SGOTM 15 - One Short Straw

To bulb Machinery and Engineering (roughly 2600b), we'd need to research first these techs:
Code:
 312 Iron Working
 468 Aesthetics
 468 Alphabet
 702 Metal Casting
----
1950 Total beakers
That's a lot of beakers and Alpha might or might not be useless, except fo a spy or two, although I'm beginning to think that these might be the only two Gawas, since they don't seem to have signed OBs with anyone they've met, Unless they met them across a channel.

But Engineering gives us 50% faster land units, which might be our main source of travel. Aesthetics also gets us closer to Literature and the Heroic Epic. MC gives us happiness and more hammers per turn.

We could chop the Pyramids in Kyoto and run a buttload of scientists (2@Delhi, GEL, NC, Kyoto). We could also build the NE for failed gold. It would be a gambit that would delay our conquest slightly but would probably pay off in the long run if we have to travel a lot by land.

The Pyramids would also give us Police State for warring and Universal Suffrage for cash rushing some cultural buildings at the end, if we need that. Furthermore, research may be our bottleneck, since we can't trade, at least not so far.

But...it would significantly delay our westward exploration and we might find out that conquest by water is much better.
 
If we research Alphabet, we can probably get Iron Working in a peace deal... although perhaps not from Toku, since he'll might die before building a 3rd City.

I am strongly against self-teching Iron Working.

I do want Code of Laws for Courthouses but I don't particularly want a competing Religion.

Metal Casting would be very nice and could be coupled with Organized Religion to get us some Forges (or at least in Cities with Hinduism in them). However, it's hard to say when we'll have the Hammers to build Forges... but then again, we could possibly partially-Chop them.

We can skip Fishing for now if we go with settling on the Marble City location, as Gems City (our only Coastal City) would be too busy with building Warrior -> Granary to be able to build any Work Boat explorers for a while.

So, perhaps we'll go Pottery -> Hunting -> Metal Casting -> Horseback Riding (if we find a source of Horses, it'll be far better to tech this tech than to dink around avoiding techs just so that some time in the future we can Lightbulb some other military techs--get the military units sooner and use them while they'll still be of use) -> Code of Laws, with us potentially squeezing-in Fishing somewhere if we do find a source of Horses?
 
Forges give an immediate +2 :) as soon as we get gems hooked up. We can and should whip these in just about every city once we have our Toku force put together.

As I said before, we can self-research the techs LC mentioned or skip Fishing and get Machinery and Engineering with GSs. I hate skipping Fishing but it is an option.

Let's reassess the Pyramid gambit once we've completed the Oracle.

We do have to decide what to research after Pottery though... Hunting works well with getting Zlatorog off it's one-pop butt. MC could be nice as well. Or Fishing if we want to explore the land mass to the west. There could be some prime settling locations over there.
 
Attached is an updated test saved game.


In the real game, Hammurabi has 2 sources of Clam and he does not want Stone in trade (although he will happily take our only Gold Resource).

Not so coincidentally, he is also the AI that built The Great Wall.

That fact kind of sucks. There's a good chance that he built it in his juicy capital.

So, if we want to capture his capital, we'll need to give up the ability to abandon captured Cities to the Barbs.

Then again, two Clams and 0 Gold Resources? What kind of a dumpy capital is that? :p Obviously, he could have 1 source of every other type of Resource...


LowtherCastle said:
I'm beginning to think that these might be the only two Gawas, since they don't seem to have signed OBs with anyone they've met, Unless they met them across a channel.
It would be nice to have other AIs in this game... that way, we might still have the option of gifting a Great Engineer for the Apostolic Palace.

Nothing says that it has to be Christian, either. If we can find an AI that learned Meditation (which was used to found some Religion that I forget) or an AI that learned Monotheism (Taoism), we could just as easily get them to build the Apostolic Palace in their Religion and then we could capture their Cities which contain said Religion, muahahaha.


Even if we do capture The Great Wall, though, we could always gift said City away to another beleaguered AI late in the game and then try to let Barbs take over some of our captured Cities. So, actually, all would not be lost by capturing the City with The Great Wall in it, as we could give up that City later on (although doing so could be annoying if it is a City placed at a chokepoint, which it is very likely to be, seeing as how Toku has such a City).
 
To bulb Machinery and Engineering (roughly 2600b), we'd need to research first these techs:
Code:
 312 Iron Working
 468 Aesthetics
 468 Alphabet
 702 Metal Casting
----
1950 Total beakers

I don't have my civ stuff with me, but I think we'd need to add Calendar to the list above. We'd also have to research CoL (546) and Civil Service (1248). So the total for this approach is 1,950 + 1,794 + 546 (if we need Calendar) = 4,290 :science: total.

If we do it all by and and don't bulb Machinery and Engineering, we'll have to research all of Metal Casting (702), Machinery (1092), Engineering (1560), CoL (546) and Civil Service (1248). That's 5,148 :science: total.

If we are willing to sacrifice Fishing (big, I know), we'd only have to research MC, CoL and CS. That's 2,496 :science: total.
 
That post was a response to Dhoom, assuming that we don't research Fishing, so we also wouldn't need Calendar, which has Sailing as a prereq.

I'm not so concerned with CS, because to me the big benefit of Engineering is the 50% faster movement. Trebs are also nice of course.
 
I'm not so concerned with CS, because to me the big benefit of Engineering is the 50% faster movement. Trebs are also nice of course.

So are you thinking axes, cats and trebs. Since we'll have Machinery, I was thinking with CS we could have maces instead of axes. Plus, CoL on the way to CS let's us run Caste System so that we don't need libraries to run our scientists. EDIT: We just have to be sure to bulb the techs before we finish Civil Service...

I had something wrong in my last post. Even if we skip Fishing, we'll have to research all the techs you mentioned.

In any event, if we do try to bulb Engineering and Machinery with GSs and want to build the Pyramids, do you think building them in Kyoto would be soon enough?

What if we build/chop them in Zlatorog since it likely won't build too many units for the war with Toku anyway. That should get them a bit sooner I would think...

Maybe a longer-term test game is in order to see how quickly we could actually get there. I'll see if I have some time early this week.

BTW, magnusmarcus, are you done or do you still want to play more turns?
 
Is there a line of techs that we can research which will keep both an Engineering Lightbulb and an Astronomy Lightbulb open as possibilities?

If yes, maybe we can research the commonly-needed techs first.

Or is it really just a matter of avoiding Fishing, Civil Service, Paper, plus optionally avoiding Code of Laws if we don't want to Lightbulb Philosophy?

Would either path be messed up if we learned Monotheism?



My personal take is that we can't afford to skip Code of Laws, since Courthouses will be very valuable on this map, so we should plan to need a Great Scientist to Lightbulb Philosophy.


Anyway, I'm fine with something along the lines of:
finish Priesthood -> Pottery -> Hunting -> Metal Casting -> Polytheism + Monotheism (if Hinduism spreads reasonably well) -> Horseback Riding (if we have Horses) -> Code of Laws (fit this tech in as soon as the related Religion has been researched by an AI) -> Alphabet (if we can't get it in trade or via a peace deal by now, we should probably self-tech it so that we can get other techs out of peace deals) -> Aesthetics + Literature (if we have a unit with 10 Experience Points)


Oh yeah, I misspoke earlier... we didn't research Polytheism... still, Monotheism could be invaluable for building Forges and Courthouses if Hinduism spreads at a reasonable pace.


Also, what's the list of techs that we will need to research if we DO research Fishing and/or receive it in trade or from a peace deal and still want to Lightbulb Machinery + Engineering? Sailing + Calendar + what? Compass? Optics? It'll be nice to know what would happen in case we, say, accidentally receive Fishing as part of a trade or a peace deal (or perhaps intentionally choose to take it or self-tech it and take Sailing as part of a trade or peace, etc).
 
So are you thinking axes, cats and trebs.
For starters, unlike Dhoom, I prefer swords to axes. For example, by my calcs, we'd need 1 less per archer when attacking capitals. Then I'd rather have knights than maces, but we need to find horses for that.
In any event, if we do try to bulb Engineering and Machinery with GSs and want to build the Pyramids, do you think building them in Kyoto would be soon enough?

What if we build/chop them in Zlatorog since it likely won't build too many units for the war with Toku anyway. That should get them a bit sooner I would think...

Maybe a longer-term test game is in order to see how quickly we could actually get there. I'll see if I have some time early this week.
At this point, I'm leery of going for the GS bulb/Pyramids gambit. Absolutely needs a proof of concept test. I started one today but ran out of energy. I'm a bit burned out on testing right now.

I'd like to see how much faster settling on the marble gets us Kyoto than settling Crab Rangoon. Then I'd like to see how fast we can bulb Machinery+Engineering by skipping Fishing. That has to be super fast or it's too risky. Sailing might be our route to horses or our route to a quick conquest or an AP victory or who knows what. It's all speciulation. Will victory be faster by sea or by land?

With all these mountains, one assumes that Neil tried his best to slow things down and perhaps make sea warfare, as we specialized in last time, unworkable. Or maybe not.
 
I dont care either way. It looks like we were at a stopping point and this coming up week I wont be able to pay alot of attn to this :(

We need something more definitive, methinks. Either you're going to put together a PPP and play this week or you're handing the reigns to Dhoomstriker. Either way, one of you needs to be working on a plan.

For the next several turns, we don't have to decide on what to do regarding GS bulbs, Pyramids, etc. unless someone pushes for Fishing.

We need to decide where to settle the marble city so that we can figure out the worker actions. Maybe we should focus on this decision right now so that we can keep the game moving...

Do we need to do a ton of testing to compare settling on the marble vs. where we've been settling it? If so, who has the energy and motivation to do it? :mischief:
 
I don't really see us holding off on fishing-sailing for long enough to bulb machinery, let alone engineering. Imagine capturing Kyoto and/or Babylon, and not being able to work their seafood (and we can expect they would have done a sheep-clam trade, if Toku didn't have any).
 
Below is what I'm going to suggest that magnusmarcus do for the next couple of turns.

We're going to have to stop play after we find out what the Barbs are up to anyway, so I might as well post this bit so that magnusmarcus can get a feel for what to do and others can comment.

Note that by moving to the Deer, we appear to lose a Worker action, but what we gain is:
a) Gold-E Locks gets connected to Delhi faster
AND
b) We ruin less Forest regrowth chances with our Roads (i.e. we have a slightly a greater chance for additional free Hammers)

Bolded text is used for actions that changed. Actions for units that were not previously listed (such as what the Warriors should do) are not bolded.

I am still optimizing the Worker turns for later turns in magnusmarcus' turnset, which I will post when I am done, but as far as I am concerned he could go ahead and play with the altered PPP (see below) for the rest of Turn 56 and Turn 57.


56 1760BC

Nature's Candi workers both NW pasture
Delhi se worker e+e GHFor Deer
Warrior 1 (John) stay on the GRiv For
Warrior 2 (Jack) stay on the GH Riv
Warrior 3 (near Zlatorog) 1W GRiv

57 1720bc

Manually save the game
If Toku’s Archer did not move SW onto the GH Riv (2S of the GRiv Copper), then stop play and let the team know where Toku’s Archer went

pig workers finish pasture verify working pigs
Change delhi to barracks
1 sci corn fp bronze in delhi
Delhi se + e + e worker road the GHFor Deer
research pottery

Warrior 1 (John) if Toku’s Archer went SW, then move 1S GH Riv (2S of the GRiv Copper): SAY NO when you are asked if we want to declare war on Toku

Warrior 2 (Jack) It kind of depends upon what Toku’s Archer did, but if Toku’s Archer went SW, Warrior 1 (John) will let us know where the Barb Archer is… and if the Barb Archer is not going to put Warrior 2 (Jack) in danger, then Warrior 2 (Jack) can move 1SE onto the GH (2N of the Crab)… but if the Barb Archer is next to that square, then Warrior 2 (Jack) can just stay where he is

Warrior 3 (near Zlatorog) If the Barb Warrior is 1N on the GRiv For (1W of the Deer), then move 1E GRiv For (1S of the Deer). If the Barb Warrior is not there but is still visible, stay in place. If the Barb Warrior is not visible, move 1N GRiv For (1W of the Deer)
 
@Dhoom

I haven't looked at your plan in detail, but the reason that we were not roading the deer is that by doing so left us one worker turn short. If we road the tile 1S of the deer, we don't lose a worker turn climbing the hill, which makes it all work with no worker turns to spare.

Now, if we settle on the marble instead, the workers in the SW will be able to help with the road. However, if we settle where we've been planning, you'll either need to use Zlatorog's second worker to help or figure out how to quarry the marble and get an extra road-building worker turn from one of the SW workers.

That is why we really need to decide where we're going to settle the marble city before we play on.
 
If the Barb Archer dies to Toku's Archer, I'm really convinced that settling on the Marble is the way to go:
1. We can start working the Copper that Delhi isn't using plus we get the 2 free Hammers per turn from settling on top of the Marble
2. We can immediately start on a Granary instead of a Work Boat
3. Again, assuming that Toku solves the Barb Archer problem for us, we will have the spare Worker turns to get a Granary in Marble City before it grows to Size 2, catapulting this City into awesomeness very quickly
4. Minor point: We can delay Fishing, giving us faster Hunting to start Camping Zlatorog's Deer on the turn that the Worker there is complete


ZPV said:
I don't really see us holding off on fishing-sailing for long enough to bulb machinery, let alone engineering. Imagine capturing Kyoto and/or Babylon, and not being able to work their seafood
Good point. Okay, we should plan around getting Fishing (although we won't need it for a little while if we settle on top of the Marble), so the no-Fishing-Lightbulbing option is, unfortunately, almost for certain going to be off of the table.
 
I don't really see us holding off on fishing-sailing for long enough to bulb machinery, let alone engineering. Imagine capturing Kyoto and/or Babylon, and not being able to work their seafood (and we can expect they would have done a sheep-clam trade, if Toku didn't have any).

Good point. The downside of skipping Fishing is more than just our single clam and exploration, which is already a big sacrifice.

We'll have to fight with axes, swords and cats for longer than I had hoped. I guess we shouldn't complain. We're still getting cats around 1500 BC, which is quite early. :goodjob:

EDIT: xpost w/Dhoom
 
@Dhoom

I haven't looked at your plan in detail, but the reason that we were not roading the deer is that by doing so left us one worker turn short.
Not to worry; I've thought of that. If it turns out that we still end up settling Crab Rangoon, we actually have a couple of Worker turns to play with.

For example, recall that we were Mining the Gem with 2 Workers, then moving the 2 Workers from the Gems square SE + E onto the GRiv that is NW + NW of the Marble then Roading. Then we were moving 1SE onto the GRiv For (1NW of the Marble) and Chopping or Roading. Then we were Quarrying the Marble.

Well, instead we would:
Complete the Gem Mine 1 turn later by having 1 Worker move away from there earlier to the Corn (we'd lose a Worker turn here). Then that Worker would move to the Copper and complete the Road there--that's our missing Worker turn for the Roads. Meanwhile the Worker at the Gems square finished the Mine there. Then, on the third turn, the Gems Worker moves directly to the GRiv For that is 1NW of the Marble (we lose a second Worker turn due to movement here), while the Worker that completed the Copper Road moves 1S onto the GRiv For and Chops and Stops.

In either scenario, the two Workers will be adjacent to the Marble square so that it can be quarried on time.

The cost is 2 Worker turns and the gain is:
a) Gold-E Locks gets connected faster, giving us more Commerce and a greater chance of Hinduism auto-spreading
AND
b) We still get The Oracle on time (if we try too hard not to lose Worker turns to movement, we can do so at the cost of getting The Oracle one turn later, which seems to be a fair price to pay--paying 2 Worker turns to get a Wonder--to me)
AND
c) If we settle on the Marble, which I am convinced is a much stronger option, we'll be in a stronger position, because we'll not only get Gold-E Locks connected sooner but we'll also get the Marble connected sooner, which gives us a couple of extra turns' worth of bonus Hammers in Gold-E Locks at 4 Hammers per turn


That is why we really need to decide where we're going to settle the marble city before we play on.
If we're willing to lose 2 Worker turns (that would have been used to build a non-essential Road NW + NW of the Marble) and lose 1 Worker turn moving to the Deer (which we'd have to spend at a later date and would lead to wasted Worker turns later building an extra Road just to have a Road-based connection to the future Deer + Cow City), then we can proceed now and find out what's going to happen in regard to the Barb units, which is the big thing holding us up form going forward at a smooth pace.

We'd gain some Commerce and, if we settled on the Marble, some Hammers... which is the entire goal of using up Worker actions, right? I mean, Worker actions are there so that your Cities get more Food + Hammers + Commerce faster, so if we spend 3 Worker turns and end up increasing Commerce (and possibly also Hammers), then we're not really wasting Worker turns, just investing them in a different way.
 
We need something more definitive, methinks. Either you're going to put together a PPP and play this week or you're handing the reigns to Dhoomstriker. Either way, one of you needs to be working on a plan.

I thought I was being clear. Apparently I was wrong. I am done, fini. Good luck Dhoom, its yours
 
@Dhoom

I'm fine with you playing per your plan. I just wanted to make sure that you had played ahead in the test game to ensure that you can connect the marble in time if we happen to settle off the marble. It appears that you've done so.

I guess we wait until LC, magnusmarcus and/or ZPV comment before playing...
 
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