SGOTM 16 - The Shawshank Redemption

Keilah said:

Hey guys, I've just received some bad news IRL and I think pc games are going to be a distraction I can't really afford any more. I'm going to have to drop out. My apologies, and have fun guys =)

Click to expand...

Bad news. I hope things work out for the best for you.

Here are some of the main first move options on the table, using the test game that mscellaneous updated. Please let me know if you think that we're missing any options that we are honestly considering.





Hi, Keilah. Thanks for letting us know. Best of luck with resolving your real-life commitments and happy future civving!

I am in camp A. Given the current information, I prefer settling in place. I generally hate giving up a turn or two unless it is clear I get it back quickly (For example, moving to a plain hill). Since I dont see that here, I vote for SIP unless the warrior reveals something quite good in the "yellow" boxes.

I'm split 60/40 between:

60) camp 'A' warrior 1SW to the hill and only move the settler S if something is revealed in the yellow squares
40) warrior 1NW to reveal E of corn and hill 2N of the settler. If something juicy revealed, SIP...if nothing, settler 1NW and pray for some good tiles in the fog.

I don't want to lose more than 1 turn before we settle. moving the settler 1W and then again is not good IMHO.

cas

Something to consider. If move the settler away from the corn, the improvement of the corn is delayed by two turns, unless we head back and SIP on turn 1.

I prefer to move the settler NW and settle on there on turn 2 if there is enough production. Otherwise we move back and settle in place.

Im ok with anything that means settling latest on turn 1 with corn and enough hills in bfc

Some more insights on fogbusting:
- Tile 2W1N is either a grassland or FP tile


Dhoom, I like the way you have worked out the unit movment options. As for options C & D I would like to discuss the option to move the warrior 1N on T0.
Pros:
+ Besides revealing the hill (2N of settler) and the tile east of the corn we also get to learn a little bit of the flow of the coastline by revealing the tile 2E of the Corn.
+ We still have the option to settle on T0.
Cons:
- This means we cannot scout the tile 1W2N on T1, but since it will always be in our BFC (unless we settle 1S, which I dislike) so I do not value scouting it too much.

My preference towards the options:
45% - Either C or D, with added option to move warrior 1N first. If no production found we settle on the tile where the settler starts
45% - B. Settling on T0 still seems not bad.
10% - A. Not fond of moving the settler 1S. I have asked myself: if we move the warrior 1SW on the GH, what yellow tiles would me persuade to move the settler 1S?
- A plains Wheat? (3S of settler) Hmmm, not sure it is worth if giving up the hill 2N plus 2 river tiles
- A forested deer? (1W3S of settler) I think this tile appearing here is highly unlikely

Apparently, the saved games are already out.

If you're going to look at ours, please review the info on Pausing the Game.


Here is a link to the REAL saved game. I'm going to try and do some fog-gazing with it shortly and will put out a couple of quickly-taken screenshots of the real game and our latest test saved game. With two screenshots having been taken on the same computer, it will be easier to visually compare where the screenshots differ, which can then help with trying to update the test saved game, which I'll try my hand at doing after posting the screenshots.

As promised, here are a few screenshots of the real game with similar views of our test game. There are some definite differences.

I'm going to try for a bit to see if I can get an identical River in the test game, but if I don't have any luck, I'll try my hand at updating the existing test game to match the real game's screenshot for a bit.

Probably the best way to visually compare screenshots would be to save them on your computer and then switch between the images in your favouring image-viewing program, either switching back and forth between images or else opening both images in two different windows that you maximize and then Alt + Tab between the two windows.

I'm still messing around with Rivers, but one thing that I'm pretty certain of is that there is another Hills square SW + S of the Settler.

Here's an updated test saved game. Thanks to mscellaneous' insight about the River going in a different direction than I'd tried previously, it was a whole lot easier to match up the test game to the real game. It still took a lot of work and I didn't quite get the piece in the south-west correct, but we're much closer than we were.

Here are some screenshots from Test Game D, as well as a new saved game. I had to mess around a lot with the map, so in the long run we'll probably abandon this test saved game and go back to Test Game C, but for fog-gazing purposes, Test Game D should help us out quite a bit.



I don't play the game with sounds on, so I am not an expert on fog-listening, but it seems that you CAN still hear different sounds with the game paused, which should a pretty safe way to do it, as long as you remember to quit to the main menu instead of unpausing, as per the message that details the recommended pausing procedure. So, if someone wants to try validating some of the terrain types just outside of view using fog-listening, I'm all for you doing so. I'm mostly interested in the squares to the west and south-west, since it will be nice to be able to say whether or not there is a Flood Plains square (or at least a Desert River square that SHOULD have a Flood Plain on it, given that it's Civ 4 BtS generating the map instead of Civ 4 Warlords generating the map).

Feel free to update the test saved game, too, if you can figure out where things are wrong. We're close, but some of the stuff in the south-west isn't quite right, and the coast looks quite different from the real game, but I have no idea what to do about the coast or if that aspect is even controllable by changing things or if it's more of a square-by-square concept like Rivers are, such that if you picked the "wrong" spot on the map, the Coasts just won't align? I'm not certain, but the Rivers are pretty darned close, close enough to let us know that the River does not seem to extend in the north or west (but it might extend somewhere in the south-west; it's hard to tell though).

Settling in Place versus moving toward the West
I agree that settling in place is decent... Corn, plenty of River squares, 3 Hills squares, possible Flood Plains (I'm still not sure about those--I had trouble getting that part of the test game's map to fit).

Moving 1W or 1NW doesn't necessarily gain us anything for the capital itself. In particular, we aren't settling on top of a Plains Hills square, so on the surface, it looks like we're losing 1 turn for just a shot at gambling for better squares in the darkness.

But, the thing is that there's that Fish Resource. It can either be used in a marginal City or in a reasonably-decent City. In fact, by moving the Settler west, we make a huge difference in our ability to build The Great Lighthouse, from it being a possibility primarily if we find a different coastal location that's pretty good, to it being an all-but-guarantee for us to be able to build that Wonder. Observe:




Moving 1W versus 1NW
Moving 1W lets us keep 2 Hills squares. Moving 1NW lets us keep 1 Hills square and lets us gamble for more random squares.

Which one we want to go for depends upon how much we like to gamble, I suppose, and how much it would hurt to lose if our gamble didn't pay off.

A bit of playing in the World Builder says that...

Counting the "first turn" as being Turn 0:
Barb Animals will appear on the map after we end our turn on Turn 5, meaning that they will haved appeared on the map at the start of our Turn 6.

Barbs always take 1 turn to be able to move after they spawn, so the soonest that our Warrior could be attacked by a Barb Animal would be after we end our turn on Turn 6.

Tech Trading
If you meet an AI on another continent that has some techs that you want, it may be good to trade with said AI before meeting their continent mates.

You may risk angering any AI that knows your trading partner if your trading partner is their Worst Enemy.

However, you will only take a We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced hit for any of the AIs that you know at the time of receiving a tech.

Thus, the continent-mates of your trading partner won't increase their WFYABTA counters if they haven't met you, even though they may penalize you for having traded with their Worst Enemy.


In addition, the proposal of a tech trade by an AI ignores checking the WFYABTA limits. So, if we have an AI that has reached WFYABTA with us and a tech trade is offered, we shouldn't click on the "Would you like to negotiate" (or whatever the text says) link. If we try to negotiate, we'll find that the AI will be unwilling to make the trade anymore, but if we accept the trade at face value (sometimes the AI will intentionally not give you full value in terms of excess Gold that they have on hand, but they are reasonably fair), then we can trade beyond the WFYABTA limit with said AI.


When you see a lop-sided tech trade proposal made by an AI, they are:
a) Generally interested in getting the tech that you have for a reason (like learning Literature faster to try and be the first to Music, learning a tech like Calendar because they have a Resource that they want to improve, etc)
AND
b) It's not really lop-sided in that the cost for you to finish researching the tech that they are trading to you is used in the calculation, and vice versa

So, if they AI is one turn away from learning Economics, they might offer you Archery in trade for Economics.


Also, if you want to increase an AI's We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced counters with other AIs (probably something that we want to avoid doing in this game), you trade them a tech that they have almost learned. They did most of the manual research work themselves, so you're only giving them a bit of value, but they take the full hit on their WFYABTA counters with the other AIs that know them.


I think that we discussed this point before, but it's worth saying again: Tech Stealing does not count against WFYABTA counters, but other forms of receiving a tech do count against it, whether it was an AI-initiated trade proposal, whether it was a gift from an AI, or whether it was a tech trade that we initiated.


Here are a couple of links on WFYABTA, in case you're interested in doing some reading on the subject:
Tech Trading: We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced Strategy
Tech Trading: We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced Game Mechanics and Leader Listing

Game Settings

Well, it looks like kcd_swede's game settings match those of our test game, so the terrain at certain altitudes that you'll see in our test game (minus the large swaths of Plains squares that I added) should give a good representation of the terrain types available in the real game. We can't know whethere kcd_swede deleted any nearby islands or not, but his comment about only making minor modifications (is adding the Humbaba Barb really minor? ), we can make a reasonable assumption that he didn't painstakingly turn most Grassland squares into Plains or anything crazy like that.

That said, the Hemispheres map script lets you pick between adding "Tiny Islands," "Small Islands," or randomly choosing one of those two, so it would be somewhat against the spirit of the game's map script to delete such islands.


Analysing Demographics


There's not much to look at yet on the Demographics screen, but we can get a bit of a clue about our opponents in this game by looking at the Soldiers values. We are, of course, assuming that kcd_swede did not add any units to or subtract any units from the AIs.

In our real game, we see:
Soldiers
Value = 6000 (that's our value, so it doesn't help us)
Rival Best = 18000
Rival Average = 16333
Rival Worst = 14000

Given that the F8 -> VICTORIES screen tells us that there are 6 Rivals left, which is a number consistent with me adding 6 AIs to a test game map, we can play around with some math, once we have a feeling for the Soldier values of some of the AIs.

I went to the liberty of generating a list of Soldier values for each of the AIs:
Emperor-Level Soldier Values for Every Leader


Our Opponents
From this list, we know right away that Mansa Musa and Hammurabi are not in our game. We also know that at least one AI with an initial Soldiers value of 18000 is in the game, as well as another AI with an initial Soliders value of 14000 is in the game, since those values match the Rival Best and Rival Worst values, respectively.

Since the Average value is 16333, we know that the sum of the remaining 4 AIs' values must be 66000. If anyone can explain the math of how I figured that out, it would be great.

Here are a couple of possibilities for the remaining 4 AIs:


Assuming that I did the math correctly, those possibilities are the only ones that I can think of, meaning that we either have:
18000 = 2 AIs
16000 = 3 AIs
14000 = 1 AI
OR
18000 = 3 AIs
16000 = 1 AI
14000 = 2 AIs

While that data doesn't tell us very much yet, it does let us know that (if I did the math correctly), we can't have 3 Leaders from the 14000 list in our game, so we can't have all three of Alex, Monte, and Shaka in our game (but there might be as many as two of them in our game!).

I have done a serious run on test save A.

Settled W of start position and settled second city N of warrior. Tech path went:
Mining - BW - fishing - pottery - writing - mysticism - meditation - pottery - hunting - archery - sailing - masonry.

Built library once I finished writing, and ran 2 scientist in capital.
Built oracle on turn 63, and picked Metal Casting.
Built TGLH on turn 79.
Got a great scientist which I used for academy on turn 71.
Have forge + library in both cities. No granaries.
Have 6 warriors, 3 workers, and one exploration work boat, but could have had 1-2 archers instead of forge in capital.

Had open borders with traderoutes for some turns.
Capital have one flood plain and one riverside green hill.
Have chopped all forests in both bfc.

I didn't have any luxuries or resources except the corn and fish on the screenshot.

Moving the Game Along
Okay, people voted on where they would like to move given incomplete information.

Test Game D makes it very clear that there is a Plains Hills square 2N, a Hills square SW + S, and the obvious Grassland Hills square SE + S that we can all see without fog-gazing.

If you still don't believe me and aren't willing to look at Test Game D yourself, then let the screenshots speak for you.

In particular, if I change the Hills square 2N of the Settler to a Grassland Hills square, it doesn't look right. Also, if I make the square SW + S flat instead of being a Hills square, it also doesn't look right. Here's a screenshot Test Game D with those two incorrect changes made to it:


Please compare that screenshot against these two previously-posted screenshots:



Now, out of our settling options, in-place is still decent, but it leaves the Fish Resource sucking and it leaves it as a big question mark in our minds as to whether we can find a distant Coastal location that:
a) Has some Food available to it
AND
b) Has some Hammers available to it
AND
c) Has some Forests to Chop
AND
d) Isn't too far away that we'd have to use a significant amount of military units to defend it from all sides


Moving 1NW loses us the SW + S Hills square.

Moving to the Coast is not so hot, since we can put our second or third City there and still build The Great Lighthouse.

Moving 1W has these benefits:

a) Any Resources that we might lose by moving will be gained by our Fish City, since all 5 of those squares will be owned by our Fish City that is settled 1N of the Warrior and 1NW of the Fish
AND
b) We're pretty much guaranteed The Great Lighthouse. Settling in place means that it will be totally up to the luck of us finding a different suitable Coastal location
AND
c) Since we're moving away from a bunch of non-Riverside Plains squares, the only obvious nice square that we'd be giving up is a Grassland Hills square, and that square can be put to better use building water-based build items from our Fish City, such as exploring Work Boats, Galleys for settling islands, Triremes for Barb Galley protection, etc
AND
d) Our Palace becomes more centralized on our continent, given that we appear to be on the eastern coast
AND
e) We'll get a bit more inland fog-busting from our Creative Cultural Borders
AND
f) We still have solid production: 2 Hills squares (at least one of which is a Plains Hills square), one of which is Riverside, and several Plains River Forest squares that can either keep their Forests or become decent PRiv Farm squares

Moving 1W has these costs:
i. We lose a Forest
AND
ii. We lose 1 turn
AND
iii. While we're mostly giving up marginal Plains squares, it is feasible that we'll instead get 5 Desert squares; then again, we're unlikely to work any of those Plains squares in our capital ANYWAY, so it's not like this point is really meaningful
AND
iv. It's possible that by moving 1NW, we would instead pick up an additional nice Resource


Personally, the knowledge of there being a Hills square SW + S has convinced me that moving 1W is the best play here, given that all of the costs of moving are easily justified by us guaranteeing ourselves a City that is more than capable of building The Great Lighthouse and also picks up any Resources that we would lose by moving.


Given that the team really doesn't want to settle on Turn 2, I don't really even care where we move the Warrior, if we can agree that we'd move the Settler 1W unless the Warrior revealed something amazing.

If we can come to an agreement that it's worth a solid shot at getting The Great Lighthouse for the costs associated with moving the Settler 1W, that leaves us with these previously-discussed Warrior moves:
A] Warrior 1SW GH, which would just give us the possibility of moving 1S, but if we did so, we'd still not have a good The Great Lighthouse location, since we need to move westward in order to give ourselves the good coastal Great Lighthouse location
OR
B] Warrior 1NW GFor, with the thinking that we'd move 1NW GRiv For on the following turn just to see if we spot some far-off Plains Hills Gold squares that might justify us settling on Turn 2 just to get it
OR
C] Warrior 1N P, with the thinking that we'll still reveal the Hills square 2N of the Settler and will still reveal the Plains square NE + E of the Settler (1E of the Corn), and we'll also see a bit more by the Coast relative to choice B], but with us not having the opportunity to see a possibly distant Hills Gold square with the Warrior's Turn 1 movement point
EDITED, based on ingentingg's comment below: OR
D] Warrior 1NE PFor
The thinking here being that we'll be okay with settling 1W, no matter what we get there, as long as we see that there isn't another possible good Coastal location for Fish City, but if there is a good visible Coastal location for Fish City, we can still strongly consider settling in place
Here's a previous screenshot of what we'd reveal by moving the Warrior 1NE PFor:



Of course, if the team thinks that saving that 1 turn by settling in place is worth risking not finding a location for The Great Lighthouse, that's fine, too. I just want people to have the chance to revise their opinions given the new information and then get some sort of consensus, so that I can put together an appropriate Pre-Play Plan.

I agree with Dhooms general remarks above, but have a small modification.

I think we should move the Warrior NE, and if we see a good spot for a possible second city NNE of the warriorw we can SIP. Otherwise we move the settler W and have N of warrior as a good spot for a possible second city.

I think we should try to get the game rolling. Once we have settled our first city and explored some, we can really start on playtesting and finding the optimal route for the first 50-80 turns. These are the most important turns, and we don't want to rush them.

Hi all, quick reply from me.. Have been busy fog listingen today.. Did not have any experience in this. Did not learn much either Squares without forests sound like wind blowing (so this seems the same for FP, plains, grassland but also desert squares)

I will download the real save and fogbust one last time..

More in 30 - 60 minutes

OK, here is my updated fogbusting screenie.. Some changes, Dhoom already was very close..



Changes:
- Tile 1W2N is a plains forest
- Tile 2W1N is a grassland
- Tile 2W2S is possibly a plains. I changed the tile to desert / oasis / FP but this did not match with the coloration on the 1W1S tile
- Tile 1W2S indeed is a forested hill

I have updated the test game to match my fogbusting. I made some max detail screen shots of the tiles around the river from the real save, compared them with the test game. They are close, VERY close, uncanningly close.. The only tile that does not match is the river fork 2S2W, for the rest every tiles seems a 100% match. I can UL these screenshots if needed..

So I have made up my mind... I agree with ingentingg

I think we should move the Warrior NE, and if we see a good spot for a possible second city NNE of the warriorw we can SIP. Otherwise we move the settler W and have N of warrior as a good spot for a possible second city.

Click to expand...

However, I want to propose to move the warrior N instead of NE. Reasons:
- tile 2E2N from warrior seems to be coast anyway
- warrior is 1 tile more in land and can thus move west 1 turn earlier, assuming we scout the GLH city site using our cultural borders

Nice work, mscellaneous! The changes that you made appear to be correct.

One interesting point is that by settling 1W, we will get to work the Flood Plains square right from the start. So, while we will still miss out on one turn work of production into a Worker and Commerce by moving, we'll make back 3 Commerce from the Flood Plains square for the first 3 turns of our City existing, before its Cultural Borders expand.

As to moving the Warrior 1N P instead of 1NE PFor, let's look at what our Cultural Borders expanding a second time will reveal for us of the coastline:


It's actually not a complete picture of the Coast, is it?


Let's realise that what we're doing here with a Warrior 1N P or Warrior 1NE PFor move is a fundamental shift from our previous discussion of moves... this time, we are no longer trying to find a good location for City #1, but instead, we are trying to see where best to settle City #2. As a result, I think that it makes sense for us to see how many squares of the big fat cross that we can reveal of a Fish City that, in the scenario where we settle in place, has to be forced right next to the Coast (NE + N of where the Warrior started).



What we can see from those images is that moving 1NE PFor does a more thorough job of exploring the potential big fat cross of a Fish City, in the case where we choose to settle in place. Also, if we settle 1W, moving 1NE PFor will reveal 5 water squares that our 2nd Cultural Border expansion would not reveal.

Thus, I think that out of those two choices, Warrior 1NE PFor meets our needs of exploring a potentially "crammed-in" Fish City's big fat cross much better, all without competing with fog-busted exploration by a capital that is settled 1W.

ingentingg said:

I have done a serious run on test save A.

Settled W of start position and settled second city N of warrior. Tech path went:
Mining - BW - fishing - pottery - writing - mysticism - meditation - priesthood - hunting - archery - sailing - masonry.

Built library once I finished writing, and ran 2 scientist in capital.
Built oracle on turn 63, and picked Metal Casting.
Built TGLH on turn 79.
Got a great scientist which I used for academy on turn 71.
Have forge + library in both cities. No granaries.
Have 6 warriors, 3 workers, and one exploration work boat, but could have had 1-2 archers instead of forge in capital.

Had open borders with traderoutes for some turns.
Capital have one flood plain and one riverside green hill.
Have chopped all forests in both bfc.

I didn't have any luxuries or resources except the corn and fish on the screenshot.

Click to expand...

I'd be curious to know when you started the Forge in the second City relative to completing the Lighthouse (before or after?) and which buildings, if any, you whipped there, and for how many population points each whipping action was.

Also, what is your overall theme for Worker actions? Did you Chop Forests into Workers or the Settler?

When did you build the Settler relative to building additional Workers beyond the first Worker?

We took a risk of generating a Great Prophet, right? A super-early, settled Great Prophet is one of the strongest Great People to settle. He'd be useful for Lightbulbing Theology, but if we go for the fast-Optics route, we won't know Polytheism or Monotheism, so we'd have to settle him.

It doesn't really make sense to delay The Oracle (doing delays the timing of when we can start on Forges and risks an AI beating us to that Wonder), so I wonder if we'll have to use a 3rd City to either Chop The Oracle or else to produce our first Great Scientist later than you were generating it.

While an early Great Prophet will be nice, an early Great Scientist that comes out a bit later will be far nicer.

The rub is that we'll still want a Library in the capital, since our 8 free Commerce from the Palace = 2 free Flasks per turn at a 100% Science Rate. So, if we can find somewhere to Chop out The Oracle in a 3rd City, that would be spectacular.