SGOTM 16 - The Shawshank Redemption

Test Game Runs
We should now have enough info to update a test game and be able to run some build order scenarios through getting the Oracle, The Great Lighthouse, and our first Great Person.

Yes, we won't know what our 3rd City will look like, but there are a few Forests in the north, so there's at least a location where we could throw a few Forest Chops into an Oracle, assuming that we can build a Settler and can have sufficient Workers to perform those Chopping actions.

Arguably, if we're 100% happy with going for
Mining -> Bronze Working
as our initial tech path, we don't have to run any testing before I proceed with the next PPP, but it might be a good idea to stop now and try a couple of other tech paths, such as
Pottery -> Writing -> Mining -> Bronze Working,
just to see if we like that approach better.

Research is apparently our bottleneck, but waiting that long to learn Mining might not be in our best interests, either, since we may want to improve a Mine sooner, so another tech path to try would be:
Mining -> Pottery -> Writing -> Bronze Working

Once we have a tech path that we're comfortable with, then I can play the PPP listed below (feel free to make suggested changes to the PPP while we figure out which tech to start researching).


Pre-Play Plan
Turn 1, 3960 BC
- Research EDIT: Mining -> Bronze Working
- End the turn. I think that we're good with building a Worker, researching our chosen tech at a 100% Science Rate, working the Flood Plains according to the City Governor, etc

Turn 2, 3920 BC and onwards
EDIT: The Warrior moves don't even seem to make sense; I must have made some typos.
- Warrior moves 1NW P (1N of the G Corn), 1NE P (NE + N of the G Corn), NE... if we're next to the coast, head NW otherwise head E or NE to scout that bit of Coast and then NW... then loop around the outside of where our Cultural Borders will reveal, doing our best to stick to Forests/Hills and doing our best to wait on said safer squares if Barb Animals are visibly nearby
- Warrior moves 1NW P (2N of the G Corn), 1N P (NE + N of the G Corn), NE... if we're next to the coast, head NW otherwise head E or NE to scout that bit of Coast and then NW... then loop around the outside of where our Cultural Borders will reveal, doing our best to stick to Forests/Hills and doing our best to wait on said safer squares if Barb Animals are visibly nearby
- Keep taking screenshots of Demographics, Top 5 Cities, terrain revealed by the Warrior and our expanding Cultural Borders, and anything else that people request that I screenshot

Pause play when anything interesting happens, but play can go up until the turn where we build our Worker.



I'm pretty sure that our Worker's first moves will be:
EDIT: 1E PRiv and Road and STOP Farming
1NE G Corn and Farm until completion

But, I'll leave those initial Worker moves to be determined later and to be executed by the next player (Jastrow).

cas said:

take screens of the demographics...although I am not good at decipering them.

Click to expand...

Mitchum provided a relevant link, which I've added to our first page's list of useful links:
The Inner-Workings of the Demographics Screen Explained

It's actually not that hard to figure things out and it will be nice to have a few heads on the subject.

Some things that we should be able to figure out are:
GNP = some AIs might be Creative or might have high Commerce starts (Financial Leader with a Lake and knowledge of Fish or an Oasis within their initial 1-square-radius

Mfg Goods + Crop Yield + part of GNP = what type of square might be worked by each AI

Soldiers = We've already discussed it and the values haven't changed yet (nor are they likely to change for a little while until AIs pump out their first newly-built Archers, since there are no Barb units yet to kill off AI units)

Land Area = How many non-water squares each AI has. One or more non-land squares means that said AI has a chance of being able to build The Great Lighthouse in their capital

Population = 1000 = one Size 1 City, nothing useful for now

Approval Rate = As Mitchum alluded to, Happiness levels can come into play, where different values are likely to indicate that either a Leader is Charismatic or (in a very unlikely scenario) settled on top of a Happiness Resource

Life Expectancy = As Mitchum alluded to, Healthiness levels can come into play, where different values may indicate the precense of Expansive Leaders, but given that Flood Plains, Jungles, and Forests can affect these values greatly, we probably can't tell much from this info unless there are some extremely high or extremely low values here

Exports - Imports = No info available until Open Borders come into play, as far as I am aware

Dhoomstriker said:

Test Game Runs
We should now have enough info to update a test game and be able to run some build order scenarios through getting the Oracle, The Great Lighthouse, and our first Great Person.

Yes, we won't know what our 3rd City will look like, but there are a few Forests in the north, so there's at least a location where we could throw a few Forest Chops into an Oracle, assuming that we can build a Settler and can have sufficient Workers to perform those Chopping actions.

Arguably, if we're 100% happy with going for
Mining -> Bronze Working
as our initial tech path, we don't have to run any testing before I proceed with the next PPP, but it might be a good idea to stop now and try a couple of other tech paths, such as
Pottery -> Writing -> Mining -> Bronze Working,
just to see if we like that approach better.

Research is apparently our bottleneck, but waiting that long to learn Mining might not be in our best interests, either, since we may want to improve a Mine sooner, so another tech path to try would be:
Mining -> Pottery -> Writing -> Bronze Working

Click to expand...

I think mining BW is a winner. We have too little food for cottages and need to produce workers, warriors and settlers before we can start on a library

I agree on Mining -> BW. We'll know Mining well before we'll be building our first mine but it's BW that I think we need ASAP for chopping, whipping and finding the copper.

I'm fine with the PPP and your proposed warrior scouting path.

Are you saying that these factors will be consistent from map to map? Like, if I take any 6 opponents and use similar game settings as we have, then generate a few maps with those same opponents, each of those opponents will have identical hidden modifier values toward us each game?

Click to expand...

Yes, the hidden diplo modifier (AFIIALO) vs human player as well as AI vs AI is not map dependent.

Therefore, it will only be the AI-AI hidden modifier values that change from game to game?

Click to expand...

Yes, the AI-AI relations are determined by one random factor.

In OSS, it was always LC or ZPV that figured out the hidden modifiers between us and the AI, but I'm pretty sure that there is an additional, random modifier that is rolled at the beginning of the game and can be adjusted in WB.

Click to expand...

Well, I went thru the meta code snippets in the "AI Attitude Explained"" thread. There is only one random factor that determines AI attitude and that is only used in AI vs AI attitude determination.

If you can provide an example of one of the OSS games I'd be interested to look into it.

Tech path:
Since we're a bit low on food (+7 max assuming we farm the FP and do not farm a riverside grassland) slavery becomes a little less attractive, IMO. I am assuming that - despite we want to build Oracle and GLH - we want to have that first settler out ASAP. Question is: do we start the settler at size 2 or 3? I think we need to do some testing for this.

Warrior:
1NW P for T2 seems fine. Personally I might be tempted to move it 1NW PHF for better view turn after.

Paris:
Worker, agreed.

I agree that we won't be whipping a lot in the capital due to the low food, but we will be chopping for sure. The sooner we can chop the sooner we get our second city settled. I really can't do much testing in the next two weeks since I leave for another business trip two days after I get home from this one...

I can't find anything at a quick glace on the AI attitude stuff in OSS, but LC was always tracking the hidden modifier by watching when each AI switched from Cautious to Pleased or some other similar switch. If it was set in stone for each leader as you've posted, I would have assumed that he and ZPV would have mentioned it.

ingentingg said:

We have too little food for cottages

Click to expand...

I agree. I really wanted Writing for Libraries and Pottery was just one way to get there.

We'll also need Pottery for Metal Casting (and Granaries in the future), but I'm not sure on "how soon" we can use Writing if we get it. Will getting a Library really fast put us behind more than it will help us?

mscellaneous said:

1NW P for T2 seems fine. Personally I might be tempted to move it 1NW PHF for better view turn after.

Click to expand...

I thought about that move, but our Cultural Borders will expand over that area before our first Settler will be complete. So, I'd rather get to the Coast a bit sooner so that we can start the loop around the outside edge of our Cultural Borders, starting from the east Coast, looping around NW, SW, SE, and then arriving at the east Coast below our capital.

Of course, if we spot a Gold Resource or something along the way, it'll make sense to explore that area, as carefully as we possibly can.


I wouldn't mind running a test tonight to see if, by getting Writing before Bronze Working, the timing of the Library would make sense or not. Starting with Agriculture and The Wheel, plus having cheap Libraries, might make it worthwhile, particularly since we have a Silk (1F 2H 1C) square and a PHFor square (0F 3H 0C) to potentially help us out.

Our gating factor seemed to be research, not Hammers, but getting the Library too soon might also put us at more of a Hammer deficit.

It's hard to say without at least testing it.

If, for example, we're going to Farm the Corn, then Farm the Flood Plains square, then Mine a Hills square before Chopping, it may make sense. If, however, we were hoping to get Chopping a bit sooner, such as Chopping out a fast 2nd Worker, then Bronze Working first would appear to make more sense.

It's hard to know which is better until at least trying each option out and getting a feel for them.


I think that we will be Farming Riverside Grassland squares, but probably not for a while yet.

I'm not sure about the Silk... if we Farm it, will we gain 1 more Commerce? If so, it could go from being a 1F 2H 1C square to a 2F 1H 2C square, which would be not too shabby early on, plus would let us use up that Forest early on, too.

I agree that testing would be worthwhile on the tech path, but consider that we'd want to build worker -> warrior -> settler at a minimum before slotting in a library. We may also want a second worker or a third warrior too. So it is definitely possible to get Writing well before it would be useful.

I'm toying with the idea of switching to a Mac. I know that xOTM games have separate Mac and PC starting files. So I assume that I wouldn't be able to play our game on a Mac. Is this true? The reason I ask is that I seem to recall there being a Mac SGOTM team but I haven't heard anything about that for quite some time.

Out of curiosity, who is planning to run testing now and do we have a tentative deadline for figuring out if we want to research Mining next vs. something else?

On the "Mac" issue... If I remember rightly, AlanH once said that he would be willing to prepare a SGOTM file as needed if an entire team wanted to play with a Mac. I am virtually certain that the same team could not be "mixed".

On the PPP. I am convinced that Worker first, and mining-BW is a very good way to go. As said above, it is the chops, not so much the slavery or the mining that I want asap. As such, I vote for going forward now until the Worker comes out. We will be in a better position to test then, as we may already have an idea of what our second city will look like.

More points about why I think mining - BW first is the way to go.

An early library adds 3 beakers in the capital, but a second city adds at least 3 golds (2 for traderoutes and one on center tile). In addition the second city will be coastal, and needs a workboat asap. Thus we need fishing before the four techs; mining, BW, pottery, writing, are done. Thus it's better to research fishing before pottery to get the extra discount.

As others have mentioned, all these forests wants to be chopped, and the sooner we chop them in to workers and settlers, the sooner we can expand, and build oracle and TGLH:

I agree with Mitchum in that we want three cities up and running when we build TGLH before turn 85. This should be doable with later library as well. The main advantage of the library is the ability to run scientists to really add beakers (8.25 per /turn).

I will be away from thursday to sunday, so I won't have CIV4 access, but I will check in on the forum.

I played it out for a bit... we could have built 1 Warrior and a Library by Turn 37 and another Warrior by Turn 39 (2440 BC) to coincide with growing to Size 5.

A Worker would then take 5 turns or a Settler would take 9 turns.

We would be 6 turns away from Bronze Working.



If we beeline Bronze Working, then we'll finish Bronze Working at the same time as we've walked on top of a Forest after having Farmed the Corn, so the timing works out nicely.

Farming the Corn = +2 Food, while Farming the Flood Plains square = only +1 Food and takes a while to do, so I'd say we'd start Chopping a Worker right away (not stealing The Great Lighthouse City's Forests, though), just to make a Bronze Working beeline more useful, then use the Chopped Worker to either help with Chopping out a third Worker or else starting work on Farming the Flood Plains square.

We would grow to Size 2 on Turn 23 (3080 BC), and while we could keep growing to work the Silk square, we might just build a Worker before the Warrior has been completed. I went with going for a Worker right away at Size 2.

On Turn 39 (3440 BC), we are at Size 3 (I grew while building a Warrior and then used a 16-Hammer-Chop to finish off the Warrior so that he completed at the same time as growing to Size 3. We also just completed our Settler with aggressive Chopping--after Farming the Corn, Worker 1 went non-stop Chopping, while Worker 2 Farmed the Flood Plains square and then started Chopping things himself.

Probably somewhere in there, we'll want to take a break from Chopping to set up a couple of Road squares so that we will get those +2 Commerce from the early two-way Trade Route.

We're 11 turns away from Writing, but we picked up Fishing before going for Pottery.



So, it does seem like we can do a whole lot more with going for Bronze Working first, EDIT: unless we leverage our Library to generate a quick Great Scientist and Lightbulb Math, giving us a good investment out of all of those Forests to be Chopped.



I'm too tired to play anything but test games right now (I don't trust myself with the real saved game) and I have a soccer game tomorrow, so I won't be able to play until really late.

So, we can either wait for me for about another 21 hours from now before I can start playing, or if Jastrow feels comfortable doing so, he can continue on with the PPP. EDIT: I really think that we should give this Fast Writing + Lightbulb Math approach some serious consideration before playing on.


Here's a link to the real saved game. Note that the game is paused. Don't add any Signs to the map while the game is paused because I think that doing so will corrupt your saved game. Adding signs can be done with Alt + s.

The strength with the Library-first approach would be to go for an early Great Scientist, so let's assume that we hire 2 Scientists on Turn 39, since we're already at Size 5.

We get Bronze Working on Turn 43 and can learn Fishing before we'll need to build a Work Boat.

I Farmed a Grassland River square (or it could have been a Plains River square) to make the Worker useful while waiting for Bronze Working to come in, but I guess that I could have also built a Road to City 2.

We'll get our Great Scientist on Turn 56. Arguably, we could even Lightbulb Math, which would give use uber-enhanced Forest Chops.

The extra-early Academy probably isn't worth the delay in Chopping, but you know what? Lightbulbing Math really might just be worth it.

So yeah, I think that we should do some more testing around this possibility.

There's no major rush on getting out the Settler for City #2, so we could Chop a Worker first and then a Settler, or else we could go straight for the Settler and then Workers.

We do need 1 Warrior as a Military Police unit, so we can't afford to lose our initial Warrior, as we only have 2 Warriors in addition to the Warrior Military Police unit available to us (at least until we build more Warriors).

Hiring 2 Scientists really speeds our tech rate along nicely. I mean, we actually make 4 extra Flasks per turn from the Library this way... 10 from Commerce, 6 from the Scientists, and an extra 4 Flasks from the Library.

If we go for a Settler before a Worker, it gets Chopped out (2 Chops have gone into it) on Turn 50, with 6 turns to go until we get our Great Scientist.

Then, we'd just pre-Chop a couple of Forests until we could Lightbulb Math.

Actually, when Orleans is built, we could use that Farmed GRiv square so that Orleans can steal the Corn and we can stay food neutral in Paris by working:
Farmed Flood Plains square, Farmed Grassland River square, Silk, and 2 Scientist Specialists.


I'm actually really liking this early Great Scientist approach.

We don't get Worker #2 until Turn 60, but by Lightbulbing Math, we can use those 2 Workers to each Chop one half of a third Worker, and so on.


EDIT: Essentially, we leverage the fact that we can't Chop really early by gaining more value per-Forests Chop for all but 2 of our Forests Chops. Considering that the extra 50% Hammers from Forest Chops get multiplied again by 1.5 for each Hammer going into a Wonder, and we're increasing our Forest yields by 50% for Workers/Settlers and 75% for Wonders. You have to admit that that's pretty solid.


I really think that this approach is pretty viable and warrants some good comparison testing before we proceed with just teching ahead with Mining.

One more thing:
Our first Worker should, on the way to the G Corn, put a Road on the PRiv square. That way, he can earn a free Worker turn on the way back.

Previously, on the way back, he would spend 1 turn moving two squares onto the PRiv and then into Paris, then his next turn could begin on Farming the Flood Plains square.

Instead, on the way back, he completes that Road and then can move from the PRiv to Paris in half a movement point, use a full movement point to move to the Flood Plains square, and then still have half of a movement point remaining to start Farming.

Even if we instead move to a Forest to Chop instead of completing that Road, that partial Road will be of use in connecting-up our second City, whereas we're unlikely to finish farming that PRiv square for quite some time.

Bulbing Math sounds really interesting. I know Plastic Ducks have had success with that earlier. We can then consider picking currency instead of Metal Casting from Oracle.

Oracle is 150 hammers = 100 hammers with Industrious. That's 3 chops with Math. TGLH is 200 =133 hammers with industrious. With or without forges that's not bad. It should then be easy to chop out oracle in a second/third city and then build TGLH in the other, leaving the capital free of gp pollution. It also makes the task of finding a suitable city for the TGLH easier.

I tought about bulbing math, but always researched mining and BW first, and then it just seemed to late, but writing first approach might work.
This definitely need some testing. I might have time to run some tests tonight.
Is someone updating the test game?

Well, if we're considering bulbing Math, then self-researching CoL (guarantees an early religion) and Oracling CS should definitely be on the table too, no? That puts us right on Dhoom's Education beeline... Although getting Education when you only have 3 or 4 cities is a bit early.

OSS has bulbed Math a few times as well... Getting an academy when it only generates 2 or 3 extra per turn isn't such a huge boost. It's a Bureaucratic capital with a few cottages and a scientist or two (plus the GLib ) when the academy really starts to shine.

@Dhoom

Are you building worker 2 before a settler? I've never had a lot of luck with that. I've always felt that getting city #2 founed ASAP is a higher priority than a second worker. If we're considering bulbing Math, then delaying chops by a few turns for an extra 50% boost starts to sound a lot more appealing. If we're delaying chops we don't need two workers right away.

EDIT: Damn you guys! It looks like we may need to take the OSS approach to testing (i.e. a lot of early testing). Can someone determine the goals for the testing so that we have a way to compare options?

If we can figure out a way to have three cities, GLH and CS sling by T80 I'd be sold. With Math-enhanced chops and a bazillion forests available, it might be doable. Can I add that the Oracle be built in a third city to my list of desires?

I'll be back in the US on Friday and I'll run some tests then. Until then, I'm stuck on my work computer that takes 15 seconds to pan the screen a few hexes, which is pretty unplayable.