SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

BLubmuz said:

Turn 66/750 (2350 BC)
100% Research: 21 per turn
0% Espionage: 4 per turn
0% Gold: -2 per turn, 15 in the bank

After End Turn:

Other Player Actions:
Attitude Change: Zara Yaqob (Ethiopia) towards Gandhi (India), from 'Cautious' to 'Pleased'

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Do we know the turn upon which a "+1 Peaceful Relations" Modifier kicks in? Could it have been at this point? If not, then this point is possibly when Zara met another AI.

Regardless, Zara seems like an AI that will be relatively easy to please (and thus relatively easy to get to vote for us).


Dare I say it, but Zara likes us enough to even vote for us after we declare war upon him once. If we DO plan to do so, we have to be careful that he doesn't become someone's Vassal, that he doesn't get eliminated, and that we fight him before he gets Gunpowder, as his Musketmen area DEADLY.


On that note: I think that we're going for a Diplo game, gang. I am really struggling to find good Legendary City locations. I am kind of disappointed in DynamicSpirit for not providing a couple of slightly better locations for a Cultural game, seeing as how it is expected that most teams will play for a Diplo game, thus making it even harder for anyone that wants to go Cultural to compete with the Diplo games.

Mitchum said:

If I'm reading the autolog correctly and I evaluated the save properly, we just learned BW IBT T72 and T73. That means that chopping was not an option until just now. When I tried to recreate his turnset, I used binary research and got BW IBT T71 and T72 (1 turn earlier) with hardly any beakers to spare (I think this is when we were planning to get it according to the PPP as well). I can only surmise that the one turn at 90% delayed BW by 1 turn, but it must have only been 1 or 2 beakers short.

I will try to recreate the save and see if I can come up with the same results from our real game.

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If that is the case (I admit that I was hesitant to look at the "real" saved game for long and based most of my info collecting off of the "test" saved game, so I missed this fact), then I got cross with BLubmuz for the right problem (losing a Worker turn) but due to a different reason than the one that I assumed (I assumed that he'd moved a Worker without taking an action) instead of the actual reason (the Binary Science issue). So, I apologise, as it is unfair to forgive you for the Science Rate mistake, only to get angry with you for the same mistake later.


That said, I think we agreed that it is policy to stop our turnset when we realise that a mistake will impact our decisions (i.e. Bronze Working coming in a turn later, what should we do with the Worker that was planning to start chopping?). So, I still think that there is an accountability issue here, just not for the exact reason that I stated.


For example, we might have used this "free turn" to our advantage, to position the Worker on a Hills Forest square, as that kind of a square takes up so many movement points that we can't normally move onto it and chop in the same turn. But, if we have a turn where we just have movement available to our Worker (i.e. the turn before Bronze Working is learned) but don't have the ability to chop on said turn, then that kind of a turn would have been ideal to have moved onto a Hills Forest square.

Well, we've moved now, so no point worrying about where we moved--but it is worth discussing accountability and what it means to the team.

havr said:

I actually remember seeing the AI do it once. Maybe this is a false memory...

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^ (about AI walking through your culture to settle.

I'm mostly going by what people say in the strategy and tactics forum. A lot of people have said it, and I've had the impression it's considered to be confirmed, but I haven't seen the confirmation myself. It's worked for me, but I haven't done a scientific experiment or anything. It would be quite an involved experiment.

It needs to be a solid wall of culture to block them, I'm pretty sure they'll skip through a diagonal gap, if they've walked through before it closes it might be too late, they can get around it with galleys, and they will also happily walk through your borders to capture a barbarian city. One of these might be the reason for your experience.

Dhoomstriker said:

One more point in favour of eastward exploration and settling to the east:

The lands to the west of Zara's capitol city's cultural borders are mostly fog-busted. Recall that unless there is a Forest or something to "block the view," cultural borders actually "fog-bust" two squares out from the edge of the cultural borders.

So, the area to the west of Zara's capitol is already well fog-busted. That would make it VERY safe (not 100%, but close to it) for our wounded Warrior to explore north for a square or two. That said, exploring with a wounded unit is just asking for trouble, and we'd be risking a Barb unit spawning in the southern area that he is currently fog-busting.

Thus, instead, I would move our Warrior that is already on the way east (Warrior 5) with confidence into that area, expecting to meet little Barb resistance. I.e. I would be confident sending him:
1NE PHFor, 1E GFor, 1NE GRiver (otherwise a dangerous, unexplored flatland square, but in this case, it is fog-busted already by Zara's borders), 1NE.

This path is a bit less risky than going 1NE PHFor, 1N PFor, 1NE P (not too risky), 1NE (a lot more risky).

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Keep in mind that our settler will be done next turn. If we take too long to explore east and decide, we may end up having to delay settling city 3 (since the settler could quickly overtake the warrior) if we decide to settle east as opposed to Stone.

Regarding Stone, it will be many turns before we know The Wheel, so I'm not sure that settling it as city 3 makes sense. However, we do have to settle it soon enough so that the borders pop, either via missionary (15 turns), holy city (3 turns) or Caste System artist (4 turns). This assumes that we need to borders to pop to capture the stone.

Regarding research, what do you think about slotting in The Wheel after Writing but before Meditation? This would allow Delhi to build worker 3 (or worker 2) before building the temple and hiring a priest. I think we have quite a large buffer on being the first to Theology.

I think we'll have to compare settling city 3 east vs settling city 3 by the stone in a test game that runs all the way until the Pyramids are built...

Edit: I'll work on the test save tomorrow, folks. Sorry for the delay. If you want to do it yourself, take my T60 test save and start from there. The save that I did provide will allow us to test city placement, worker actions, etc. It shouldn't be a major issue to be off by a beaker or two, right? I'll get the save posted tomorrow.

Does anyone know how to WB France out and Ethiopia in?

Dhoomstriker said:

but it is worth discussing accountability and what it means to the team.

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Erring is human. It is annoying to look at team-mate work and see an error... I know (from my days as a programmer) how annoying it is to open a team-mate work and see all those awful errors, wanting to delete everything and redo it myself. The truth is that this is a price you have to pay when working as a team. Working as a team has advantages, but also some disadvantages. So, I suggest we not dwell on errors or inaccuracies and their accountability friend. We should discuss these issues only when a team-mate makes a gross intentional anti-team decision (i.e. rouge play). Discussing it otherwise just means trouble and hard feelings.

I am focusing on "erring" because even if it seems intentional it is usually an error (when you are annoyed with something you tend to think it is intentional).

Summary: when someone ends his TS just say "Good Job" and move on.

Dhoomstriker said:

BLubmuz, YOU DID PRE-CHOP DIDN'T YOU? Exactly as we agreed, right? Chopping the Forest to 1N of the Grassland River immediatly after Bronze Working came in, right?
(...)

Am I wrong to point this situation out? No one likes to throw around dirty words, including me. However, shouldn't we be accountable to our teammates?

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Yes, you're plain wrong.
Since i stopped the turn we learned BW, i could not have chopped anything the previous turn. Instead, i has the worker with nothing to do, since all tiles were forested.

Thus, i lost a worker turn (but i actually lost nothing, since he can't do nothing) by bringing him on the forest where you can see him now, to start chopping there, then move on the adjacent forests without losing turns.

I thought it was clear enough that i stopped the turn we learnt BW. The plan was to finish the settler and then stop. But there was a new decision to take: if chop and ignore the GL copper mine or viceversa.

About the warrior now injured, i moved him 1 tile after the battle, feeling safe to not further barbs will arrive. I was forced by the barb moves on my path.
This is why i think that every plan we can draw about units is too subject to variables to deserve to be discussed in deep as you want to do.
In this case, i have no other choices than what i did. We want to keep our warriors alive, right?

The only actual mistake i made was the research. For some reason i got distracted in turn 62 and forgot to set to 0. That do not have delayed BW, nor anticipated. On the contrary, now we have more beakers in PH. The loss? not easy to calculate, probably nothing. In any case, the autolog and the PPP do not differ by a single turn.

BLubmuz said:

The only actual mistake i made was the research. For some reason i got distracted in turn 62 and forgot to set to 0. That do not have delayed BW, nor anticipated. On the contrary, now we have more beakers in PH. The loss? not easy to calculate, probably nothing. In any case, the autolog and the PPP do not differ by a single turn.

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I just checked our test game, and Louis already knows BW on T60. That means in the test game we were getting bonus beakers for knowing an AI that already knows the tech we're researching. In the real game, the only AI we know doesn't know BW yet, so we were getting no such bonus beakers.

SOOOOO... I don't even think binary research would have netted us BW by T72 like we were planning based on our test game. BLubmuz' "mistake" on T62 probably cost us 1 beaker (2 at the most) and was likely NOT the cause of the discrepancy.

BLubmuz' major goals were to 1) keep the warriors alive and 2) scout east and north, both of which he accomplished. As he said, barbs kept him away from the coast. With that said, I'd rather have our warriors alive and not have the coast explored than vice versa. I think BLubmuz' minor mistake was just that, a MINOR mistake.

Can we move on now?

Dhoomstriker said:

On that note: I think that we're going for a Diplo game, gang. I am really struggling to find good Legendary City locations. I am kind of disappointed in DynamicSpirit for not providing a couple of slightly better locations for a Cultural game, seeing as how it is expected that most teams will play for a Diplo game, thus making it even harder for anyone that wants to go Cultural to compete with the Diplo games.

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Hmmm... Look at the map. No fur, dye, silk or ivory. I think that all of these resources (except fur) are either on the other AI continent or on an unihabited continent (except for barbs). With that said, the only way to get these resouces will be:

1. Through trade or war (if resources are on AI continent)
2. Through quickly settling new cities (if resouces are on a vacant continent)

The teams that don't control most of the religions (like us) are going to face a relgious nightmare when they reach the other AI continent. It is going to be almost impossible for them to trade for the resources without facing negative modifiers for "Trading with our worst enemy!" because all of the AI will be in different religions. For these teams, the only option for a win could be cultural as the diplo situation could be nearly impossible.

One possible strategy for us could be to more or less bee-line Optics after we've accomplished our religious goals. We could then send two caravels loaded with a spy each in opposite directions. Until we fully understand the religious, diplomatic and resource situation, we can't really plan our overall strategy. Knowing the situation will let us know if warring with Ethiopia is even an option. It will let us figure out who our opponent will be in the UN election. It will give us time to make nice with our friends and make our opponent hated by everyone. It will also give us the best chance of getting the dominant world religion (currently Buddhism) so that we can use it to our advantage.

Also notice that there are currently just 2 happiness resources on our continent (silver and incense). These will be needed for trade bait, so we need to be sure to capture both incense and all three silver resources. It also means that we'll have to use either Heredity Rule (Monarch) or Representation (Pryamids) along with temples and religion to allow our cities to grow.

I think our team is in a very strong position thanks to the religious situation. Having five (or four) religions will allow us to use temples to grow our cities bigger than our opponents. The diplo situation on the other continent will hopefully be a lot easier to navigate. We need to capitalize on our stengths while minimizing the effects of our short falls (e.g. later core techs like Pottery and AH, etc.).

Is it time to re-write our high-level strategy with a focus on Diplo (at least until meeting the other continent)? We can then discuss a fall-back to Cultural if the situation on the other continent is unfavorable or impossible.

I was thinking about this last night in bed. So far, we've been discussing whether to settle Stone or Cow first. Initially, I wanted to settle Cow to block Zara. However, it will be some time before we know Animal Husbandry. So, that city will be slow to develop depending on what other resources are in the fog.

I'm still leaning toward settling Cow first for the long-term advantage of blocking Zara. But we need to know what is in the fog before deciding the best location. I'm thinking that the next turn set will be broken into 2 segments. The first will be 4 or 5 turns of uncovering the tiles to the east of the cow tile. Then, we'll have to stop the game and discuss exactly where to settle city #3.

Regarding Zara, it seems strange that he only has 1 city. In our test game, every AI but 1 already has 2 cities by T60. In our real game, Zara still only has one city at T73. I have a feeling that we got very lucky. My guess is that Zara's settler 2 got killed. Typically, the AI will send out the first settler with one archer escort and a second archer 2 or 3 turns behind. It's possible that the escorting archer (and the settler) got killed by a barb animal. If this is the case and we're the only team facing this situation, we need to capitalize on it. If we can peacefully REX and box Zara in, we won't have to "waste" one of our war declarations to claim enough land. This is one more reason to settle city 3 toward Zara as opposed to near the stone.

OK. I had to go to great lengths to recreate this save. For some reason, I had to take BW away from Louis in WB every single turn. I would take it away and then check WB and he would have it again the very next turn. This happened over and over...

I also had to set up in WB several battles for Warrior 4 such that he would have exactly 1.0/2.0 hit points. I also had to move him every turn to ensure that he didn't heal and make sure that he ended his T72 on the corect tile.

The attached save should be as close as possible to our actual game. Let the testing begin.

EDIT: IMPORTANT!! Two people had already downloaded the save file I posted yesterday. Please delete that one and use this one instead. I deleted that test save from the previous post already.

EDIT 2: Updated save to add copper.

Go, BLubmuz, go!

havr said:

Erring is human. It is annoying to look at team-mate work and see an error... I know (from my days as a programmer) how annoying it is to open a team-mate work and see all those awful errors, wanting to delete everything and redo it myself. The truth is that this is a price you have to pay when working as a team. Working as a team has advantages, but also some disadvantages. So, I suggest we not dwell on errors or inaccuracies and their accountability friend. We should discuss these issues only when a team-mate makes a gross intentional anti-team decision (i.e. rouge play). Discussing it otherwise just means trouble and hard feelings.

I am focusing on "erring" because even if it seems intentional it is usually an error (when you are annoyed with something you tend to think it is intentional).

Summary: when someone ends his TS just say "Good Job" and move on.

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That is a very fair assessment, thank you.

Allow me to praise BLubmuz for various aspects of his turnset, then:
1. Great job on keeping all of our Warriors alive! Considering how we were taking some of the biggest exploration risks to date in terms of sending Warriors out into Barb Warrior & Archer infested lands, you did a commendable job in this regard!
2. Thank you for executing caution with our Warriors, emphasizing that over exploration. You made the right choice, in my mind.
3. Great work in positioning Warrior 3! He is located in a very safe spot to heal, benefiting from both Zara's cultural borders and from terrain bonuses that will help for the most likely of Barb units that appear.
4. Thank you for having the foresight not to move our units after we learned Bronze Working. Now that more facts are in, it is clear you deserve praise for this point, instead of condemnation, so your thoughtfulness here is appreciated!
5. Thanks for taking the time to uncover the Fish Resource to the north of the Incense. Just knowing that one Resource's location is enough to allow us to strongly consider eastern City 3 locations that ignore the Incense Resources.
6. Great job on switching to the Irrigated Grassland River square!
7. Thank you for also running the test game that proved to yourself that 100% of the Food obtained when working on a Settler (or a Worker) will be counted as Hammers, including overflow of said Hammers.
8. Thank you for running the test games that were designed to be relatively accurate (removing some of the other AIs from our continent for better representation of the Barbs) and also ran well past your turnset, so that you were able to take into account ideas that would affect future players' turnsets.
9. Thank you for the excellent work with the screenshots, including the play-by-play screenshots. That idea of involving us "in the action of the moment" is a really innovative idea and it is highly appreciated.
10. Thank you for following the PPP as accurately as possible.
11. You have accomplished our goals for the turnset and have left the next player in a good position, so extra credit is due here, too!

BLubmuz said:

An Ethiopian scout helped to fogbust W, coming from NE.

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Note: I did not put a French scout on our peninsula in the test game. Even though he would help us fogbust, I think it's better for us to assume the worst case since we really won't know where that scout is on any give turn.

Regarding the other Civ that Zara knows, do you think he could have met him here?



This area may be a good location to put a city once we feel like we've blocked off enough land from Zara. Not only will it have a ton of sea food and make a great GP farm, it will be close to this tile (grass land forest?) in the fog, allowing us to easily build a galley or scouting WB to check it out. We could also build a boat in Silverado, but it would have a long way to go and it may die to a barb galley on the long trek around the peninsula.

In any event, I think we should try to explore this as soon as possible. There may be happy resources up there we need to win the game!!

A discussion about exploring eastward with Warrior 5 before Settler 3 must commit to moving towards a particular settling location, as well as a discussion about where religions will get founded

Dhoomstriker said:

Thus, instead, I would move our Warrior that is already on the way east (Warrior 5) with confidence into that area, expecting to meet little Barb resistance. I.e. I would be confident sending him:
1NE PHFor, 1E GFor, 1NE GRiver (otherwise a dangerous, unexplored flatland square, but in this case, it is fog-busted already by Zara's borders), 1NE.

Mitchum said:

Keep in mind that our settler will be done next turn. If we take too long to explore east and decide, we may end up having to delay settling city 3 (since the settler could quickly overtake the warrior) if we decide to settle east as opposed to Stone.

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Warrior 5's suggested path, which reveals many of the relevant squares, takes 4 turns to do. More relevant land could be explored to the north afterwards (land that helps us to see what Option c) would get), should no Barbs have been lurking next to Zara's borders that would otherwise delay this extra exploration.

Settler 3 must walk through many movement-eating squares, such as through Forests or on Hills squares. Thus, the soonest that Settler 3 can arrive at the following proposed City 3 locations will be (counting the 1 turn remaining to complete Settler 3):
a) 2N of the Plains Cow and 1SW + 1S of the Plains Wheat = 5 turns + 1 to settle = 6 turns
b) 1 NW of the Plains Cow = 4 turns to be completed and move + 1 to settle = 5 turns
c) 1NE + 1N of the Plains Cow = 5 turns to be completed, move, and settle = 5 turns
d) 2E of the Plains Cow = 5 turns to be completed and move + 1 turn to settle = 6 turns
e) 1SE of the Plains Cow = 5 turns to be completed, move, and settle = 5 turns


The best route would be to go with Settler 3 would be northward, as going that way can allow us to move 2 squares north per turn for our first two turns (N GCornRiver, NE GHFor; NW P, NE GFor). Due to all of the Forests and Hills to our east, we'd get to Options d) and e) in the exact same amount of time as if we'd headed directly east + north-east. At the same time, we'd still be able to keep Options a), b), and c) open, as going north first is the fastest way to get to those locations.

So, unless there is a Barb that has walked to just outside of Zara's borders, without Zara having fought it, which is a low risk possibility but still a possibility, then we will have enough time to explore with Warrior 5 before Settler 3 gets there. Even if there is a Barb unit nearby, we will still accomplish most our exploration in time. We can move the Warrior for 4 turns before we even need to "decide" which way to branch off Settler 3 from the GFor square that is located to the SW + W of the Plains Cow square).

Of course, to support moving Settler 3 northward, we must commit to sending Warrior 3 back eastward. I'd rather leave the Barb Warrior that is next to Warrior 3 alive, hence my suggestion to first go 1SE with Warrior 3, before sending him east + north-east. If we don't want to send Warrior 3 eastward, then we can still send Settler 3 east + north-east, but that would only leave us with Options d) and e) as settling locations, and they'd be at greater risk due to not having a unit to help fog-bust the land to the north of City 3.

Regarding Stone, it will be many turns before we know The Wheel, so I'm not sure that settling it as city 3 makes sense.

Regarding research, what do you think about slotting in The Wheel after Writing but before Meditation? This would allow Delhi to build worker 3 (or worker 2) before building the temple and hiring a priest. I think we have quite a large buffer on being the first to Theology.

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I smell test games in the air. It would be nice to intentionally not learn Theology and see when an AI will get it, to help validate your claim.

It will be nice to see if our lone Worker (and maybe, just maybe, multiple Workers) will have time to use The Wheel. Consider that if we can get our borders over the Stone, our Worker or Workers could be busy chopping and then Quarrying for a long enough time that getting The Wheel earlier won't help, if our Worker/Workers are already busy on non-Road Worker actions.

However, we do have to settle it soon enough so that the borders pop, either via missionary (15 turns), holy city (3 turns) or Caste System artist (4 turns). This assumes that we need to borders to pop to capture the stone.

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Our test games seem to indicate that we'll have City 4 settled before we get our 3rd religion, meaning that either of City 3 or City 4 could easily get that 3rd religion. We will certainly have the chance to "suffer" from the game's randomness in this regard.

The only way to control that a religion will 100% appear in a city is to settle that city on the turn that the religion is learned. Doing so has always (at least for me) given me the new religion in that newly founded city.

The other way would be to build a Missionary and spread it to the other city (of Cities 3 and 4) which DOES NOT have a religion. That way, the religion would spread to the city which has no religion, UNLESS, between the time that you learn that religion's tech, natural spread also puts a religion in the religionless city. So, unless we delay the settling of City 4, we'll have to rely a bit on luck for getting a religion founded there (assuming that we want one, say, in order to expand our borders over the Stone and to better fog-bust the west).

Does anyone know how to WB France out and Ethiopia in?

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It might not be possible since we used the HOF Mod (by way of using BUFFY). The saved games get encrypted by the HOF, partially in order to prevent this kind of tampering.

Perhaps once we learn at least 1 more AI, then it will be worth the effort of regenerating and rebuilding the map. Doing so for each AI seems a little excessive, especially since it is hard to accurately simulate our Research (as you said, if we get bonus flasks from an AI knowing a tech in our test game but not in the real game, or vice versa, it could be very difficult to build this research discrepancy into a test game).

Where to find another AI and possible tech research path

Mitchum said:

Regarding the other Civ that Zara knows, do you think he could have met him here?

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It is certainly possible. While a Work Boat would be the ideal way to check out the area, a Warrior could also stand at the NE edge of the peninsula, 1N of the Plains Cow square, hoping to spot an AI that moves onto the Grassland Jungle (Forest?) at the south-western tip of the other continent.

Of course, it might be part of our continent if things connect up in the far east.

It might also be just a little island and Zara may have met another AI that is to the east of him. But seeing as how it took so long for Zara to meet anyone else, your theory has a reasonably strong chance of coming true.

In any event, I think we should try to explore this as soon as possible. There may be happy resources up there we need to win the game!!

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This point equally applies to land areas that are even further away but might contain one of our "target Resources." Fishing will need to get slated into our tech path somewhere, say, after Meditation/The Wheel -> The Wheel/Meditation? Or else we'll need to be really, really nice to Zara, get Zara in the same State Religion as us, and research Alphabet.


EDIT from here and below:
Math or Fishing?
If we get Math before Fishing, then it will be a while before we can get a Work Boat out. But, without much in the way of northern Coastal cities (yet), a Work Boat from Fishing built in the south (in Silverado) might take so long to get to the north as to be worth delaying Fishing until after researching Math.


Colonial Maintenance and how it will force us to very carefully settle our off-continent cities
At least if we settle a city on another continent for additional Resources, we will already have Code of Laws for Courthouses, keeping distance-based & civic-based maintenance costs somewhat in check. Note that it can be very costly to settle more than 2 cities on a separate continent or island. One city on another continent or island has a normal cost associated with it, while two cities will start to incur a "Colonial Maintenance" cost. The third such city makes all three of them start to cost a LOT in Colonial Maintenance. Thus, more than 2 cities on another continent can be VERY expensive and we need to be careful to place our off-continent cities well, bearing this fact in mind.

Dhoomstriker said:

So, unless there is a Barb that has walked to just outside of Zara's borders, without Zara having fought it, which is a low risk possibility but still a possibility, then we will have enough time to explore with Warrior 5 before Settler 3 gets there. Even if there is a Barb unit nearby, we will still accomplish most our exploration in time. We can move the Warrior for 4 turns before we even need to "decide" which way to branch off Settler 3 from the GFor square that is located to the SW + W of the Plains Cow square).

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Excellent point. I think we should plan on settling the cow city third. Knowing all of the land around it in 4 turns would allow us to stop and evaluate the situation after playing said 4 turns. Worst case, if we have extra worker turns, we can always farm the cows until AH is learned.

Dhoomstriker said:

Of course, to support moving Settler 3 northward, we must commit to sending Warrior 3 back eastward. I'd rather leave the Barb Warrior that is next to Warrior 3 alive, hence my suggestion to first go 1SE with Warrior 3, before sending him east + north-east. If we don't want to send Warrior 3 eastward, then we can still send Settler 3 east + north-east, but that would only leave us with Options d) and e) as settling locations, and they'd be at greater risk due to not having a unit to help fog-bust the land to the north of City 3.

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Two things make the above comments appealing to me. First, I would rather have a roaming barb warrior than a newly spawned barb archer. We should try to keep barb warriors alive if we can. Second, Zara's scout is out on the peninsula somewhere helping to spawn bust. The risk is still there, but smallish, that a barb will spawn in the west if we move warrior 3 NE rather than SW. The warrior from Silverado can be in his fog-busting spot in a handful of turns anyway, right? As Dhoom said, IF we do this, we'll have to be sure to move warriors 1 and 2 one tile east.

Dhoomstriker said:

Our test games seem to indicate that we'll have City 4 settled before we get our 3rd religion, meaning that either of City 3 or City 4 could easily get that 3rd religion. We will certainly have the chance to "suffer" from the game's randomness in this regard.

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We will know Priesthood in 6 or 7 turns. This should be just enough time to build worker 2 and maybe another warrior (or start the temple) before building the Oracle. I'm worried that settling city 4 too soon will kill our research. Plus, if city 3 does a decent job of blocking, we should have a bit of time to settle city 4, 5, etc. If we start settler 4 right away followed by the Oracle, we'll have 4 cities and 1 worker. Not good. As long as we place city 4 before bulbing Theology, it should get Christianity (Zara's favorite religion, by the way). Hopefully, Zara will settle city 2 east since nothing between us looks that great at the moment, but there is no guarantee.

I agree that we'll need to test several options. A lot hinges on the Pyramids, whether we want them, and how soon we need to hook up stone. Speaking of stone, do we know where we want to place Stone (the stone city) yet? There are a fair number of forests up there, so we may want to build/chop the 'Mids there and have Delhi focus on settlers, workers and missionaries. This would allow Stone to be our Great Engineer city with no GP pollution... It would also mean that fewer roads have to be built to connect the stone to the city building the 'Mids (1 to be exact). A city settled 1SW of the stone tile has 5 forests, stone in the inner circle, 2 flood plains, and 5 riverside tiles (it does lack production though) once the forests are chopped.

Stone City's Location

Mitchum said:

Speaking of stone, do we know where we want to place Stone (the stone city) yet? There are a fair number of forests up there, so we may want to build/chop the 'Mids there and have Delhi focus on settlers, workers and missionaries. This would allow Stone to be our Great Engineer city with no GP pollution... It would also mean that fewer roads have to be built to connect the stone to the city building the 'Mids (1 to be exact). A city settled 1SW of the stone tile has 5 forests, stone in the inner circle, 2 flood plains, and 5 riverside tiles (it does lack production though) once the forests are chopped.

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I'd still like to see the Coast to the N + N + N of the Stone. If there is a Seafood Resource there, then we could go for 1NW of the Stone, grabbing the same Flood Plains as 1SW of the Stone, while also getting a Grassland Hills square. This location would not require a border expansion in order to cover the Stone.

Failing a Seafood Resource being up there, I'd actually like to see us put the Stone City to the NW + W of the Stone, netting us an extra Flood Plains square, as well as access to using the Marble and Cow in our fat cross. Those squares may get shared by later cities, but we'd get the benefit of them now, in a lower-Maintenance City.

Both of my suggestions would be Coastal Cities, allowing us to quickly build Work Boats when needed for exploration or to help the 3 Clam City get productive immediately by building Work Boats for it.


I'm not certain that 5 Forests will be enough. We're not really talking about beelining Math. If we research:
Priesthood -> Writing -> The Wheel/Meditation -> Meditation/The Wheel -> Math, will Math be ours in time to safely chop The Pyramids? It would be nice, but I am doubtful about that possibility. So, I think that we'll have to use the capitol's abundance of Forests for chopping.

Even if we used 5 Forests at maximum, 45 * 2.25, that's only 101 Hammers per chop. With The Pyramids being 750 Hammers, we won't have enough short-term production in Stone City to make up for the shortfall, no matter where we place our Stone City. Maybe, if we settle the Stone City location with Marble and Cow and a Grassland Hills Forest square, we MIGHT get a reasonable production city down the road, but certainly not in time for The Pyramids (Quarrying The Marble would take ages, the Cow couldn't even be improved yet, and we wouldn't be growing the city quickly enough to use more than The Marble + a Grassland Hills square at the same time--not enough production output).



So, if we want the ultra-expensive Pyramids, they'll have to go in the capitol where all of the Forests are located, which pushes us towards researching The Wheel before Meditation, if doing so doesn't greatly risk us losing out on Christianity.

Just a flash, read with not much care your posts, do it later.

My opinions:

Warriors:
the one now healing will heal, then move.
the one now close to our E border will scout the coast
the one in the forest will fortify there to defeat the barb warrior.

Zara:
his settler can be on his way, still it's strange. It's possible he's building some wonder?

He can have contacted an AI with the scout on the west coast (i already posted on the possibility from a contact from E). If this is the case, there's probably a landmass in range of galleys.

New cities
all our efforts were made to block Zara.
Now, we can do it. We must do it.
Even if without resources, the land straight E of Dehli is a good land.
The cow/oasis area looks decent. If we settle bost those cities, we have time to build a settler after the Oracle/temple in Dehli and settle by the stone and marble.

I'd love to settle that marble/stone city, but we can do it at any time, once our land is secured. Also, usually a good date for the Pyramids in BTS is the late BCs, so no need to hurry, mainly if we have stone and forests.

BLubmuz said:

Warriors:
the one now healing will heal, then move.
the one now close to our E border will scout the coast
the one in the forest will fortify there to defeat the barb warrior.

Click to expand...

I think having 2 warriors due east of Delhi is overkill. The one healing is doing a great job of spawn busting the entire area. Couldn't he heal and then then scout the coast to the south?

The warrior close to our E border is in a good position to uncover the fog around the cows. This will be a city location that will block Zara from our peninsula and may stop him from settling north at all (depending on what is in the fog east of the wheat).
It will also put him in good position to spawn bust the area for a safer journery for our settler and then to continue exploring / spawn busting further NE.

Keeping the barb warrior alive is a good thing, not a bad thing. Based on my testing, if we kill that barb this turn, a new one will spawn to replace it the very next turn. It could be an archer. It could be in a worse location, like between our western fog busters and our capital or near the cows. I would prefer that we keep this minor nuisance alive. I'd much rather have a barb warrior running around than a barb archer. Since we're not planning war anytime soon, it's much cheaper to build warriors to fog bust and fortify in our cities than the much more expensive axemen to contend with barb archers (or axemen).

BLubmuz said:

New cities
all our efforts were made to block Zara.
Now, we can do it. We must do it.
Even if without resources, the land straight E of Dehli is a good land.
The cow/oasis area looks decent. If we settle bost those cities, we have time to build a settler after the Oracle/temple in Dehli and settle by the stone and marble.

Click to expand...

I agree that we should block Zara since that's been our plan all along. Are you suggesting that Delhi should build settler 4 immediately after settler 3 and before starting the Oracle? I'm worried that this may be too much of a delay. Plus, we could use another worker now to help mine the copper, chop the Oracle, and improve city 3. With two worker chopping the Oracle and then chopping settler 4, we should be able to get another blocking city out soon enough...

BLubmuz said:

I'd love to settle that marble/stone city, but we can do it at any time, once our land is secured. Also, usually a good date for the Pyramids in BTS is the late BCs, so no need to hurry, mainly if we have stone and forests.

Click to expand...

I agree that we have some time to build the Pyramids. But let's not delay them just because we can. The sooner we get them, the sooner we can benefit from them. We'll have to carefully balance REX and blocking Zara with wonders and our economy.

BLubmuz said:

Zara:
his settler can be on his way, still it's strange. It's possible he's building some wonder?

Click to expand...

What you say is very possible. Perhaps Stonehenge or The Great Wall? Those Wonders are the only ones I have seen an AI build before expanding to at least a second city.

Mitchum's comment about a Settler being killed by a Barb is also possible.

all our efforts were made to block Zara.
Now, we can do it. We must do it.

Click to expand...

Okay. If we put one city to the east, say, at Option d) or e), it is likely to discourage Zara from immediately settling north or south of that city, due to the nature of AIs trying not to settle cities that are more distant from their capitol than your closest city to their capitol. Due to the diagonal distance of cities to the south and north of a mid-eastern location (such as Option d) or e)), such cities will be farther from Zara's capitol then our city would be, meaning that he'd greatly hesitate to settle out there.

I'm not sure why the AIs behave this way--perhaps they are afraid of a city being "surrounded" on multiple sides and thus later culturally flipping (a fair concern).

So, in my opinion, due to the proximity of Option d) or e) to Zara's captiol, one city would be enough to discourage him from settling closer to us for now.

the one now close to our E border will scout the coast...
Even if without resources, the land straight E of Dehli is a good land.

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So, which is it? Would you prefer to settle on the southern Coast, picking up several Grassland River squares and some Grassland Hills squares, or settling inland and ignoring the Coast? Because it sound like you are somewhat suggesting both options here, so I can't tell which one you prefer. Maybe you will have no preference until we can see if any Seafood Resource exists off of the southern Coast?

He can have contacted an AI with the scout on the west coast (i already posted on the possibility from a contact from E). If this is the case, there's probably a landmass in range of galleys.

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In range of Galleys also means in range of Fishing Boats, while Fishing Boats can be built more cheaply and sooner, thus making them good exploration units.

So, would you favour putting in Fishing in before Alphabet? That way, we might have more AI contacts to increase the usefulness of Alphabet.

Would you favour delaying Mathematics for Fishing, or are you fine with us getting better use out of our Forest chops before chasing after Fishing?

I'd love to settle that marble/stone city, but we can do it at any time, once our land is secured. Also, usually a good date for the Pyramids in BTS is the late BCs, so no need to hurry, mainly if we have stone and forests.

Click to expand...

An interesting perspective you have there, and one that wasn't mentioned previously. Can we get our borders to expand sufficiently over the Stone in time if we make the Stone City our 5th city? It would require us to build The Oracle, a Temple, 2 more Settlers, and probably at least 1 Warrior and a Worker or two from the capitol. Can we build all of that in time in order to have the Stone Quarried and Roaded in time for chopping, while still being able to maintain a strong enough tech pace? A test game might tell us the answer.

Dhoomstriker said:

An interesting perspective you have there, and one that wasn't mentioned previously. Can we get our borders to expand sufficiently over the Stone in time if we make the Stone City our 5th city? It would require us to build The Oracle, a Temple, 2 more Settlers, and probably at least 1 Warrior and a Worker or two from the capitol. Can we build all of that in time in order to have the Stone Quarried and Roaded in time for chopping, while still being able to maintain a strong enough tech pace? A test game might tell us the answer.

Click to expand...

Having a "strong enough tech pace" has been my concern for some time. Without any good commerce producing tiles other than the silver, I typically rely on cottages for my early research. I have played a few Specialist Economy (SE) games where 90% of my research came from scientist specialists and using the resulting Great Scientists to bulb techs. This is great for a game heavy in fighting because the total beaker output of the empire is not severly impacted by the science slider, allowing liberal use of the culture slider to affect happiness. I have to admit that it's been a long time since I've toyed with an SE game. Some top Deity players swear by it.

In the test games I've played, once city 3 and especially city 4 were placed, the tech rate slowed down considerably. IIRC, with 4 cities Alphabet was going to take some 30 turns to research.

How do we plan to deal with this situation in our game? Should we build farms and focus on an SE game fueled by Representation? This plays well with our Philosophical trait since we'll be getting a lot of Great Scientists. Or do we need to start thinking about researching Pottery so that we can lay down some much needed cottages?

I'm fine either way, but our short-to-mid-term tech ability will really suffer until we can do something about our pitiful beaker output.