the City Governor was initially turned on or off at the start of your turnset.
 
I was under the impression I already put this in the plan (I could be wrong)

I didn't see it. Maybe I was looking in the wrong place.

On the turn we pop oracle I had barbs entering our cultural zone. I ended up having to use the gold-e locks warrior to attack a barb warrior my last test game so I could finish a chop without losing a worker.

If our warrior is on the hill, no barbs should be able to spawn. If they do, we'll see them way before they can cause any problems and can plan accordingly.

Not able to load the game right now... you mean gems E worker?

Yes. For some reason I get E/W confused when writing posts. I really can tell them apart, I can! ;)

I think pottery is late that way. (If I remember)

Not when I tested it. I worked the improved pigs non-stop until growth to 2 pops, which is when I first worked the gems mine.

Timing the granary completion for more food

This needs further testing then. I was able to complete the granary on the same turn. To know for sure, the test needs to be played forward to see how much food is in the granary after the city grows again.

I debated what to do with him but i wanted the chop for the granary. This is not a deal breaker with construction sling shot

No, it's not a deal breaker by any stretch. It just seems like a low priority to build roads in a place where they aren't needed for city connection and likely won't see any military troop movement for some time while Zlatorog is busy building its granary. I don't know what to do with said worker, but there must be something better for him to do with these 4 roading turns. A farm (or partial farm) in Delhi may be better...

Jack was bored and lacked a sense of direction. Your welcome to give him one

I think we need a general plan for our warriors. We will still need one to the east of Marble City to spawn bust. If we plan to whip a lot in Delhi, we may need him there to keep the :mad: away. That's something for the player after you (Dhoom?) to help us with.

I was playing with the idea of building a cash reserve early in case of a need to upgrade a warrior. If I recall we dont really need fishing until turn 63

My bad. You have us learning Fising on T62 and Hunting on T63. For some reason, I read Hunting as Fishing... :blush:

I was getting tired at this point so I'll have to recheck all my work apparently

In this case, it was me again. :blush: I didn't see that you were researching Hunting after Fishing.
 
Okay, I've been trying variants on Mitchum's plan and we can actually research pottery-priesthood and get the Delhi granary finished on T65, pop4 on T66. But there's one prohibitive drawback that more or less cancels the whole plan in my mind, which is why I interrupted my testing to say this.
I think we need the Zlatorog warrior much sooner than T62.
One key difference between magnus' and mitch's plans is that magnus doesn't require the second Zlatorog worker for the Oracle at all. That means we can put the chop into the worker but still complete the warrior first.

Or we could pre-build the warrior to 1t and monitor the WorldwideCity count, turn by turn, so we know when it's getting close. That's a bit risky because a half a dozen AIs could build cities on the same turn. It could get us the worker a bit sooner if AIs are slow to settle, but I doubt they will be.
 
Excellent point, LC. In the test game, barbs aren't an issue in the NW but they easily could be in the real game.

To be clear, my test doesn't REQUIRE that sencond Zlatorog worker. I was one worker turn short because I was roading the deer, so I had to send the worker south. Since he was there, I figured I'd chop the forest under Marble City because I could. If we don't road the deer, then that means I don't need the extra worker to get the Oracle on time.

So, I plan to run two quick tests. I'm not wedded to either one, so I'm going to call them:

Option 1: 1-pop whip the settler in Delhi similar to magnusmarkus' test with the changes I mentioned related to prioritizing F > H > C.

Option 2: 2-pop whip the settler in Delhi saving a forest for Gems City similar to my test.

In both tests, I'll get the warrior to within one turn of completion (catching the chop into the worker) and then complete the worker. When the worker is done, he'll just stay in Zlatorog hanging out in his favorite watering hole just to keep his worker turns out of the equation so we get an apples-to-apples comparison. I'll upload the saves and make a comparison when I'm done.
 
I ran the tests. The warrior was within one turn of completion on T52. The second Zlatorog worker was completed on T61 for both saves. This worker did nothing during the testing.

Here are the deltas for Option 1 (1-pop whip max food) and Option 2 (2-pop whip save forest):

Delhi: Option 1 is +16F and -9H
Zlatorog: Same
Gold-E: Same
Gems City: Option 1 is -3F, -2H and minus 1 30H chop
Marble: Same
Research: Option 1 is +3 beakers
Gold: Option 1 is -9 gold

The tradeoff appears to be a larger Delhi with fewer hammers, which it will make up by being pop 4 sooner, and a few more beakers vs. a slightly better Gems City (with the added bonus of a 30H chop) and more gold.

In my mind, Delhi is a powerhouse that can grow, produce and whip at will with the 2 farms and 3 mines without too much effort or additional improvements (although it still could use another mine and a farm or two). Gems City is a fairly weak city (other than the gems commerce and :)) that will either rely heavily on the whip for production or just be a science city with a library and 2 scientists. Option 1 makes a powerhouse a bit better (let’s say it’s about 1 to 2 turns ahead) while Option 2 gives Gems City a much faster ramp up time (say 5 to 6 turns ahead)… 30H is a lot to a city that generates so few each turn.
 

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Overall, I prefer saving at least one forest for each city's granary. Makes a huge difference in terms of growth and our cities are food-scarce.

The problem with Gems is that it didn't get the free cultural expansion from SH so it doesn't have more chops in its culture. With a granary and the pigs, it can still poprush every ten turns. Or it can just grow and work cottages, which I think we should do with at least a city or two because we'll have serious costs eventually.

Frankly, I also view Zlatarog as a capable enough city. It just needs a granary and a couple of farms and it will grow fairly rapidly and then work its mines. So keeping that worker there to 1) chop 30h into a granary on T64 and then camp the deer will work just fine in my books. Then the worker builds the farms and mines and by the time we turn our attention from Toku toward Hammy it's producing its share of units.
 
One important point that I don't want us to forget about: as nice as Axemen and Catapults are going to be in a battle versus Toku, we will definitely want to try and bring 2 or 3 Warriors along with us, if we can.

Those Warriors can be sacrificial Warriors that will lure Toku into attacking them with his Archers.

In that way, we can face less Protective Archers defending on hilltops in his capital.


Unfortunately, once we get Hunting, we probably won't be able to make Warriors... except... as long as we don't connect Gem City, we should still be able to build Warriors there after learning Hunting, right?

Perhaps we can delay connecting the Road network to that City (although that means no +1 Happiness in other Cities for the Gem Resource) and then in the future (say, on my turnset) can whip a Warrior or two... perhaps with the overflow going into our Granary.
 
I would like to make a proposal while the server is still working. Since things keep happening during these turnsets that change our plans, maybe magnus should just play to T53 1880BC and stop (if not before). If I'm not mistaken, both plans are the same up till then.

The only outstanding question that I can see is Zlatorog and what to do with its production. I think we'd be much wiser to simply build the warrior asap and move him up to that chokepoint so barbs won't target our cities.
 
Some details I think you should add to your turnset plan, magnus:

* Check each turn to see if Hammy or TOku have gone WHEOOHRN. (Little red fist in lower right-hand corner)
* Check each turn to see if Toku has revolted to Slavery. (F4 screen-Info).

EDIT: The Gold-E Locks warrior can fogbust from teh sheep tile adequately. No need to risk putting him on the hill.

Spoiler :
The above edit overrides this text....

I agree with Mitchum that stationing our warrior on the hill at Gold-E Locks NE-E to fogbust barb spawning is a good idea. It's a risk when we first move it there, but so be it, unless someone can figure out how to minimize the risk. Right now there is a TOku archer there. IF that archer were to see a barb two tiles away, would it go to attack it? If yes and it doesn't go attack, then there are no barbs 2 tiles away right now. That might be an argument to finish our warrior in GOld-E Locks in 1t instead of 2t.
 
I would like to make a proposal while the server is still working. Since things keep happening during these turnsets that change our plans, maybe magnus should just play to T53 1880BC and stop (if not before).
I'm okay with him playing the real game that far and then stopping if anything unexpected happens.

There are still some minor details that are being discussed, but we don't want the playing to get completely stalled, either.


I think we'd be much wiser to simply build the warrior asap and move him up to that chokepoint so barbs won't target our cities.
Sure, we can just aim to complete the Warrior before the Fast Worker... we'd be working the Gold Mine the whole time, right? So, we just need to make sure that the City Governor doesn't automatically work the Deer square.


LowtherCastle said:
IF that archer were to see a barb two tiles away, would it go to attack it?
I've never heard anyone talking of an AI going Barb-unit hunting like that, but the fact that I haven't heard anyone discuss the subject does not mean that it is impossible.


LowtherCastle said:
I agree with Mitchum that stationing our warrior on the hill at Gold-E Locks NE-E to fogbust barb spawning is a good idea. It's a risk when we first move it there, but so be it, unless someone can figure out how to minimize the risk.
I'm still of the opinion that we should keep a Warrior fortified inside of Gold-E Locks, so as to reduce the chance of Toku declaring war on us.

That said, one way to mitigate the risk is to send the Warrior to the Grassland River Forest that is 1N of Gold-E Locks: doing so will still spawn-bust the two hidden squares to our north. It will also put us on good defensive terrain in case there is already a Barb unit up there that will wander next to our borders on the following turn. Of course, if such a Barb unit appeared, it would be the time for magnusmarcus to stop play and consult with the team on how we want to handle the appearance of such a Barb unit.

Staying in that Forest would mean that Toku could not kill our Warrior by declaring war and attacking on the first turn of war.


Alternatively, we could move 1N to that Grassland River Forest, then, if no Barb unit appears for 2 turns, we could move to the Grassland Sheep square. We could then stay on the Grassland Sheep square (being careful not to pillage our own Sheep Pasture) and just end that unit's turn every turn.

We'd spawn-bust a good amount of terrain and would still be close to our City should Toku decide to "get his hands full" (i.e. start preparing for war).

There would be the small chance that Toku would declare war and kill our Warrior on the first turn of war. So, we'd get to spawn-bust one extra square in exchange for a little bit less safety.


Either way, I'm not comfortable with heading outside of our Cultural Borders with the Gold-E Locks Warrior for a few reasons:
1. We might encounter a Barb unit and lose our Warrior altogether
2. Toku will be tempted by an empty City and I'd like to have a unit nearby that can retreat to Gold-E Locks if Toku declares war (of course, if Toku declares war, magnusmarcus should stop play and we'll figure out how we want to handle said situation)
3. Toku's Cultural Borders might expand if we position the Warrior to the north of Osaka. In that case, our Warrior could get teleported next to a Barb unit in the north. Our Warrior might also get teleported far away from Gold-E Locks such that he will be far out of position if Toku decides to declare war on us
4. As I said before, we're not going to be building a City up there anytime soon, so going to the square that is to the NE + E of Gold-E Locks would not be helpful in terms of exploration and would just be a very risky move with no substantial gain


Spawn-busting from the Sheep square will already spawn-bust the three nearby hidden squares, and if we first move to the Grassland Forest River to the north of Gold-E Locks and then stay in that Forest for 3 turns before moving to the Sheep, we should be quite confidently safe from Barbs... just not as safe from Toku declaring compared to just leaving the Warrior inside of Gold-E Locks.
 
Okay. Fog-gazing reveals that Osaka-2N-NE is a hill tile (the forest rises significantly higher than the grass forest to its south). So Osaka is fogbusting that tile. That means we can station our warrior on the sheep and fogbust the same three tiles that he would fogbust from the hill.





As for Toku, he can't DoW us yet, because he needs at least a chariot or axe/spear first. Once he gets that, he'll need to go through X turns of WHEOOHRN, unless he can sneak attack us. That can be determined doing the math.

.
 

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I've been debating playing my turnset while the site has been in an up / down state. Frankly I just dont feel comfortable playing the save. I'm more than happy to test but not anything more. Perhaps in the future but for now I'm going to relegate myself to a lurker.
 
I've been debating playing my turnset while the site has been in an up / down state. Frankly I just dont feel comfortable playing the save. I'm more than happy to test but not anything more. Perhaps in the future but for now I'm going to relegate myself to a lurker.
We're here to support you, whatever your decision. I'm ready to be on-line as you go through it if you wish. I was psyched to have you play your turnset, but I don't want to pressure you. The way you've been testing, I have total confidence that you'll play it out just fine.
 
I've been debating playing my turnset while the site has been in an up / down state. Frankly I just dont feel comfortable playing the save. I'm more than happy to test but not anything more. Perhaps in the future but for now I'm going to relegate myself to a lurker.

First of all, you made a good choice by not playing when the server was down yesterday. In general, you should wait for a positive "Yes" from at least half of the active players before you play a turnset.

Second, I agree with LC that you should go ahead and play your turnset. You are VERY prepared for this. You've played through it more than anyone else on the team. Your plan, your comments and you organization show that you know what's going on and you have an excellent handle on what needs to be done and why.

In general, there are two types of things that can go "wrong" in a turnset. First, you can make a mistake and deviate from the plan. This can be caused by misclicking, forgetting to do something (like set the research to 100%, switch a citizen to the copper, change a build item, etc.). All of your testing so far and a clear PPP have prepared you to avoid these types of issues. The second thing that can go wrong is more unexpected, like getting declared on, having a barb appear, getting unlucky and losing a unit, etc. There's really nothing you can do about this second type of event and they happen to all of us.

The ONLY thing I'd warn you about is that since you've played through the test save so many times, it's easy to become complacent, think you know what to do, and accidentally forget to do something. As I said before, I did this about 3 times in my testing when I accidentally whipped the barracks instead of the settler. Luckily, when you're testing, you can reload. Not so in the real game.

When I'm playing the real save, I have a detailed PPP printed out. I check off each item as I do it. I check every city a few times to make sure everything is correct before ending the turn. I re-check my list. I'm prepared, I've played through the test game. I know what I need to do. I do it. I'm 100% confident that you can do the same. Come up with a system that works for you, follow it each turn and you'll be fine.

Good luck, magnusmarcus!! :cool:
 
I have the save and will commence playing the turnset up to turn 53 on or about 11:15am Central Time. (approx 1 hour from now).

Please post if any objections
Turn 48 2080BC

Gold Worker NW NW
Bronze Worker Mine
Zlatorog Worker Chop Zlatorog-S
Change Production in Zlatorog to worker
Zlatorog Works Gold only
Tech Slider to Full
Delhi GrassHillMine x2 Floodplain Corn

Turn 49 2040BC

Change Zlatarog to warrior
Deer worker W SW Mine
MM Delhi to work the copper mine (plus corn, FP and GHMine)
Zlatorog Worker Chop
GOLD-ELOCKS works Plains forest and gold this turn only

Turn 50 2000BC
Gold-E Locks completes warrior and starts a worker.
Warrior heads NE to sheep to fog bust.
MM sheep Gold. Worker in 8 turns
Zlatorog 1S worker S SE
1 Bronze worker N Chop Cancel Order
1 Bronze worker W NW

Turn 51 1960BC

Delhi 1SE Worker NE Chop
Delhi 1SW Worker Chop
Delhi 2NW worker 1 SW Chop

Turn 52 1920BC

Nothing
 
I have the save and will commence playing the turnset up to turn 53 on or about 11:15am Central Time. (approx 1 hour from now).

Please post if any objections
No objections from me.

Are you planning to build warrior first in Zlatorog?

Put the warrior on the sheep?

Also, please make a save some time during each turn so we have the demographic data for that turn. Usually this is at the end, but that's not necessary.
 
No objections from me.

Are you planning to build warrior first in Zlatorog?

Put the warrior on the sheep?

Also, please make a save some time during each turn so we have the demographic data for that turn. Usually this is at the end, but that's not necessary.

Updated earlier post for 4 turn PPP
 
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