SGOTM 15 - Unusual Suspects

I like Pottery --> CoL so we can grab another religion and then run artists (and have one city devoted to getting a Scientist for Bolly's academy). But Fishing is so cheap I'd like to do it first and whip a workboat in Delhi to explore--knowing whether or not every AI is Toku is important, and meeting more civs will also help our tech rate. After CoL we can bulb Civil Service with a Great Prophet. We'll also want Hunting at some point for the 2 deer tiles--that city site N of Drona can have 13 extra food, I believe.

I'd like to try for the AP but maybe it would be better to grow our cities first. Drona has a lot of hills and once it gets a granary it can pump out the AP probably as fast as Bolly (once Drona gets Hinduism), leaving Bolly to emphasize cottages, granary, a temple or two (to run priests for that first Prophet and raise our happy cap), monasteries (once we have Meditation, to get the 10% research bonus), etc. But first, I'd really like Drona to whip out that settler and grab the wheat spot. Then I agree we can expand more slowly.

Chris: no hammers invested in Bolly settler.
 
No actions have been taken after completion of the Oracle. All worker turns should be available. No turns in settler. Pottery, fish, and hunting make sense. COL as well, someone suggested a bulb for that. May make sense. Some units to discourage our neighbours would also be helpful. I am worried about toku. I do not have game access so can't post screens.
 
Sorry, no screenies but I've updated the test game, and if I do say so myself, it's darned good. :D Differences from real game are:
  • Real has 3 beakers, test has 2.
  • Real has 45 bpt and -14 gpt @100%, test has 44 bpt and -13 gpt.
  • Real has 2/28 food in Drona, test has 4/28
  • I have a phantom 3 hammers toward walls in Delhi to make the barracks hammers correct, but since we'll likely never build walls there it shouldn't matter.
I noticed that we have 256 espi points on Japan and need 259 to see his research. :)
 

Attachments

  • TestT68.CivBeyondSwordSave
    158.4 KB · Views: 42
Perhaps I am mistaken but I think there are AI DOW conditions where an AI is not in wheoohrn before DOW. Does anyone know if this is correct and what the conditions are?
 
Yes, an AI can DoW out of the blue--happened to me in a recent xOTM. I have a link to "AI DoW Logic" in the Reference post but I'm getting an error--the server is so slow right now that I don't want to spend time figuring out what the problem is. Maybe just a typo. I guess try searching for that in the forums.
 
I played a highly nonoptimal game to T102 just to get a rough idea of how things would go.
  • Fishing(70), Pottery(73), Hunting(75), CoL(90), Meditation(94), Math(100), Civil Service (mostly bulbed with Great Prophet born at T92, will finish T105).
  • Bolly--pop 10, barracks, granary, library, Htemple, AP(T102)--This is not build order
  • Drona--7, bar, gran, monu, Ctemp, Htemp, Hmona--FWIW, in the test game we lost the corn ~10 turns ago.
  • Delhi--7, bar, gran, lib, Htemp
  • Bombay--5, gran, monu, lib
  • Vijay(wheat, founded T75)--3, gran, monu, lib
  • Patal(deer/cow, founded ~T97?)--2
  • 93 bpt, -41 gpt @100%, ~44bpt @45%
I held off on starting the AP for quite awhile to build up population. Chopped 3 forests right after Math was done. I was wrong about Drona--it'll take too long to grow onto enough mines, so Bolly is the place to build it. I did Fishing first to start the workboat ASAP and get a prereq beaker bonus for Pottery, but doing Pottery straight away would speed up the granaries.

[Edits]--I'm going to collect ideas for improvement here:
  • Pottery first might be best--build those granaries.
  • Once we have Hunting we can't build cheapo city-garrison warriors anymore--build a couple soon.
  • 4 FWs aren't quite enough; I built a 5th but probably later than I should have.
  • Take advantage of no-anarchy revolts to save costs, run specs, etc.
  • In particular, Bombay (or Vijay?) should run 2 scientists as soon as we get Caste so we get a Great Sci (9 turns--or 6 turns if we can run 3 sci's) for an academy, before Bolly pops its Great Prophet to bulb Civil Service. Yikes, that means getting CoL no later than ~T85! Possible??
  • After CoL, turn down slider to save gold for academy-powered research.
  • Drona might run an artist for awhile to pop its borders faster--improve the odds of keeping the corn from Japan.
  • Meditation could be done later to hasten Math. It would be nice to get the AP by T95. T90 is almost certainly possible but would waste a lot of Math-less chops. I used 3 forests (all with Math) but there are more available.
 

Attachments

  • Test68to102A.CivBeyondSwordSave
    216.2 KB · Views: 50
I'm agreed with the direction the thinking is going.

So... who will be up? Deckhand? Rusten? Someone else?

Note, I won't be available for this coming set, but maybe for the one after that.
 
I have nothing to contribute right now. Don't have the energy to study test games. Too tired to think.
Spoiler :
But I'm not that sick (well, physically at least:rolleyes:) anymore. Just dead tired. Maybe ask a priest of Myrkul to replace me with a zombie and get smarter ideas.

Hope we get AP. Sistine is a must. Wonders will do wonders for culture. Is it smart to consider settling a few early Gartists instead of culture bombing?
 
I took another shot at it, playing to T97 (and "fixed" the 2 extra food in Drona). I could have finished the AP on T96 by using workers more intelligently--got sloppy toward the end. I now understand that prior to Engineering, when crossing a river, it's as if roads are not there. <Repeat to self, repeat to self...>
  • Pottery(71 just barely), Fishing(74), CoL(87 just barely), Math(95 just barely). Civil Service should be finished by bulbing a Great Prophet to be born on T100.
  • Bolly 9, Drona 6, Delhi 7, Bombay 1, Vijay 4. Patal to be founded in about 2 turns by deer/cow. This is lower pop than in the previous test, but it's 5 turns earlier and I don't have Hunting (or Meditation) yet so deer aren't camped.
  • Beaker and gold rates about the same as in TestA @T102, but we have an academy in Bolly now.
I built a 5th FW earlier and skipped a few builds in Bolly to start the AP earlier. Pottery went before Fishing and the early granaries are worth it. This allowed Delhi to get to pop7 in time to run 4 scientists when we got CoL, and then a 5th for one turn to beat Bolly to the first GP pop. The Great Sci went to Bolly for an academy. A temple built in Bolly allowed it to run a priest after that, which will give us a Great Prophet at T100 to finish off Civil Service.

I didn't optimize gold hoarding after getting CoL (saving it for when we got the academy) so it's possible Math could be done 1 turn sooner, but ... well, I cheated and gave myself 11 gold to finish CoL in time to run the Delhi scientists. I didn't revolt out of Monotheism OrgRel when I could have, so that would have saved 2 gpt. There were also some other little tweaks that would have helped slightly. So, I think we can get CoL by T87 (although somebody beat us to it in the test) and Math by T95, at which time we can finish chopping 3 or 4 forests to finish the AP on the next turn.

Another approach that might good to check would be building a temple or two in Bolly to run priests and speed up the Great Prophet, then use it to bulb CoL (perhaps researching Hunting, Meditation, and Math while waiting for the Prophet). Then finish whatever is left of Math and manually tech Civil Service (or whatever). That would presumably get us the AP faster (because we can get the Math-fueled chops) but CS would take a lot longer, unless we got another Prophet for it. But makes it harder to bulb Artists, if we're going for a Culture win. :crazyeye:

(BTW, how many MB in cumulative attachments can I have on this site? I'm pushing 11 MB and could delete some old obsolete ones)
 

Attachments

  • Test68to97B.CivBeyondSwordSave
    210.3 KB · Views: 42
Nice work, Xcal.

Are we going for CoL primarily for Caste System, or do we want to try for Confucianism? If the latter, can we shave off the 3 turns by delaying Fishing (yet again...)?

If we are going for a culture game, when do we head toward Music? And at what point do we make the decision between Religion and Culture VCs?

Sorry for all the questions. :crazyeye:

Edit: I think you are allowed 60 Mb of attachments.
 
Nice work, Xcal.

Are we going for CoL primarily for Caste System, or do we want to try for Confucianism? If the latter, can we shave off the 3 turns by delaying Fishing (yet again...)?

If we are going for a culture game, when do we head toward Music? And at what point do we make the decision between Religion and Culture VCs?

Sorry for all the questions. :crazyeye:

Edit: I think you are allowed 60 Mb of attachments.

These are the right questions. I think we can go about 3 more techs before deciding which path to go down. I am good with a plan to get pottery, fish, hunting as we need in either case. But after that we need to decide. AP religious will likley involve exploring and infecting while cultural will involve an opposite approach.
Edit-AP is useful for both.
 
Another approach that might good to check would be building a temple or two in Bolly to run priests and speed up the Great Prophet, then use it to bulb CoL (perhaps researching Hunting, Meditation, and Math while waiting for the Prophet). Then finish whatever is left of Math and manually tech Civil Service (or whatever). That would presumably get us the AP faster (because we can get the Math-fueled chops) but CS would take a lot longer, unless we got another Prophet for it. But makes it harder to bulb Artists, if we're going for a Culture win. :crazyeye:

(BTW, how many MB in cumulative attachments can I have on this site? I'm pushing 11 MB and could delete some old obsolete ones)

Glad that you keep in mind that every non-artist GP we get is one less GArtist we get (i.e. 1-2 turns longer game). GSci for academy is pretty good move, but GPro are sub-optimal, usually. When I get GPro in a culture game, I build the shrine if I can, particularly if it is early. If it is late, using for a Golden Age to generate more GArt is usually the best you can do with'em. Think this way: A GPro gives about 780beakers towards CS, as opposed to a GArt who would give about 4000 culture towards culture VC (more over the course of the game if settled early enough in the right city). How many turns towards CS does a GPro give us? Maybe 10? Will 10 turns earlier CS actually make up for the loss of 3200 culture? I can't answer that, but I have trouble believing it. IOW, instead of speeding up GPro, we'd be better off going into Caste Systems and hiring enough artists to overwhelm GPro production entirely (we'll get one for the shrine eventually - when we least want it probably:lol:).

OTOH, for religion VC there is definite advantage for having the Shrine to help spread our religion to people who won't open borders.

These are the right questions. I think we can go about 3 more techs before deciding which path to go down. I am good with a plan to get pottery, fish, hunting as we need in either case. But after that we need to decide. AP religious will likley involve exploring and infecting while cultural will involve an opposite approach.
Edit-AP is useful for both.

I agree these are the right questions, and the longer we delay fishing exploration the longer we delay having more info as a basis to decide. Without exploring, the culture path is the only one open to us. Thus, founding the religions should be a goal for culture VC. Not founding them would be better for religious VC. So as we are on the culture path, delaying fishing even more is probably a fair move. But if we are uncomfortable in knowledge that religion VC can beat culture vc by at least 500 years, then the delay for fishing is worth it. We're going to have to make a gamble in either case.

If we want slavery/OR for whipping temples (and we do), then early Drama/Music line is a must to hire artists during this buildup phase. After cathedrals are built we'd go to castes and hire loads of 'em, and hopefully have mature cottages by then to work.

Note, minor cities can overlap with our legend cities and grow cottages for them. This often helps. They can starve afterwards. Who cares?;)

But in religion VC pop is key. So city site selection needs to keep this in mind as well.
 
If both Deckhand and Rusten are unavailable, I can take it. However, I'd very much prefer if one of them can play this set.
I can post a PPP on Saturday and play when it's approved.

(OTOH) I'd prefer if Rusten can play. Work is very busy right now.
Busy and forgot to check server for a few days - sorry.
Looking good. :goodjob:
 
Are we going for CoL primarily for Caste System, or do we want to try for Confucianism? If the latter, can we shave off the 3 turns by delaying Fishing (yet again...)?

If we are going for a culture game, when do we head toward Music? And at what point do we make the decision between Religion and Culture VCs?

These are the right questions. I think we can go about 3 more techs before deciding which path to go down. I am good with a plan to get pottery, fish, hunting as we need in either case. But after that we need to decide. AP religious will likely involve exploring and infecting while cultural will involve an opposite approach. Edit-AP is useful for both.

...but GPro are sub-optimal, usually. When I get GPro in a culture game, I build the shrine if I can, particularly if it is early. If it is late, using for a Golden Age to generate more GArt is usually the best you can do with'em. Think this way: A GPro gives about 780beakers towards CS, as opposed to a GArt who would give about 4000 culture towards culture VC (more over the course of the game if settled early enough in the right city). How many turns towards CS does a GPro give us? Maybe 10? Will 10 turns earlier CS actually make up for the loss of 3200 culture?
...
OTOH, for religion VC there is definite advantage for having the Shrine to help spread our religion to people who won't open borders.
...
I agree these are the right questions, and the longer we delay fishing exploration the longer we delay having more info as a basis to decide. Without exploring, the culture path is the only one open to us. Thus, founding the religions should be a goal for culture VC. Not founding them would be better for religious VC.
...
But in religion VC pop is key. So city site selection needs to keep this in mind as well.

:confused::crazyeye: If we assume the research rate it took to get CoL, CS would take 30 turns. If using the Math rate, about 26. So I'd say manually teching it, taking into account growth and more cottages, would be at least 20 turns. Bulbing a Great Prophet cuts that to about 3 turns (from empirical test experience), so it's a pretty big deal. But using a Prophet for that instead of building a shrine, for culture and/or religion spread, is a tradeoff. (But do we really want Hinduism to spread widely? Ideally we'll have 74% of the votes and need only 1 AI to vote for us. If Hinduism spreads too much our share of the vote may be so small we require more than 1 AI's vote. Or is that not a worry given our good land and probable population lead?)

As noted before, I tend to overvalue "efficiency" versus getting things done ASAP, which is why I haven't yet tried bulbing CoL using a Prophet--it "wastes" about half of the Prophet's beakers. But if Bolly builds a Hindu temple ASAP and runs a priest we can pop a Prophet around T81, giving us CoL 6 turns earlier than in my 2nd test. If we've built a second temple (Christian, assuming Drona's missionary succeeds in Bolly) then we could pop a 2nd GP around T94--by then we should have Math and could bulb Civil Service. That would mean no Great Sci (probably created in Delhi) for an academy for quite awhile. But if we bulb CoL we get Math earlier, and therefore earlier AP--maybe T90?

How does T87 stack up for founding Confucianism? I suspect it's a bit late. If we lose, then we have only Hinduism and Christianity, but can count on getting Buddhism one way or another. That leaves Taoism via Philo. We probably need 4 religions for a good Culture effort. If we can establish contact/routes with other civs and don't actively spread Hinduism to our religionless cities we can probably count on getting infected by at least one of Judaism, Islam, and/or Confusion.

(Some) key issues:
  • We really need the AP for a Religious win. Can we beat the AI that founded Divine Right (and has Theology) back on T39?
  • How badly do we want to found Confucianism?
  • If founding Confusion and building the AP are of vital importance and we're worried about failing, then we should get a Great Prophet and bulb CoL. We'd then have to decide between next getting a Great Prophet (to bulb CS) or Scientist (for an academy).
  • If getting Civil Service early is an aim then we should save our 1st Prophet to bulb it, or plan to get another Prophet before a Scientist.
  • How important is meeting other civs and exploring? I think most people think pretty important. So Fishing needs to stay near the top of the queue.
I guess I lean more toward trying for a Religious win, without worrying too much about founding Confusion, and being pretty confident that we can build the AP in time. So I'd go for something like my 2nd test. It's not optimal for a Culture win, but it's not bad at all, and we can still change our minds without siginificant damage for awhile. But we really need to have more discussion, perhaps a lot more, before anybody plays.
 
If we go for a religious win and there's an AI that can't be reached...
or infected with Hinduism because of closed borders... we would lose. Therefore if we decided to pursue Religion we'd have to keep Cultural as our backup. It's certainly a risk. A Cultural win is pretty safe, but a bit slow. Religion is quite a bit riskier, but could be much faster. A key in deciding between them is seeing what other AI are out there. Or we could blindly commit ourselves to Culture, which doesn't really depend much on meeting the AI, other than finding them so they can infect our cities with other religions to enable temples and cathedrals. But finding the AIs also boosts our research rate and provides more trading opportunities. BTW, since we have Writing now, we would profit from Open Borders if we can find more AI (although we'd need Sailing for trade routes)--the Toku's aren't going to trade with us any time soon.

I'm getting a bit burned out with the tests. Can someone study the similarities and divergences of pursuing Religion vs Culture? When, and how quickly, does it become critical to decide? Going for CoL seems like a no-brainer, but is Civil Service the next Big Thing? I've assumed so, but what do I know?
 
Ok. I will put some thoughts together on path toward a Ap relig victory and what it would take. The biggest issue would be reaching them. But in general, unless we are blocked by say mountains, galleons should be as much as we need. Once we reach them, there are a few ways to get the religion to AI even without open borders.
 
Top Bottom