Sandkasten

here´s a copy of our start as an SP map. everybody feel free to pick map and run simulations now on how we do reach our most important goals as fast as possible (more simulations = more good):

GOALS:
1. Get settler fast and dont delay oracle
2. Get oracle fast
3. Get all techs to pick metal casting from oracle (so timing is crucial)
4. Post screen and save of turn, when you got 1-3 and describe how you did it, so we can decide on best strategy to go from here
5. have fun experimenting

my go:
1. settle in place, build worker, research agri
2. reserach an early reli, here medi (bronze doesnt help, no free worker to chop anything)
3. improve both rice, then both gems, then mine riverside hill
4. grow to 4 start on settler
5. research towards priest
6. get settler turn 34, timed with research of priest (no whipping, no chopping)
7. start oracle and grow to 5
8. research wheel-pottery
9. chop 3 forerst
10 get oracle turn 44 (see pic... ...my settler is fortified in capital, cause no sense running out with no knowlege of map)

so my milestones are:
1. settler turn 34
2. oracle turn 44, ready to pick metalcasting

View attachment 248128

Can't look at the file right now...

I've actually never done the MC-Pyramids thing before. Could you get a second city forge in time with this schedule? You have 16-17t from settler completion to forge completion, if you wanna beat the GP pop in capital.

I'll do some test runs tonight or tmr...

That looks like a great plan to me, Snaaty. Turn 44 is an extremely fast time for the Oracle and a second city (of course, it's helped by the double gems). I looked over the steps, and didn't see any major issues. (Good thing you picked the cheaper Meditation over Polytheism!) My only question is - when do we get Bronze Working? (Isn't it a prerequisite of Metal Casting?)

Hopefully tomorrow evening or the week after I can run a test. I'm swamped right now with sports.

My first run...

Tech: Agri / Medi / BW / PH / Wheel / Pottery / Writing / Oracle MC / Fishing / Sailing / COL

Delhi: worker / warrior / Part warrior + grow to 3 / settler / 1t worker / 3t oracle (1 chop) + grow to 4 / finish worker / finish oracle (2 chops) / finish warrior / library (2-pop whip) / settler / start forge / pyramids (GE rush)

Bombay: warrior / forge (2 chops + 2-pop whip) / monument / wb (explorer) / wb (seafood) / part granary / start settler

Vija: didn't bother with it

Worker(s): rice - rice - gems - gems - chop - second city corn - chops - mining and roading - nothing

Timeline:

t32 settler
t48 oracle
t52 forge in second city
t62 settler
t70 GE pops (I think I forgot to hire the Eng for 1t after forge )
t71 pyramids

I went for a second worker before Oracle, delaying MC by 3t compared to Snaaty. Placed an irrigated corn in immediate radius of second city to get it to a 2-pop whip of forge. I tried to get the library and growth to 6 timed so I can run 2 scientists and try to beat GP+GE odds (1t late with growth).

Minor issue: I'd assume that most teams won't start with Mysticism (as Snaaty pointed out somewhere else). Maybe our test map should avoid civs that do, so we can found Buddhism in test games.

One issue I'm not sure on in the current release. If you switch into a religion, does that speed up spread chances?

Snaaty, I don't believe that 4,4 should be a grassland hill.

Also, this map has problems. It has a lot of food tiles in the West that are already worker-improved? What is going on here. There is even invisible sheep on a plains-hill. I don't understand this. I tried not to work tiles I normally would while growing, but then gave in because I realized this was stupid lol.

Anyhow, you missed an important mile-stone. It's the turn the engineer gets to run in your city, which equates to the turn it will pop. I don't understand why you didn't found the sister city, since you also have a lot of work to do like getting a forge up, etc. And you have to run your engineer before your capital is 18 turns away from popping the GP or you will not beat the race against the priest. There is only a window of 6 turns between the two cities or it is too late.

I was able to have my engineer running in our second city already BEFORE turn 50, and even then I was being sloppy. But there needs to be some changes on this map, things are just wrong in places.

I started Med --> BW (and won religion race) My last hammer went into the Oracle on T44. The engineer specialist was generating GPPs on T49.


Oh and I almost forgot. There needs to be a LOT of land added to this. I was able to fogbust everything with just 1 warrior from the start. That can't happen. We need to have real waves of barbs allowed to come after us while in this start. Everything here is far too optimistic. And we haven't even begun to judge risk vs an opponent who were to show up at a vulnerable moment early.

@ obs:
concerning the map:

i didnt improve anything outside our visible range (maybe there was floodplains and i run over it with grassland, when making the island)... ...doesnt really matter. point only is, to SEE what tech first and whats the theoretically fastest way to oracle + city 2. planning on setting up second city should be done in like 5-8 turns when we have scouted that much.

the map is no secret or mystical doing, just open it in WB and do whatever you feel like, put in tiles you want and such... ...then post version 1.1 of the sandkasten

btw. obs, its monarch, there are NO "real waves of barbs"... ...i have 3 warriors fortified in capital and our innitial warrior unmoved on the starting hill... ...that will perfectly do to keep us save up to turn 50-60

what we see here NOW (and is very important):
1. Do we really need oracle in turn 44 or will 46 do?
2. If we dont need oracle in turn 44 but 46 will do, i would prefere to go for poly, because of
a) 2 turns more growth for second city
b) milestone to mono, for org-reli
3. We indeed have a decent shot on a reli if we go agri-reli
4. We should settle in place, cause start is super-strong
5. If we could get a second worker out, it would be perfect, to improve city 2
6. City 2 should be as close as possible to capital to use some improved tiles (rivermine)
7. City 2 needs food to grow as big as possible to whip the forge ASAP
8. City 2 needs forests to chop the forge as fast as possible
9. 7+8 indicate that slowing oracle for a 2. worker might be best (which makes poly also interesting, cause we loose the turns on the oracle anyways)

NEXT SET OF TESTS:
in the next set of tests we should try to find the answer on the following 2 questions:
I. when can be build the oracle with 2 workers done, so we can improve city 2?
II. can this be timed with researching poly as religion?

My feeling is I think there's almost no chance that anyone else will build the Oracle before T46. Last game I think it went in the late 50s?

Snaaty said:

I. when can be build the oracle with 2 workers done, so we can improve city 2?

Click to expand...

That's what I did in my first test.

Snaaty said:

II. can this be timed with researching poly as religion?

Click to expand...

I think so. The tech is so fast, 1t really doesn't matter. Assuming you go for BW after religion, there is a bit of a bottleneck getting to PH, but that can be used to build the second worker.

I see three mile-stones that need to be checked here.

1. Religion
2. Oracle
3. Running Engineer

Just tracking up to Oracle is very misleading, because getting the oracle is the easiest part. It's trying to make sure you get that second running engineer up before the oracle gives your capital a priest. If it's just the Oracle we wanted, I can get that around T35, maybe even faster. But it's useless if we can't get a forge up in time.

As for barbs, well yes we won't have as much as deity coming through, but we should still have enough coming around trying to pillage our tiles, and this problem has to be included in these runs.

I will try to repair this map later on this evening. For example, I have tiles that start off with 5 and 6 food loafs in the west that I haven't even improved, and plains-hills with 3 food and lots of hammers!?

I think Poly is better than Med here, because we have too much commerce, more than we can ever use.. it's just wasted really. Also, Poly will open up Parthenon, Hero Epic, Great Library, and National Epic. Med doesn't.

1. The other team's leader choices have been published. Pacal is the only one that starts with Mysticism, so we'll have a reasonable chance at a religion going Agri first. Personally I prefer Poly here, being PHI, for later Aest line stuff. That also opens up early Mono, if the Pacal team goes Hindu ahead of us.

2. We only need Agri here, start with two relevant techs, have double gems and fast workers chopping. Getting the Oracle up is no big. Just a matter of timing relative to other things.

3. In my test I did an irrigated corn in the second city's immediate radius, plus substantial ovarlap with capital. Getting that forge up is really a function of growing into a 2-pop whip, I would think. It's hard to speculate on what we would have available in the actual game. Maybe we could run alternate tests with cities slightly further away, and mediocre food available?

Barbs: We might have a difficult decision regarding second city, if copper isn't the ideal site for the forge/eng move. I'm not too worried, though. We have a very fast start here, and barbs are much less of a problem on Monarch, I think. Third city copper might even be ok.

I agree, though, I'd have a much larger land mass for spawning if I did another run. This map was ok to get the first run out of the way.

Alright, here is our Version II map.

I have removed the hill from 4,4 and I fixed the bugged food. I also threw in some random grasslands in a few places while connected some tiny islands. So now it is theoretically possible for barbs to spawn.

This is still probably too over-optimistic, but should be much more realistic at least. We can improve on this perhaps later with a Version III if there's anything else wrong here?

I am suspicious we may get something in the 4,4 in the real game, but it is possible that Dave simply removed what is in that spot, so I left it blank here.

I we should probably put a SCOUT marker on the map, and have a minie-milestone on how long it takes one of our warriors to reach the marker.

Anyhow, I gave this map a run, and going after Hindu instead of Bud seems to have delayed me by not just 2 turns, but double that.

I grabbed MC on T48, and had my engineer running at T53.

I'll try to experiment later with different orders.

obsolete said:

I we should probably put a SCOUT marker on the map, and have a minie-milestone on how long it takes one of our warriors to reach the marker.

Anyhow, I gave this map a run, and going after Hindu instead of Bud seems to have delayed me by not just 2 turns, but double that.

I grabbed MC on T48, and had my engineer running at T53.

I'll try to experiment later with different orders.

Click to expand...

once you have optimized your path/settings, please post a detailed description on what and how you did it, so we all can try to optimize it (thats what i really like about the sandkasten, with many people involved in the process of planning and optimizing, person 1 for exemple has a great idea and person 2 to x pick up this idea and can try to optimize it, helping to go for the optimal... ...each chop/whip/workeraction may count in the end)

It will take me a little while before I think I'll be ready to post a good description. I want to test a few extremes first.

BTW, for our 2n'd city, I think we should apply a small bonus to coastal spots? Because we will have (with copper) 125% bonus on Colossus, and a huge tech lead above everyone else in this direction. We don't have to build it right away, (other priorities first), but later on we can still have a great window to get this.

To be honest it's not that I think it will help us much, it's how much it hurts the financial guys that will get the most out of this one.

Since it obsoletes (npi) it's not that big a deal, but what do you think?

We also should perhaps give a small bonus to 2n'd cities which are positioned on hills, or even across a defensive river.

obs, are you getting these Oracle dates with religion first or agri? Sounds like you're going religion first in the other thread, so I'm not clear on that...

I've been mixing things up now, and can't remember what is what. But what I will tell you is, going Aggriculture first always slows down Metal Casting for me, which I expected. The only advantage with AGG first is that when you are done with oracle, you have food plots up and running with a bigger capital size. So we may want to balance risk vs reward here.

OK, I will do a new test this weekend, with babyblue...s 2 workerstart as basis and obs new save... ...turn 71 is too late for mids i fear, cause after math and given the right city you can chop the mids really fast having stone (with 5 forests and some mines its 10 turns +/-)... ...so we must aim on getting them BEFORE turn 70 I think

EDITH says:
i did a short testrun with 2 workers, getting oracle in turn 48 (seems already getting risky to my...), having engineer running in turn 54... ...which would give us the GI in turn 71 (risky too)... ...maybe its possible to squeeze 1-2 turns extra out of this (oracle in 46 + GI in 69 would be rel. save id say...)... ...im interested in obs version, cause he seems to be faster...

EDITH adds:

i was able to drop oracle to turn 47 and GI to turn 70 by changing techpath slightly:

agri-BRONZE-WHEEL-poly-priest-pottery

faster bronze helped me chopping 2. worker (1 chop)
chopped settler (1 chop)
faster wheel helped me getting city 2 up 1 turn earlier (roading there)
farming city 2 (farmed cows and dye) to grow to 4 in time

then used another trick:
to get more of the chops and whips in city 2, after reaching oracle-MC techs, went for MONO (masonry-mono), getting reli in city 2
switching slavery-org.reli
the 25% bonus on chops and whips allowed me to get the hammers needed faster for the forge (pop2 whip and 2chops each + 25%), only needed 6 hammers put into forge through produciton
View attachment 248267

im curious, if and how this can be improved....