SGOTM 19 - The Shawshank Redemption

Old Roster
LowtherCastle
ZPV
WastinTime
Jastrow
Seraiel
Dhoomstriker
Mitchum


Roster Requests
LowtherCastle wants to play first
Jastrow suggested that he play second and greatly prefers playing during peacetime
WastinTime may want to play some of the turns prior to building The Oracle
Seraiel wants to play turns with heavy micro or early warring, but some time after The Oracle gets built
...
Mitchum wants to be last in the order

You never know when you'll get feedback to change Worker actions or when you'll need to upload the saved game for feedback. In the former case, we remain flexible. In the latter case, we don't want to trigger any irreversible moves by accident (such as completing a Worker action) without noticing, due to someone simply looking at the saved game and having a Worker action autocomplete... that shouldn't happen in most cases, but can happen if certain reversible moves (such as Waiting with one unit) are performed

Loading the game from autosaves can sometimes result in BUFFY flagging a reload, if you have to make a "choice" that an AI presents to you, and it is also easy to overwrite your autosaved games, so it's best to have a manual saved game for each turn that we can refer to, if required

Whoever is looking at the saved games when not playing a turnset can do so with the game paused. You should play around in a non-real game first just to see how pausing works, but the basics are:
1. The Pause key on your keyboard (usually found next to the Scroll Lock key) can be pressed once to Pause a game of Civ IV and can be pressed again to unpause the game.
2. Moves made (say, clicking somewhere with your mouse with the Warrior selected, such that the Warrior would move in that direction for the next few turns) while the game is paused ARE REMEMBERED and will all execute one after another after unpausing the game
3. If you Pause the game and save it, when the game is loaded, it will start off being Paused
4. If you Pause the game and exit the game (say, to the main Civ IV menu or right out of Civ IV), the game will not be paused when you load your saved game

Since we are not allowed to "reload" or "undo" any moves that we make, it can be dangerous to be looking at a saved game when you are just looking at the map (say, for fog-gazing) or are doing other random things, like taking screenshots or looking at DEMOGRAPHICS data. The solution is to use the Pause key.

The Pausing Procedure
1. a) If you just loaded the saved game and have not made any changes to the game (such as moving a Warrior or making a deal with an AI), then skip to step 2. Otherwise, if you have made such a change, go to step 1. b).

1. b) If you have already made some changes to the saved game, such as if you moved one of our units, whether by accident or because you are the Active Player, then save the game. We have to live with any changes that were made to the saved game, so any moves made while the game was unpaused MUST count as our real game. If you happen to make a mistake and move a unit when the game is unpaused, save your game and let the team know; you'll also have to submit that version of the saved game to the uploads server and we will have to play forward from that saved game

2. Press the Pause key on your keyboard. You should see a message about the game being paused if you are on the "main view" of the Civ IV map. That message should appear in the same location as the "End Turn" message. If you don't see that message, exit out of the saved game and load a test game to experiment with using the Pause key. If you still can't get it to work for you, ask the rest of the team for help.

3. As long as you do not press the Pause key, you can now safely look around the map. Please try not to intentionally move units, but if you accidentally do, that movement won't actually "occur" while the game is still paused. If at any time you make such an accidental mouse click and you are 100% certain that the game is still paused, then quit that saved game (Exit to the Main Menu in the Civ IV menu or else quit the game). Then, start again from step 1. a).

4. Since you didn't intentionally make any changes, but in case you accidentally made a change, ensure that the game still says that it is paused and then quit that saved game. That way, any actions that were "queued up" to occur after the game was unpaused will never occur.


All of that said, there may be ways to accidentally make things happen even when the game is Paused. For example, if you End the Turn, I'm pretty sure that the Pause key will not save you (this point should be tested). So, the Pause key is not necessarily a way of protecting you from all possible misclicks, but it should protect you from the vast majority of them.

If, for whatever reason, you do make a mistake while looking at our saved game; no harm done. Just be sure to tell the team about it. We can live with any mistake and play on, but we can't replay the game, so we need to know about any accidental moves made. We're all good people here; no one's going to bite your head off if you make a mistake; only if you try to hide that fact will there be trouble, because the game admins will find out and will punish us for trying to hide such a mistake.

iTechTradeKnownPercent
Gandhi = 20
Churchill = 30
Mehmed = 40

With all AIs knowing each other and knowing us, the following techs can be received in trade when the number of AIs, INCLUDING the AI doing the trading, know such a tech. Note that I listed the techs in order of ease in which they could come in trade.
Alphabet
Gandhi = 1
Churchill = 1
Mehmed = 1

Calendar
Gandhi = 2
Churchill = 3
Mehmed = 3

Philosophy
Gandhi = 2
Churchill = 3
Mehmed = 3

Currency
Gandhi = 3
Churchill = 3
Mehmed = 4

Metal Casting
Gandhi = 3
Churchill = 4
Mehmed = 5

Mathematics
Gandhi = 3
Churchill = 4
Mehmed = 5

Feudalism
Gandhi = 3
Churchill = 4
Mehmed = 5

Code of Laws
Gandhi = 3
Churchill = 4
Mehmed = 5

Horseback Riding
Gandhi = 4
Churchill = 5
Mehmed = 6

Aesthetics
Gandhi = 4
Churchill = 5
Mehmed = 6

Construction
Gandhi = Will not trade it even when 6 AIs know it
Churchill = Will not trade it even when 6 AIs know it
Mehmed = Will not trade it even when 6 AIs know it

Tech Trading
iTechTradeKnownPercent
Gandhi = 20
Churchill = 30
Julius = 40

With all AIs knowing each other and knowing us, the following techs can be received in trade when the number of AIs, INCLUDING the AI doing the trading, know such a tech. Note that I listed the techs in order of ease in which they could come in trade.
Alphabet
Gandhi = 1
Churchill = 1
Julius = 1

Calendar
Gandhi = 2
Churchill = 2
Julius = 2

Philosophy
Gandhi = 2
Churchill = 2
Julius = 2

Currency
Gandhi = 2
Churchill = 2
Julius = 2

Metal Casting
Gandhi = 2
Churchill = 2
Julius = 3

Mathematics
Gandhi = 2
Churchill = 3
Julius = 3

Feudalism
Gandhi = 2
Churchill = 3
Julius = 3

Code of Laws
Gandhi = 2
Churchill = 3
Julius = 3

Horseback Riding
Gandhi = 2
Churchill = 3
Julius = 3

Aesthetics
Gandhi = 2
Churchill = 3
Julius = 3

Construction
Gandhi = Will not trade it even when all 3 known AIs know it
Churchill = Will not trade it even when all 3 known AIs know it
Julius = Will not trade it even when all 3 known AIs know it

Costs in Hammers for AI Build items
Archer = 20
Monument = 24
Axeman = 28
Barracks = 40
Worker = 48
Granary = 48
Settler = 94

An important observation is that Immortal-level AIs pay 80% of our cost of the build items listed above, except for Settlers, for which they pay almost the same price as us--94% of our cost.

Food needed for an AI City to grow
Size 1 = 18
Size 2 = 20
Size 3 = 22
Size 4 = 23
Size 5 = 25
Size 6 = 27
Size 7 = 28
Size 8 = 30
Size 9 = 32
Size 10 = 34
Size 11 = 35

t148
start Goto Jail

t149
rush @Goto Jail --> Gondar

t150
Goto Jail1 travels
start Goto Jail2

t151
rush @Goto Jail --> Hamster
Build Gondar1 --> Aksum

t152
Goto Jail2 travels
Build Gondar2 --> Yeha
Build Aksum --> Addis

t153
Build Hamster1 --> CNip
Build Yeha1 --> Madrid
Build Addis --> Gaul
Build Aksum2 --> Lalibela

t154
Build Hamster2 --> NW
Hamster1 travels
Yeha1 travels
Build Gaul --> Edirne
Build Yeha2 --> Toledo

t155
Build Hamster3 --> Trumpster
Build Madrid --> Seville
Build Edirne1 --> Istanbul
Build CNip1 --> PTIgloo
Hamster2 travels

t156
Build Istanbul1 --> Bursa
Build Edirne2 --> Konya
Build Lalibela --> Spicy Deer
Build Trumpster1 --> Sheep2N
Build NW --> Sarmatian

t157
Build Konya --> Samsun
Build Istanbul2 --> Ankara
Build Trumpster2 --> LM
Build Sarmatian --> Fool's Gold
Lalibela travels

t158
Build Fool's Gold --> Free Willy
Build Seville --> Florence
Build Bursa --> AlexCoal1
Build Samsun --> AlexCoal2
Build Spicy Deer --> Stone City

t159
Seville travels
Bursa travels
Samsun travels
Fool's Gold travels
Build CNip --> Adriana

t160
Hopefully we win.

Goto Jail: n/a
No MM necessary

Gondar: build execs t151, 152
Build knight 147-9, 2whip t150. 4 chops

Aksum: build execs t152, 153
We can raze Murcia so there are 2 chops.
147 knight 65+31/90
148 explorer 0+38/40
149 knight 48/90
150 explorer 80/40
151 2whip knight

Hamster: build execs t153, 154, 155
I'd need to spend at least 4 pop, probably 5, to set up whips for overflow. Might as well just 5pop two of them.
Build an explorer t147-8 for overflow.

Yeha: build execs t153, 154
147 put 7h in Explorer
148-50 put 14h/turn in Treb
151 2whip Explorer
152 2whip Treb

Addis: build exec t153
147-8 14h/turn mace
151 2whip explorer
152 2whip mace

Gaul: build exec t154
152 put some hammers into explorer
153 2whip
154 2 chops

Madrid: build exec t155
5whip

Edirne: build execs t155, 156
6 chops. We can save up the chops in wealth for a few turns.

CNip build execs t155, 159
153 put 19h in Rax(?)
154 2whip, work 21h
155 work 26h, plus one chop
156-7 put 49h in cat
158 1whip, work 21h
159 work 26h, plus one chop

Istanbul builds execs t156, 157
6 chops

Lalibela builds exec t156
t153 almost build a knight
t154 build an explorer
t155 finish the knight
1 chop t156

Trumpster builds execs t156, 157
Manipulate Theatre to get 30ish overflow during the golden age. Then 5whip, and run 27hpt

NW builds exec t156
154-5 generate overflow with Explorer
2 chops t156

Konya builds exec t157
3 chops
(If that's not possible, can switch to 2 chops + 1 whip overflow)

Sarmatian builds exec t157
4 chops, including the one in neutral territory.
No prebuild.

Fool's Gold builds exec t158
4 chops.
No prebuild.

Seville builds exec t158
Not sure yet.

Bursa builds exec t158
Prebuild Explorer to 39h
Prebuild Treb to 49h
Grow to size 5
2pop-1pop-1 chop + hammers.

Samsun builds exec t158
2 chops.
Need one whip overflow. Will decide closer to the time.

Spicy Deer builds exec t158
1 whip overflow needed; get it over with so we can hold chops in wealth.

Turn-by-turn sequence.


I've held on to Toledo and Barcelona. If there are lots of far-away coal sources, we can raze them to free up a little room.
I don't think I can get it down to 10 turns.

Individual City requirements:

LC:
This game is a beeline to Democracy and Sushi (with Mining Inc an alternative), then fulfilling the additional criterion.

How do we want to research? Some combination of:
1. Specialist economy
2. War economy
3. Colossus economy
4. Cottage economy
5. Espionage economy
6. Corporation economy
7. Golden Age Economy

Conventional wisdom says that the SE is by far the fastest up till corporations. SE provides lots of GSes which are perfect for bulbing the Sushi beeline. Imperialistic is good for spamming settlers for a SE, in particular for stone if we can find it soon enough. The Pyramids give GE genes which would be okay for Mining Inc.

SIP doesn't look great for Oxford but it's not terrible either. The towns might be too slow to develop though if we bulb to Sushi. Instead we might just capture a nice capital and build a palace, if some AI works lots of cottages. That's likely since they're starting with Pottery, but that would also be a nice trading partner.

My gut feeling is SE (=farms) + WE (+ ColE) and forget about Oxford till we get to Democracy. Plan for a Domination VC so that REX to the domination limit serves all of the above. Go for a super early Sushi, with Biology also giving us a boost to all our farms.

Save our Golden Ages until we get Democracy in case the condition is research a Future Tech or something like that.

ZPV:
A low seas Lakes map doesn't have much water. So little, that I'd say it effectively nerfs Sushi.

Captured cottages could be really powerful - I believe the AI gets a growth bonus too - but frankly any captured AI capital would let us research one way or another.

However, kcd_swede hinted that there are good sites for us to settle, if only we would bother to go out and explore them. I suspect that those could form a significant boost to our economy.

Overall, I think it'll be a case of "remember to actually build some science cities/stuff" rather than a massively focused "all our cities must run 2 scientists at all times" sort of thing, but I do agree on farms in general.

Which VC? My guess is that a pea-shooter Diplo would probably win, if there weren't the extra hidden requirement, (just settling enough cities to be flexible, and then picking off the gold, gems and silver for Civ. Jewellers in the endgame).

The spanner in the works is the Democracy requirement. My first guess is that every city of ours must be working at least one town (since that will give us the encouragement to go to emancipation, etc. which we don't normally see, and also force us to grab our land immediately afterwards.)
edit: xpost with the other thread...

LC:

Yes, interesting. That might mean good city sites. It might mean strategic resources such as horses or stone.

The more nerfed Sushi is, the better. That just means fewer resources to monopolize. We don't know we need the "power of Sushi."

We might want to chop a scout as our first build, send one each direction.

Dhoom:
If we don't find Stone or get beaten to The Pyramids, does a Specialist Economy still sound like a decent option? Or, would it then become better to focus most GPP generation in a single City?

Mitchum:
I need to spend some time understanding the different corporation options. A few interesting facts:

1. Mining Inc (coal), Aluminum Co (coal) and Creative Construction (aluminum) all require resources that we won't be able to see until late in the game. This is a reason to avoid these corporations.

2. Aluminum Co only requires coal, which "might" make it easier to control all resources. It does require Rocketry though.

3. As LC said, the two fastest corporations to reach appear to be Sids and Mining Inc. I agree with LC that Sids can be very fast with GS bulbs of Paper, Education, PP, SM and Biology (if we avoid Astro) possible.

Dhoom:

In order for the Lightbulb path to work, which techs must we avoid? Would it just be avoiding Compass? Or, would we have to avoid Calendar? Would we have to avoid Machinery? It's probably going to be good to figure it out before we commit to an early-game strategy (such as going for early Calendar via The Oracle).

Mitchum :
In order to bulb Biology, you have to avoid Astronomy which opens up the Physics bulb. All of the other ones are fairly straight forward as far as I can tell. With 6 to 8 GS bulbs and Liberalism, we could get to Medicine very quickly. That is if we were willing to beeline Medicine before Democracy and/or Corporations.

Dhoom:
Okay, but can we learn Compass? Machinery? Optics? Calendar? Or, do we need to avoid one or some of those techs so that one of those techs or Astronomy itself won't become a Lightbulbable option before any of the other techs that you would like to Lightbulb?

LC:
Good question Dhoom. Here it is:

Education(1)-PP(1)-(Philosophy)-Chemistry(1)-SciMeth(2)-(Not Compass)-Biology(3) = 8 GSes total. We could use another for Education or Chemistry or both.

The key to bulbing Biology is NOT ACQUIRING COMPASS!!!

========================
................Beakers
.............-------------
.............Final....Base....Slingshot
.............------..------.---------
MassMed.47842..39784..Radio
Sushi......32380..26972..Medicine
.............------. ------
Differ......15462..12812
=========================

Assuming AIs trade us:

Alphabet
Calendar
Iron Working
Compass
Optics
Polytheism
Aesthetics
Literature
Philosophy
Nationalism
Monotheism
Monarchy
Feudalism
Guilds
Banking

Note: Also includes 8/9* GS bulbs already subtracted from the totals.

*MM gets an extra GS from Physics.

ZPV:
So do you guys think this could be a BC finish (or close, at least)?

Of course, it depends on the distribution of rice (unmodded, there are about 5 of them evenly spaced throughout the jungle).

Dhoom:
Thanks for checking the Lighbulbing Preferences!

We should also consider: are there any useful techs along the way (or afterward, such as the tech that unlocks Sid's Sushi--what is that, Medicine?) that a non-Great-Scientist Great Person could Lightbulb, should we end up with such a Great Person?

Are you giving that total Flask comparison to show us that getting to Sid's Sushi can be considerably faster than getting to The UN?

Preparing the Wallstreet (Corporate HQ) City with plenty of overflow Hammers to be able to complete an Executive in 1 turn is also a good goal when founding a Corp, so that you won't have to dry-whip until the second Executive that you build.

Also, Sid's Sushi provides Culture, so we'll need to take this factor into account when approaching the Domination Land Limit (assuming that we're really successful with our warring).

I guess that you should strike Compass + Optics off of your "techs from the AIs list," and we can just plan to pick those techs up late-game, after Lightbulbing Biology.

Also, since it looks like we will have to self-tech Paper in order to be able to Lightbulb Education in place of Philosophy, I guess that we'll want to build an Academy with our first Great Scientist, right?

Or, would we just limp our way to Paper and then Lightbulb like mad sometime after that? I assume that if we want Oxford, we'll want an Academy, but that would mean 9 Great Scientists (unless we capture an Academy).

LC:
I don't see a BC finish. That's a lot of beakers isn't it? This start isn't all that good, especially for our capital.

Not sure I see building an academy, especially if we go SE and run a low slider. The idea of SE is not to limp but fly through the tech tree.

Dhoom:
I suppose that Oxford is still important, though, right? Or, is it less important with no settled Great People and an apparently not 100% Science Slider? Would Oxford belong more in a GP Farm than in a capital if we really aren't going to run a 100% Science Slider?

Not going for Astronomy also means no Observatories.

How important will Courthouses be?

What will we be putting our Commerce toward? Gold to be able to keep REXing while teching? Espionage to Support City Revolts? I think that I'd probably rather dump Hammers into Cats than Commerce into City Revolts, as City Revolts are expensive, can fail when you need them, take time to plan, and if you miss capturing a City just barely, you're screwed for the next turn when the City Defences go back up.

Mitchum:
There was discussion about putting Oxford in a captured AI capital. Hopefully said AI has matured several cottages for us already.

It's not that we get 0 beakers from the slider. It's just that our research rate is less dependent on the slider. We may still get ~25% or a bit more of our research from the slider. So I do not see us running the espionage slider at all.

Sure, if we have to run 0% slider to support REX, then that's what we'll do, but we should still try to run the science slider at 100% when possible since every little bit of research counts.

Courthouses are always important for a war economy, no? They will be mandatory if we decide to (or have to) spread Sid's everywhere. Assuming that there are only ZPV's projected 5 rice resources and a handful of seafood, it may not make sense to spread it at all... time will tell.

Dhoom:
Another thought about Sid's... Resources could be placed out in the Ocean such that you need 2 Cultural Border expansions in a crappy City to claim them. Well, I suppose that Sid's Sushi itself helps to spread Culture... but, you also need to build the Work Boats, since kcd_swede said that you must fulfill one of these two criteria for each Resource: "(owned and accessed, or traded for)"

Let's hope that no such crappy City is needed in a location where we'd first have to raze an existing City just to be able to place a City close enough to the Resource in order to put a Work Boat on the Resource within a reasonable time frame. We may have to be very careful about which Cities we capture and keep, particularly if a City will produce Culture.

A City can produce Culture if:
a) We own Stonehenge
b) A Religion exists in the City and it matches our State Religion (any Religion matches No State Religion and any Religion matches Free Religion)
c) We own The Sistine Chapel and a Specialist gets assigned

Once you've produced Culture of your own in that City, you're pretty much out of luck for gifting the City away and then razing it. Most Civs will not raze Cities on your behalf.

ZPV:
The reason I ask about finish date is:
If we were starting from a pure ancient start, we'd try to look for a 1200-1300 AD finish (think: a similar pace to a fast diplo). That's turn 180-190. Our techs are worth dozens of turns on top of that.
1AD is turn 115. I know that's a stretch, but it doesn't seem that egregious.
Does that affect our strategy? (Mostly, does it mean we need to go to war earlier? Focus wonders earlier if we need the benefit? Something else?)

Re: Oxford. We'll put it in our best science city. That may or may not be the capital. If we have other good science sites, but few production ones, I'd prefer to put the Heroic Epic in Amsterdam and crank out the units.

Seraiel :
As I see it, this game is all about reaching Sushi as fast as possible, and then getting Democracy probably by trade.

I know the fastest way to Sushi very well with all my experience from Sushi-games, it's basically prioritize CS, research Paper, then double bulb Education, single-bulb if double-bulb is not possible or not suiteable, have all cities prepared to lightning fast build the Universities, try to build Oxford in a minimum number of turns using chops and (maybe even stacked) OF-whips, Gunpowder, Chemistry (can be bulbed) , Scientific Method (can be bulbed) , Biology (can be bulbed via missing out on Astronomy I think) and then Liberalism -> Medicine.
Liberalism -> Biology is also possible, but from my experience more sort of a backup option.

Constitution and Democracy are high-priority techs for the AIs, and I think we should feed them what's necessary for them to research them fast enough. Maybe we'll have to research Corporation ourselves, we probably should tech Economics somewhere in between for the free Great Merchant imo.

From what I can see right now, settle Capital 1SE to also get the Pigs (yes, I hate that move as much as you do) , and I'll continue reading the discussions now.

I think 1200 AD finish date is something we can do better. I find we should either go for Horse-Archers or War Elephants and try to conquer as much of the map as possible, and personally I think that something like an 900 - 1000 AD finish date is definately possible, and I assume Deity-opponents there. With the game being on Immortal, I expect conquering the other Civs to actually be really simple.

There are 2 games we could take for references, which are the 700 AD Spacerace from WastinTime and the 1100 AD non-Incan Spacerace from me. Both games are Marathon, so our wars have to be slightly different, but both games feature amazingly fast ways, and even if our speed of conquest is just a little slower because of playing on normal speed, I think that finishing somewhere between 800 - 1000 AD is very well possible.

If you'd asked me what I believe, I'd say for us, with everything going perfect, 500 AD probably not, 600 AD maybe, 700 AD most hopefully, 800 AD definately. 900 AD I'd already find sad.

LC:
Okay, I say we target a 500AD finish.

Seraiel:
Plz excuse the style on the last post, important is the information given in it. It's really the "master-way" to earliest Sushi, found by WastinTime and me. I've friendly asked him to play with me again, it'd be good if he joined too.

Personally I think that the information given prior may already be of such great worth, that it might get us into a really good decision, but in order to really win again I believe, we must simply be ourselves, be very confident, and continously work our way towards earliest possible victory.

I've btw. asked WastinTime too, hopefully he'll consider joining this team too, he's basically a "Master of Sushi-games" and if someone knows how to get the maximum tech-rate in a situation, and also what is right, it's him.

If he doesn't join, I'll try to fulfill that part as good as possible too, but my personal skills are a lot more those of a warmonger ;D .

Mitchum:
This game definitely has a few curve balls/constraints that aren't in a normal HOF beeline Sushi game:

1. We learn about a new requirement at Democracy that may change the game drastically and possibly make it go much later.

2. We must own every Sushi resource on the map. Not impossible with our warring strategy, but getting ALL of them could take a bit more effort than normal.

3. We start with almost all Ancient techs and the AI presumably start with PH. This throws off any projections based on normal games in several ways. We get a massive head start with the added techs. We can throw typical wonder dates projections out of the window. A 2000 BC Oracle is now much more of a crap shoot. 500 BC Pyramids are a no go most likely so we'd have to sacrifice early REX to get them pre-1000 BC and possibly much earlier.

My point is that we have to be very careful not to assume that things we pull off in normal games will be doable in this game.

WT:
I didn't see any talk about Cereal Mills in the corporation discussion. Too much research?

Anyway, I don't think we even need to worry about it yet. Let's just get to Democracy first.

A Democracy beeline on a lakes map means one thing: SoL. We will want to plan to build this in 1 turn. We should have at least 30 cities, hopefully 40.

Seraiel:
I read some talk about Cereal Mills, was somewhere in here. Basically Cereal-Mills is better in form of benefit, but worse if being the only Corporation, because Sushi will probably have less resources = easier to get all.

Democracy or beeline to Sushi imho is an impossible call to make. I don't know why, but I'm somehow sure that beelining Sushi and using the AIs to research Democracy for is faster, because I've basically never seen AI help with anything on the way towards Sushi.

I know that this doesn't make it easier, but we should try to take small steps, like do we want to go Math -> Currency or directly skip both and beeline CoL after having gone for HBR.

I really don't want to come of offensively, but I've always regretted going for techs AI researches often, this includes Construction, Calendar and Alpha.

Going something like Priesthood -> Oracle CoL -> self-tech HBR -> Horse-Archer Rush nearest neighbour -> tech CS -> trade for everything from AI could unfortunately be really fast. Detour to Math and Currency will maybe be worth it, but about that part, I'm already not sure . Early CoL is a stronger move than many think, working Scientists for quickly double-bulbing Edu would give us the earliest Oxford possible, early production usually comes mostly by the whip, and in general I don't really care about math-chops being better too much. I think we could simply whip the HAs and trade for Maths before the 2nd or 3rd war.

Dhoom:
With Mansa being in the last couple of games, and with us PLAYING as Mansa (EDIT: Oops, we are playing as Cyrus, who is Charismatic & Imperialistic... I got mixed up with the BOTM game), I think that it is safe to assume that Mansa will not be one of the AIs in the game. Thus, any tech trading needs to come from us working hard to get an AI up to Friendly status or else us waiting until multiple AIs know a tech.

For a tech like Construction, most AIs will not trade it around until nearly every other AI knows the tech. So, while it is a tech that is possible to get in trade, you usually have to wait way too long to get it in trade.

Math is also usually relatively easy to get in trade, but we'll have to wait for the AIs to research (at least part of) one of Meditation or Hinduism + Iron Working before we'll see enough AIs learning Math for it to be tradeable. We'll also need enough AIs to learn Alphabet so that we can actually make trades.

Thus, I'm not too concerned about duplicating research on techs like Math + Construction, as we'll need to wait a long time to get them in trade.

Techs like Calendar and Currency can potentially wait as being techs that are usually good to pick up in trade. Again, assuming that we can access all AIs, and have a large enough army to be able to attack an AI of choice, we could plan to capture a Wonder like MoM and only build it for the Failure Gold after getting Calendar in trade at a later time.

Code of Laws is generally harder to get in trade than Calendar simply because AIs who don't found the Religion will avoid teching Code of Laws for a while.

Assuming that we're going to go for Meditation -> Priesthood -> Oracle Code of Laws, besides Cultural Border expansion, what is the point of founding Confucianism? It will be a while before we can grab Alphabet so that we can eventually get Hinduism + Monotheism in trade for Organized Religion.

It sounds like we don't want to Lightbulb Philosophy, so we won't be using Pacifism.

Or, put the opposite way... if we do go for Code of Laws for early Caste System, maybe we should plan to Lightbulb Philosophy and/or plan to build The Pyramids without Stone. If we don't do these things, and if we aren't planning on building an Academy, then does it really matter if we get our Great Scientists right away instead of a bit later? Maybe, but we'll have to self-tech Paper in order to be able to use our Great Scientists on a non-Philosophy Lightbulb if we go for Meditation + Code of Laws.

Also, if you race to Lightbulb Education at the cost of not building Libraries so that you can hire your Scientist Specialists sooner, then what is the point of unlocking Universities really early if you don't have your Libraries in place first?

Does "early Caste System" come too early, given that our empire will be less-developed than in a regular game by the time that Code of Laws is Oracleable?

Mitchum:
If we do Oracle CoL ~T27 as in WT's test run, it will come much earlier than we need it for Caste System or courthouses. But it's never too early to have a religion for the +1 and "free" border pops. Plus, CoL is on the way to CS so if we can't pull of the CS-sling at least CoL is on the way.

What I'm more concerned about is building the Pyramids, especially if we're planning to run an SE. We have to find some stone... or at least it would be very nice to do so.

Seraiel:
Only way dealing with economy I know of, is to work for it.

What I know, is, that all concepts of certain "types" of economies are all obsolete. The only way for a maximum economy is to try to get the best out of each situation, so to evaluate options in single and on a case to case basis.

Possible alternative would be to set a goal, and work for achieving that goal, so i. e. to say "Mids are important, but Mids are nothing without cities" -> look for good city spots -> notice when arbitary cities are able to continue production of settlers -> build Mids in freed up capital.

LC:
This is exactly what we're doing, Seraiel. We're looking at the various factors in this scenario and trying to figure out how to create the optimum economic mixture.

War ecnomony makes sense because it always does and because we need to dominate resources for a corp. Plus we're Charismatic and Imperialistic.

SE makes sense because it spams GSes and the Sushi beeline is on the optimum GS bulb-line, plus it's generally the fastest early-game research engine, except maybe for war economy. Representation is also good for a city that is settling GGs.

WE and SE are somewhat in conflict because one prefers slavery and the other castes.

What is the best way to beeline Democracy? I've never done it.

WT:
Democracy Beeline :
In a perfect world, it looks like we only need to manually research 8 techs.

Medi,
PH,
Math, (free Col)
CS, trade for MC, Alpha
Paper, (bulb Philo)
Nationalism, (double bulb Edu), trade for Machinery
Constitution, (bulb Printing Press)
Liberalism (free Democracy)

Dhoom:
Okay, yes, Democracy is an expensive tech, but Constitution is reasonably expensive, too.

What if we used Liberalism on Constitution so that we could skip building The Pyramids and get to Representation ASAP?

What if delayed Liberalism until later and just straight-up beelined Constituation, then later went for Education (with Representation-enhanced Specialists) and later Liberalised Democracy?

WT:
Constitution rush:

Medi,
PH,
Math, (free Col)
CS, (bulb Philo)
Nationalism,
Constitution,
Paper, trade for MC, (alpha), Machinery (single/double bulb Edu), (bulb Printing Press)
Liberalism (free Democracy)

Mitchum:
As has been said before, what if we rush to Democracy only to find out that it's a "bad" thing like having to revolt to Emancipation right away. There go Caste System and Slavery out the window which will delay Medicine...

I get that we want to beeline it to see what the extra requirement is but what if by beelining it we actually hurt ourselves and add turns to our game? Are we willing to live with that risk?

Having said that, the Democracy beeline is lot quicker than I thought, especially with 4 GSs. In addition, beelining Constitution first to feel better about skipping the 'Mids is interesting. Although generating 4 GSs (or at least part of 4 GSs) without Representation makes it seem that the 'Mids would still be worth it. Being able to run Police State during the warring phase alone could make up for a lot of the hammers spent on them.

WT:
Rushing Demo is worth the risk. It's not likely it will hurt us.

I don't expect the new 'goal' will include forcing us to run emancipation or any other demands. Teams need to be allowed to be creative and flexible. It's much more likely that the new goal will make you wish you were in emancipation, but not force it (e.g. # towns requirement discussed elsewhere)

Someone posted the wise advice: It's best to have a plan early, stick to it, and execute it well. Without knowing the new post-democracy goal, it's hard to have an appropriate plan.

Don't forget that juicy Statue of Liberty on a Lakes map. That will be better than the usual Oxford rush I do. 30 cities (30 free scientists) = 180 raw bpt , 225 bpt with libraries.

Mitchum:
Yes, I've been thinking about the awesome benefit of an early SoL as well. In your estimate, how soon will we have Democracy? Could it be in the BCs? I think the limiting factor will be getting the 4 GSs but I'm not certain...

Jastrow:
I do not disagree with the generla concensus above (Get to Demo, Sushi, Min-Inc ASAP), but just want to add that I dont think we should necessarily assume that we should control all product of either of those two corperations. Depending on the map, it is possible that monopolizing Aluminium, or standard ethonal might be faster... (Even in those cases, we probably will want at least one, if not both, of the other two corps.)

My bottom line reasoning however, is that it is not necessary to answer the question of which corp, or even which type of economy, before the start. Clearly, this is an at least partly research game (no COnquest by 500 AD...), so we need to set up a research economy... The first ~30 turns of that are not likely to depend too much on which grand strategy we take, so a final decision can wait until we have more map knowledge.

Dhoom:
I would not be completely opposed to building a Scout or a couple of Warriors for early exploration, but another option is to settle a second (or third?) City that can Chop out a Granary, whip a Barracks, and then whip out some Axemen. Let the Axemen take Woodsmen II Promos after beating a Barb unit and they can explore the map... exploration will come a bit later but will be safer and our units will be far more likely to reveal more of the map overall before dying.

With no Vassals, we SEEMINGLY have to control every copy of a Resource ourselves. One alternative, say, if we'd going for Sid's, is to allow a single AI to control multiple copies of a single Resource type, say, Clams. We'd be penalized for not owning one source of that Resource but could get every other source in trade.

In fact, taking that idea one step further, if, say, we had an AI controlling 6 Clam Resources and we traded for 5 of them, we could Culturally steal the 6th one so that we would not be penalized for missing a Resource (we wouldn't be missing any, as we'd steal the AI's final copy of the Resource that wasn't being traded to us) but also would not have to own any of those Cities (we would just want to own 1 City that is near enough to one of the AI's Clam Cities be able to Culturally steal at least one copy of a Clam Resource).

Are we going to ignore the Literature path? The Heroic Epic will get unlocked early and The National Epic could help us with our Lightbulbing goals. The Great Library also helps us with our Lightbulbing goals. All Wonders are boosted by having a Marble Resource, and while none of them are GREAT for Failure Gold (each one requires either a Barracks or a Library), Failure Gold could be one "prize" that is worth the detour... but, perhaps only after we've gotten Aesthetics in trade from an AI would we consider a Literature detour?

WT:
I like that you at least want: Free Aeshetics, then we might detour.
Either that or we also trade for Lit. or steal it?

Dhoom:
I'm okay with stealing techs but one challenge is predicting who will research a tech and another challenge is getting a Spy built between the time of learning Alphabet and into place long enough to get the 50% stationary bonus.

I'm not saying that we can't steal a tech, but I think that for a cheap tech like Literature, it's better to just bite the bullet and research it ourselves than to try and set up a tech theft. The Epics themselves are usually enough to pay back the investment, although there is the minor risk that you can also get some rotten luck with spawning Great Artists from your Great Person Farm.

LC:
How realistic is it that we'll be able to trade for MC and Machinery early enough?

WT:
MC maybe. Machinery, not likely. I was just listing the minimal possible in a 'perfect world'. We don't need those until the last second tho. Just in time to bulb PPress. One turn before we get lib->Democracy.

Seraiel:
Oracle, definite yes.
Mids, definately maybe.

Advantage of stealing a small tech like i. e. Literature for example is, that if one i. e. directs the espionage to the right person early enough, that one can often steal a small tech like the mentioned one from palace-espionage only, which makes it basically "free" .

LC:
Here's how I like to plan:

If we decide to beeline Constitution, followed by Democracy, then how do we do the research and dovetail that with our warring and other sub-goals?

If we bulb Philo, then we have 8108 beakers to Constitution and with 3 more bulbs we have 6068 to Democracy, if we Lib-slingshot Democracy. Then with 6 more bulbs we have 23,005 to Sushi, assuming we get obvious techs in trade. That's 29,073 beakers under representation.

1. So how do we research the 8108 to Constitution?
2. When do we war and with what units?

WT:
I don't think we can plan that stuff so much as we need to adapt. If we see lots of food and no commerce, then we must have the mids. When and how we go to war depends on what resources we find and what neighbors we have, how close they are, and what their land looks like, etc.

ZPV:
I've created a rudimentary test save... with a nasty surprise coming for anyone looking for a late Oracle slingshot

Seraiel:
Writeup about Testgame played by Seraiel:

1. Settled 1SE -> Switch to Slavery on T0
2. Improved Copper first because 6 yield tile while building Granary > 5 yield tile imho
3. Improved Corn -> Pigs, microed the city to work the PHF (Plains Hill Forrest) for 2 turns when the Food-bar was half-full
4. Granary on T15, city size 2
5. Grow to size 5 while producing an Archer, working both Food + Copper + FP + Lake
6. 2pop-whip the Settler thx to IMP T22
7. Regrow to size 5 producing another Archer
8. Start production of a Worker in T25: This harmonizes very well with a riverside grassland Forrest chop happening exactly on that turn
10. Start of a Library in T28, city size 6 in T29 -> 3pop-whip

Important information: Riverside Cottage can not be worked, City is at happy-cap with Corn + Pigs + FP + Copper + 2 Scientists

-> Reloaded from 2960 BC

11. Founded 2nd city in 2920 BC -> start on Monument. City founded south of Capital near Wheat.
12. Switched to Binary Research
13. Moved 2nd Worker to 2nd city, Capital starts on Library
14. Capital grows to size 6 -> 3pop-whip Library -> T29
15. City grows to size 4 in 1T, chop from last turn stored in the OF of the Library -> 2T production of the next (3rd) worker

16. 1st Worker pre-roads to 3rd city (near Rice, capturing both Silks: possible option, found megacity capturing both Corn + Rice and having many green hills, I personally prefer 2 slightly weaker cities more than 1 megacity)
17. OFed into GW -> 2640 BC, Mansa builds GW
18. Regrew to just before city getting size 6 again. Worked Scientist at size 5
19. T36 whipped Monument and 2nd Settler
20. OFed into Oracle, started on 4th Settler in T38, Settler gets produced in 5T through normal slow-building in order to reduce the anger of the city
21. 2440: Mehmed builds Oracle
22. Met Julius, he has Alphabet and Polytheism
23. Founded 4th city in 2200 BC, hired 2 Scientists in Capital growing on an Archer
24. Started on 5th Settler in T46
25. Adopted Confucianism (this eleminated the single citizen which occured in the capital, but never was a real problem because of the city always producing Workers / Settlers in that time)

Result: 1960 AD, finishing CoL, Buddhism founded, 4 cities, 2nd city Borderpop + Granary, 3rd city Monument + 2 improved tiles, management of 4th city was not ideal

Savegame: http://www.philipploeger.com/civ4/ZP...eyondSwordSave

WT:
couple things:
- we start with 200 gold (test save doesn't have this)
- In my test I improved Copper, Pigs, then Corn (not corn, pigs)
- Granary, whip library would get us a border pop in time to hook up marble for a pre-T50 Oracle, but it's not looking like we have 40-45 turns.

- Plan B: We put a 2nd city on the marble for faster hookup.

@Seraiel, your test results don't show your research, and when you could get PH, when you could hook up marble, etc. But of course that would have been way off without the 200 starting gold.

I got a T25 (3000 BC) Oracle
on my first try.

I only used one chop which only saves 2 turns (I never chop pre-math). I used one 2-pop whip. I'm sure there is a way to improve on that with another whip.

Settled on PH (1S, SE)
Worked copper, Pigs, then corn.
building Granary.
T10: Meditation
Granary overflow into Settler 1 turn.
Grew to size 4 on a warrior 3 turns.
Worker is roading towards Marble.
T18: whip settler.
T19: Priesthood
T20: 2nd city on Marble.
T25: Oracle (3000 BC)

I will protest any further pre-math chops, so if you guys are going to unleash the axe then we should take Math free from the Oracle, but that's not what I want to do. I think we can keep our worker busy improving resource tiles for our cities that we will pump out quickly. We should not need to chop anything else before T35 (which is when we get should Math)

ZPV:
I've updated the test save - let me know if anything else seems off.
We now have 200 gold to play with.

Mehmed is pretty much a perfect storm re: Oracle, but I rolled that start for him first time. In tests without a super-marble start it goes around t50, with some variability.

WT:
Great! so we don't even have to chop a single forest and we can get it T27....or we could even try for Currency or CS....hmm. Instead of focusing on getting a settler for Marble, we focus on a library to get Medi,ph + Math T30-ish, post-Math chop the Oracle.

Seraiel:
Taking CoL from Oracle while self-teching Maths, that would be something I'd support.

WT:
Yea, maybe we build a super-shrine with that GProphet in confu (I know you used to like that sorta thing Seraiel). Convert the whole planet. I've seen players use the religious combo in space races (i've never done it). You get the AP (hopefully someone builds it for you in confu), Sankore, Spiral. The beauty of this game is that we may not even have to obsolete the combo like you eventually do in space race.

Mitchuj:
I can't do any testing until Monday or Tuesday. If we did go for a CS sling, how soon could we get it? Is it not even worth considering? A CoL sling is nice but a CS sling is a game changer...

I guess if Math doesn't come in until T35 we'd be looking at ~T50 unless we build an early library which would really hurt REX, right?

ZPV:
We can do t42ish with 2 cities; third settler in progress (based on a 2S capital. I imagine a plainshill capital can do a similar date).

We can beat Mehmed and take a post-Mathematics tech too, again at the cost of running scientists.

WT:
Normally, I'd go for the CS sling, but in this case, bureaucracy is not as attractive as it normally would be since we don't have a big commerce capital. Or hammers really either.
I'm not saying it's off the table, but I don't think it's a 'game changer'.

Mitchum:
I guess it depends on what your definition of game changer is. Will Bureaucracy in our capital at 6 pops be a game changer? No, but it will help. Will getting a ~1,000 tech instead of a ~500 tech be a game changer? Will being one expensive tech (well, at least it's expensive in the early game) closer to Paper -> Education be a game changer? Will having Math + CoL + CS as trade bait be a game changer? Will chain irrigation be a game changer?

Maybe each item on its own isn't a game changer but in my opinion, all of them combined will be a game changer which is why I'd be willing to risk going for it. Before deciding though, I'd want to see the state of our empire at ZPVs T42 vs. where we would be at T42 with WT's T27 Oracle to see what we'd be giving up in REX.

ZPV:
Honestly, the sacrifice feels too big, Mitchum. I'll post a save once I've run a few different lines through the first 10-15 turns, so that I know which improvement order comes out ahead.

Running those scientists so early really hurts, and we don't get a super commerce capital at the end. The only way I can see it being worthwhile is if we have a strong second city site to power our expansion while the capital can use its newfound production bonus to build us the Pyramids.

Mitchum:
I was just thinking more about this. One of the biggest drawbacks to the CS sling in addition to slowing REX is that it delays HBR for a LONG time... assumes that we have horses and want to HA rush an AI or three which I think we do.

WT:
You don't want to rush them too soon. I like to let them set up and get 5-6 cities from each AI instead of 2-3. All depends on how close they are and the horse situation.

Seraiel:
To decide on CS-sling, we need to know whether AI has Priesthood. With AI having Priesthood, Oracle can go at something like 2400 BC.

Horse-Archer-rushing is nothing we need to push, because we'll probably have decent space to expand to on the map. In the test-game, I would have had space for something like 8-12 cities to expand to, earliest war that would make sense for me would be something like with Cuirrassiers then, simply because Knights simply suck completely ^^ .

I btw. think that founding a city on the Marble is overkill imho... Oracle is a cheap wonder, we need to found some good cities, so cities that work well at sizes of something like size 4, 5 or 6.

Dhoom:
Quote:
Originally Posted by WastinTime
You don't want to rush them too soon. I like to let them set up and get 5-6 cities from each AI instead of 2-3. All depends on how close they are and the horse situation.

Unless you have Trade Routes, tech trading opportunities, or some other reason not to go to war early with an AI, you can both go to war early (taking a Worker, if possible) and disconnect their Strategic Resources and let them continue to expand without capturing Cities.

An AI which spams Archers will just REX that much faster.

Of course, such an AI is unlikely to build Wonders for you, too.

It's even arguable that we'd want to declare war on far-away AIs, with no intention of fighting them for real for a long time, while letting the nearby AIs develop peacefully while building Wonders for us.

LC:
The main reason I like settling 2S is that it frees us to settle our second city on a juicy site our scouts find. I can't test now, but I'm thinking we can get CS on or before T40. Someone should run a max REX test to compare the CS-sling tests. Max REX should include building granaries in all cities and probably libraries too.

Spending a GS on Math in exchange for CS is a dubious trade-off. The way to resolve it, in my mind, is to check how many turns CS will take in the Max REX test after beelining CoL. It's not really a question of beakers, it's always a question of turns in fastest finish. Later bulbs will probably only save a small handful of turns, whereas the Education bulbs often save 15 turns or more.

Jastrow:
I have no real feel of how the AI (and this may be strongly AI dependent) will react to this start, but my gut tells me that wating for CS to sling would be a huge gamble... I am more alongs the lines of a COL sling...

Seraiel:
Any new infos from the initial saves already whether AI has Priesthood? Without Priesthood, we can think about a CS-Sling, if AI has Priesthood though, we definately only want to run a maximum REX, Oracle -> CoL and biggest goal that's next then are the Mids, if someone's not so kind and builds them right in front of us... ... ...

Jastrow:
I thought it was clear from the gaem description that the Ai's have preisthood? If not, is there any way to tell from the start save? I cant think of one (at least not before playing a turn and investing beakers in research, and even that would only work if we have met the AIs, I think.)

Dhoom:
A Dike replaces a Levee
It is available with the Steam Power tech
It provides +1 Hammer to River squares and +1 Hammer to water squares
What needs to be confirmed is where we can build them... for sure when your City is on a River, but when else?

Must you be adjacent to a Coast square if you aren't on a River?

I assume that if you must be adjacent to a Coast square (if not on a River) that it can either be fresh water or salty water, right?

How important will Dikes be? Like, do we care if our capital has the ability to build a Dike? We won't really know how deep we'll need to go in the tech tree until we learn Democracy, but if we're highly considering putting Oxford elsewhere, we might not care about the ability to build a Dike in our capital and will just want to settle our capital without worrying about this criterion.

Mitchum:
Dikes are very nice and can be built any time your city is on a river, lake (even one-tile lakes) or ocean. So it's almost like a dike + Moai in a UB.

Unless the hidden requirement we find at Democracy has us going deep into the tech tree, I don't see Dikes being too relevant this game. In other words, if we can win with Democracy + Sids I doubt we'll even unlock Steam Power to build them because the game will be over already.

Jastrow:
Yep, I am playing the current BOTM, and am very impressed with the return I am getting from dikes in ocean-side cities. Having said that, unless the requirement at Demo is something like "devellope space tourism" (which I think it a possibility BTW), then I agree with Mitchum that we will not get to Dikes.

LC:
Charismatic + copper leads right into our hands for massive worker stealing despite kcd's silly efforts to the contrary. If we build a barracks and an axe, he only needs +1XP and he's already a Woodsman II. We don't need to DoP or CF, just keep snarfing up new workers and pillaging his metal, if needed.

Dhoom:
Haha, great point! And, you can combine said Axeman with a buddy... either 2 Axes or 1 Axe and 1 Spear, since it will be relatively easy to get Woodsman II on two units... that way, if an Archer gets the attack courage to attack, our unit won't be vulnerable to a second nearby Archer.

Mitchum:
We've put some pretty creative worker traps together the last two SGOTMs and SGOTM-12. I'm sure that we'll be able to steal our fair share of workers if we put our minds to it! I think massive worker stealing, if we can pull it off, will propel us way past any teams that don't do it.

Jastrow:
Agreed... If he wanted to stop worker stealing, he should have made it illegal. Anything less is nothing more than a detail... Stealing workers is just that goood!

LC:
Don't think we've asked this before. It might be a useful way to approach our strategic planning.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Duckweed
I guess it's more a matter of playing style. I usually have goals in very [early] stage and all strategies are made around to achieve those goals with flexibility as possible.

In general, the sooner a team establishes its game plan, the better they do. A corollary is that setting an inferior plan and sticking to it is often equal to or better than a superior plan set much later. What corporation will Duckweed select? What VC? What economic mix? What REX plan? Any early wonders? How will they leverage the 200g? Where will they settle and why? Will they go for an Oxford capital?

1. He will evaluate wonders based on their cost/benefit, but likes all of the early wonders, if useful.

Originally Posted by Duckweed
Early wonders conflict with early expansion. It's a trade of hammers (early expansion) for beakers (mostly). Most of ancient wonders are worthy of sacrificing the expansion. People don't build ancient wonders often in deity level is not because those wonders are weak, but because they can't compete with deity AIs. We have a pretty good chance for GLH (a super strong wonder) with a strong production capital.

2. He has an interesting approach to REXing decisions. For Deity/maze/k-mod he came up with this:

Originally Posted by Duckweed
Now back to the 2nd city site. The expansion priority in my mind is

Site helps to achieve a critical short-term goal >
Site with critical blocking value >
Site helps REXing >
Site with good resources
The gold site is in both 1st and 3rd category since deity expansion is expensive, while the Corn site is more of the last category site than 3rd before working on improved Fish and Pig, since it can only give 6 hpt when producing a settler. If you want a settler there, it is going to take a couple of dozens turns after you settle it, that's almost the time when capital completes GLH and ready to whip at size 6.

Okay, that list is specific. What is our list of priorities?

3. He thinks expansion:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Duckweed
The reason why I mentioned techs like Pottery, BW, TW, and Writing is because that they are critical techs for expansion, with both economy and production support. A simple example is that you double your production when whipping with granary.

We start with all the basic techs. That's a huge variance to our usual start. Is granary first? Or scout-granary? Or settler? Or worker? We have a ton of work building improvements and roads.

4. He likes 2f2c water tiles better than scientists (without Representation of course). Colossus 2f3c even moreso. Early exploration can give us some idea of how many lakes there will be. How many water tiles do we need to work to make the Colossus profitable?

5. He understands what the AIs will do when. ZPV already did some testing on this. How soon will the AIs get various wonders? How fast will they REX? How fast will they tech, starting with pottery?

Dhoom:
Well, for me, if we go for a Construction beeline, a clear choice would be to get a City that has 2 Food Resources and 2 Forests for a quickly-Chopped Granary. Then, we whip a Monument and whip units until the Happiness kills us. Then, we gift the City away, which RESETS whipping Unhappiness. Since we have Writing, we can Open Borders with said Civ. We then gift that Civ a bunch of Scouts on flatland, 1 stack per Cat that we have. Then, hopefully, we capture a Worker from the Civ to whom we gifted the City, recapture the City one turn after we gifted it, then hopefully get to keep the Granary (the Monument will be gone, though, but will have served its purpose of giving us a greater chance to keep the Granary and allowing us to still have our big fat cross), all while being able to take a Cease Fire for a second Worker steal at any time, while also being able to stay at war and continuously promote every Catapult that we own by attacking Scouts... Collateral Damage will only go so far, and then you can generally attack +1 time per Scout in a stack. The Scouts will stay in place healing, allowing you to rinse and repeat over time, gaining Great Generals and Promotions on your Cats.

In other words, we figure out what we want to do and then we base our plan (such as our settling plan) to meet such a goal.

One clear point is that if we want to be able to evaluate different settling locations, we need to be aggressive in our early exploration.

I already get the feeling that the AIs won't be blocking us in too quickly, but it may or may not help to have our third City be a blocking City... probably not, though, especially if we are planning an aggressive playing style as a way to get new Cities.
We also start with a Worker, which is not normal. I would tend to think something like improving a Food Resource -> 2 Chops into a Granary -> other improvements would likely be a good opening, but Food Resource -> Copper -> 1 or 2 Chops into a Granary could also be a good opening.

Or, we could even do something like Food Resource -> Copper -> Chop into Worker -> Settler while working those 2 Resource squares.

I have found that if you have heavily-Forested sites nearby, clear-cutting your capital to get additional heavily-Forested sites can help out a lot.

Duckweed has preserved Forests for Oxford in the past, but I'm thinking that REXing, especially to help us expand our empire and get Resources like Stone within our Cultural Borders (if possible) for The Pyramids will be stronger than saving Forests.

The first non-Religious tech will (likely) be slow for every player, including us, to research. It could very well be argued that ignoring The Oracle is a strong play UNLESS we want to get a "deep" tech. Sure, we have Marble, but +1 good City in place of The Oracle, especially if we plan to get whatever tech is chosen from an AI anyway, could be a good move.

If it weren't for the 200 Gold, we could even consider building The Oracle for Failure Gold, but if we want to put Hammers toward it, I'd just complete the Wonder.

If we do focus on fast REX, though, we CAN build The Temple of Artemis for Failure Gold in a City that we REX to, in order to help support further REXing.

LC:
Hm...forgot about Failed Gold Economy (FGE). That would be a way to leverage an MC slingshot (forge bonus).

Wow! With an FGE we could really go to town with REXing. What early marble/copper wonders could we build for Failed Gold?

Oracle (could complete in our second city for a quick border expansion and protection against gene pool contamination)
SoA
Parthenon
TGL
NE
HE
MoM
Colossus

Practically limitless. Massive REX and a race to the domination limit might be the best strategy here. If we complete the wonders though, it throws a monkey wrench in our GS spamming, except that we'll want some GPs for GAs anyway.

SLingshotting COnstruction + REX + units + WE also proofs us against the barb threat, which is always a very nice dovetail. Also enables massive worker stealing and proofs us against a counter-attack. Furthermore, we'll almost surely have to research COnsturction ourselves anyway.

ZPV:
@Those settling priorities:
Those are heavily influenced by Deity, where it's "block or get boxed in".
If the blocking one not so useful for us (AIs don't expand much faster than plain Immortal so it's 3 cities at 2000BC rather than 6), we could probably deprioritize that one.

I think our early goals should all focus around getting our science and production capabilities up as quickly as possible.

Tech priorities:
If we can get it free, CS would be great, (and maybe pay for the production hit it would take to get to it - I'm not sure yet), but if not, I'd prefer to go for some cheaper options first.
In particular: Mathematics, Literature, Construction, and Calendar (the first three for obvious reasons; the latter to let us run our cities at size 8-10 rather than size 6ish. I don't know about MC for the Colossus. I rather think it's one to try and pick up late once we have a lot of cities, rather than beeline. The main benefit to the water tiles is that they take 0 worker turns to improve. However, any saltwater ones need a lighthouse which costs as much as a worker.

AI Wonder dates: I'll fire up a few more test saves and try to pin some more wonder dates down after work today.

Seraiel:
Elepulting the whole map and Oracling Construction is something that will definately work, but it might be just a little slower and just not as safe as going Math -> HBR -> rush earlier and conquer faster -> aquire Construction later -> switch.

Maximum conquest is definately the way, and maximum rate of conquest will most likely have very great influence on the winning date.

I personally am not sure btw. if we should care about Duckweed and try to copy him, there are several other players in the forum that are at least on his level.

I personally believe that we can definately do better than Duckweed.

LC:
Just to be clear, I focused on Duckweed as a thought process, just another way to approach our strategic planning. Duckweed is, in my mind, the premier strategic planner in the current group of SGOTMers. SGOTM is a different beast than HOF or single play. That doesn't make him best for HOF or best all around necessarily, but right now we're focusing on strategy. If we can match their opening, and I agree that we can, then we can roll them in the mid- and end-game. That's just how I see it.

As I said elsewhere, a solid strat plan from the beginning is the strongest way to go. In fact, that's exactly how HOFers create their best dates. The difference with SG, of course, is no mapmaker, no new map. My key principle from SG4 onward is this: No hindsight! In other words, foresee all contingencies possible and play with total prediction.

Seraiel:
1. Goal: Get a Corporation and own all resources.

Way: Uncover the map, decide between Sushi, Cereals and Mining.

Interesting: Conquest will probably be the limiting factor of the game. Either this, or it's gonna be the tech, but I assume that conquering the map takes longer, because... :

Lakes has a lot of land.
Maps with little land already take up to 500-800 AD to be conquered under good circumstances.
Corporations are found in the BCs on Marathon, normal speed is completely different though

Solution: Every player that finds the time play out 1 test-game. Choose a HoF map if you want get yourself a HoF entry otw., all choices depend on you, but we need some Data. Kakumeikas biggest fault was, that they only searched the way, but nobody wanted to invest work, we're Team TSR, we work our way towards victory, everybody should actually know that work is needed to feel better, but in case you're not understanding that, I'm willing to hammer it into you!

(Let's move!)

LC:
@Seraiel

Generally we have viewed these early discussions as a brainstorming stage of the game, so the focus is more on generating all sorts of alternative ideas, then synthesizing a strategic plan. Sometimes alternative ideas are located in the swamp weeds. I can understand a city boy not wanting to get swamp juice all over his threads, to say nothing of leeches stuck all up and down his legs, so I'm here to do that dirty work.

What I'm currently curious about is how to combine warring with a specialist economy? Does a Lakes map have enough hammers to build units without whipping so we can run castes?

Seraiel:
Regarding the question: Lakes map offers beautiful land usually, so I don't think we have to worry about the map

The question is: How can we beat the Ducks

And the answer to that, we get by work.

It's very simple. We simply play out test-games, people upload test-games once they've finished for the day, posting a result.
Next day others have posted their results, this creates intelligent behaviour via ideas, those ideas get translated into further tests and further play, upload, continue as long until we've got a decent result and know what "the limiting factor" will be. That limiting factor is our focus, and must not be lost.

So we find out, what takes longer, getting to Sushi, or getting the Sushi-resources. Everything else we'll see / find out on the way.

ZPV created a test-game.
I played that test-game, made notes, now 2 players go their own way and play their own games.
We compare the results, combine the best all 3, 1 player replays test-game upload.

We continue tests from that game, 1 player plays, 2 players play to, we combine the good of all 3, replay, upload.

Let's say the game takes 200 turns, let's just simply try to play 30T of tests / day, then we will know exactly what will be important for us in 1 week. Let's say we play a little slower once the games get more complex, and know the results in 2 weeks.

We simply always follow the way we find, then all we have to do is adapt that course when playing the real game. We can start with playing the real game once we'll know the first results. So try to stay away from other CIV games, and really try to keep the goal, and walk that way. You'll notice that the result will be amazing, and that if you're doing good and being generous, that people will reward your efforts.

This is all I can give towards this for now.

Mitchum:
Regarding what takes longer, to get Sushi or the Sushi resources, you can bet that KCD made getting resources a bit more difficult than a standard Lakes map. He may have put some in the corner of the map or on a lake that requires a canal to net (yuck!).

To that end, we need to know the area around a city before we decide to capture/raze it. It would suck to keep a city near the edge/corner of the map only to find out that we need a second border pop to get some resource that cannot be claimed any other way. As KCD warned, exploration is going to be key in this game...

Dhoom:
Do I have to do anything special in order to generate a HOF-eligible map? Actually, what settings should I pick to simulate the current game that are non-obvious (or even that are obvious, if someone has the time to list them out)?

EDIT: Now that I think about it, if we want to play out different settling positions of the start, we probably can't create HOF-eligible maps, as we need a way to World Build the starting area. Still, a list of any game settings that we should pay attention to setting would be helpful so that we don't have to each re-engineer such a list.

Seraiel:
Ok. Deciding on Democracy or Sushi first isn't important, because we'll want Education first anyhow. We start with a scout, so we can uncover a lot of territory before reaching that tech.

Regarding what Mitchum writes though, I doubt that KCD_swede will give us a channel and it'd be really sad, if Astronomy would be needed on top, as Democracy and Medicine are already far away goals.

I personally think that the extra-goal will be a lot simpler, and that it's gonna be out of the box, but can be guessed from knowing Monopoly. Monopoly had cards, like "go to jail" , "get out of jail free" or "claim x y and z street and build Houses on each" .

It's hard to imagine any of them except for the trivial "Houses are Cottages" and so on, though that could actually be something. There is a connection between Cottages and Democracy, so maybe it's gonna be something like "raise this or that amount and buy x number of i. e. Intelligence Agencies" .

I'm afraid to try my hacker skills on kcd_swede and / or Alan_H, so I cannot go further in this situation, but someone that knows one or both of them could maybe "talk" or "snooker" them into a situation where they reveal some info that would help us?

Mitchum:
Good point. So I guess we need to decide at what point in the game we need to decide between beelining Medicine or Democracy. Do the tech paths diverge at Education or sooner? Would the number or type of desired great people change depending on which one we target? If so, how soon do we need to know?

Like LC said, it's great to pick a goal early on and go for it... but it's also good to pick paths that keep the most number of options open so that we can adjust when needed.

WT:
Democracy has got to be the first goal. Seraiel just pointed out a very possible new goal. "Getting a certain # of towns". Like getting houses and hotels in Monopoly. That would mean emancipation which Democracy provides. And we need time to grow them or time to do whatever the goal(s) really are. Either way it suggests Democracy first is the correct choice.

LC:
Anyone have an idea how the Trumpster relates to Monopoly or anything else for that matter?

@WastinTime: What's you rview on the best way to generate beakers in this game?

WT:
Pyramids: obviously we could make that work well, getting good beakers while going for the GS bulbs. However, we need to keep an open mind and scout. It sounds like there might be some pleasant surprises out there. For example: pre-improved gold mines? After all, this game is only 3 months, so giving us things to speed it up seems likely.

Also, realize that we are beelining Constitution (Representation) very early, so there is only a small window (ok medium size window) that we will use Mids. Maybe we can get by without it. Especially if we just run scientists in a couple cities to get our GS's. It may not be worth the hammer investment, especially if we don't have stone.

RE : Trumpster. I thought it just referred to Donald Trump.

Mitchum:
Posted in another sub-thread regarding the Mids:

Even if we get to Constitution relatively early, would said medium size window plus the ability to run Police State for our initial, heavy buildup of units for our wars still make the 'Mids a solid investment?

Maybe the going-in plan should be: If we have stone and can hook it up relatively early, heavily consider the 'Mids. If no stone, be willing to let them go. Hey, we can always capture them!!!

LC:
I'd like us to brainstorm all the possible Democracy conditions we can think of. It has to be something doable when we get to the point. In other words, it cannot be Diplo VC or Religious VC because we could be down to 1 AI by then.

Initial thoughts:

= resources (acquire them, own them, et cetera)
= exposed tiles (expose all tiles on the map)
= tech (research Future tech or whatever)
= improvements (build specified improvements, such as a uranium mine, et cetera)
= buildings (build a fallout shelter or whatever)
= units (build some Great Person, submarine or whatever)
= something really sick (gift away all cities you own with a wonder) -- unlikely
= spread your corporation to all your cities, et cetera
= town in every city or whatever (from ZPV's post in other thread)
= kill some (barb) unit
= control something with our culture
= be forced to revolt to one or more civics upon researching Democracy
- Have OB with every remaining Civ alive at the end of the game.
- Build every National Wonder.
- Move your palace to the western edge of the map.
- Have unit(s) on specified tiles
- Build a canal from Lake A to Lake B.
- Get an AI to self-build the UN (or some other wonder like the SoL which will be a strong wonder on a single-land mass map).
- Grow a city to 25 pops.
- No more tech trading allowed.
- Get an AI to DoW on you.
- Have 10,000 gold in the bank.
- Steal a technology.
- Nuke a city or get an AI to nuke one of your cities.
= dikes
= ocean resources

Cannot be:
/= Diplo VC (maybe only 1 AI left)
/= religious VC (maybe only 1 AI left)
/= Capture X AI city (We might have already razed it)
/= own X shrine or early wonder (We might have already razed it)
/= adopt or own X religion (We might have already razed...)
/- Own at least one city from every AI.
/- Have every religion in at least one city (or all religions in one city).
/- Build at least one Cathedral of every religion.

Dhoom:
Well, with that many possibilities, we can't avoid Democracy for too long.

It still may be preferable to grab Democracy with Liberalism, i.e. going for earlier Education.

In case it is "switch to Emancipation," then:
- It might also be wise to have 1 whippable build item in every build queue on the turn of learning Democracy, in case we are told "you must switch to Emancipation now."
- Since we aren't Spiritual, it may also be helpful to be in a Golden Age at the time where we still have 1 Civic Revolt left, but that's probably overdoing it, as there are so many other possibilities.

That said, most other possibilities won't be as painful as having to give up Slavery unexpectedly... but if there are other possibilities that we should prepare something for, speak up.

Mitchum:
We could revolt civics the turn before we learn Democracy so that we "can't" revolt to anything right away. That would buy us 4 turns to get our affairs in order...

Dhoom:
Which is fine, as long as we have a Golden Age that we just recently started, so that we won't force ourselves to take an Anarchy hit later.

WT:
I'm guessing that since we are Dutch, the secret new objective might have something to do with getting steam/dikes.

I'm also thinking that there will be an ocean island with required resources since we have a UU requiring Astronomy.

Dhoom:
For the sake of my questions below, let's assume that we were told at the start that there is an island with hidden Resources on it and that we needed Astronomy to reach that island.

Would that fact affect our gameplay? I.e. Would we still try to reach Sid's Sushi via Lighbulbing Biology without learning Compass?

Or, would we rather get Astronomy earlier, knowing that we'll need the tech?


If we're willing to make an assumption that we may need to find a hidden island, would we feel comfortable skipping Democracy until later and gambling on what that objective might be without actually knowing what it is?

WT:
I would rather just go straight to Lib->Demo. It's a pretty short path actually.

Dhoom:
So... Mathematics again, like the last time we had this decision to make? There are several Calendar Resources near our starting area (which are useless as Corporation Resources but are useful for Happiness and trading purposes) and Math unlocks Calendar, as well as the MoM (Marble is nearby, too). Math also unlocks powerful Chops. Math also unlocks Construction, which could be good to grab early on in the game.

Do we try for Buddhism or Hinduism, to make Priesthood tradeable, then grab Alphabet?

Do we beeline Alphabet, build a Spy, and try to steal Meditation or Polytheism if we can't get one of those techs in trade, to then be able to unlock the Priesthood trade?

Do we want to let an AI build The Oracle so that an AI will build a Holy Shrine for us? At least an AI can't waste The Oracle on a tech like Fishing... although going for Civil Service via The Oracle is also an option (with or without the possibility of Chopping out an early Library and Lightbulbing Math).

ZPV:
I don't consider a CS slingshot doable. We're Cha/Imp, and simply don't have the commerce to knock out CoL+Maths before an AI builds the Oracle.

I also don't think we'll be able to research one big classical tech (Alpha) and expect the Oracle to still be available. It might be, in which case we can hurry to priesthood and put two Marble-enhanced chops into it, but I wouldn't build a game plan around it.

I'll do some testing this evening, but I expect every AI to start researching Med or Poly, and then go for Priesthood if they don't start with it, since they're so much cheaper than the other options available.

LC:
If we settle 2S, then the only reason to not grab Oracle and at least take CoL or MC would be gene pollution.

If we wanted to try for the CS slingshot, it might be doable with a quick granary+library, two scientists, maybe working marble and a cottage, and bulbing Math.

MC slingshot gives us the Colossus which could be quite useful on Lakes. For Sushi we don't need Astro, so the Colossus doesn't obsolete. We have copper, so it's cheap.

ZPV:
I really think this is a Great Library scenario, but don't quite want to spend the hammers on two wonders when we also need to rex.

Oracle for something expensive but not very useful is great if we're struggling for trade bait.
It is very cheap (in hammers, if not worker turns) even if we're not struggling, but not so cheap that we shouldn't consider whether there's something better to spend the hammers on.

I wonder if we can chop out a small stack of Axemen and catch an AI napping. Of course, we'll need to find said AI first.

ZPV:
Initial test results:

1) Every AI starts off by researching the religious techs, and follows up with Iron Working. There is no point in researching Alphabet first.
2) The AI doesn't seem to consider building the Oracle before its second city, but it could end up building it in the t40-60 range.
We could probably research Poly-Priesthood and another tech by then without sacrificing growth too much (since we start with 200 gold to pay for city maintenance). My guess is one of the Mathematics followups will be the best choice. In that case, a marble-enhanced Oracle could pop the borders of a frontier city with two chops.

3) (This belongs in another thread) We'll start to see human barbs in the t20-25 range, and they'll start invading in the t40-60 range.

Dhoom:
Quote:
Originally Posted by LowtherCastle
For Sushi we don't need Astro

That's assuming that there isn't an Astronomy-accessible-only island where some of the Sid Sushi Resources are hiding, similar to what we saw in the last BOTM. Still, the life on The Colossus could last for a long time.

I'm pretty certain that all AIs will start with Priesthood, so self-teching Alphabet would net us at least Priesthood, but possibly not much else other than Iron Working for a long time. It would unlock Spies, though, which could be great for exploring a map that supposedly requires a lot of exploration. Still, it doesn't sound like the strongest play.

I do like the idea of self-teching Priesthood -> Math -> Oracling Calendar for extra Happiness Resources + MoM or Oracling Construction, spamming Cats, promoting those Cats against gifted Scouts, then rampaging across the map with highly-promoted Cats and an early Super Medic to go with them. Charismatic has me leaning toward Construction, both because Happiness will be a slightly smaller issue and because Promotions will come more easily to us, so it wouldn't take long to get several Drill IV Cats who gather XP by fighting gifted Scouts (say, gifted in a gifted City which we capture so that we can make Peace at any time of our choosing due to having captured a City).

It does sound like we'd have to sacrifice a lot to build an early Library and hire 2 Scientists when we could otherwise be Chopping into Settlers to fuel our Imperialistic Trait.

LC:
We should be able to figure out whether they have the points for Phood or not.

I think we should minimize our tech path and get as much as possible in trade. I'm not thinking just about cities with libraries and 2 sci, but about running castes and tons of scientists in our cities. Even SIP is weak for an Oxford capital. How are we going to research techs if not SE?

If we settle 2S, we'll want to whip settlers until we have math.

Mitchum:
I played an SE game a few months ago and I forgot how powerful it is... and this was with zero GS-bulbing plan. If we run an SE and have a very definite and focused GS bulbing plan, I can't see how another method could get us through the tech tree as fast. Don't forget that SE goes hand-in-hand with a War Economy. If 75% of our research comes from specialists, we can use the slider on culture if required to fight war weariness with little effect on our research rate.

Of course, although the Pyramids aren't required for an SE, they are a very big deal. We need to have an idea of how soon the 'Mids will go with all AI staring with Masonry.

LC:
Another reason to slingshot CoL is to get Confucianism so we can plant religion in our scientist cities if we run Pacifism. I'm assuming we'll be too late on Mediation or Polytheism.

Mitchum:
That's also a reason to slingshot CS since CoL is on the way there...

I don't think a CS sling is off the table unless every AI starts with PH...

LC:
ZPV, when did Meditation go in your tests?

Dhoom:
While kcd_swede has been a bit coy, I think that we can count on the AIs knowing Priesthood, since every player initially knew Priesthood and he only made a point of talking about taking it away from the human player. It was only when he was asked to specifically clarify his meaning that he probably had his feathers ruffled and started being tight-lipped about blatantly spelling out the fact that the AIs will still keep Priesthood.

ZPV:
Med in the 8-9 interturn. Poly in the 10-11 one.

LC:
Damn, we're 2 beakers short of Meditation on T9.

Seraiel:
Oracle -> CS would imo could produce a win very early.

I think we should definately try our best, and not make any predictions about the game or others in order to get it.

I think we should definately go for it, and the great advantage of the CS-Sling is, that it comes with basically no risk. Beeline CoL, aquire Math through trade or bulbing, bam.

If Mansa is in the game, we'll gonna have a way easier time. The option with the bulb though works really well. In HoF games I've achieved 1800 BC - 1700 BC CS-Dates with that strategy, I think 1500 - 1000 BC is absolutely possible with a normal start, and those values are definately still within the are at which getting Oracle on Immortal is possible. I even once got Oracle at 1100 BC on Deity, but I'm honest, and say that that was something special.

There are just those games where the AIs simply don't choose to tech Priesthood, because Priesthood simply not offering enough to them. Let's hope that what we're doing is simply good and believe that what we do has all rights, and then... .

Mitchum:
The biggest risk I see with the Oracle in general for this game is that it is likely that the AI start with Priesthood already as Dhoom mentioned above. If this is true, it's not a matter of the AI having to research PH; it's just a matter of how soon one of them will decide to build the Oracle as opposed to some other item. ZPV's testing showed the AI getting the Oracle T40 to T60. That's 2400 BC to 1600 BC. That's pretty damn early.

So I think we have three options:

1. Ignore the Oracle, let the AI get it and just assume that we'll be able to get whatever tech they pick for "free" via trade.

2. Play conservatively and go for a very early, very safe tech like those mentioned by ZPV in another thread (e.g. Calendar, Literature, CoL, etc.).

3. Take a risk and really push for the CS sling. This will affect our early REX for sure but if we're going to go for it, I think we need to pull out all the stops and get it as absolutely early as possible. Worst case in taking this path is if an AI finishes the Oracle and takes CoL a turn or two before we self-tech it. If that happens, is that us stepping off the top step of the podium already pre-2000 BC?

Personally, I'd love to pull off the CS sling but it makes me a bit nervous because the AI starting with PH changes a lot.

LC:
We'll know as soon as we see a filled-out demo screen if the AIs have Phood or not.

Dhoom:
Quote:
Originally Posted by LowtherCastle
we're 2 beakers short of Meditation on T9.

If we want a Religion badly enough...
Settle in place and work the Lake?
Settle 1S on the Corn and work the Lake once our Cultural Borders expand?

Warning: Anecdotal Evidence follows from my own experience/observations and these claims may not be true...
One benefit of grabbing one of the early Religions is less competition for The Oracle.

I find that an AI who founds an early Religion will first target Stonehenge, then one of The Temple of Artemis or The Oracle, in order to get a passive shot at generating a Great Prophet for the Holy Shrine (which is the proven preferred use of a Great Prophet in the hands of an AI). It's as though the AI knows its own limitations in generating a Great Prophet in that it knows it will build a Temple and hiring a Priest Specialist early on.

With all 3 of those Wonders being unlocked and with Stonehenge being cheaper, an AI will have far less likelihood of going for The Oracle. Specifically, it is my opinion that AIs do not target The Oracle to get the free tech but instead target that Wonder because of its Great Prophet GPPs.

I also find that if an AI does not found an early Religion, they seem to put a higher priority on building Stonehenge, as they do seem to "know" that building Stonehenge can "replace" a Religion in terms of faster Cultural Border expansions.

By founding one of the early Religions ourselves, we could take away a competitor for The Oracle, since the AI that would have founded the Religion may instead try for Stonehenge, having missed out on getting a Religion.

On the flip side, where we ignore Wonder-building, we can simply play a game of focusing on REXing and Military (it is a lot easier to balance 2 objectives, rather than 4 objectives--getting an early Religion and building Wonders). Beeline Construction/Horseback Riding, Chop out Granaries and Whip + Chop out units. Capture enough Workers to build Roads on the map to make our lives easier.

If all AIs are reachable, we can simply "claim" any Wonder that gets built. Whatever tech an AI gets from The Oracle can also be "claimed," via trading or a peace treaty demand (Espionage is unlikely going to be viable that early on in the game).

Horse Archers are more mobile, but can also suffer heavy losses if used improperly. Fortunately, we have a few good warmongerors on our team.

Cats are useless by themselves but ironically work well when paired with any type of unit, including Horse Archers--Cats have a slight edge against Spearmen on defence, and on offence, Cats will weaken Spearmen sufficiently that even Horse Archers can easily defeat the Spearmen.

I am kind of liking Seraiel's idea of early Horse Archers (of course, we'll need a source of Horses on the map) while we soon-thereafter build a couple of Cats at home to play the infinite XP tactic, getting ourselves a really strong army via settled Great Generals in a production-heavy City (such as even using our capital, settled 2S of the Settler's starting location, as ZPV has suggested for a possible Heroic Epic location).

LC:
As I understand things, when barbs units spawn, they will be an equal mix of warriors/archers/spears/axes. That won't be too deep into the game. We need to be prepared to defend against barb axes. My guess is that kcd gave us 200gold for teams that need an emergency warrior-to-axe upgrade.

This is actually a dramatically wild variable in this scenario. Far worse than the pantywaist complaints about events. Some teams might spawn only warriors nearby by while others only axes. Woe to the latter. We might want to test this because the GW might be a solid move, even without stone.

ZPV:
Yes, it should be an equal mix. The barbs are a bit scary, but I guess this means we'll need to get our scouts out before they spawn, or else exploration will be difficult for a while.

Dhoom:
Spies are invincible spawn-busters, but Warriors are still cheap spawn-busters.

Early Catapults can take on Axeman if the Cats are promoted up the Drill line.

Having a couple of early Axemen (we have Bronze Working) would also work, too... defend against Axes and attack Spears.

Mitchum:
I think barbs will be the biggest factor in the early game and they could REALLY screw up a perfect MM plan. So, I think we should do our best to spawn bust as well and as early as possible to just avoid the issue as much as possible. A pro-active spawn busting warrior seems wasteful but it's a lot better than a re-active double axe whip.

LC:
The eastern edge of the map and the saltwater lake to the west also provide a fair buffer against barbs. Kcd did that for the weaker teams. Easier to spawnbust.

Dhoom:
So, theoretically, the Barbs could build an Ancient Era Wonder, particularly if there are pre-settled Barb Cities (kcd_swede is fond of them).

I've seen Stonehenge and The Pyramids built by Barbs in past games (although no guarantees that those were BtS games--I probably saw that situation happen in Civ 4 Vanilla games).

Dhoom:
For our capital, do we:
A] settle in place
B] move, say, 1S onto the dry Corn (which could quickly become wet with a Civil Service beeline) for +1 Food in our City Centre, to also pick up the G Pig Resource in our capital's big fat cross?
C] move 1S + 1SE to the PH For and settle on Turn 1, getting Pig + dry Corn + Copper + 1 Flood Plains square + 3 squares off of the edge of the map + no long-term production?
D] move 2S to the G For, getting the same things as C] within our big fat cross but without the +1 Hammer from settling on a PH square, while also getting 2 PH Mines and 1 P Marble Quarry to work for longer-term production?
EDIT: E] move 1SE to the G Riv For?

Comparison: 1SE on the G Riv For instead of 1S + 1SE on the PH For:
+ Capital is on a River for the Fresh Water bonus and for 6 squares from a Levee (7 from a Dike)
+ Can work +1 non-River P Silk square
+ Can work +1 G Riv square (you gain 2 in the north but lose one by settling on it)
+ Can work a PH square
- Misses out on +1H per turn, which means a slower Worker
- Takes us +1 turn to Pasture the Pig Resource, which means a slightly slower start
- May miss out on a Resource that is hidden in one of 3 fogged squares (but one of which is a Forest)

LC:
We have a free turn to revolt to Slavery, so the worker could first move to the ph to see what's further south. That also allows our settler to freely settle on T1. Otherwise, where to settle depends largely on our overall game strategy.

ZPV:
I find it hard to ignore the food, production and fast start potential of 2S.

I think that would probably lead to a secondary commerce city NW of the lake to work all those calendar resources and boost our early-to-mid game science.
The area looks relatively hard to dotmap, so maybe we just shouldn't worry about using all the tiles here. Those sugar tiles are strong (think: floodplains without the worker or health penalties), but I like the pig more, so I think I can accept demoting them to a later (possibly filler ) city.

Mitchum:
I agree with worker S+SE on T0 to see what we see, but settling toward the corn, pig, copper and marble is hard to ignore as ZPV said. The northern city will be better post-Calendar.

At first glance, I failed to notice that we're at the far eastern edge of the map...

Dhoom:
If there are enough Hills in a City, I, too, tend to prefer Farms over Cottages, especially for a capital that doesn't have a lot of Food. In place looks nice for long-term Cottages and looks decent for Chopping out Settlers, but it also seems like a pretty weak capital for the initial stages (1 primary Food Resource being a big hindrance, and needing Calendar for most of the Resources being another big hindrance)... if those 2 Silk Resources were 2 Gems Resources, I'd be singing a different tune, but it will take a while to really make that place a strong Bureaucracy site.

Being Imperialistic means that Settler-Hammers from Food are slightly weaker, but working a 6-Food G Pig square is still good... we just won't get bonus Hammers from it... that said, with +1 Happiness from Charismatic and an early Granary that can be Chopped, we COULD 3-pop-whip (or 2-pop-whip Settlers), which would mean that the Pig would be very strong in terms of Food -> whipped Hammer conversion for Settlers.

The capital gets +1 Happiness from the Palace, which could be just enough to make it worthwhile grabbing that Pig in our big fat cross.

LC:
I think we should do some precise calculations to determine where the best starting location is. SIP has more commerce, but grows slower. It has about double the commerce as a capital in the long run. It also has more forests.

2S gives us marble in the FC and faster growth so it's clearly better for REX. A hidden advantage, if we want quick REX and kcd did indeed make a few nice cities nearby, then this settles them sooner and we don't have to waste an early settler hooking up marble. Non-trivial. We keep making the mistake of settling Podunk cities early for some hair-brained reason.

Calculations would tell us just how much faster 2S is at REX and how much faster SIP is at research. For example, 2S with pigs-corn should be able to 2whip the granary on T13 I think. (I doubt chops before improvements are optimal but can be tested.) 2S with pigs-copper should be able to 1whip the granary on T12 I think, so which is better?

Seraiel:
I'd settle 1SE. Settling the capital so close to the border of the map somehow is odd, but doesn't matter at all. We lose 2 Sugars, wayne, but we gain the Pigs. Commerce is almost the same, and with a game this short, our city will not reach size 20 anyhow, and even if it would, we could still work specialists.

Calendar resources don't matter to me and we can settle another city in the north, catching the sugar and the rice which can work as a GP-Farm.

I don't want to hurt you, but for me this is a no-brainer. The Pigs give the same Food that the 2 Sugars do, only from one tile, then we simply Cottage the riverside Grasslands, gives a size 8 city with decent commerce, and the other, non-riverside-grasslands are then good for being pflastered with Workshops. I believe that with us needing to pump out Settlers, the city won't be much larger anyhow when we reach Guilds / Chemistry.

WT:
My first instinct is to settle on the PH, but I would like a test game to see if we can get the marble hooked up in time for an oracle play. Anyone working on a test game?