SGOTM 04 - Geezers

Berserkers are quite nice for amphibious attacks. Wasn't the last WOTM as the Vikings, too ? There I used them several times from ships with very good success. If they will not be outdated when establishing our new home they will contribute nicely.

I already suggested a lib in El Do as Nidaros comes back into business now. I think we can afford that.

I would let Nidaros grow again after the rush before training any workers. It will lose 2 pop. Some military first would be my choice.

What exactly is our plan to make best use of the Pyramids we have worked so hard to build?

I've just started a separate game as the Vikings, just to get a better feel for what they are all about. Aggressive and Financial is a great combination. I'm currently running Vassalage and Theocracy and with Barracks and Stables, after a few victories, my units have more promotions than I know what to do with. A few extra experience points makes a massive difference when going head to head with with equal units (e.g. Axeman vs Axeman). The extra coins from Financial are a great complement to the cash coming in from taking cities and pillaging.

Main thing I have noticed about Vikings is that, not being Industrious or Organised, they probably shouldn't bother building very many wonders and they should be very judicious about the choosing not to raze enemy cities.

From my experience in WOTM6..without using any spoilers, since it is still open to be submitted by any who want to, is that Berserkers and Trebs are an amazing combination. Catapults are ok...but we really want to use Trebuchets ASAP, which means if we were to plan on warring anyone after Khan, we would want to research engineering fast.

Berserkers are great for attacking off ships, which leads to very fast coastal assaults(I took out 4 AI cities in 6 turns along their coast with the same forces each time), but they are also great on land...for attacking across rivers. Rivers only give a +25% modifier, rather than +50%, but that's still a benefit we'd have when defending and not have to worry about when attacking. Plus, they are still +50% against melee units. That combined with the vassalage/theo/rax experience quickly gives the ability for CR3/Combat 1 troops.

Another thing to consider is what to do with the Great General we will likely get out of our war with Khan. IIRC, we can use him to give bonus experience in a single city, give +50% production in a single city, or give experience to all units in a single tile/free upgrades for one unit.

Generally I've used them for superunits, either super-city raiders or super-healers. In WOTM6 though, I found it to be a great boon in my military city to have +2 exp, +50% prod, and with the Heroic Epic, +150% total.

As for my turnset...I don't expect it will have any surprises. We can place the Great Library anywhere we want if we can get a GE in time, otherwise we'll want to put it in either El Dorado or IronSheep, since they can both have decent production and still have a few forests.

As for civics, I should think Hereditary Rule would be good for growing our cities more if needed, otherwise I'd propose Representation...it'd give us some bonus science, along with +2 happy in all of our cities. I don't know that we want to grow our cities larger than that right now anyway.

I'll leave the HR vs Representation decision to others, as I can never sit down and work out the maths of the benefits of either happier cities that can work more cottages, or more science from specialists. Isn't representation quite good when we still only have a small number of cities? I don't know.

Also, can someone explain exactly what makes the Great Library so essential? Can you quantify the benefit provided in terms of beakers and tech pace?

Harbourboy said:

Which one is going to be our Science city? Do we have a Science city yet?

Also, I have been looking at the graphs of the other teams' performance. There seem to be some interesting graphs there that look different to ours. Is anything we can conclude from those graphs at this stage?

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Since I seemed to be fairly accurate about my readings last SGOTM...I can take a guess about what some teams are doing:

CRC: Built a wonder between 925BC and 820BC...probably either Pyramids or the Oracle. Oracle would be an easy build then, but they tend to go extreme, so probably the Pyramids(remember, they didn't move their capital, so had more forests) They are currently building up their troops, either to invade or raze Khan. Either one is a valid move, although I'm tempted to think they will raze him unless they did a CoL slingshot rather than building the Pyramids...they could easily whip/chop courthouses in their viking cities, build up their military, take on Khan, keep all his cities and then whip/chop the FP in Vikingland and move their palace to Karakorum.

VQ: Played the religion card. They are growing larger cities thanks to religion, and are hoping it spreads to Gandhi allowing them free spying into his lands. They too are building up a military to take out Khan. They built something between 2800BC and 2200BC, probably Stonehenge, and something else between 1600BC and 1300BC, probably the Oracle.

Peanut: I believe they are going toward Pyramids as well.

CDZ: Either they are whipping a TON, or they're having real issues with barbs/Khan/Gandhi

Real Ms Beyond: Low population, no wonders, small military...I don't know what they are doing either, they beat us last SGOTM, but it appears they either have some plan I can't begin to guess at, or don't know how to help an AI win.

Moved Nidaros
Us, Trash Team, Smurkz all founded Nidaros 1 turn later...I don't know where they moved it, but everyone else founded on turn 1, which to me means in place. VQ cuild have moved, but I'm not certain they could have founded Hinduism if they had.

Built wonders
Us, CRC, VQ. Ours will be at the beginning of my set, CRC built either Oracle or Pyramids 600 years ago, and VQ has built two wonders, likely Oracle and Stonehenge, from the dates. Peanut will likely built Pyramids before us but after CRC. I can't begin to guess if anyone else will.

That's about all I can gather from the graphs right now...perhaps in two months I'll know how accurate I was

Thrallia said:

Since I seemed to be fairly accurate about my readings last SGOTM...I can take a guess about what some teams are doing:

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I'll have to make a note of this post to check how accurate it is when we finish. That said, it doesn't sound too far off the mark. We probably need to think a bit more at the start of a SG about trying some of these ploys.

EDIT:

Thrallia said:

Real Ms Beyond: Low population, no wonders, small military...I don't know what they are doing either, they beat us last SGOTM, but it appears they either have some plan I can't begin to guess at, or don't know how to help an AI win.

Click to expand...

I very much doubt the latter.

Harbourboy said:

I'll leave the HR vs Representation decision to others, as I can never sit down and work out the maths of the benefits of either happier cities that can work more cottages, or more science from specialists. Isn't representation quite good when we still only have a small number of cities? I don't know.

Also, can someone explain exactly what makes the Great Library so essential? Can you quantify the benefit provided in terms of beakers and tech pace?

Click to expand...

Benefits of HR
+1 Happy per military unit

Allows very large cities as long as you have a lot of defensive units

Benefits of Representation
+3 Beakers per specialist
+2 Happiness in 5 largest cities

That means all our cities currently would get +2 happiness..combined with gems and gold, that gives us...what, size 8 or 9 cities before we'd get unhappiness? I think that's a good size for this point in the game..I'm not sure we could get much higher in our cities with HR for quite a while.

Also, the +3 beakers per specialist, while not valid right now(we have no specialists), we do plan on having a GP farm, preferably running mostly scientists, thus +3 beakers would give 9 beakers per specialist...that's a TON of bonus science, especially since they are subject to modifiers just as commerce is.

Eg. We build a library in Nidaros and then hire 2 scientists. That would normally give 6 beakers each, so 12 beakers...plus the library gives 18 beakers. On the other hand, if we have representation, we get 18 beakers BEFORE the library, giving us 27 beakers total...from just 2 pop. That's more than we'd get from running two citizens on anything, including towns(+7 or +8 gold for us IIRC)

As for the Great Library...I consider it and the Pyramids to be the best two wonders of the early-mid game.

Benefits of Great Library
It gives you 2 GS ppt
It gives you 2 FREE Scientist specialists

That equates to 18 free beakers per turn withour representation, 27 with, plus 8 GS ppt. And that's without pulling any citizens into being specialists...in order to build the GL, you need a library, so you could conceivably have another 2 science specialists and still have a growing city...in such a case, we'd have 54 beakers per turn(under representation, 36 without) and 16 GS ppt, giving us GS's very quickly and often.

The combo of Representation and GL is a very powerful one, especially in the early game.

Sam_Yeager said:

I very much doubt the latter.

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I agree, I just can't think of any strategy they might have other than to have declared on Khan immediately and be spending all their efforts at gaining his cities and giving up their starting cities/location to Gandhi/barbs.

Harbourboy said:

I'll leave the HR vs Representation decision to others, as I can never sit down and work out the maths of the benefits of either happier cities that can work more cottages, or more science from specialists. Isn't representation quite good when we still only have a small number of cities? I don't know.

Also, can someone explain exactly what makes the Great Library so essential? Can you quantify the benefit provided in terms of beakers and tech pace?

Click to expand...

The Great Library gives two free scientists, + 2 GP points per turn, which helps research. Combined with Caste which allows unlimited specialists it can greatly help research and the generation of great scientists which can be used to pop techs. I believe that Representation doubles GP points but I may be wrong about that.

EDIT: Crosspost with Thrallia.

Great analysis guys. That has answered a heap of my questions. I overlooked the GP aspect of Great Library + Specialists, which if used to pop techs equals additional "beakers" over and above the ones visibly used for research each turn.

It is fascinating trying to work out what the other teams are doing as the graphs are starting to diverge all over the place.

Yes...if we truly wanted to go all out Specialists for our GP farm, we could go Pacifism/Cast System once we get CoL/Philo.

That'd give us unlimited specialists, and Pacifism doubles GP points.

Thus, with 4 scientists, as above, we'd make 28 GS ppt(4 scientists*6 points + 4 points for GL), with adequate food, we could go to anywhere from 6-10 specs(including the two free ones) giving us up to 64 GS ppt! That would very quickly give us lightbulbs for space race techs.

Interesting ideas that will make for heated debates when the time comes for that decision.

When do you start playing then?

And, based on your analysis of the other teams, who are looking like early threats?

Early threats are, as always, CRC and Peanut. Right now I'd say VQ is a threat, and most likely Gypsy Kings and Murky Waters will be threats. Real Ms Beyond is likely to do well also.

However, I would tend to think that anyone who does not get the Great Library and/or the Pyramids will have trouble maintaining the tech pace of the others.

How do you rate our chances at this point? And when are you playing your turns?

I'll play my turns tomorrow, on Thursday, it'll be my first chance, but I'm not sure we're in a hurry anyway.

I don't think I can rate our chances right now other than to say I think we've done a pretty good job so far...Once some of the other teams are farther along I'll be able to rate us and them.

One thing I do have to add, as an aside, is that I am impressed by the standard of writing in this thread. You all use real words, not gibberish like "omg wot a dum 1 2 do u noob!" It is quite refreshing compared to some other message boards around.

Go 4 1t, Thrallianizzle. u da bom. pwn the mf mongols!

I think my brain just exploded.

Just checking in 'cause I've been quiet lately. Still reading every day but nothing to add right now. I've been sick and I'm not thinking my best at the moment. I did have an amazing dream about barbarians attacking but that's about the extent of my civ playing atm. I'm better now though - hoping to play G-Minor tomorrow and if I can do it without doing anything completely insane I'll start trying to contribute here.

Hope you're feeling better now, Jenarie. And, no, Thrallia, we're not really in a hurry, but we are in suspense as to what is going to happen next.

In my Viking game I'm playing at the moment, I am rolling in cash from cottages and coast tiles. My capital is making enough cash to fund all the maintenance from my new cities. I think we really need to cottage it up in this game too.

It was also be great if we could somehow time the arrival of Beserkers with some sort of intercontinental military campaign.

What do you think our chances are of getting circumnavigation?

Depends on how long it takes to get to Optics, which I agree we should beeline for after we get Literature.

Starting play now...will post a turnset soon after I'm done

Turn 0(400BC): Rush Pyramids for 2 pop.
IBT: Nothing
Turn 1(385BC): Pyramids complete, Nidaros starts Spear. El Dorado Spear>Library. Informed Gandhi has techs to trade...that means he knows Alphabet...Now we can see his tech progress. Revolt to Representation. 1 turn now will cost less than 1 turn later
IBT: Nothing
Turn 2(370BC): Revolt over, Nidaros now has happy cap of 10 Forest chopped for IronSheep
IBT: Nothing
Turn 3(355BC): Find my first Keshik. Other than that, he's all archers...we cannot allow him to hook up the iron outside of Ning-hsia
IBT: Warrior killed by barb archer, N near barb city. I had him fortified in woods with combat 2...darn RNG
Turn 4(340BC): Nidaros Spear>Spear
IBT: Great Lighthouse BIAFAL
Turn 5(325BC): Gandhi has galleys, he's got one on our Western Shore. Uppsala Axe>Axe. Iron hooked up. Swords will commence once the Spear and Axe in Nidaros/Uppsala are complete
IBT: Archer dies attacking our Axe in IronSheep
Turn 6(310BC): Cottage started in Nidaros. Workers start filtering down from IronSheep to cottage around Nidaros/Uppsala
IBT: Nothing
Turn 7(295BC): Construction>Alpha Nidaros Spear>Rax Library Rushed in El Dorado
IBT: Archer dies attacking our Axe in IronSheep. Confuscianism founded in a far away land
Turn 8(280BC): El Dorado Library>Catapult: grows to size 4
IBT: Gandhi converts to Confuscianism and adopts Org Rel. I think he's building the Great Library himself...I suppose that's kinda a good thing?
Turn 9(265BC): IronSheep grows to size 2
IBT: Nothing
Turn 10(250BC): Nidaros Rax>Sword



Summary: We've got the Pyramids, Representation, and a high happy cap for us to grow our cities up if we desire. Rep actually gives us +3 happy for the top 5 cities
Alphabet due in 10 turns, then we can find out if Gandhi knows Literature yet...if he does, it may be worth ignoring it and just heading to Optics.

El Dorado grows next turn, then we'll have quite a powerhouse there. El Do, Nidaros, Uppsala all can build 1 sword/cat/axe in less than 8 turns(El Do is 4 turns, Nidaros is 3 turns, Uppsala is 7/8 turns) and all have Rax. I think we can safely begin transporting our troops down toward Khan and just leave them there until he's about to hook up his iron, or until it looks like he may get Feudalism(watch for him to research Monarchy)

Cottages have been begun near El Dorado, Nidaros, and a jungle on Sugar is being cleared near Uppsala for either a cottage or farm.

Chariot is at Ning-Hsia making sure Khan doesn't connect the only source or metal he has access to.

Our score actually barely went up as well thanks to the 5 whipped pop I had...I felt it was best to get the library finished ASAP, and since El Do regrew the next turn, we barely lost any research time.

Side note: From the graphs, it appears Real Ms. Beyond built the Pyramids around the same time period as we did.

I would propose that in our next turnset, after we've built say 2 Swords in Nidaros, or perhaps after it grows once more, we begin producing more workers...we desperately need to get cottages down, mines down, and perhaps build another city S of El Dorado...either on the river, or near the river, clearing the jungle and setting up a GP farm there.