SGOTM 15 - One Short Straw

LowtherCastle said:

SHouldn't be a problem. We just put it somewhere where we aren't running culture.

Click to expand...

I was more thinking of the risk of our cities flipping back
It's still something we can deal with. Just a little more effort on our part.

@bbp

Sorry to hear that you're leaving us... and Civ. I've retired from Civ IV twice and it was always xOTM/SGOTM that brought me back. I'm sure that you'll be back!

ZPV said:

On t74, I see a couple of options for NC's hammers.
They could go into a warrior (->spearman autoupgrade) to set up a 2-pop whip when it's convenient.
They could go into the Pyramids for a smidgen of failgold.

Click to expand...

NC isn't connected to the stone on T74. I assume that connection doesn't occur until after those hammers are assigned to the build, right?

ZPV said:

I was more thinking of the risk of our cities flipping back
It's still something we can deal with. Just a little more effort on our part.

Click to expand...

Can they flip back even if the previous owner doesn't have any current culture, from another city, on the city center? I've never played with it before. DO they get a free unit when it flips? What else happens? We absolutely can't afford to let that happen while we're in the middle of some big build, or afer we've built some strong infrastructure.

LowtherCastle said:

NC isn't connected to the stone on T74. I assume that connection doesn't occur until after those hammers are assigned to the build, right?

Can they flip back even if the previous owner doesn't have any current culture, from another city, on the city center? I've never played with it before. DO they get a free unit when it flips? What else happens? We absolutely can't afford to let that happen while we're in the middle of some big build, or afer we've built some strong infrastructure.

Click to expand...

1. They won't be stone-enhanced hammers, but it's still an option to think about.

2. If the tile culture says the city tile should belong to its former owner (and it will), and they have a city whose cultural boundaries have expanded to include our recently-acquired city center, then it can flip.

i.e. They keep all the tile culture they've built up over the years, but they still need a city nearby to get a flip.

Edit: They get a free defender, and all the buildings remain (and even keep their culture output, I believe).

LowtherCastle said:

Looking ahead, we have a lot of research to do (Aesthetics, Lit, Poly, MC, CoL, Currency, etc.), so we need to find a nice balance between early warfare, teching, and failed gold accumulation.

Click to expand...

Does building a Library and hiring Scientists right away really need to happen if we have a lot of techs to tech? I mean, the primary purpose of the Scientist Specialists is to get a Great Scientist; their additional Flask output is helpful but it's not going to be a sizeable part of our tech rate.

So, as Mitchum was suggesting, do we really need to get our Library so soon? Can we afford to build a couple of more units out of Chandi? Or can we actually get The Great Library soon enough that it really does make sense to get our 2 Scientists in Chandi hired as soon as is reasonably possible?

LowtherCastle said:

1. WHen to switch research to 100%. T74 when we start wokring 2sci? Wait till Delhi is also working 2 sci?

Click to expand...

2 Scientists + a Library = 2 * 3 * 1.25 = 6 * 1.25 = 7.5 Flasks

So, we essentially "lose" a 0.5 Flask for every turn that we're at 0% Science. So, technically, we're possibly better off, on average, running at a 100% Science Rate when hiring 2 Scientists, but again, it depends upon how much raw Commerce is being applied to Science in our Cities that contain Libraries; it could be that we end up with a final total with 0.75 Flasks as the decimal portion of our total Flasks made, in which case it's better to be at a 0% Science rate during the 2-Scientist-hired time period.

Thus, the answer depends upon how much Commerce is being made by our Library Cities and what the total of all decimals will be at either a 0% (0.5, in this case) or a 100% Science rate, with the higher the decimal fraction, the greater the loss due to truncating the decimal values.

Note that truncation only happens after the Flask output from all Cities has been summed, so if one City makes X.5 Flasks and another City makes Y.5 Flasks, then we will have (X+Y+1).0 Flasks, which will mean no fractional loss at all.


Of course, maybe you were just asking in general when would be a good time to switch. I can't really answer that one, since I don't know how much Gold we have accumulated and how much we will lose per turn at a 100% Science rate and for how long we'd need to sustain such a rate, etc, but it sounds like ZPV has already answered you on that subject.

LowtherCastle said:

2. Optimization of 1f3h versus 2f1h in Delhi.

Click to expand...

For the short term, if growing to a greater City Size can be accomplished faster with a 2F1H square, then sure, go ahead and work such a square, but otherwise, we're probably better off working a 1F3H square in most cases--common strategic knowledge in the Civ 4 community is that GH Mines are strong squares to work, while GFor squares are weak squares to work, so I'd only work the 2F1H squares when really needed for a couple of turns, if at all.

ZPV said:

2. Except where turn-by-turn builds dictate otherwise, my instinct is to go for a 2f1h tile. What Delhi needs most of all is citizens.

Click to expand...

Hmmm, yes, if there are still squares to grow into, we COULD work a 2F1H square, but again, unless we are completely desperate for Worker turns or unless we need to work it for growing to +1 Size faster by working it for 1 or 2 turns, I'd rather not work a 2F1H square. I think that I would prefer turns of a 1F3H square now and that we invest some Worker turns pretty soon to get Delhi a Farm... working a 3F1C Grassland River Farm IS a very good investment and a pretty solid square to work.

Working a 1F3H square and then later a 3F1C square is better than working a 2F1H square straight up, by a long shot.

LowtherCastle said:

4. Will we start building cottages anywhere?

Click to expand...

Perform a quick test and find out: Let's say that we were to use the World Builder to delete Osaka and Kyoto and then put Cities in place of them (either Build a City on the second tab of Player items or else build a Settler and settle a City)... then add population points to said Cities... say, 4 in Kyoto and 6 in Osaka... then plop down a Deer + Cow City and set its population to 2.

Compare the Gold per Turn that we make before and after the ownership of these Cities when we are running at a 0% Science rate.

Doing so should give us a rough idea of the impact of owning a few more Cities on our economy and should help us to decide roughly how many Cottages we might need to work.


I have not found the time to review the PPP yet, but am currently away from home and am uncertain if I will be able to do so effectively.

Dhoomstriker said:

Does building a Library and hiring Scientists right away really need to happen if we have a lot of techs to tech? I mean, the primary purpose of the Scientist Specialists is to get a Great Scientist; their additional Flask output is helpful but it's not going to be a sizeable part of our tech rate.

So, as Mitchum was suggesting, do we really need to get our Library so soon? Can we afford to build a couple of more units out of Chandi? Or can we actually get The Great Library soon enough that it really does make sense to get our 2 Scientists in Chandi hired as soon as is reasonably possible?

Click to expand...

It takes 17 turns to pop the GS from NC. The beakers to get Aesth, Lit and MC are not a problem in the timescale it takes to get 2 GS.
(And we can't even consider getting Delhi past 200GPP before this one pops. We can unwork scientists later if we have more room)

Dhoomstriker said:

Does building a Library and hiring Scientists right away really need to happen if we have a lot of techs to tech? I mean, the primary purpose of the Scientist Specialists is to get a Great Scientist; their additional Flask output is helpful but it's not going to be a sizeable part of our tech rate.

So, as Mitchum was suggesting, do we really need to get our Library so soon? Can we afford to build a couple of more units out of Chandi? Or can we actually get The Great Library soon enough that it really does make sense to get our 2 Scientists in Chandi hired as soon as is reasonably possible?

Click to expand...

NC can't start building axes until Delhi's borders expand on T75. At that point, I'm scheduling it to chop two axes to protect against Toku's vagabond archer. But the library is already done.

Anyway, how soon we complete the GLib depends on how soon we get Literature. 4 sci * library bonuses will help that. We don't want to even do the bulbing if it's going to delay Fishing forever.

Also, I'd like to grow NC asap so it can work some cottages. The sooner it pops the GS the better. SO I'd like for other cities to produce our units if possible.

I've played through the PPP and have some questions:

T66 - What are you building in Marble City after the granary?

T66 - Why parital road NC E+SE and not the GHill mine at NC E+NE? E+NE could have iron and is the direction the road is going to go eventually.

T67 - Delhi should be at +3F (FP + copper + mine), not +4F, right?

T69 - Why not farm Zlat-S instead of Zlat-W? Zlat-W prevents a forest growth on that tile.

T72 - What does Zlat start after the granary? It looks like a library by looking at the save.

T74 - Why not build a warrior (auto upgrades to a spear) instead of a scout? I'd like at least 1 or 2 spears in our stack. A spear can easily kill a red-lined archer and will be need in case we run into chariots/war chariots.

T74 - What are you doing with the Zlat worker? I see chopping in the test game...

I didn't see any whipping in Marble City but I see 6 more turns of in the test save...

How far do you plan to play?

Mitchum said:

I've played through the PPP and have some questions:

T66 - What are you building in Marble City after the granary?

T66 - Why parital road NC E+SE and not the GHill mine at NC E+NE? E+NE could have iron and is the direction the road is going to go eventually.

T67 - Delhi should be at +3F (FP + copper + mine), not +4F, right?

T69 - Why not farm Zlat-S instead of Zlat-W? Zlat-W prevents a forest growth on that tile.

T72 - What does Zlat start after the granary? It looks like a library by looking at the save.

T74 - Why not build a warrior (auto upgrades to a spear) instead of a scout? I'd like at least 1 or 2 spears in our stack. A spear can easily kill a red-lined archer and will be need in case we run into chariots/war chariots.

T74 - What are you doing with the Zlat worker? I see chopping in the test game...

I didn't see any whipping in Marble City but I see 6 more turns of in the test save...

How far do you plan to play?

Click to expand...

I'll answer what I can off the top of my head and the rest after I get back from the store, which closes in a half hour.

1. Mable City builds a cat first. (I'm trying to build the cats first mostly, simply to minimize unit cost, and because they're easier to 2pop.)

2. The road at NC-ESE is to get our axe(s) into the Toku archer zone quicker. The NC axe(s) are finished starting T80, which is last minute. Otherwise, that road is probably useless. We could road as you point out.

3. I'l recheck the precise food counts later.

4. Good idea on Zlat-S! I didn't think about it that way. I was just farming the farthest first, because I figured we'd farm several, but not all at once, so we'll go with Zlat-S.

5. I've been thinking library, because every Zlat tile is river, plus the gold. Otoh, we could go barracks and focus on military units, eventually for Hammy. Opinions?

6. A warrior->spear in NC? Frankly, I'm reluctant to put those hammers into a spear there, because NC is so far away from everything. I'd prefer to build failed gold, then eventually wbs/galleys. Otoh, a scout, though possibly useful, is more unit cost. Perhaps an unpromoted spear is the best use of those hammers, since we're not connected to stone and will want a spear or two for Hatty. Okay, I'm convinced.

7. Zlat wkr: camp-chop-farm-chop-mine-?rd? Kind of depends on whether we build a barracks or a library next.

8. Marble CIty whips twice. I'll go through the sequence a little later to make sure nothing's omitted.

9. I was hoping to play to close to T80. As you pointed out last week, we need to get the show on the road. Depends on what happens, as always.

Since your plan goes to T75, I think you should stop there and then play the next 5 turns later.

I'm fine with you playing with the few changes listed above.

Mitchum said:

Since your plan goes to T75, I think you should stop there and then play the next 5 turns later.

I'm fine with you playing with the few changes listed above.

Click to expand...

Right. I didn't mean all in one go anyway. More that once someone's playing, it seems to move faster. Switching players seems to slow things down for a while. If I can get this close to where we ready to go down on TOku, then that sets Dhoom or ZPV up for a new phase, which he can hopefully complete, and so forth.

EDIT: When MW played SG10, we broke the second half into distinct phases, each lasting 10-20 turns, and each guy was able to focus on one phase. Worked really well.

Perfect. So you're pitching middle relief and then Dhoom (or ZPV) is the closer... at least for the Toku campaign.

When do you plan to play? Are you needing more feedback?

BTW, on Zlatorog, I'm not sure how far past Engineering, Machinery and CS we really need to research. I'm not sure that a library in Zlatorog will pay for itself. I'd rather either build units for the Toku war or a barracks to set us up for future wars.

I've updated the PPP above, except for the Zlatorog build after the granary. I agree on barracks there rather than library, which will only give us 4bpt at 16cpt at 100% research slider. A promoted axe exploring north gives us a back-up alternative to 10XP. Btw, I think there's an excellent chance we'll research to Guilds, because I think we're going to run into a very advanced opponent or two. (The max GNP right now is more than twice ours... ) Should be fun, knowing how we can "trade" for techs with the Wawas. We should be able to get Monarchy and Fedualism for free...

I'd like to run a quick test with 2f1h instead of 1f3h in Delhi to compare the food/hammers differences. Then I'll either play tonight or tomorrow morning, but I'll give a bit of advanced notice.

Been running a number of tests and juggling the food between the two cities is quite interesting. Growing Delhi faster enables us to compromise and work mines sooner at pop4, so that we can get it down to at least +4f = -6h, which is a pretty good trade-off. But I'd like to test an idea in which we simply don't poprush Delhi any more at all and instead work all three mines, while growing Marble faster and 2popping it three times instead of two. Usually poprushing comes out better overall, but since we're not in a hurry to get the +60h for the first few units and because we're sharing the food, it might not be the case here.

I'll go ahead and test some more tomorrow morning, but should be able to wrap it up reasonably quickly.

LowtherCastle said:

Four religions have been founded, which means someone has Theology or CoL, most likely Theology. That's really early (2000BC) and I can't see us researching it and building the AP any time soon.

Click to expand...

I remember seeing this effect before in a game... probably an XOTM game... the AIs would tech quickly but would have a low amount of production. As a result, they were still very vulnerable to Stacks of Doom but could be well-prepared for a war where they were given a few turns to whip units.


Of course, this situation is slightly worse if most AIs have City Walls and Castles in their capitals, as they get solid defensive bonuses with a chance of getting Longbowmen reasonably early.

LowtherCastle said:

To prevent Mahabodhi from winning a AP victory, we may want to keep some AI alive, isolated in a city without Buddhism.

Click to expand...

That idea is a good one, but we'd probably be forced to gift a City with a Religion already spread to said City in order for the idea to work.


Another thought is that after building The Pyramids, a City like Kyoto should build a Monastery and whip out Buddhist Missionaries... if we're going to have at least ONE Buddhist City, we should aim to have a ton of said Cities, so as to have as great of an influence as possible over the voting. For example, other votes could hurt us badly, too, such as "return a City to its original owner."

Perhaps it will be worth switching gears to getting Metal Casting before Aesthetics, getting an early Forge, generating a Great Engineer, and building the AP ourselves (as a Hindu Apostolic Palace) using a Great Engineer.

In that case, we'd want a Great Engineer as our second Great Person and could feasibly delay Chandi's Library for a while.

Optionally, we could still get Chandi's Great Scientist and then just aim to build a Forge in Delhi before building The Great Library, then run an Engineer Specialist alongside Scientist Specialists and hope for good luck in the 3rd and 4th Great People that we generate, with one of them hopefully coming out as a Great Engineer.

ZPV said:

Aren't they just Buddhism + the three ancient religion techs?

Click to expand...

Even if that's the case (instead of the case of Theology already having been learned), then the point is that AIs who tech extra quickly will still be behind on Hammers, so we will still have a while to build the Apostolic Palace, if we choose to build it ourselves.


Note that if we plan to let the AIs build a Buddhist AP, we really do need to give away a City with a differing Religion, such as Hinduism... the AI that we "keep alive" has to have incentive to switch out of Buddhism, which they will not do if they don't have a different Religion into which to switch... and I'm not sure how the Apostolic Palace works in terms of determining "Full Membership," but it's probably quite feasible for an AI to be a "Full Member" of the AP without owning a Buddhist City, as long as they keep Buddhism as their State Religion. In such a case, one of our captured Cities would probably come up as a votable option to be returned to said AI... and if it's a Buddhist City that we'd have to return, the next vote could end up being a Diplo Victory vote. We really, really, really do want to be careful about letting the AP be built as a Buddhist AP, as the extra efforts that we will have to deal with just to work around such a situation may far outweigh any up-front costs that we might have to pay just to secure the Wonder for ourselves.

LowtherCastle said:

Can they flip back even if the previous owner doesn't have any current culture, from another city, on the city center?

Click to expand...

No.

Mitchum said:

I'd like at least 1 or 2 spears in our stack.

Click to expand...

I, too, would like to see 2 Spears in our stack, which could save our bacon if Hatty gets dragged into the war. I'd plan for that possibility, given that Toku has Alphabet and their Friendly relationship.

Mitchum said:

5. I've been thinking library, because every Zlat tile is river, plus the gold. Otoh, we could go barracks and focus on military units, eventually for Hammy. Opinions?

Click to expand...

I originally thought of Zlat as our Heroic Epic City. It will have a ton of Farms but won't be able to afford Cottages without stagnation (or without failing to work our GHRiv Mines, which would just be a waste of good Hills River squares).

So, I see it as being a much better production City than a Science City.

Progress report: I figured out that the Great Library will be hard to get on a timely basis, because it will take 11t after we get Lit which also won't be for quite awhile.

But...we don't need it. If we run 1 scientist in Delhi on T74 and then 2pt, we get GS#2 on T91 and GS#3 on T99 = 400BC. That means T91 we can start building Xbows if we have Alpha from Toku and iron, which will be very powerful against Hammy's bowmen and axes.

Freeing us up from building the GLib means we have more chops in Delhi for units now, so we can skip the poprush and work the scientists instead.

I'm working on the details, but I've had some interruptions, unfortunately. While I put that together, we can discuss the question of whether we should go for MC next as Mitchum was previously proposing.

I think we need to take whatever approach is required to get the 2 GSs as soon as possible without sacrificing too much with respect to beakers, hammers and/or food. If we can get those 2 GSs without the GLib in a reasonable time, that's great because we really don't need Asthetics or Literarture right away. Literature is great for the Heroic Epic, but we can hold off on that until after the two GSs.

What I liked about early Metal Casting when I played is that there was a lull between building up the force for Toku and getting the two GSs for Engineering and Machinery. That "lull" could either be filled up by building more units and continuing our axe/cat warring or building infrastructure like forges and barracks. The great thing about forges is that they provide +2 with gems and gold. So they can be whipped with a net +1 . The issue I ran into is that in my test run wat that I built the library in NC after building up the Toku force so my GS #3 came very late. With our focus on getting said library up sooner, that shouldn't be an issue.

Now, since we're not going to be running 4 scientists in Delhi, it doesn't really matter which city, Delhi or NC, gets its GS first since they will both be running 2 scientists, right? So if we wanted, we could pop #2 from Delhi any time and NC should pop #3 on T98 or T99 if LC's math above is correct.

OR... we could run 2 scientists and 1 engineer (compliments of an early forge) in one of the cities to speed up GP #3. We don't really care if its a GS or GE, do we? So, we should be able to get GP #3 no later than T96. If we are able to run 2 scientists and 1 engineer in both cities for some time, we may even be able to pull GP #2 in several turns and GP #3 in to the early T90s. I haven't done the math but it should be doable depending on when we can get MC and build forges in NC and/or Delhi.

Mitchum said:

We don't really care if its a GS or GE, do we?

Click to expand...

For Machinery, no, for Engineering, yes. The GE will yield 1000 + 2*TotalPop, iirc, so it would only bulb about 2/3 of Engineering.

LowtherCastle said:

For Machinery, no, for Engineering, yes. The GE will yield 1000 + 2*TotalPop, iirc, so it would only bulb about 2/3 of Engineering.

Click to expand...

So as long as we don't get two GEs, we're fine because for a GS, Engineering comes before Machinery and for a GE, Machinery comes before Engineering.

If we were to run 2 scientists and 1 engineer the whole time (not going to happen since the library will come way before the forge) in both cities, the odds of getting a GE in each city is 33% and the odds of getting two GEs is about 11%. Since we'll be running 2 scientists for most of the time and an engineer for a smaller part of the time, our odds of getting two GEs should be less than 5%.

I think running an engineer is a solid way to speed up the Engineering/Machinery bulb plan. If we research MC next and build forges, that is.

Okay, I was assuming we'd bulb Machinery as soon as we get the GS, so we could start building Xbows, but of course, that's not necessary. SO you're right, if we wait to bulb Machinery, then we could run an engineer in Delhi. We'll see if and when we finish a forge in Delhi and how many turns it would speed up the GP#3.

I don't think we even want to bother with a forge in NC.

I've written up my new PPP and I'm just going to test it out and then show to you guys.