SGOTM 15 - One Short Straw

I just ran a test game and when a barb captured a city with a worker in it, the worker was killed. I plan to continue to work the gold, not the deer.

Fingers crossed on the barb situation.

BTW, if I move 1E on this turn and to the choke point on the next turn, if the barb moves next to me should I stand and fight with 0% (or maybe 5%) fortification bonus? Or would it be better to retreat to Zlatorog-1E where we'll at least get the 25% river bonus?

LowtherCastle said:

ZPV, is the formula to determine how much tech value we can get from Toku for a DoP, something like this:It would be interesting to konw if there's any way we could get Alpha from Toku. I think our power should be more than 1.3 his (Agr AI modifier?) after we mobilize.

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Peacetime begging is handled differently to wartime peace prices.
The DoP formula is the one which determined whether we could worker-steal.

half-ceasefire: We pay
(100+(ourCities+theirCities)*3+ourpop+theirpop+ theirwarsuccess*20)
*(Theirpower+10)/(OurPower+TheirPower+10)
--------------------------------------
forDaggerAIs: *9*Theirpower/10*OurPower
forAIsw/morelandthanus: *Theirland/Ourland*.9
forWarPlanAIs: *35*TheirPower/10*(OurPower+4*TheirPower)
forTotalWarAI: *2
eitherDogpileAI: *1.5
---------------------------------------
if theirendangeredcities>ourendangeredcities /3 (AggAI only)
round down to nearest 10

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So can we make this expensive enough that Toku will give us Alpha?
Alpha will cost us between beakers*1.5 and beakers*2 - a maximum of 936 "value".
We just need to accumulate plenty of war success; (our power will be > Toku's, I assume, although killing Toku's standing army will be important towards these ends), and leave a city to threaten, and Alpha should hopefully be within our reach.
(War success is 4 for attacking wins, 10 for a city captured, 1 for each non-combat unit captured after defeating its defender, 3 for defending wins, 10 for nukes )

I guess we need to keep track of our losses too, right? In my test, I was not threatening another city. This could be the key.

Mitchum said:

I guess we need to keep track of our losses too, right? In my test, I was not threatening another city. This could be the key.

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Yes, we need to keep track of losses. Catapults are good for this, since they have a higher chance of surviving than an axe or similar.

Threatening a city triples the amount Toku is willing to pay for peace. It's very important.

I played up to T61 and nothing noteworthy happened.

T59
Toku founds Tokyo where we can't see it.
Our warrior moved to the choke point. No barbs in sight.
Sabotage Production: 255
Poplulation (high, average, low): 281K, 225,222, 96K

T60
No barbs in the NW
Toku learns Mining
Sabotage Production: 294
Poplulation (high, average, low): 386K, 255K, 156K

T61
No barbs in the NW
Sabotage Production: 332
Poplulation (high, average, low): 386K, 262,222, 117K
Toku threatens with archer
No one is WHEOOHRN
No new culture seen

Stopping now until we decide what to do with Hunting, which can be learned in 1T at 100% research. If I don't play in the next 4 hours or so, I'm going to have to hand off the save to the next player.

LC, do you still need the saves for your calcs? Maybe it doesn't matter. We have the choke point covered so no barb should target us since there is no open land route to our cities, right?

Excellent job, so far, Mitchum! Great news that the barb warrior didn't suicide on us. Let's hope Hammy keeps the area up there clear of barbs, although that might be one way for us to get our 10XP unit.

I guess I woudn't mind having the saves, just in case. I don't think I'll continue to run the demo calcs, but sometimes issues come up and it's useful to have the saves. Once we get past all this preparatory stuff, then we'll just bulldozer along.

So what's the plan regarding the worker actions? Are we going to try to camp the deer? Or should I continue on to T64? I don't have time to do any testing today but I can play the next 3 turns with worker modifications or as written in the PPP. I'm also fine handing this off to Dhoom.

We do really need to start moving. The saves later in the game are harder and take longer and I'd hate to run short on time again.

Saves attached

I think we have a huge opportunity here. Don't play on yet, please, Mitchum. Be back in a while.

LowtherCastle said:

I think we have a huge opportunity here. Don't play on yet, please, Mitchum. Be back in a while.

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Your huge opportunities usually consist of finding a way to squeeze out one extra beaker over 10 turns...

No hurry. I'd rather get it right than to hurry forward with a sub-optimal plan. I just wanted to know if you and/or Dhoom were still working on improvements.

@Dhoom Can you pick this up when I'm officially done, which will likely be in about 4 hours? Or do you need to swap again, which would mean that EDIT: ZPV LC (after checking roster) is up? Just trying to prepare the next victim...

Mitchum said:

Your huge opportunities usually consist of finding a way to squeeze out one extra beaker over 10 turns...

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What's a beaker up or down, right? Actually, I'm talking about squeezing an extra tech or two over the next 10 turns. We leverage the fact that Toku researched Alpha, which enables tech trading under DoP, and leverage no city razing.

It's actually a take-off on Dhoom's idea of building a city for Toku to capture. In this case, instead we gift him a city or three, recapture immediately and then 2 (or 3?) turns later DoP for Alpha(+Hunting or Archery?). The key here is that we don't want him to have any WarSuccess. That's hard to do against his protective archers, but easy to do against our gifted, unprotectived cities, each worth 10 points of WarSuccess.

By my calcs, our power is 28 and his is 38 (weakest AI in the game right now). We add a couple of cats and axes, plus Construction to the mix and our power is up to around 50. Three cities captured is enough for Alpha. With enough power, we could also get hunting or archery.

For example, if we both have power = 50 and we capture three cities from him, his DoP cost is 1215 minus ours 78 = 1147. More than enough for Alpha.

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Now if we build granaries and then gift our cities, we have a 66% chance of losing them on re-capture. So it would be better to gift them before building the granaries or any other buildings we'd lose, like barracks.

One choice could be Zlatorog. We lose nothing but the three turns of resistance. We don't even lose a poppoint. Another choice could be Deer/Cows, which we could quickly settle. A third city, Osaka. Even if we lose one unit to his archer, the difference in DoP costs would be 1105 in our favor = Alpha.

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Okay, now the DoP would mean delaying the capture of Kyoto by some small number of turns, possibly quite minimal, since we don't need our power up to 50 when we DoW but 2-3 turns later when we DoP.

Any takers?

Sounds good to me. If we can pull it off, a slight delay in capturing Kyoto and not having Zlatorog or cow/deer for a few turns is worth Alphabet for "free" in my book.

The trick will be to found the deer/cow, gift this city and Zlatorog to Toku, declare war, capture Osaka all in the same turn. We'd need a unit within two movement points of both deer/cow and Zlatorog so that we could capture them on T+1. Then have a stack march close enough to Kyoto to threaten it. In fact, we'd get a "free" look at Kyoto to see what's up.

If the next two turns could change based on this plan, I'm fine stopping for now and handing this off to Dhoom (or LC).

Nice thinking, LC. It'll be interesting to see what Toku does and how many archers he builds during this first DoW that we'll have to contend with in the real DoW. At least well already have Osaka!

More thoughts:

Toku only has 2 cities right now and might not be building a settler, we just don't know. If we go forward with the Osaka>Kyoto plan, we might have difficulty getting Alpha out of it. If we only capture Kyoto, we might have as little as 600 beaker trade value. If we're don't capture Kyoto first, then there's no point in delaying the Alpha gambit.

Settling Deer/Cows is a great city really. For example, at pop2 it could pump out workers every 5.5 turns. Or units. Or failed gold. Our culture will cover the cows on T75.

Toku has 3 cities right now. He built Tokyo on T59.

One point, with culture flip after conquest enabled, is it possible that Osaka reverts back to Toku before we declare the second time? What are the odds?

Mitchum said:

If the next two turns could change based on this plan, I'm fine stopping for now and handing this off to Dhoom (or LC).

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Or bbp!!!

Well, I could probably work something up quickly, but we should probably take a day to think this through. We'll have to take out the derelict archer and make two or three axes for Osaka. Then if we need to build a settler for Deer/Cows, that's new.

ZPV might be able to figure out more precisely what Alpha will cost and whether we really need the third city.

I think we shouldn't rush into this tonight.

xpost: I haven't looked at the latest save. Where is Tokyo?

Agreed. I'm done. I'll upload the save and officially hand this off to the next person.

We should be able to build 4 axes (3 to take Kyoto and 1 to handle Tokus's archer in the SW) and 1 settler for deer/cow pretty quickly. We can use two of our warriors to capture Zlatorog and deer/cow.

We need to have Zlatorog build either a unit or a worker so that we don't waste any hammers on infrastructure in that city.

Note: if we do this, we've freed up our workers to do things other than camp Zlatorog's deer. It looks like LC went to all kinds of trouble just to come up with a reason not to improve Zlatorog.

Save uploaded.

Here is your Session Turn Log from 1760 BC to 1560 BC:

Turn 56, 1760 BC: You have discovered Priesthood!

Turn 58, 1680 BC: You have discovered Pottery!

Turn 59, 1640 BC: Gandhi adopts Slavery!
Turn 59, 1640 BC: You have trained a Settler in Delhi. Work has now begun on a Granary.

Turn 60, 1600 BC: Nature's Chandi will grow to size 2 on the next turn.

Turn 61, 1560 BC: Nature's Chandi has grown to size 2.

Here is the updated test save.

I had to take BW and Masonry away from Toku and force him to research Alphabet. If I just give him Alphabet, we'll research BW and Masonry in one turn each. It's easier to do this that to go into WB and remove Masonry and BW every other turn. He'll have Alphabet in 15 turns IIRC. We can always just give it to him when we're ready to try the gambit.

I also added the forest growth. Beakers, gold, hammers and food all check out.

Mitchum said:

@Dhoom Can you pick this up when I'm officially done, which will likely be in about 4 hours? Or do you need to swap again

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I'm travelling this weekend and need to prepare for the trip. I really don't see how I can squeeze in the time.

LowtherCastle said:

It's actually a take-off on Dhoom's idea of building a city for Toku to capture. In this case, instead we gift him a city or three

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A cool idea, but have you tested it? From my recollection, an AI will take a City for free up to the 4th City. After that point, the gifted City must either contain some of the AI's Culture (which is not going to happen) or must be within a certain proximity of one of his other Cities... something like 8 squares away, but that number might not be accurate. We may end up having to gift GEL for this whole insane scheme to work, just to connect the "chain" of Cities next to each other that get gifted.

Of course, if we gifted GEL, we'd whip it down to Size 1 before gifting it, although we would lose all of the Granary's stored Food in the process. At least Toku would get 0 Cultural output from owning The Oracle (assuming that we complete The Oracle).

Perhaps why LC said we'd build Deer + Cow is because that City would be close enough to Toku's western City of Osaka for gifting purposes, even if Toku has 4 or more Cities by the time that we are ready to gift him some Cities and start the war?

P.S. What is it with LC and giving away Cities to the AIs?

You're up LC. This is your idea. Run with it. It sounds just crazy enough to work. I'm away from Civ until Monday but can follow the thread on my phone... kinda.

I did not verify how many cities Toku had in the test save. It's likely wrong.

Ideally, you can pull out of the plan right at the end. Maybe whip the settler the turn before attacking just in case Toku founds a new city at the last minute.

I don't know how closely our test game's map script approximates the real game's map script, but it appears that all but 1 Horse Resource is in the northern half of the map and there are quite a number of them in the northern half of the map. So, we might not get a Horse Resource for some time to come.


Okay, I see what you guys are talking about with the Workers building Roads and connecting-up the Trade Routes this turn by first Roading and then settling Marble City.

There is the opportunity to delay connecting-up GEL and sending Workers to do other Chopping instead, although by the looks of it, it would only be a 1 turn of difference, so we probably do want to connect-up GEL this turn anyway.


Well, what do you know? If we gift the Deer + Cow City to Toku, he'll then gladly take Zlatorog (or even Chandi, but we're not giving him Chandi).

If Toku has 7 Cities, including any that we give to him, he stops being willing to accept Cities as gifts. If he can somehow settle up to a total of 7 Cities by the time that we are ready to attack, all the power to him and we will have enough war targets not to have to gift him any Cities. Barring that next-to-impossible scenario, I suppose that gifting him Deer + Cow and Zlatorog will work.


So, fine, LC, you win: we can delay Hunting and can avoid using the Zlatorog Worker to improve Zlatorog for now.

In fact, we should make sure that we switch techs to Aesthetics now... which would allow us to keep building Warriors for some time.

If we're gifting away Deer + Cow, there is no rush to improve those improvements immediately... we just need to have one of them improved by the time that we're ready to recapture the Deer + Cow City.


On that note, we will have the GRiv For to the NW +N of GEL to Chop into its Granary and could feasibly also Chop the GRiv For to the NW of there (to the NE of the GHRiv For Deer), since we'll need to settle the Deer + Cow City there before we can get our Cultural Borders to cover that square, so it might as well be Chopping it sooner rather than later.


I am sorry but I do not have time to look at Granary optimization tonight.

Still, given a plan to gift away Zlatorog, we probably will get Chops coming in about the time that we need them anyway.


Theoretically, we could Chop Zlatorog's inner-radius Forest into an Axeman, but then it would be harder to Chop a Granary later. It might be a worthwhile tradeoff.

Otherwise, Zlatorog can probably just build Warriors while working the Gold Mine... then, as we get close to the time that we're going to declare war, rather than building a partial Warrior, we can dump some excess Hammers into a Wonder for future Failure Gold.