SGOTM 14 - Kakumeika

Kaitzilla · Oct 31, 2011

mabraham said:
Isengard T119 will not be able to run a merchant. Karl should build a road 1S2W of Isengard, and definitely not 2W or 1S1W. Consider the likely movement patterns through this area. Then he should road Silver and the tundra forest hill 1W of silver, and then probably the ice marble, while waiting for the settler to plant so the sheep can be improved. This accelerates the settling date and access to improved sheep for city growth.

Gems City should get started on the forge before the AP, rather than a settler. If Isengard is building one for the hub marble site, we should not delay the AP in order to get out a marginal sheep city. Worker plan is good - follow up with sugar road, Gmine (since Karl is not helping) and moving one worker to the Phill to mine it.

GPfarm looks fine. Why fort the silk T115 only to replace it next turn? I don't think we will work this tile in a long long time. So I think we should finish the fort (though I'd prefer not to have started it!) and work on the plantation north of it with both workers, and then go and finish the slow desert incense plantation. This gets us resources for trading faster, I think.

Washington has some dead time before it can start a forge Since we will build it a monastery for the Bureaucratic bonus to AP hammers as well as the extra beakers multiplier, it makes sense to play for Washington to produce many missionaries in the long term. So that suggests not building a barracks. So I think two turns of central-tile-only hammers on wealth is the best approach, and once we have MC start a forge, planning to spread Taoism here first to whip the forge and overflow onto another missionary or two. I think Semiramus is better building a river farm 1S of corn for Marble City - working the Gmine is better than the pre-granary whip conversion, but I think earlier access to the 2-pop whip from the farm(s) is better still. Hoover should go to start Gworkshops north of Stone City. Multiple turns moving pairs of workers cross-country to do non-critical work should be avoided, IMO

CB does better to not work the Gmine (merchant instead) so that the lighthouse whip can be of two population rather than one. Then grow on coasts while building Courthouse?

Rather than another spy (we have five of them!) shouldn't Stone City build Wealth or start a Tao Monastery? I think Stone City should work the river Gmine in preference to a coast, unless coast gets growth one turn earlier. The difference between the two tiles is 11 against 3. The extra one food from the coast is worth about 2 base hammers, so Gmine is better at what we really want to produce here - hammers on missionaries. I think the first missionary should go for Washington and the second for Gems City.

Silver City builds a forge next? Our university sites look like being Washington, Stone, Gems, GPfarm, Isengard and one more... here looks best.

Phants city will whip a granary the turn after the forest chop, so we are not in a hurry to work a grassland farm. Eiffel should chop the jungle after the ivory camp, and Stevenson should spend one turn on the iron road before joining Eiffel to build the plantation after the jungle is chopped. Then judge how best to juggle roads and getting farms built.

Our missionary should spread Taoism T117 immediately before the espionage mission, just in case something good happens - like spontaneous Taoism spread.

Deny requests for Philo, not Pacifism

Ok, I will change Karl's work order.

Ok, I'll whip a missionary in Gems City, overflow into a lighthouse, whip a forge, finish the lighthouse, and get started on AP Palace.

The first was a boo-boo already finished in T115. I'm pretty sure it takes two worker turns to finish. I'll just complete it since that is what everyone wants.

I understand the urge to build monastaries and courthouses in every city, but I really must put my foot down in favor of some military. In my test game vs. paired AI two months ago, I lost that game going in a similiar direction as the one we are pursuing. Julius Caesar rolled up to my cities with a big stack, and his catapults attacked my city. His partner then attacked with catapults and his stack immediately after allowing no time for my troops to heal. My defensive stack of doom was destroyed, my main military city fell, and I was set back by many many centuries as they piled on. This can be prevented with a high enough power rating, which means strong troops, walls, and especially barracks. I don't feel getting to Mass Media 5% faster is worth the risk of relying on warriors and large distances to keep us safe.

I'll fix Culture Bridge so that it does a 2 pop whip.

I've decided that Stone City will work on some military before changing over to missionary.

I think Silver City should whip a settler, then a lighthouse, then a forge.

With Phants I was thinking to delay whipping the granary until 2 pop and half full food box, then whipping. So I think I need one farm before dye. Ill make sure not to waste a turn and put a road on dye and ghill as Bcool suggested I think.

I'll use the missionary to spread to Gems City as Bcool suggested.

Philo right :lol:

mabraham · Oct 31, 2011

Sun Tzu Wu said:
What do you mean "That scenario will never apply at a relevant stage of an SGOTM medal attempt."?

Sun Tzu Wu said:
In general, whipping is for turning excess Food into Hammers. Assuming the excess Food is being lost without any benefit, it doesn't matter what the Food to Hammer ratio is

The situation of excess food being lost without benefit will never arise in practice in a strong SGOTM attempt because it requires a significant error.

Sun Tzu Wu said:
If one stores Food as Population and later wants it back as Hammers, whipping and slavery is the only way to do it. Surely slavery and whipping is used in nearly every recorded SGOTM medal win; attempts that fail to get a medal do not count.

If on the other hand, you mean simply to stagnate growth at a particular Population, there may not be an optimal way to do that.

I wish to optimally convert the available food into hammers. The three main procedures for this (whipping, drafting, working tiles) have some different side effects, of course.

Sun Tzu Wu said:
Also note, that Grassland Workshops at 1F3H are indistinguishable from Grassland Hill Mines 1F3H. One notable thing about this comparison is a Railroad will add a Hammer to the Mine, but not to the Forge. The Workshop doesn't surpass the Mine until Chemistry and simply matches a Railroaded Mine.

Depending on the tech path, Railroad can be anywhere from about 3-10 techs after Chemistry. So in that window workshops outperform mines. The worker time required to add railroads is another factor.

Sun Tzu Wu said:
The only thing great about a Workshop is it adds organic hammers to a BFC that has no unused hills left, but does have spare flat grassland or plains plots.

The great thing about a workshop is that it allows you to run a Caste-enhanced specialist economy with some cities spending food on gold and beakers via specialists faster than cottages can yet have grown, and other cities producing hammers from flat land with comparable efficiency to slavery, and all cities having fairly high populations and specialized buildings. How good this is depends on the land and game situation.

Sun Tzu Wu said:
Instant Stack of Doom:

Finally, whipping is the best way to produce an huge army where none existed before. For example, one can whip a unit every two turns in every city for 10 turns, creating an army of 5 * # cities in one's empire. The assumption is all cities have stored excess Food as Population sufficient to be whipped at least 5 times every other turn. No AI can hold out against such huge numbers of units or respond fast enough by whipping defenders or moving his mobile forces to defend cities under attack.

Conclusion:

I understand that the concept of storing Food as Population for later whipping is not what you are objecting to. However, I do not accept your idea that stagnate cities at a supposedly ideal population size must be used in every SGOTM medal winning game. Never say never. Sometimes it is ideal for city population to continue to grow and more often it is better for a gradual reduction of the granary to enable 1-2 more specialist to be run, especially during a Golden Age.

Sun Tzu Wu

These were not my contentions. My contention was that your assertion that "situations exist where the food to hammers conversion ratio is irrelevant because the food was being wasted" are unlikely to arise in high level SGOTM play. Growing the populations before a planned transition to mass whipping or drafting is not wasting food.

Kaitzilla · Oct 31, 2011

@Bcool

Ya, we have a spy for Boston. Stone City just built it. I was thinking about building us a 6th spy in case the one for Boston or the two for Trojan Horse ran into trouble, but I suppose 6 is excessive.

Sun Tzu Wu · Oct 31, 2011

bcool said:
stealing theocracy without the religion costs ~399

stealing theocracy with the religion costs ~239

Is 140 espionage worth spreading the religion faster? I think it might be.

I'd rather spread Taoism at the last moment in Trojan Horse and save the 140 Espionage points. We can produce more Taoist Missionaries in our Holy City. We should also allow time for natural spread of Taoism to cities near the Holy City where such spread is far more likely to occur than in cities further away.

Sun Tzu Wu

Kaitzilla · Oct 31, 2011

Sun Tzu Wu said:
I'd rather spread Taoism at the last moment in Trojan Horse and save the 140 Espionage points. We can produce more Taoist Missionaries in our Holy City. We should also allow time for natural spread of Taoism to cities near the Holy City where such spread is far more likely to occur than in cities further away.

Sun Tzu Wu

I disagree. Natural spread does not really occur except in cities that don't have a religion. Also, the AP can't be started in Gems City until Taoism is spread to it around T123 if we start with the Holy City. By using the missionary on Gems City instead, we can get AP going earlier at the cost of some espionage points, which we have in abundance.

mabraham · Oct 31, 2011

Kaitzilla said:
I understand the urge to build monastaries and courthouses in every city,

Actually I want as few of these as possible

Kaitzilla said:
but I really must put my foot down in favor of some military. In my test game vs. paired AI two months ago, I lost that game going in a similiar direction as the one we are pursuing. Julius Caesar rolled up to my cities with a big stack, and his catapults attacked my city. His partner then attacked with catapults and his stack immediately after allowing no time for my troops to heal. My defensive stack of doom was destroyed, my main military city fell, and I was set back by many many centuries as they piled on. This can be prevented with a high enough power rating, which means strong troops, walls, and especially barracks. I don't feel getting to Mass Media 5% faster is worth the risk of relying on warriors and large distances to keep us safe.

I've decided that Stone City will work on some military before changing over to missionary.

If we are taking a risk, it is a calculated one. We are going to start being disliked because of Taoism, and we do have a small military and population (thanks to whipping). So that does make us a target. Against that we are 25+ turns away from the people we are most concerned about, and they have close borders with some opponents they have religious reasons to dislike, and yet other opponents with more religious reasons for dislike. We have scouts out to find any approaching stacks of doom, and once we start finding their cities we'll have a good clue on what's going on. AIs don't normally DOW when there is still land to settle. We have good chances of stealing Feudalism in time to defend against a sword-axe-cat stack setting off now (they've only had construction for a few turns...).

We've had some significant ill luck in this game (deaths of scouts delaying meeting West, loss of GLH, birth of a second GSpy that will not provide a definite gain for a long time rather than Gscientist for earlier Philo) and there is evidence from the graphs that other teams are adopting different strategies from us. We may or may not be dead already from our strategic choices and the random luck. Building a low-tech army now rather than forges and courthouses will cost us later on, and we don't know how long "later on" will be. I don't see what value 40 :hammers:

swords and 35 :hammers:

axes built now will have in 20 turns time when a hypothetical sword-axe-cat stack shows up and we're likely to be able to whip 50 :hammers:

longbows at the time. I think that accepting some risk that we can get an army up in time is a sound way to proceed with a race against opponents using unknown strategies.

Sun Tzu Wu · Oct 31, 2011

mabraham said:
These were not my contentions. My contention was that your assertion that "situations exist where the food to hammers conversion ratio is irrelevant because the food was being wasted" are unlikely to arise in high level SGOTM play. Growing the populations before a planned transition to mass whipping or drafting is not wasting food.

What assertion? Sometimes food gets wasted unavoidably depending on the terrain and improvements. "unlikely to arise" isn't saying it doesn't happen, so what is your point?

When I say something "in general", I certainly do not mean specifically "high level SGOTM play". I was simply stating that when Food is being wasted, it doesn't matter what the Food to Hammer whipping ratio is. I was certainly not suggesting that a competitive SGOTM should optimize ways to waste food? That can't be what you thought I meant, right?

This thread of conversation has become a waste of time. Let's drop it.

Sun Tzu Wu

mabraham · Oct 31, 2011

Sun Tzu Wu said:
How do you plan to complete Guilds in 15-20 turns? We aren't even close to having any of its prerequisite technologies.

I don't. I plan to steal it: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=11008617&postcount=2141. AIs love to tech Feudalism, and love to tech Guilds. Machinery is not so favourable for them to tech. Hence there's significant uncertainty about when Guilds might get stolen.

Sun Tzu Wu said:
Regarding base Hammers 3:1 ratio from whipping at low populations, for example Pop 2 city whipped 1 Population for 30H:

1) Assume city just grows back to Pop 2 with no excess food.

2) Granary will have 11F in it 22F (Pop 1) / 2.

3) One Pop whipping provides 30H and Granary still has 11F.

4) City needs precise 11F to return to state in step #1, except with +1 Unhappiness.

The only bad thing about whipping is the +1 Unhappiness stacked per whip which fades with time (10 tuns for normal speed).

30H / 11F = 2.72:1 which is fairly close to 3:1.

This is not relevant because there is no city of size 2 with a granary that we will whip.

mabraham · Oct 31, 2011

Kaitzilla said:
@Bcool

Ya, we have a spy for Boston. Stone City just built it. I was thinking about building us a 6th spy in case the one for Boston or the two for Trojan Horse ran into trouble, but I suppose 6 is excessive.

One spy fortified in TH, one waiting outside, one fortified in Boston and two scouting the East sound plenty. Perhaps we should not fortify in Boston until we can identify what we might wish to steal.

Sun Tzu Wu · Oct 31, 2011

Kaitzilla said:
Well, we do have that extra great spy roaming around for a later 3000EP boost. I suppose we could ditch a hundred or so espionage for faster religion spread.

mabraham said:
I think boot-strapping Taoism faster by spreading in Gems City is worth 100 or so EPs. I measured 397 vs 292 in the test game.

In my opinion we should value 100 Espionage as much as we value 100 Wealth, 100 Beakers, 100 Hammers or 100 Commerce.

100 Espionage is not a small amount of espionage to be wasted so we can spread Taoism a little faster.

We should quantify how much faster Taoism can be spread in exchange for the wasting of 100 or 140 Espionage. Determine what the benefits are. I would be extremely surprised if a sound argument for trading the Espionage points lost would justify the benefits gained. I assume no real benefit can accrue until we switch back to Pacifism and by that time we will have figured out a cheaper way to spread Taoism to the cities that really matter.

Sun Tzu Wu

Sun Tzu Wu · Oct 31, 2011

Kaitzilla said:
I disagree. Natural spread does not really occur except in cities that don't have a religion. Also, the AP can't be started in Gems City until Taoism is spread to it around T123 if we start with the Holy City. By using the missionary on Gems City instead, we can get AP going earlier at the cost of some espionage points, which we have in abundance.

Sorry, I probably should have qualified that natural religion spread only works on cities with no religion, thus we must manually spread Taoism to all cities that already have a religion present that isn't Taoism. (I assumed everyone knew this, but it was wrong of me to make that assumption.)

Sun Tzu Wu

Kaitzilla · Oct 31, 2011

ok no extra military then. I guess we will see how fortunate we are with only Isengarde building troops.

Sun Tzu Wu · Oct 31, 2011

bcool said:
I want a spy sent to Boston however. Do we have a spy for Boston? If we send 2 spies to the eastern witches then we don't (at least not for boston and 1 for Trojan Horse and 1 to wait to jump in. If we send 2 spies to the eastern witches we do need an extra spy.

We should always have at least one spy (and probably not two unless we want to risk a second steal attempt in the same city) in each of our gifted cities.

I believe two spies to the Eastern Witches is adequate, so long as we keep them apart, so they are never in the same plot on the same turn.

Sun Tzu Wu

Kaitzilla · Oct 31, 2011

Well, we are finally getting the debate Tachywaxon wanted

.

I would love to perform my turnset in 24 hours, but it has only been 48 hours since the last turnset ended and I am too tired to make a 2nd draft PPP incorporating all the latest changes.

I too feel the uncertainty of possibly delaying war with East Witches too long. Therefore I will plan on playing in 44 hours instead, leaving tommorow for everyone to refine their arguments and opinions while I fine tune PPP.

mabraham · Oct 31, 2011

Sun Tzu Wu said:
In my opinion we should value 100 Espionage as much as we value 100 Wealth, 100 Beakers, 100 Hammers or 100 Commerce.

That's a nice sound bite, but it does not help make sound strategy. 100 wealth is worth nearly 125 beakers at the moment, thanks to the library multipliers in our larger cities. 100 hammers has a very nebulous value - it gets us a tool to get other stuff faster.

Sun Tzu Wu said:
100 Espionage is not a small amount of espionage to be wasted so we can spread Taoism a little faster.

It's a small amount of the espionage we will acquire, a large chunk of which is sitting around wasted at the moment.

Sun Tzu Wu said:
We should quantify how much faster Taoism can be spread in exchange for the wasting of 100 or 140 Espionage. Determine what the benefits are. I would be extremely surprised if a sound argument for trading the Espionage points lost would justify the benefits gained. I assume no real benefit can accrue until we switch back to Pacifism and by that time we will have figured out a cheaper way to spread Taoism to the cities that really matter.

Sun Tzu Wu

You are assuming that Taoism provides no benefit until Pacifism. From reading the thread and PPP, you would know that we are planning to switch to Slavery and Organized Religion for 20-40 turns. That's 25% bonus to
buildings, and many of our cities want to whip multiple buildings over the next 40 turns.

The extra source of early missionaries has a chain reaction effect. Two initial focal points for spreading are much more effective than one. Our empire-wide hammer production is something like 60-70 hammers, so call 25% of that 15 hammers. Taoism will spread (on average) a few turns faster to each city that receives it. So we will get back 45-60 hammers just from the OR effect spreading earlier. That will facilitate whipping forges and courthouses sooner, returning yet more hammers and EPs. It will probably also get the AP sooner, for that benefit. We will need the same total number of missionaries in any scenario.

Our EPs are just sitting there waiting to be used - there is no time-based scaling effect in play, unlike with spreading Taoism. Stuff spent earlier gets a return earlier. In effect, we are spending some of our banked, currently-useless EPs to get a similar quantity of hammers. It's hard to put more definite numbers without a comparison play-throughs of the single-focus and dual-foci spreading scenarios.

Sun Tzu Wu · Oct 31, 2011

Kaitzilla said:
I understand the urge to build monastaries and courthouses in every city, but I really must put my foot down in favor of some military. In my test game vs. paired AI two months ago, I lost that game going in a similiar direction as the one we are pursuing. Julius Caesar rolled up to my cities with a big stack, and his catapults attacked my city. His partner then attacked with catapults and his stack immediately after allowing no time for my troops to heal. My defensive stack of doom was destroyed, my main military city fell, and I was set back by many many centuries as they piled on. This can be prevented with a high enough power rating, which means strong troops, walls, and especially barracks. I don't feel getting to Mass Media 5% faster is worth the risk of relying on warriors and large distances to keep us safe.

Just building a Wall in the cities on the frontier near the expected path of an AI Stack of Doom can be enough to dissuade the AI from following through on its War plans. This is especially effective on Hill Cities.

One ploy which doesn't help our power rating is building Walls until there's 1t left. When the AI Stack of Doom arrives, its siege units will take one or more turns to bombard the city. When the cultural defense is gone, complete the Walls and the defense goes back up to 50. This is most effective when Cultural Defense is 60 or higher. Not sure it will help in our situation, unless Cultural Defense is at least 40.

It would also have helped our Power rating, if we had build Archers or even Swordsmen rather than Warriors when we traded Iron away. Just a comment on a side effect of the choice; I still think Archers would have been better and Power rating is part of why; Helping Eastern Witches is the other.

I'd prefer to build Barracks and Walls to increase our Power rating to avoid unit maintenance. We probably should refer to the Power rating article in the Civ IV War Academy for the details.

Sun Tzu Wu

mabraham · Oct 31, 2011

Sun Tzu Wu said:
We should always have at least one spy (and probably not two unless we want to risk a second steal attempt in the same city) in each of our gifted cities.

Yes, if we can name the tech that we may wish to steal in 5 turns' time from which AI. Even a 0.5% chance of spy discovery per turn becomes significant if we sit there for 20 turns when we didn't have a tech that we might have wanted to steal.

We plan to steal Theology in the short term. The next steal might be Civil Service or Machinery, and we will have a better handle on what to do about that when we have an idea when the AIs will finish them.

mabraham · Oct 31, 2011

Sun Tzu Wu said:
Just building a Wall in the cities on the frontier near the expected path of an AI Stack of Doom can be enough to dissuade the AI from following through on its War plans. This is especially effective on Hill Cities.

One ploy which doesn't help our power rating is building Walls until there's 1t left. When the AI Stack of Doom arrives, its siege units will take one or more turns to bombard the city. When the cultural defense is gone, complete the Walls and the defense goes back up to 50. This is most effective when Cultural Defense is 60 or higher. Not sure it will help in our situation, unless Cultural Defense is at least 40.

It would also have helped our Power rating, if we had build Archers or even Swordsmen rather than Warriors when we traded Iron away. Just a comment on a side effect of the choice; I still think Archers would have been better and Power rating is part of why; Helping Eastern Witches is the other.

I'd prefer to build Barracks and Walls to increase our Power rating to avoid unit maintenance. We probably should refer to the Power rating article in the Civ IV War Academy for the details.

Sun Tzu Wu

Our power rating is equal with the weakest of the AIs at the moment, so we are at least a factor of two behind them considered as pairs, which is probably how they compute it. Archers instead of warriors would have increased our power by around 50% while delaying everything else we have done, and only maybe would dissuade the AIs from war.

I'd much rather have them send a stack to die uselessly on our late walls in Isengard with recently-whipped longbows than jeopardise our finish date with walls and barracks that only maybe will reduce the chance of a DOW that might not ever occur anyway. If an AI DOWs us then we are probably losing the SGOTM anyway - even if we survive the attack, our plans will be delayed so long that someone else with a luckier scenario will win.

Good strategy is brittle strategy: it balances risk and reward with narrow margins of safety.

Sun Tzu Wu · Oct 31, 2011

mabraham said:
That's a nice sound bite, but it does not help make sound strategy. 100 wealth is worth nearly 125 beakers at the moment, thanks to the library multipliers in our larger cities. 100 hammers has a very nebulous value - it gets us a tool to get other stuff faster.

Yes, its an attempt get everyone to think more critically about this choice. If you prefer to think of it as a "sound bite" and not quantify how much delaying Taoism spread will affect our win date, then there's nothing I can do beyond quantifying the choices myself.

mabraham said:
It's a small amount of the espionage we will acquire, a large chunk of which is sitting around wasted at the moment.

100-140 Espionage is no more smaller than 100-140 Beakers. We aren't producing Espionage nearly as fast as we are producing Beakers.

Because we have 3000E sitting on the Western Witches doesn't make wasting 100-140 Espionage a trivial matter.

mabraham said:
You are assuming that Taoism provides no benefit until Pacifism. From reading the thread and PPP, you would know that we are planning to switch to Slavery and Organized Religion for 20-40 turns. That's 25% bonus to
buildings, and many of our cities want to whip multiple buildings over the next 40 turns.

No, I thought the choice between early war and building infrastructure wasn't quite finalized. Yes, I have been reading the thread and the PPP, but I suppose something could have slipped by without my noticing its significance.

Your post was the first I've seen that mentions a commitment of 20-40 turns by the Team to Slavery and Organized Religion.

mabraham said:
The extra source of early missionaries has a chain reaction effect. Two initial focal points for spreading are much more effective than one. Our empire-wide hammer production is something like 60-70 hammers, so call 25% of that 15 hammers. Taoism will spread (on average) a few turns faster to each city that receives it. So we will get back 45-60 hammers just from the OR effect spreading earlier. That will facilitate whipping forges and courthouses sooner, returning yet more hammers and EPs. It will probably also get the AP sooner, for that benefit. We will need the same total number of missionaries in any scenario.

The next Taoist Missionary will cost 40H (H cost is not extra, since the delay doesn't cost an additional Missionary) and take 2t to whip. Thus the Taoist Missionary chain is delayed by 2t. There is a 3 Taoist Missionary limit that we can't exceed which limits the spread of Taoism via Missionaries.

You claim that the Organized Religion will add 15 Hpt Civ-Wide. Spread is delayed by 2t, so we lose 2 x 15H to save 100-140 Espionage.

I consider 100-140 Espionage more valuable than 30 Hammers, even though they aren't really comparable. The question is which choice gets us an earlier win date? I don't really see 30H having that much effect on our win date and to be honest I have no way to express the value of 100-140 Espionage yet with respect to our win date.

However, I still prefer saving the Espionage points. 30H just isn't persuasive enough.

mabraham said:
Our EPs are just sitting there waiting to be used - there is no time-based scaling effect in play, unlike with spreading Taoism. Stuff spent earlier gets a return earlier. In effect, we are spending some of our banked, currently-useless EPs to get a similar quantity of hammers. It's hard to put more definite numbers without a comparison play-throughs of the single-focus and dual-foci spreading scenarios.

If the game situation allowed it, would you trade all 3000E we have into hammers at 140E:30H ratio? 3000E -> 643H? Would that be a fair trade?

Sun Tzu Wu

Sun Tzu Wu · Oct 31, 2011

mabraham said:
Our power rating is equal with the weakest of the AIs at the moment, so we are at least a factor of two behind them considered as pairs, which is probably how they compute it. Archers instead of warriors would have increased our power by around 50% while delaying everything else we have done, and only maybe would dissuade the AIs from war.

We should not be concerned while our power rating equals the AI Teams. We could even be significantly lower (maybe 80% of theirs) without too much risk.

Archers (25H) are only 10H more than Warriors (15H), but now that we have an adequate power rating, I agree that Warriors was the right choice.

mabraham said:
I'd much rather have them send a stack to die uselessly on our late walls in Isengard with recently-whipped longbows than jeopardise our finish date with walls and barracks that only maybe will reduce the chance of a DOW that might not ever occur anyway. If an AI DOWs us then we are probably losing the SGOTM anyway - even if we survive the attack, our plans will be delayed so long that someone else with a luckier scenario will win.

You don't think we have already missed our gold medal chance for SGOTM-14? I'm convinced that at least one top team made a beeline to Iron Working (Domination Win), but maybe not based on the Teams' graphics.

Are you against building a single wall in Isengard?

mabraham said:
Good strategy is brittle strategy: it balances risk and reward with narrow margins of safety.

A good Grand Strategy that is well executed is what usually wins a SGOTM.

An optimal strategy may be brittle. A good strategy is best if it can bend to adequately deal with contingencies.

Sun Tzu Wu

SGOTM 14 - Kakumeika

Lord Croissant

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Lord Croissant

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Lord Croissant

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