SGOTM 11 - One Short Straw

Only one little detail, could we settle North marble city first, before Rice, so we have flexibility to change rice city position depends on exploration?

Mutineer said:

Only one little detail, could we settle North marble city first, before Rice, so we have flexibility to change rice city position depends on exploration?

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I have the exploring wb coming from a Rice City chop. I don't see any other good way to get an explorer out there. Popping two wbs in Two Fish delays it too much and it needs at least one fishnets asap. (Edit: And as it is, the second fish nets coming from Rice are too late for my taste, but that's life)

Looks good LC

Regarding currency, it is much better if we somehow manage to finish it one turn sooner for the trade routes, better turn up the slider one turn early since something unexpected could shorten its tech durantion or something non-binary is enough to finish it, which would be a good exception to the "always binary" rule.

Good luck on the gold pop

Since bbp wanted me to go ahead and play the first few turns, I guess everyone has chimed in, is that right? MIght as well play, right?

Why is the ivory city on the desert tile?
I can get Currency on t132. Hunting after, though I'm not sure we need it - Rep covers happy for a while and GH mine is only marginally worse for the ivory city startup.
Mining both GH's in Delhi ahead of cottages is an option, too.

I'm gonna give up on HG, but I'd still argue that a monastery in Delhi right now is worthwhile. What do you guys think?

Think we can just depend on Bombay's next border pop for land-blocking.

I played a test run to t136 - forgot to save t133. Seems about equivalent, except for some tile improvements.

Edit: x-post. Yeah, go ahead and play, LC.

Huh - good question about the Ivory city placement. I thought we agreed on plains Ivory?

Do we want to make some safety Warriors before we take Hunting? Afterwards we can only make Warriors by either trading away all our metals or having an inland city outside our trading network, neither are very nice ways to do it.

In the test, I simply put the Ivory city on the desert assuming the worst-case scenario. IF we're lucky, of course we'll put it on the plains ivory tile.

Do we want to make some safety Warriors before we take Hunting?

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Probably not. Under current plans we will have 8, twice what we need. If we are unfortunate enough to lose 5+ of them we could always temporairily pillage our metal for a couple of turns.

Why is the ivory city on the desert tile?

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I think this is to reduce the cultural pressure the cities tiles will come under from Spain/Zara

Mining both GH's in Delhi ahead of cottages is an option, too.

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We can be reasonably certain of getting the H.G. without building the second grass hill soon. The tradeoff is delaying our cottage growth V delaying other infastructure such as the market/monastry/temple.

I'm O.K. with L.C. playing the next few turns.

Okay, I'll play now.

Turnset Report

T118 -- 1050 BC
Revolt to Rep and No State Religion. Izzy now Cautious at +1 but we're still her WE.
Trade Justy corn for cows.
Set espionage to 3 for Zara, 1 for Justy. Hopefully, we'll be able to steal at least one tech.
City MM done.
Units moved.

T119 -- 1025 BC
OBs with Izzy
Izzy's galley vanishes and settlre does not appear on northern gh. Ominous news.
Izzy has coastal copper.
Zara researching Poly

T120 -- 1000 BC
Izzy has not settled Ivory Island yet!!! What's she waiting for?
Rice settled 1S of rice tile
northern island looking to be a 6-tile island
Izzy's east coast already encountered

T121 -- 975 BC
Madrid sighted. Founded Buddhism.
Delhi build wkr, starts warrior.
Northern wb meets Toku's wb.
Set research slider to 100%

T122 -- 950 BC
northern island is 6 tiles, all grass, 3 hills, 2 sugar, all jungle except one hill (iron?)
Izzy's empire continues to the east
Zara sends Aksum galley to the south, warrior will take advantage of this to scope out his horse city
Zara is building something other than settler/wkr in Aksum
Oasis poprushes galley, settler waiting in the wings
and...Toku of course won't trade but he has Hunting, Poly, IW, and Alpha. He wants Meditation, PHood, and Math. We're extremely lucky to have not met him till a few turns ago. I don't know the formula, maybe you can check it out, Silu, but I bet we can get +4 from him pretty cheap and clean up on techs.


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Turnset paused. Continuing after discussion through Post #820.

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T122 -- 950 BC cont.
Gift Phood to Toku, and we're at +3, Cautious, must have had beakers in Phood.
Gift Medit to Toku, and we're at +5, Pleased.
Sign OBs with Toku.
Toku will not trade Alpha for Math, but will trade IW+Htg for Math. I assume we don't want to do that, since that means Justy has both.
Set research to Alpha, slider to 60%, putting 49 raw beakers into Alpha. My tests show that's more than ample.
If Toku demands Math in the interturn, we're screwed...

T123 -- 925 BC
Trade CoL to Toku for Alpha
Calendar is now only 7t.
Justy will only trade Htg+Poly for Math, so he's got beakers in it.
Izzy doesn't have IW, Zara can't get Math because he needs Wtg. We can wait one turn to trade Wtg to Zara for Poly or gift him Wtg this turn. I think we can wait another turn to find out about iron tiles.

Exploring wb sights dyes inside Izzy's culture.


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Turnset paused. Continuing after discussion through Post #848.

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IT
Toku offers IW for Math, is still willing to trade IW+Htg for Math. I point out he could commit hara kiri instead, just for fun.

T124 -- 900 BC
Trade Zara Wtg for Poly
Zara is researching Monotheism now
Izzy has 2 dyes

IT
I command Rice and Oasis to auto-spread Confuciansim. They obey.

T125 -- 875 BC
We trade Zara Math for IW.
Delhi has icy iron and Oasis has desert iron. Crapola, but we were wise to beat Zara to the oasis. Zara can't DOW us till Construction or he trades for a metal or finds one who knows where.
Our western wb immediately meets Saladin, the founder of Hinduism, soon to be WEs with Toku, but not yet.
We trade Sal Wtg+Medit for Monotheism!
We're tempted to send our wb south to visit Sal's cities and open up trading and trade routes, but our mission is to explore and to the northwest ther mght be valuable unowned resources...
Speaking of which...our eastern wb spots UNOWNED JUNGLE DYES on the northeastern part of Izzy's landmass.
Sugar has no more seafood.

Lots to discuss...

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Turnset paused.

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Good luck.

mdy said:

The tradeoff is delaying our cottage growth V delaying other infastructure such as the market/monastry/temple.

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Well, yes. Since we're building HG and, hopefully, quite a bit of infra in the near future, extra hammers are more important, I think.

Nice. You uploading the save?

It would be pretty awesome if we could get Alpha from him somehow (Math+), but that seems completely impossible. Let's see what Master Silu says about opening up trading...

If the north island is already all scouted, I guess we need one less WB, which is great.

Save uploaded.

We can surely trade Alpha for CoL if we want to risk Toku bulbing Philo. To me the question is whether we can get him to pleased without math so we can use it for IW.

Here is your Session Turn Log from 1050 BC to 950 BC:

I've dug up the formula 3 times I think for every serious SG I've played Taxman, both OSS SGs...

IIRC it's FAIRTRADE_VALUE / (TURNS_KNOWN*10), where a gifted techs' fair trade value is approx 1.5x beaker cost (varies with how many Civs a Civ knows that know it). We've known him for what, 20 turns? So the threshold for +4 would be 200 fair trade (~ 200 gold), or a 160 beaker tech. PH + Medi give 210 EDIT: plus the map multiplier (1.3x) at least, not 100% sure if handicap multiplier (1.2x) is added, so at least 273, which is cutting it close... Need more calculations to know if those alone would give +4. Math would certainly give it.

mdy, exactly which turn did we meet Toku? Your report doesn't give the date.

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Okay, Silu, assuming Toku's wb came from the west and went north, I'd estimate we've known him for 9t max. He knows Justy, us and one or two other AIs.

I know you've dug it up before, but I'm too stupid to actually put it to use.

Disregard my last post, I forgot (doh) we want +4, not +1

Okay, the value of techs for an AI in a trade:

((COST - RESEARCH_DONE) * 1.5) + ( COST/2 * ((CIVS_KNOWN - CIVS_WHO_KNOW_IT) / CIVS_KNOWN)) * AI_TRADE_MODIFIER

Sooo.... PH and Medi cost 210*1.3 = 273 beakers to him. No extra AI trade modifiers, very few techs have those - so assuming he doesn't have any beakers in PH/Medi everyone else knows them, fair trade value is 273 * 1.5 ~~ 409. So in order for us to get +4 from the formula with this, we'd get it if we have known him for 10 turns or less (so 409 / (TURNS*10) is over 4). If the other Civs he knows don't have it that might buy us a turn or two more.

EDIT: Humm... I now double-checked the fair trade diplo code (functionality of previously given to me/us by bestsss) and actually the turns are only multiplied by five for fair trade and ten for WE hate. So that doubles the turn limit above, giving us +4 diplo if we've known him for 20 turns or less.

CONCLUSION AND TL;DR: We should get guaranteed +4 with Toku with PH+Medi if we've known him for 20 or fewer turns, 20-25 might be possible if Justy/Bella/ZY do not know PH/Medi.

We made contact with Japan in the turn between 1075 and 1100B.C.

Seven turns. So maybe Meditation will be enough, if we're lucky.

xpost with SIlu's edit: Or even Phood...

We have +1 with Toku now, so adding +4 will give us +5.

In that case PH should theoretically be enough but I won't guarantee that so maybe Medi is better... But wait, does +4 give Pleased with Toku? He has -1 base attitude, so don't we need +5(-1-1 hidden) ?

If I remember correctly the AI's only trade a tech if a certain % of other AI's also know it, for Japan I think this 100%. So if Justinian doesn't have the tech he won't trade it too us regardless of how high our diplo is.

Perhaps it would be better to wait till Zara/Justinian gets alphabet? They are far more likely to be our long term friends. Japan is currently the strongest/ most dangerous Civ, and we probably don't want to strengthen him too much.