SGOTM 11 - One Short Straw

Ok, I settled. Unless anyone objects, I'll play through agriculture before passing the save tomorrow (in a feeble attempt to mask the fact that we didn't settle in place).



Mushroomshirt, you'll be the first up after that since bbp has requested a swap.

Test 1:
2025 BC SH
1500 BC GW
975 BC ToA
925 BC Oracle

Leaders: Pacal, Monty, Kublai, Mao, Cyrus, MM - forgot to note who built it

Test 2:
1625 BC SH
1400 BC Oracle

Leaders: Hammy, Catherine, MM, Joao, Saladin (winner, had marble), Zara

Test 3:
2100 BC SH
1425 BC Oracle

Leaders: Saladin, Frederick, Wang, Ramy (winner), Joao, DeGaulle

Test 4 (doctored map - all given gold + marble)
2125 BC SH
1850 BC GW
1825 BC Oracle
Leaders: AC, Hatty, HC, Ramy, Saladin (winner), Wang

befor you play I would like to discuss exploration priorities.

IN My humble opinion our second city should be coastal, so we can send workboat exploring as fast as posible. We need to find a good, productive, second coastal city site.

By the look of it, we are on south age of the map. Seens by some reason we send warrior south, not north(we had 2 voites to explore north and one voite to expore south), we do not know coastal cituation on other side, no on this side. I do believe we need to concentrate on coastal exploration rigth now, go along the coast back to the east.

I have a couple more thoughts on some immediate testing for exploration and research before continuing. For exploration, I thought we'd build a warrior or two while growing to pop3. He or they could help explore some of the coast, but how much before the settler is ready? Both south and east? Would we have time to build one or two warriors? Could be tested a bit.

On research, I'm seeing wasted worker turns while moving to each corn and to the silver. Should we research agr-TW? Then our fast worker could build one turn of road on each movement and never waste a single turn. The question for testing is how soon we would get BW compared to when the worker is done farming and mining.

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Another point on exploration. It would be nice for our warrior to get past that region of plains before animals appear, if possible. Losing the warrior or waiting 9t to recover is also a huge blow to our exploration. Shyuhe, can you tell if the land continues to the SW and WSW of the lake by fog-gazing?

Yet another point. There MUST be at least two more very nice LC sites or cultural would be a stupid VC. One will probably have at least 3 food resources for a GP farm. The river to the east could be a nice commerce LC. A GP Farm LC to the SW would make sense, from the Mapmaker's point of view, to make sure all teams were able to secure all three cities. Related to that, I also expect to see at least one if not all of copper, stone, and marble somewhere reasonably close. Marble is often on tundra (SW) and stone on plains (NW/E).

Late checking in. Wellcome to LC and mushroomshirt!

There is land to the WSW of the warrior right now. We can send the warrior along that thin strip of land but I'm not sure it'll be fruitful, since it'll take 3 turns down and 3 turns back up before we can go scout northwards.

Any other thoughts on where to move the warrior while we tech agriculture?

I agree scouting SW is probably a waste. We see it's coast instead of another lake in there, and we know approx what a city there'd be like (low land, good food from fwlakes, not much else). I'd vote for arcing clockwise around our capital with the warrior for now.

I assume you're planning this, Shyuhe, but if the warrior goes first 1SW then clockwise around, another warrior can expose the rest to the south just by going down to the deer area. We definitely want to find a food-rich site because it will be a good settler/worker pump. Border expansion will get most of that, but maybe not enough.

I would agree with 1 SW and then north around the city clockwise. There are lakes and grass we see and probably tundra low south.
we only be able to get 1 warrior out before settler. It should be enough, it is only emperor, but slightly depends on how exposed designated city site will be.

But on other hand we should try to preserve our existed warrior and have it around just in case.

LowtherCastle said:

I assume you're planning this, Shyuhe, but if the warrior goes first 1SW then clockwise around, another warrior can expose the rest to the south just by going down to the deer area. We definitely want to find a food-rich site because it will be a good settler/worker pump. Border expansion will get most of that, but maybe not enough.

Click to expand...

Yes I'm playing it (assuming we get a majority opinion) - I thought about posting the save but then it'd be a dead give-away that we moved our settler. So I'll pass after scouting through agriculture - I promise

So tentatively - move one SW, then probably NW-NE-NE and zig-zag east from there to look at the land. Delhi set to worker working a grass forest until the border pops (switching to wet corn).

Mutineer said:

I would agree with 1 SW and then north around the city clockwise. There are lakes and grass we see and probably tundra low south.
we only be able to get 1 warrior out before settler. It should be enough, it is only emperor, but slightly depends on how exposed designated city site will be.

But on other hand we should try to preserve our existed warrior and have it around just in case.

Click to expand...

Not to swear by it, but in my four press-enter test games, I had a total of two barb archers enter my borders. It seems barbs aren't very active on this level?

There will be some barbs, but nothing like what you're used to. Still need something better than warriors on a reasonable schedule.

I generally agree with 1SW, followed by a clockwise loop. Kinda hoping the coast turns that way, so we can hug it a bit.

Like LC, I also expect an excellent GP farm + another city to show up fairly soon. If those are inland, and we're lacking in seafood, we might be hard-pressed to get a coastal city or even tech Fishing early... I guess there's not much point speculating until we see something more.

BTW, I had a look at the graph: Choko - haven't settled t0; Maple Sporks - 19t 36c; Smurkz - 10t 18c; Ducks - 36t 70c; GK - 19t 36c; Barley - 19t 36c; Phoenix 21t 42c. So, Phoenix are the only team to settle in place.

shyuhe said:

Yes I'm playing it (assuming we get a majority opinion) - I thought about posting the save but then it'd be a dead give-away that we moved our settler.

Click to expand...

Yeah, but it doesn't tell them it was a good move. Chances are, they've also already made the move and are waiting for us to post...

shyuhe said:

Mushroomshirt, you'll be the first up after that since bbp has requested a swap.

Click to expand...

Sure thing! Should be a pretty quiet set.

Played through agriculture.

Turn 3, we meet Zara from the east:



The scouting warrior out west makes an interesting find (mapmaker artifact I imagine):


It looked like a peninsula so I had the warrior scout a bit more thoroughly:


And here are some city sites based on the resources:


Agriculture is in. What do we want to research next? LC's suggestion of wheel is intriguing. The western lands are unbelievably flat - we'll have to whip things if we put cities out there first.

edit: Ignore my city makers - I don't know what I was We can plant a city that has double fish, pigs, and plains cow. It can definitely crank out settlers/workers while Delhi does the heavy lifting, especially after a granary.

Log


I've posted the save so you guys can take a look at the land yourself.

I was thinking we agree to circle city clock wise, so we can see what is on the coast north of our capital. We still did not do it.. It is bad, be can not make a good decision about next tech, as we do not know enough. No of scouted locations good for second city.

What techs are you considering Mutineer? Also fishing?

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To me, the most important info we have is that we met creative Zara after his scout had moved 3 turns. Unless Eldine is playing games with us, that means Aksum is <=9 tiles from Delhi. Zara starts with only one scout, so either we got lucky or he's landlocked to the east. My conclusions:

0. We need a settler really soon.
1. That settler MUST take the best spot to the east/northeast.
2. If possible, we need to "see" the Aksum city center before its culture expands in 23t, so we can monitor his settler build through the espionage screen. Actually, by then he'll probably have finished or be finishing it, but we want to see his espi-screen anyway and we're not on a Writing beeline.

TW will save our settler 1 or 2 turns max. To me, we need to answer these questions:
0. TW or BW next? (Our next city will need a monument before workboat if coastal.)
1. Build a second worker before the settler?
2. Grow to pop2 or pop3 before building the wkr/settler?
3. Grow as fast as possible or work a 1f2h tile for a some turns to get two more warriors built while building farms?
4. Chop or poprush or both asap? (poprushing gives more hammers before Math)
5. Start chopping after the second farm or after the silver mine or not at all?

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Notes:
1. Zara is now working two 3f tiles, but by my calcs he researched fishing first. If he's coastal with seafood, then he'll have a lot of food and produce settlers fast. Soon his score graph will jump and we might guess if he's coastal.
2. Zara is a bit loaded. He's either on a plains hill, has a forested grassland deer tile or something like that, because at pop1 he was producing +2h and +3f per turn. He's also in second place in GNP, but creative helps that.
3. Zara just finished an archer. His pop should keep growing if he's not building a settler.
4. Current barb population is 4, if I'm not mistaken.

Tech i was thinking about is well. I we know for sure second city location we would have been able to plan worker turns, now we can only guess.

When I look on our capital I see that we will have problem with hammers. The best way of getting them will be 3 pop settler whip with granary, with something between 30-39/100 at settler when whip. that give about 40 hammers overflow.

Yes, we probably need to block Zara ASP, which make west exploration even more pointless. We should already see him, but we do not.

I am in favor of Farm(corn) Farm(corn) Mine(silver) Farm (riverside grass)
Road to second city.That would provide near instant population re-grow with capital producing order approximate( Warrior)*2 settler(revolt to slavery)-warrior-granary(chop)- settler(3 pop whip)- overflow into what ever we need.- worker-

But all that subject of finding good production site for second city. Something like 1 food resource - 4 grass mines as ideal.


About resources. Standard map script create 2 types of happy resource per continent per civ.(in general)

So far we see 2 happy resources: silver and whales and we meat 1 AI. So, unless Map maker did something to resources we should expect to see 2 more types of happy resources as minimum somewhere.

Sorry for my absence, I've been a bit ill lately

Good move shyuhe - somehow, something like this was to be expected

That land to the east - omg. Culture might be so easy if it weren't for the other things we need to achieve. I found this point by LTC good about opics not being the optimal path for cultural victory... We need to think about that. If we want culture, and with the capital chopping 1-2 wonders (oracle and mids or so), that 2fish pig cow city and one with 7 FPs and 9 riverside tiles total, this might very well be a good option - we don't need THAT much teching if we take that route - we can take astro off lib to settle cities overseas, maybe we'll want rifling/steel to aquire the last resources, but that's it. A reason not to go culture is that we have yet to find stone/marble. Another is that it's not so easy to control it if we need more time to get the resources or (unlikely) another GP...

Zara being so close usually would mean we'd rush him but not here I'm afraid I am impressed by all the info you're reading from the game, LTC

I'm not feeling too much rex pressure though as this is only emperor level and zara is so close. IMO we can block him off with 1-2 cities + capital maybe. Let's see what the Mighty Map Creators gave us...

We'll surely want to be at pop3 when starting on the settler to work the two corns and the silver plains hill. I'd say we build 2 warriors, not sure how far we'll be pop-wise but we'll be growing so fast that we're at the very least pop3 when the 2 warriors are done. The first of the two can go directly east, along the coast and move up north while the second can go directly north. Our existing warrior can move further north if possible (NW first).

I'm not sure about what to tech. BW means we'll see copper AND can chop forests AND could start whipping... Not sure it's worth to delay it for the wheel. OTOH with silver we can race through those early techs so fast that it doesn't really matter whether we tech TW > BW or vice versa once we get our first settler done but the worker could start roading (or chopping) earlier. I think I might just prefer to go TW first to give our worker something to do earlier.

Definitely improve the two corns before the silver.

edit:

Looking at the culture progress diagram makes it look like chokos moved their settler for several turns

LowtherCastle said:

0. We need a settler really soon.
1. That settler MUST take the best spot to the east/northeast.

Click to expand...

agreed

TW will save our settler 1 or 2 turns max. To me, we need to answer these questions:
0. TW or BW next? (Our next city will need a monument before workboat if coastal.)

Click to expand...

BW for me. it will help getting the second worker/settler faster. Knowing copper position is always usefull too. As noted, fishing aren't gonna be usefull before a monument in a coastal city, and now being coastal doesn't look like the best path anyway.

1. Build a second worker before the settler?

Click to expand...

I wouldn't take any risk with Zara... all the "this is only emperor" talk doesn't justify gambits. Furthermore, with the current research pace, and assuming we go BW, a second worker will be bored at best, unemployed at worse

2. Grow to pop2 or pop3 before building the wkr/settler?

Click to expand...

I would say we will be size 3 after finishing a second warrior, but this needs testing (in any case, I would go worker -> warrior -> settler)

3. Grow as fast as possible or work a 1f2h tile for a some turns to get two more warriors built while building farms?

Click to expand...

Grow and fogbust with only two warriors for me

4. Chop or poprush or both asap? (poprushing gives more hammers before Math)

Click to expand...

Poprushing without granary isn't that hot, in my book, more so with only one city (unless some worker whip into wb for coastal starts). I prefer whipping the second settler as per Mutineer's plan if the second city can provide us with garison and our first scientist. (maybe whipping the second city and going library in the cap will be better though... cough silver cough)

5. Start chopping after the second farm or after the silver mine or not at all?

Click to expand...

I would improve both farms and silver before chopping, unless we can put a chop in the first settler by delaying the mine (not sure we 'll have BW in time)

Other stuff: western land is beautifull, and I agree with Mut and LC we should explore toward Zara now (but don't feed the bears )

Ras