SGOTM 11 - One Short Straw

Played the 7 turns to AH as I had to lower the slider.

I started off by making a mistake, I paused the game (some kind of habbit) to draw the dotmap, add/remove some signs, and I was playing in window mode so I had to click on tiles to move the map... Looks like at some point I also moved a worker, which in the end cost us the 1 turn of prefarming the FP but it looks like we'll be improving something else first anyway...

Turn 1
GW bidl. Wonderhogs are catching up by the looks of it, this date is just silly.

And we get a forest spread 2S1W of bombay, this gave us a few additional hammers when dehli borrows the corn

Turn 4
Confucianism spreads in Delhi

Worker in Bombay done.

Turn 5
Revolt to slavery

Turn 6
Bombay's borders pop.

Settler in Dehli complete, I am sending him towards 2fish but he could go anywhere really.

Zara turns pleased...

Turn 7
... but just changes his mind again, back to cautious

SH gets BIDL! We'll get 19g next turn.

Finish granary in Delhi, chop comes in, Settler in 1t.

And we finish AH... just see for yourself:



Ain't that beautiful? Like I said, we might find horses in the BFC - although I didn't really believe that to be the case

There are 2 more horses on our continent, one down in the tundra, most likely claimed by zara now and one on the north coast which will not be in any city bfc...

Zara Sabotage Production development:



Some more things:

• None of the two wonders built so far (SH and GW) were built by any AI known to us.
• I marked the hamlet which was closer to becoming a village with "#1", the other with "#2".
• Zara is still teching IW.
• We do not yet see just's graphs.
• On turn 99 zara most likely finished a settler but I'll rather leave this to LTC.
• There is a barb warrior to the NE who might attack our brave warrior who has been sitting on the hill a few turns, watching the barb. Do we want to retreat?
• I'm sorry for the lost worker turn

Uploading the save only worked on the third attempt; is that normal?

Nice scoredrop thanks to the

mdy, wanna take over?

Log:

Excellent stuff, mysty. Horsies! I also assumed we'd find them nearby.

Imo, it would help our discussion if you moved the warrior 1W to reveal the rest of the crab sea tiles. Unowned tiles is now 94, so no more need to spawnbust. You're free to do that immediately.

Edit: Did Zara poprush Aksum on T99? If not, I don't think it was a settler build, but it also seem like too many hammers for a worker. It also seems like too many hpt for a non-settler/worker, so I'm not sure.

So far, this map set-up has followed a consistent logic, namely, 1) make it fair to all teams, whether they settle in place or on the hill and 2) make it fair whether the teams go for Diplo or Cultural. Now we can add 3) make it fair whether teams research AH or BW first. I think we can safely conclude from this logic that Astro is not necessary to reach the furs, AIs and the other 3 luxuries. Of course, that doesn't mean it isn't necessary to DoW to do some of that or build a city and grow its culture to access some of that. Mutineer is still right, though, as MW showed in SG6--it's faster with galleons than galleys.

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That forest growth in Bombay is actually worth 2h, because it immediately solved our problem, giving the settler build an extra hammer. That happened in the exact same tile in my test run and that's why I said we'll decide whether to poprush the settler on T103 or T104. Now we can do it on T103 (if we still want to), then revolt to castes. Perfect.

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Congrats on successfully spawn-busting, mysty . 94 unowned tiles also means only 2 barbs max. I suggest we use this info to our advantage to get a 10XP unit, like this: We force the barb to spawn near our axe!

1. the threatened warrior moves SW to prevent barb spawning at 2SW
2. the axe moves SE
3. the warrior at the marble goes NE
4. the barb should spawn next turn at rice NW
5. the axe moves in for the kill (hopefully the barb cooperates)
6. rinse and repeat up to 10XP

I believed we agreed to put all chops/overflow in capital into Mids, not settler.

Please, change production in capital for Mids.

In a ligth that bouth early stone wanders gone it become even more impotant!

Umm no the plan was to have the overflow in the settler (which is at 0 hammers but has exactly 150h overflow (+ chop). Afterwards we can build the mids while regrowing. We have plenty of forests.

Mysty, I'm testing my idea for the 10XP axe and there's a bug right now. The barb doesn't spawn at rice NW, so don't move the warrior being threatened yet. (I'd still like to see the crab water tiles. That would be the only move before our discussion.)

Hmm...I simply can't get any barb units to spawn whatsoever in the test save. I don't understand this. There are plenty more than 35 unowned tiles and even when I leave a whole bunch of fogged tiles, nothing spawns. Could this be an artifact of wordbuildering the test save or what? Silu?

New test save.

Hmm, it looks like we're the only team that's still blazing on ahead. Are we missing something in the bigger picture here? I hope not...

Otherwise looks good. Love the horses.

Zara's production may be from failed stonehenge. It sounds like it's on the right turn.

So let's continue our earlier discussion about settling patterns versus exploration (and pyramids).

Also, could somebody post screenshots of the cities? I (still) can't open any civ saves.

LowtherCastle said:

Mysty, I'm testing my idea for the 10XP axe and there's a bug right now. The barb doesn't spawn at rice NW, so don't move the warrior being threatened yet. (I'd still like to see the crab water tiles. That would be the only move before our discussion.)

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I don't want to be pessimistic, but in one of the few BOTM I played, I set up exactly the same plan, and nothing spawned in the small unfogged area for like 1500 years! I had to dow a weak AI to get that damn 10 XP AI. Though it's worth a try. I just hope the curse was just Erkon's lie.

Should be able to open the save in the evening (though I doubt I will have anything to add to your comments guys )

WE need workers turns to improve new cities.

2 new cities is more then enough, seens Bombey producing settler 2 and has only 2 improved ties.

If you want second settler soo mach whip it form bombey, he has only 2 improved ties anyway.

I never agreed on chopping second settler in capital.

@shyuhe: Interesting thought. Pretty sure the lost SH prod would show up as a spike in the GNP graph, which it doesn't. But you gave me an idea. Usually, the sab-prod shows 0 the turn after a completion, unless another build's already partial. Maybe Zara interrupted the settler build...which would put it at about 97/143 right now. That's about 5 more turns of settler production or a poprush.

@Mutineer: Let's figure out what's best. I really don't see such a hurry to finish the Pyramids. The SH and GW builds were something like 500-700 years late. For starters, we have to bear in mind that the stone won't be connected till next turn, so we lose ~150 hammers if we put it into the Mids this turn.

Mutineer said:

I believed we agreed to put all chops/overflow in capital into Mids, not settler.

Click to expand...

Mutineer said:

I never agreed on chopping second settler in capital.

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Okay, let's step back a minute. Mutineer, this was probably my oversight. I thought we were in agreement up to AH and I suggested we do that. In hindsight, I see that we weren't completely agreed and this affected our flexibility because we created the overflow one turn too soon for the stone (or connected the stone one turn too late for the overflow).

Mutineer, would you please accept my apologies?

LowtherCastle said:

Hmm...I simply can't get any barb units to spawn whatsoever in the test save. I don't understand this. There are plenty more than 35 unowned tiles and even when I leave a whole bunch of fogged tiles, nothing spawns. Could this be an artifact of wordbuildering the test save or what? Silu?

Click to expand...

I can't believe how dumb this function is. You're correct in that 35 unowned tiles is enough for the game to try to spawn a barbarian if there are no barbarians on the landmass. However...

When the game tries to figure out where to spawn the barbarian, things get tricky. For each barb that is supposed to spawn (it's UNOWNED_TILES / 35 - BARBS_PRESENT, and if this is >0 then further /4 + 1 ), the game tries to find a plot to put the barb on - if one is not found, a barb doesn't spawn. And how the game tries to find valid tiles? By picking random tiles of the whole map, and then checking if this tile is valid (if it's in the right area, not visible to any Civ, etc.). If it wasn't, then pick another random tile! This is done 100 times and if a valid tile is not found, the poor barb that's trying to spawn just gives up and doesn't appear.

Essentially this means that the less land there is, the less probable it is for any barbs to spawn regardless of the number that should spawn, and if there are only a couple of fogged tiles it's very very improbable than the shotgun method of finding valid spawn sites gets a hit.

LowtherCastle said:

Mutineer, would you please accept my apologies?

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Guys, I am starting to get scared just at the idea of posting here
@Silu: interesting research, it does explain a few weird things...

RRRaskolnikov said:

Guys, I am starting to get scared just at the idea of posting here

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Ras, go jump in a lake fountain.

LowtherCastle said:

Ras, go jump in a lake fountain.

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Yeah, I hear that's something of a tradition in Grenoble! Right?

You keep talking of unit visibility for barb spawn, I thought it was 2 tiles distance of the unit, regardless how far it is able to see... So right now there are foggy tiles to the west but theres still no tile for the barb to spawn.

PS thanks for inviting me to the chat last night, when I woke up this morning I had 156 new messages on my iphone

Silu said:

Yeah, I hear that's something of a tradition in Grenoble! Right?

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I think it goes hand in hand with cherchez la femme... at least in Erkon's case...

mystyfly said:

You keep talking of unit visibility for barb spawn, I thought it was 2 tiles distance of the unit, regardless how far it is able to see... So right now there are foggy tiles to the west but theres still no tile for the barb to spawn.

PS thanks for inviting me to the chat last night, when I woke up this morning I had 156 new messages on my iphone

Click to expand...

Yeah I just said 'fogged tiles' as a shortcut instead of saying 'non-(non-fogged tiles or ones within a radius of 2 of any existing unit)'

And you were sleeping? We thought you were hard at work on SGOTM micro!

I was just saying this as with forests around visibility can be very limited, and you made me unsure with all that foggy talk

Yup, was sleeping as one should at 2am