SGOTM 03 - The Real Ms. Beyond

The good: Nobody's declared war on us, and we actually have an axe!
The bad: I think I wasted 3 turns on a useless obelisk on our Iron Island site

The ugly (details):

T0 590 Swap around tiles in Moscow for production, and switch to 0% science. St Pete lends its warrior to moscow, so that the brave military police of Moscow can be freed to settle new lands.

T1 565 We meet Caeser and declare peace with him, also discovering that Iron Island is aptly named. Within Caesar's border's we spy an axeman, as well as pastured horse.

T2 550 As planned, Moscow finishes it's granary and works on a settler while Nov grows and whips a granary out.

T3 535 Nov completes it's production and works on a lighthouse. Moscow gets the

T4 520 Carl and Dave finish the mine and road on the copper, so when Moscow completes the settler it starts work on our first "modern" military unit. A mighty AXEMAN!!! Also, Rostov gets its first taste of the whip.

T5 505 Rostov continues with an obelisk, the settler and warrior for II move onto their faithful transport, Zim.

T6 490 Zim offloads his passengers to II, and moves back to the mainland. By a miraculous stroke of timing, Alan finishes cottaging the flood plain by Moscow this turn. Since we have 7 workable tiles around Moscow, he loads himself onto Zim. Science is switched to 100% with research going to Polytheism. St Pete, which had whipped a granary the previous turn, regrows back to size 2. There is a considerable amount of overflow (each citizen is worth 90 hammers towards a granary) so I put a turn of production into a worker.

T7 475 Yaroslavl' is founded on II! I start work on an obelisk, but I think this was silly. St Pete swaps off it's worker and goes to produce an axe.

T8 460 Bob (at rostov) chops the gems to the east, currently outside our cultural borders. I am certain that since there is a road there already, we are in no danger of the jungle growing back.

T9 445 <hits enter>

T10 440 Imhotep is born in Moscow !! Also, Moscow produces the axeman! Production is set on a barracks (which is still in the queue from before) but could be changed.

Thoughts:
Imhotep and Zim have not yet moved this turn. If we are going for Partheon in Yar', Imhotep can board Zim this turn, and Zim can move towards Yar'! If this is still the plan, those turns in the obelisk were wasted, since it's culture won't be needed, so I'd switch that to something more useful as well (workboat?). Alan, the worker on II, is currently mining the iron.

My idea for St Pete's is that if it is whipped again just before it grows, the overflow from the axe can go towards the worker which had been started with the previous overflow. It should only take a couple more turns of work after that. Also, there is some unexplored, apparently uninhabited land SE of II. Zim could move in that direction (see screenshot) after dropping of Imhotep.



And the save! http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm3/The_Real_Ms_Beyond_SG003_BC0430_01.Civ4SavedGame

Well done on the settling of Iron Island. Let's hope that was Caesar's only source of iron.

I'll sit down tomorrow with the save and see if I can figure out how quickly we're likely to be able to get to Literature. Now that we're producing axes, I feel a lot more confident about our ability to repel an AI invasion.

Tentatively, I like the idea of exploring the uncultured land SE of Yaroslavl'.

So, I did a rough calculation of when Literature will come in. Here's what I did: Looking at our current income (32) and expenses (-14), I figured we could up our income to 44 by working gems in 2 cities. Also, I figured our expenses would rise to by 4 to 18. That leave us a net research rate of 26 bpt.

Coincidentally (I didn't plan this), this is exactly our 90&#37; research rate. So, I just set the research slider to 90% and clicked on each tech to see how long it will take. This is from the latest (430AD) save, so these turn counts are from the founding of our first GE:

Polytheism: 3T
Writing: 7T
Agriculture: 5T (Not strictly necessary, but we'll probably want it here)
Alphabet: 25T
Literature: 17T

Total is 57 turns, which is just a few turns before our GE is scheduled to appear.

Note: This is a ballpark figure. We can speed these times up by working more cottages and coasts. And by building libraries in the capital and gem cities. This is especially true because we could be building libraries in 15T or so (since our max science rate isn't this good yet). And we can increase these times by concentrating on food rather than gem mining.

With these numbers in hand, I now lean toward building the Parthenon with Imhotep, but am certainly willing to be talked out of it if there's a consensus that the AI will probably build it before 500AD or so.

Edit: We could speed up the generation of our second great person by running scientist specialists in Moscow for a while. This would dilute the GE pool, but if we save the engineer for the great library, then we'd be guaranteed a scientist or engineer. Of course, we could do the same thing with the parthenon, but then we risk not being able to rush the G. Library

Edit2: In our SGOTM2 game, the Great Library fell in 1025AD. I'm not sure how relevant that is here. The map was not archipelago and wasn't crowded, so I guess it will probably fall later here.

I've looked at the save, though I don't have much time to study it today. Some more status notes:

Gandhi has archers, Mao has chariots and swordsmen (horses and iron), Alex has axemen (iron, we know), and Caesar has praetorians (iron; also, we can see horses). Caesar doesn't know Gandhi, so those must be separate islands. Unfortunately, this means that we can't tell if Caesar has "enough on his hands" and it also means Caesar only has one valid target to declare war on: us! Mao and Alex still have enough on their hands. Caesar, Alex, and Mao all have Writing, but Gandhi does not.

I think we should strongly consider signing open borders with someone, possibly several someones, for the trade route income and diplomatic benefits. (The trade routes will benefit the AIs too, but keep in mind we're racing against the other teams as well as the AIs.) I'm not very worried about AI settlers on our island at this point, because we can always close borders if we see a galley with a settler incoming.

From looking at the scores, I'm guessing the other teams have chosen more aggressive strategies which have just gotten rolling. I think we should keep to our chosen path: our next phase should be to start building military and basic improvements while getting all of our gems mined to support our science, then going out and taking over some people.

I also want to get some explorers started sooner rather than later. Besides the southern land accessible from iron island, there's also more coastline visible north of the northernmost fish, but it won't be accessible until we found a city on the northern part of our island and pop its border. My guess is that our circumnavigation explorer is going to have to go past Gandhi and sign open borders with AIs on the other side of him.

St. Pete is building an axe, but it's already at its cap of usable tiles, so it should be finishing the enqueued worker instead. We need more workers, and I think St. Pete is the most logical place to get them from because of its workable tiles cap. Rostov is working an obelisk; my inclination is to wait until the whip unhappiness dissipates and then whip the obelisk, so Rostov can work its gems mine for some time. Novgorod should either finish its lighthouse and switch to a barracks, or just switch to a barracks right now, and then start building military. Moscow is building a barracks, and should then switch to military. Yaroslavl' should get out workboats, then a granary, then either a lighthouse or a barracks, then military.

I'm not sure our naval forces are adequate to the task. To guarantee victory in a naval war, 2-1 superiority is probably necessary. Do we think four galleys would be adequate for now? This would allow us to blockade Mao and Alex's island while having one galley on transport/exploration duty and another held in reserve in the event of an attack from Caesar, Mao, or Alex. Keep in mind that besides fighting in any wars, our galleys will also be needed to ship troops to, e.g., iron island, if we need to defend it.

What kind of ratio do we want in our military? Now that we have iron, courtesy of iron island, we can build swords. How many swords vs. how many axes do we want? I'd probably add a spear in each stack we plan to make just to massacre any chariots we meet.

I don't think that roads prevent forest and jungle growth. Can anyone confirm this? If so, we shouldn't finish the jungle chop at Rostov. I'd probably have that worker road and chop (but not finish the jungle rice, then road to Novgorod if we still don't have Agriculture and the borders haven't popped. I think Yaroslavl's worker, after finishing the iron mine and road, should go chop the hills forest to help speed up the city's progress, then mine the hills. I would leave the other forest intact.

Iainuki said:

Gandhi has archers, Mao has chariots and swordsmen (horses and iron), Alex has axemen (iron, we know), and Caesar has praetorians (iron; also, we can see horses). Caesar doesn't know Gandhi, so those must be separate islands. Unfortunately, this means that we can't tell if Caesar has "enough on his hands" and it also means Caesar only has one valid target to declare war on: us! Mao and Alex still have enough on their hands. Caesar, Alex, and Mao all have Writing, but Gandhi does not.

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There may be other civs on the other side of Caesar whom we don't know yet. But you're right, we're probably the least powerful civ on the map right now.

I think we should strongly consider signing open borders with someone, possibly several someones, for the trade route income and diplomatic benefits. (The trade routes will benefit the AIs too, but keep in mind we're racing against the other teams as well as the AIs.) I'm not very worried about AI settlers on our island at this point, because we can always close borders if we see a galley with a settler incoming.[/quote]

I lean toward open borders with Gandhi and maybe Caesar. Since I'm expecting a war with the others, the only reason I'd sign with them is if we want to send a galley out east past them.

Is the trade income from open borders much more?

Also, one of the posts in the Better AI thread indicated that a civ won't consider declaring war unless it wants to move to a spot, but can't, but war would enable it to. This inclines me to sign OB with Caesar, so we aren't restricting his movements. (This info might be wrong or somehow inaccurate, since otherwise open borders would ensure peace.)

From looking at the scores, I'm guessing the other teams have chosen more aggressive strategies which have just gotten rolling. I think we should keep to our chosen path: our next phase should be to start building military and basic improvements while getting all of our gems mined to support our science, then going out and taking over some people.

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Yes. We need a good solid land base so that our power is sufficiently high that AIs won't want to declare on us. Mao and Alex seem the obvious victims.

I also want to get some explorers started sooner rather than later. Besides the southern land accessible from iron island, there's also more coastline visible north of the northernmost fish, but it won't be accessible until we found a city on the northern part of our island and pop its border. My guess is that our circumnavigation explorer is going to have to go past Gandhi and sign open borders with AIs on the other side of him.

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I think we should be defending ourselves with axes and not galleys now. I recommend sending a workboat in each direction. Sign with Caesar or Gandhi and go west via them. If we meed other civs that Caesar knows, we can tell his "enough" status. Also, we can sign with Alex too and go through his lands to the east. Once we're past him, we can close borders (via war declaration) at any time. I'd feel more comfortable slamming the borders on Alex than Mao right now.

St. Pete is building an axe, but it's already at its cap of usable tiles, so it should be finishing the enqueued worker instead. We need more workers, and I think St. Pete is the most logical place to get them from because of its workable tiles cap. Rostov is working an obelisk; my inclination is to wait until the whip unhappiness dissipates and then whip the obelisk, so Rostov can work its gems mine for some time. Novgorod should either finish its lighthouse and switch to a barracks, or just switch to a barracks right now, and then start building military. Moscow is building a barracks, and should then switch to military. Yaroslavl' should get out workboats, then a granary, then either a lighthouse or a barracks, then military.

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I agree with this. I think Novgorod should do a barracks. We're light enough on military that we need troop production out of Moscow and Yaroslavl' with Novgorod as backup. After a barracks and 2 axes (including the one we have), Moscow could make our exploring workboats (or galleys, but workboats are cheaper and go just as fast; on a crowded map, they're unlikely to encounter barbarians). I think Yaroslavl' has enough food without the lighthouse for now.

I'm not sure our naval forces are adequate to the task. To guarantee victory in a naval war, 2-1 superiority is probably necessary. Do we think four galleys would be adequate for now? This would allow us to blockade Mao and Alex's island while having one galley on transport/exploration duty and another held in reserve in the event of an attack from Caesar, Mao, or Alex. Keep in mind that besides fighting in any wars, our galleys will also be needed to ship troops to, e.g., iron island, if we need to defend it.

Click to expand...

I'm okay with 3 galleys in the very near term: 2 scouting for approaching AI galleys, one ready to shuttle to Yaro, but staying near Sparta. I think our defenses should be land based since we have axes and are likely to face swords, phalanxes and praetorians.

What kind of ratio do we want in our military? Now that we have iron, courtesy of iron island, we can build swords. How many swords vs. how many axes do we want? I'd probably add a spear in each stack we plan to make just to massacre any chariots we meet.

Click to expand...

We need to make a decision about whether or not to fight an AI before catapults. Without siege equipment, our losses will be high, especially since everyone (except Gandhi so far) has iron.

I don't think that roads prevent forest and jungle growth. Can anyone confirm this? If so, we shouldn't finish the jungle chop at Rostov. I'd probably have that worker road and chop (but not finish the jungle rice, then road to Novgorod if we still don't have Agriculture and the borders haven't popped. I think Yaroslavl's worker, after finishing the iron mine and road, should go chop the hills forest to help speed up the city's progress, then mine the hills. I would leave the other forest intact.

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Only non-road improvements (even if they are razed) prevent jungle/forest growth.

I am curious to see how our wonder strategy compares to other teams' early aggression. I wonder if the Oracle got built this early in all the games.

Compromise said:

We need to make a decision about whether or not to fight an AI before catapults. Without siege equipment, our losses will be high, especially since everyone (except Gandhi so far) has iron.

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I would say no. We give up very early war to get the Pyramids. I want a decent defense first, then we can look at war again.

LKendter said:

I would say no. We give up very early war to get the Pyramids. I want a decent defense first, then we can look at war again.

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I agree. Since we're defending, I think we're looking at primarily axemen with a few spears. Since we can now whip them, I think it's time to get some workboats or galleys out there and get the circumnavigation bonus. I'm thinking we should sign OB with Alex and Gandhi and head out in those directions. Both are weak at this point, so if we need to declare war on them either to prevent them from founding a city on our island or to close the borders quickly, they will be less of a threat.

But, we should note that when Caesar and Mao run out of room to expand, I think there's little doubt they'll be coming for us.

Have we decided to use Imhotep for the Parthenon?

Also, do we need to discuss how to specialize our cities? That will make build orders--both buildings and units--more clear.

For the next few techs, I'm thinking Polytheism, Writing, Agriculture, Alphabet, Literature in that order. All of our gem cities have access to good food. We should get libraries up pronto.

What I'm not at all clear about is our plan for naval supremacy. Are we going to try some GS tech popping early or do all of that later, maybe around Astronomy?

I would say that the Parthenon is a good idea. Thats all I have time to comment on. I'll try to put up a summary post by tomorrow afternoon.

NOTE: All those lines on the graph that are soaring above ours are Warlord teams. Our line, when comparing with just Vanilla teams, looks pretty good, with both Murky Waters (can we beat their post count?) and the Gypsy Kings (good to see they realized it wasn't spelled "Gipsy") around our line.

Perhaps we should sign open borders with everyone we can, for exploration purposes.

My thought was that we could head as directly east and west (two boats) as possible and only sign the borders that we need. Maybe when Moscow's culture is close to closing the iron site, we could open even to settler galleys.

Edit: Or maybe we want an AI to settle a city for us?

newbie's thoughts:

Parthenon => yes

War with Alex => yes, but we need good defenses at home. At least a cat and two axes in the east coast cities. I would go with combined arms on the invasion force: three cats, three axes, and three swords for the initial landing. We will also need the galleys in order to land in one turn.

Open borders make a lot of sense right now.

Compromise said:

I lean toward open borders with Gandhi and maybe Caesar. Since I'm expecting a war with the others, the only reason I'd sign with them is if we want to send a galley out east past them.

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That's a definite possibility. How will signing open borders hurt our defenses? Given the geography of our island, there aren't really any particularly easy targets, since they can't bypass galleys to land troops somewhere annoying.

Compromise said:

Is the trade income from open borders much more?

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Foreign trade routes get double the income, so provided we sign with people who have, together, enough cities, we should get five extra commerce.

Compromise said:

Yes. We need a good solid land base so that our power is sufficiently high that AIs won't want to declare on us. Mao and Alex seem the obvious victims.

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Yes. I'd like to keep Mao from getting to his UU if we're going to kill him, but I don't know how realistic that is.

Compromise said:

We need to make a decision about whether or not to fight an AI before catapults. Without siege equipment, our losses will be high, especially since everyone (except Gandhi so far) has iron.

Click to expand...

This is an interesting question. All early wars involve high casualties, since Monarch AIs start with archers and usually stack three or four of them in their capital before long. Our casualties won't be much worse now than they would have been earlier, I'm guessing: the geography of our island and the slow starting tech pace would have made it hard to get copper/iron hooked up much faster than we did, and also hard to get an army built and across the water either.

Have we considered attacking Alex? With luck we might be able to grab a worker and then take Sparta, which only has two archers and no cultural defenses yet. I don't know how much harder Athens will be, but it's a possibility we could take it too. Adding two cities including a capital could be quite profitable.

Unfortunately, I agree catapults will be needed to take Mao. One issue with this is that Construction is off our Mass Media beeline and off our cossacks beeline. How do we intend to juggle this issue?

Compromise said:

Have we decided to use Imhotep for the Parthenon?

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Opinion seems to be trending that way. I think it will work out ok, but this is not something I'm certain about.

Compromise said:

Also, do we need to discuss how to specialize our cities? That will make build orders--both buildings and units--more clear.

Click to expand...

Moscow: commerce. The mines will be important for awhile, but we may want to replace them with windmills at some point. We should emphasize commerce buildings first in Moscow.

Novgorod: resources mean it has to be hybrid production and commerce. We should cottage what grasslands it has.

St. Pete: GP farm. Scientists, farms, and science buildings only here unless we play one of the unusual strats.

Rostov: Commerce city. Cottage the grasslands, maybe add a few farms on the wet side of the island for more food for specialists? Commerce buildings.

Yaroslavl': production city. Leave the grassland forests, build mines and production buildings. Maybe put Heroic Epic here?

Sir Bugsy said:

War with Alex => yes, but we need good defenses at home. At least a cat and two axes in the east coast cities. I would go with combined arms on the invasion force: three cats, three axes, and three swords for the initial landing. We will also need the galleys in order to land in one turn.

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Cats are a long ways away. How do people feel about trying Alex with just swords and axes?

Iainuki said:

Moscow: commerce. The mines will be important for awhile, but we may want to replace them with windmills at some point. We should emphasize commerce buildings first in Moscow.

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Production is the biggest problem with islands. I have to disagree with the windmills. We can't get so income focused that we kill a production city.

Iainuki said:

Yaroslavl': production city. Leave the grassland forests, build mines and production buildings. Maybe put Heroic Epic here?

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That is exactly where I want Heroic Epic...

Not to throw too much of a wrench into the works at this point, but if we build both the Parthenon and Heroic Epic in Yaroslavl', are we going to be generating too many Great Artist GPP there? But, maybe we don't care.

Compromise said:

Not to throw too much of a wrench into the works at this point, but if we build both the Parthenon and Heroic Epic in Yaroslavl', are we going to be generating too many Great Artist GPP there? But, maybe we don't care.

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We may get an extraneous great artist, but after that Moscow and St. Pete should outrun it. If we're willing to dilute our GPP in Moscow, I'm pretty certain we can prevent a great artist from happening.

I'm not committed to the Heroic Epic in Yaroslavl'; if we find another good high-food site, I think we should consider doubling it up with the Globe for a turbo-whipping center.

Well our team captain needs to update the order more...
I was wondering why no one claimed the game just to realize it is my turn. I will try to get a summary plan for my turn put together tonight.

Compromise
Greggo (just played)
LKendter (UP)
Grangerm (on deck)
Kodii
Sir Bugsy
Iainuki

Sorry about, I've been so busy that I overlooked it.

SUMMARY POST #6

Compromise
greggo (just played)
LKendter (UP)
Grangerm (on deck)
Kodii
Sir Bugsy
Iainuki

Diplomacy -

We want open borders, definitely with Caesar and Gandhi. We can sign open borders with Alex and Mao for exploration purposes, as it may give us a better look at what we have to deal with when we declare war.

Technology

Polytheism - Writing - Agriculture - Alphabet - Literature

Settling -

I think the majority of our settling phase is over. Here is a new dotmap, for the sole purpose of indicating the fishing villages (white dots)



Builds -

Moscow
Barracks - ?

St. Petersburg
Axeman - ?

Novrogod
Lighthouse - ?

Rostov
Obelisk - ?

Yaroslavl'
Begin Workboat - Rush Parthenon with Imhotep - Continue Workboat

Religion

Let it spread to us.

Great People

Use Imhotep to lightbulb Metal Casting. This way we can get early forges and have a better chance at getting the Colossus. Run an engineer specialist in Moscow as soon as the forge completes. The next GE will built the Great Library.

Civics

Nothing for now.

Nice summary.

I've been thinking more about our game plan. There is one idea that Iainuki proposed in his long post that I'm really starting to warm up to: Going to Paper via Theology. I think this might be just pure brilliance.

I'm actually thinking we could use this to avoid even learning Alphabet ourselves!

If we get a couple boats out exploring/meeting the neighbors, we will probably find most of the civs in our quest for circumnavigation. Eventually, a couple of them are bound to develop Alphabet. When they do, they won't have gone the Theology route, so we'll have good trade bait and be able to get Alphabet. Then, we'll have Alphabet before most of the world and we'll have great non-Alphabet dependent tradebait (Theology).

We can then research Literature on our own and rush the GL (if we have an engineer) and National Epic. For Heroic Epic, we're going to need a war: I think Alex, though he might declare for us.

We should be able to fill in much of the line to (maybe through) construction and Code of Laws by trading Theology around the world.

What do you think?

Edit: Note that for our civ, half-priced Universities barely cost more than libraries!