SGOTM 11 - One Short Straw

Yeah, I'd trade for Hunting, as well.

I'm getting burnt out on this endless testing and analysis paralysis, as are the rest of you, I imagine. I'll just go ahead and do my best. And of course, 1 turn from now, when everything changes, I'll pause again...

mdy, one more question, if you're still around. How did you develop Marble, in a bit of detail? WHen did you work which tiles, etc.?

mystyfly said:

I'm against selfresearching hunting, we can pick that up anytime. WFYABTA is no big issue on emp due to higher limits and fewer opportunities. Let's grab all the freebies we can, as long as we can.

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Higher limits? Surely you jest. It's set in stone as far as I know. Not that I disagree with you, Yeah, I seriously doubt WFYABTA will be a significant issue even though we have a couple of big WFYABTA fans.

For reference, WFYABTA limits for Emperor:

ISABELLA: 7
TOKUGAWA: 7
ZY: 14
SALADIN: 14
JUSTINIAN: 21

EDIT: Sorry, the limit does decrease with level

WFYABTA increments according to level. It does go up marginally by level but I wouldn't count on it much. I doubt we'll ever trade with Toku. We will only trade with Izzy if we butter her up (i.e., adopt her religion = friendly) so that's not an issue. So we have lots of WFYABTA space so I'd trade for hunting later. We have no pressing need for it anyways.

The ivory worker will be done with the two mines by T+13, so we'll need it then. Two Fish can use the extra happy soon after (I didn't note the turn it hits happy cap in testing - somewhere in 15-20t, I think).

mystyfly said:

I'm also for early philosophy.

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We can get Paper well before the next GS. Paper's kinda huge here for map trading, but I think accumulating extra gold, or completing Aesthetics (if we wanted to go that line), while waiting for a Philo bulb is ok. Thoughts?

While I agree that map trading is a very good thing here I don't see the benefit of getting paper a few turns earlier. I'm not for delaying it, by all means, but I don't think getting maps 5-10t earlier helps us at all as we're by then still far from preparing to war. I'm definitely for going aest > lit before paper no matter whether we'll build GL but to build the NE.

IDK how realistic it is to build NE before the Uni, assuming we want two GS from Two Fish (which we do - clam's not fast enough). I also don't quite see where we would build GLib, even if we wanted to. Delhi needs to stay more or less GE pure, Two Fish has no production, Marble is behind in development. We don't want it in Bombay, since we risk popping a GP then. I was just suggesting slowing down Paper until GS pop.

It is waster of beakers. NE is near to useless to us, whipping it will cost more in lost specialists time then benefit it gives. (only 33% increase if we run pacifism)

I disagree. You could flip that argument and say that Oxford only contributes less than 50% after lib/acad/uni/mona - hence not worth building. We do need 4 extra GP's in this game...

Two Fish can run 8-9 specialists. Let's say it's 8: that's 24 gpp, plus another 4 from NE itself. We can build it with some 100+ turns to go before win, so it's 2800+ gpp contribution. That's hardly negligible. Also, if we went down that line, we could potentially follow through to Music, scoring the freebie GA and using that as a substantial trade chip. Not sure if that's our tech path, but it's among the better choices, IMHO.

Well the music GA is certainly nice but is it worth trading all those beakers for this one GP? We'll get GPs from physics and communism most likely and we can use GGs. I don't think it's worth selfresearching music, better trade for it if available. Especially since the consensus is not teching aest now...

mystyfly said:

I'm definitely for going aest > lit before paper no matter whether we'll build GL but to build the NE.

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mystyfly said:

Especially since the consensus is not teching aest now...

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Which is it?

I only meant to suggest Music as a kinda maybe if we did go for Aest-Lit...

I checked what actually happens in Delhi with the base commerce. It turns out that it doesn't have to be a multiple of 8. All even multiples are equally good. The only atrocious base commerce is multiple of 8 plus 1c. Plus 3c, plus 5c, and plus 7c get progressively closer to the optimum. Edit: This is calculated at 100% research. Who knows how this plays out at other percentages...

Had to run another test... This one is more balanced. It could still be much better and there are issues we need to resolve to not screw it up, but I think it's enough for me to continue finally. (I started to continue last night and only got as far as: OBs with Sal + mine Delhi NE... ).

mdy's save made me rethink what we need versus what seems good, based on our priorities, which I think are:

* GS for Philo asap + GS for Educ around 200BC, both in Two Fish.
* HG in Delhi asap.
* Nine cottages built and getting worked in Delhi.
* Develop a core of 6 cities for Oxford unis.
* Develop Ivory.
* Settle Sugar.

---------------

What I realized:
1. Two Fish: 2nd wb rather than the lh. And it's best to build it on T+0 and 1pop it on T+1. Two Fish builds: wb(1pop)-lib-lh
2. I haven't been testing with OrgRel, so this should go somewhat better with that and we want it asap, as in, after our wb gets past Toku, which is hopefully very soon.
3. Send the Conf Miss to Two Fish. We spend it there, IF we need it for the OrgRel hammer OR for happiness BUT not before in hopes we get auto-spread.
4. After poprushing the wb, we switch to Castes and stay there for a long time.
5. For the next turnset: My hunch is that we want to have five turns of slavery+OrgRel timed just before the Philo GS pops. At this point, the HG will be completing, and the extra pop will come in handy with bldgs like the Two Fish lib and granaries, etc. Needs to be tested after my turnset.

Turnset report T125-T133

Original turnset plan T118-T133
Turnset report T118-T125
Turnset Plan T125-T133

T125 -- 875 BC cont.
sign OBs with Saladin
switch Two Fish build to wb
switch Rice build to granary

IT
Justinian will trade us gold!

T126 -- 850 BC
exploring scouts find nothing remarkable
our settler is the first to land on Ivory Island
trade Justy silver+fish for gold (can't cancel corn deal yet, we can upgrade in 10t)
1pop wb in Two Fish

IT
Izzy appears at +4, Cautious, and demands Writing. Granted. She jumps to +6 Pleased. Very nice timing, in case we switch back to Confucianism soon.

T127 -- 825 BC
Ivory settled
eastern wb sees the final AI with a piece of GW through the fog. By the color of the culture, it appears to be Joao.

I guess we need to discuss this gold...Save uploaded.

Here is your Session Turn Log from 875 BC to 825 BC:

************

Turnset paused. Continuing after discussion through post #1007.

************

T127 -- 825 BC cont.
Revolt to castes
Ivory hires an artist which shows 2t for Currency as 100%. We'll see.
Delhi: warrior
Bombay: worker
Ivory: granary

IT
Confucianism spreads to Lalibela!
Zara has two wkrs at Zali-N. One building a cottage, one farming.

T128 -- 800 BC
There is an unclaimed fish tile N-NW of the 2nd gold.
We meet Mehmed, who has no religion, knows Izzy + Zara (corn for clams). We have trade routes, but no resources to trade.
There is a fish tile NE of the clams, so Mehmed will surely settle that site before settling the dyes, because it's within range of his capital.
Sal has Monarchy to trade and wants either CoL+Math or Math+Alpha of CoL+ Alpha. No point in dealing before we get Currency.
Sal goes to -4 with Toku, is annoyed, and Toku is now his WE. Sal rolled a PeaceWeightRand of 2.
Izzy drops to +5 with us, Pleased. Sal to +3, Cautious.
Research slider gows to 70%, no sensible way to get currency next turn. Bummer, because Zara has only 2t on Mono and I was hoping to trade him Mono for cash when he was at Mono(1t)

IT
Zara adopts Confucianism Lalibela! Ha! This delays Zara's Mono comletion!

T129 -- 775 BC
Izzy is now -2, Cautious, with Zara, which means she rolled a PeaceWeightRand of 0.
Toku now has close borders with both Sal and Justy.
Sal is both north and south of the gold, and we sight one of his marble tiles.
Toku will trade rice. We trade him our new fish. Sal won't like that but who cares?
Our warrior in Madrid spies Izzy's settler+2 archers moving to the N-NE...

T130 -- 750 BC
We spot Damascus and yet another unclaimed gold, but it will fall under Damascus at the next cultural expansion.
We complete Currency. Set research for Metal Casting at 0%.
Trade Zara Mono for 30g. No other good deals available.
Looks like Izzy is building a settler in Barca (~4t to completion) and settler or worker in Madrid.
Marble settled, building granary, working clam nets.
Two Fish pop5, hires a sci.

T131 -- 725 BC
Toku meets Zara
Damascus has its own gold.
Zara researching Alpha. Maybe we should trade it to him...

T132 -- 700 BC
Izzy/Barca 1popped settler (there go the dyes in all likelihood...)

T133
wbs sight toku's borders, what looks like the far northeatern tip of Mehmed's landmass.
Izzy has a gems site with her new city.
Turnset done. Save uploaded.

Here is your Session Turn Log from 825 BC to 675 BC:

well, I would rather settle SE of first gold and give city this crab..
But I am sure if I voice this opinion everyone will be agais it.

Advantages: we got gold as happiness resource.
We got gold as resource to build this wander, which I want to deny to AI, just in case.

Mutineer said:

But I am sure if I voice this opinion everyone will be agais it.

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I can see how you might think that... Of course, you know that's not how it is...

We definitely want those crabs for health reasons and it wouldn't hurt ot have our own gold, even though we now have gold from Jusy and currently plan to be on good relations with him. But Justy and Toku have close relations -1 already and we wouldn't want access to the gold cut off if we both are at War with Toku later on.

The question is, where does the settler come from? Instead of Sugar? Does this change anything in the next few turns or should I just go on?

you know my opinion, there is no harry to develop cities, we are NOT technically backward.
We should use this fact, stuff our development and expand as mach as possible.
Build Dyes, build gold, build sugar, settle more cities near Dyes if possible.

More cities = more population = more resource = easier to satisfy victory conditions = slower initial tech (but we are tech leaders anyway, no pressure there).. faster final tech, More GP's

For me all your strategy is wrong.

I don't think we'll be able to build the NE before the university, but we will want to eventually build the NE. So I think we'll have to tech aesthetics--literature eventually, at which point we might as well pick up the free artist from music. It will basically let us convert one of our GPP's into a scientist bulb - which should save us turns in the grand scheme.

As for the current save, I don't think this has been discussed before but is there any way to get currency in two turns instead of three? Because of the number of oversea trade routes, currency alone should give us around 12-15 coins across the empire. Is it worth re-arranging some city builds to make it possible to get it in two turns?

Regarding the gold - we were going to settle the crabs anyways eventually, so in this case I think 1SE of the gold is better. But none of our cities has spare hammers right now to settle it, so I'd hold off on it for now. I think it's more important that we proceed with our current plan for an early Oxford, as research will likely be the bottleneck in this game.

Also it looks like the dye spot is a bit more reasonable if you settle it to claim the clams. It's not something we'll claim any time soon but it may be worth re-considering in another 30-40 turns if it's still available. And that green may be one of the Ottomans. I can't tell the greens apart that well unfortunately