SGOTM 14 - Kakumeika

I gave us an ocean fish and plains cows to see if that was enough to want to settle NE-E. By T47 I got three warriors, a worker and two settlers, having improved both seafood, the cows and the corn. I did two 2-pop whips and a forest chop, and the capital is at size 2. The plains forest hill was nice for production early on.

So this is a warrior and one or three population behind the other test games. The 6-production cows is nice, but the need to whip twice to get the job done fast enough loses much of the value of the corn and crabs.

I was dissatisfied with my approach, and tried again. This time I built WB-WB-worker-worker, and by T50 I had those four units, four warriors and two settlers. I improved the obvious four tiles and did four chops and three 2-pop whips total, finishing at size 2. Tech was similar, Pottery about one-quarter done. So that's 3 turns slower to produce the warriors and settlers than my game where I settled 1W, but this game has already revolted to Slavery and has built two extra workboats. A settle-1W play would need to chop these workboats in the second city later on, but I don't know if that's a severe enough cost to offset being a couple of turns faster.
 
Everyone seems very enthusiastic! :crazyeye:

My thoughts have been ringing from the starting screenshot, and it took a long while but I finally found this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=351380

For years I have seen references to plains cow bug and forest spam, and lo and behold there's a plains cow and lots of forests in our BFC. Now I'm not saying for sure that there are hidden resources, but we should give some thought to Tachy's practice games that include them.

I'm not sure it's relevant - we have cows and corn for food sources, so we might not trigger the "this is a poor start" condition. I'd have to look at the map script to be confident of anything, and there's nothing stopping the designer adding or removing such "hidden" resources, or deceptively carving away forests, anyway.

Beyond Settling spots and warrior scouting, what are your guys' thoughts on the various game settings ?
From the few No vassal games I have played, I seem to remember the AI vs. AI wars lasting a loooongggg time.

Yeah that seems right. Domination is also painful because you have to do more complete kills or declare peace and do compensating settler spam. That settler spam is also more expensive to support because you can't spin off colonies even if you were prepared to accept half-value for vassals' lands in the Domination calculation.

I have never done random AI personalities.

It significantly limits our ability to anticipate AI "strategy". Tech trading chances are harder to anticipate, as are diplomatic reactions. So the UN victory condition would be extra hard (ditto religious I guess, but it's not available to us).

The cultural victory condition is not out of the question - Philosophical gets us an extra artist or two for culture bombs. However it doesn't make much use of our Charismatic trait.

Space and time are obviously silly except in some extreme map design.

So I guess that leaves the military victory conditions as the most logical target, unless we can kill the Wizard relatively early and some distant AIs will be harder to conquer than Culture Victory is to achieve.

Also, is that "lots of good witches and wicked witches" a hint from the mapmaker of including all the female AI leaders? Wicked witch of north,south,east,west.
Poor Dorothy :mischief:

Maybe. Someone was theorizing in the sign-up thread about cowardly lions and tin men, etc. too. :)
 
Well, the case with horses isn't that impertinent as everyone is agreeing to start with AH. If horses are found and we SIP (of course, SIP isn't optimal), my test game is a representation of we can do. But I do think that mabraham REX is better...
And the attachments aren't distraction, but a tool people can use for testing. Just get rid of unrevealed resource in worldbuilder.

Sorry about that. I thought the discussion might go in the wrong direction if we assumed resources would appear there. And thanks for the test saves. I used them too :D.

Looking at the starting screenshot provided, the tile 1NE from the oasis looks like it has tundra color. We should confirm that with with the starting save when we get it. Crabs presence might also mean we are close to the northern tundra parts of the map. That would mean scouting north is not a priority. Scouting the "green" south would be better (warrior 1 SE).

Why would more seafood be better than settling 1W? I think that position is great with AH as the 1st tech.

Also, like mabraham mentioned, Stonehenge would be a great asset with the charismatic trait. More whipping and growth potential.

The fact we have to kill someone (the poor wizard) calls for a warmongering game IMO and a domination/conquest victory condition. Sinergy with the charismatic again.
 
how do you enter worldbuilder?
I know it was alt+w in vanilla, but I didn't need it since a long time. I tried alt+w in BtS the other day, but nothing happened.

Do I have to unload buffy or what?

thanks
 
I agree that military conquest does seems to make the most sense right now.

Yeah that seems right. Domination is also painful because you have to do more complete kills or declare peace and do compensating settler spam. That settler spam is also more expensive to support because you can't spin off colonies even if you were prepared to accept half-value for vassals' lands in the Domination calculation.

Without vassals you don't have any colonial costs. So the settler spam at least won't suffer from that.

I guess I am hoping that the wizard will be difficult to kill. That will make the victory condition more interesting. Cultural victory is difficult to do in a fast manner if you are not gearing up for it from the beginning (although a sushi cultural game might be a more flexible approach -- of course a lakes map would likely kill that)

Sorry I haven't been able to do more than comment on others work. I hope to get some real testing in soon. I made a soul killing decision to try a marathon-time victory because it sounded fun. I hope to finish that soon and get the work that has been piling up out of the way.
 
The Wizard of Oz is a Civ that was given a Capital, Religion and The Apostolic Palace at turn 0 of the Start file.

It could be problematic to have The Wizard of Oz pop up every 10 turns with another annoying resolution, especially the Religious Leader Diplomatic Victory resolution.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
SGOTM-14 starts Aug. 10th:

We may want to wait for the Start file which I presume will be made available on August 10th, before we get too deep into test files, discussions on where to settle etc.

The start file will reveal information like whether any Civ already owns certain Great Wonders like The Great Lighthouse in SGTOM-13. There may be interesting logging information left as in SGTOM-11. All of these could be game changing to the extent of invalidating all our previous discussions.

We could discuss what game aids (spreadsheets we might use in micromanaging cities, determining hidden diplomacy bonuses, etc.)

We definitely need to consider our Grand Strategy, even though we are clueless about the nature of The Wizard of Oz and how to destroy him (or it).

I also wonder how important the story line of "The Wizard of Oz" is to winning the scenario? Its difficult to tell whether there are any clues in the book or clues in the movie that may help us win earlier.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
The Wizard of Oz is a Civ that was given a Capital, Religion and The Apostolic Palace at turn 0 of the Start file.

It could be problematic to have The Wizard of Oz pop up every 10 turns with another annoying resolution, especially the Religious Leader Diplomatic Victory resolution.

Annoying, yes, but only once his religion has spread to everyone can he suggest that he wins :)
 
We may want to wait for the Start file which I presume will be made available on August 10th, before we get too deep into test files, discussions on where to settle etc.

I would rather encourage people to speculate and test out strategies based on the information we know. The more familiar we are with the starting techs and limitations of the starting area (by testing, etc.) The better able we will be able to make best use of the inevitable changes scouting will bring. The entire game will be like this, trying to make the best decisions without all of the information.

So I think we have to avoid becoming attached to any of the MM plans we make now (on this point I agree with Sun Tzu Wu), but I disagree that we shouldn't speculate and try to make the best plans based on those speculations.

We definitely need to consider our Grand Strategy, even though we are clueless about the nature of The Wizard of Oz and how to destroy him (or it).

This seems far more difficult to do with the amount of information we have. I think we have made tentative conclusions here about what victory conditions are possible. But this too needs to be flexible as we discover more with the start file and map type and the nature of the wizard.
 
Believe it or not, I just finished watching the Wizard of Oz movie :D.
I turned the TV on after lunch, and the movie was just beginning.

I'll post a few facts if you tink it would help us in the game :crazyeye::confused: .
 
Apparently the movie is slightly different than the book, but who knows which one the game is based on. Sun Tsu Wu had some good guesses based on the book, but maybe we should look at the movie too, so sure post a few facts.

Diplomatic victory...

I think while a diplomatic victory might be harder with random personalities it has a good chance of being the one we could finish the fastest. I think we need to keep this in mind when we are interacting with the AI. There have been some very fast Diplomatic victories lately (Tachy...)
 
I'll randomize the play order unless someone wants to suggest an alternative or request a particular position. Since I expect we will collectively determine the settling location and best moves based on extensive testing (at least in the beginning), I don't think it is that important who goes first.

So tomorrow I'll post the random order (determined by picking names out of a hat or something similar) unless told otherwise.

It is nice to know who will have the lead and who will be next to keep things orderly and who will be able to break any stalemates in case we can't come up with a concensus on any point.
 
More wild speculation (assuming a coastal fish and 2E settling)

settled 2E
T48 (I think, but I must have lost a turn since I settled the capital 3920 BC for some reason)
1 worker 1 settler 1 warror built 1 granary 6 pop capital
(so could 3 pop a settler in a couple turns) finished pottery and animal handling (& mining, BW, wheel) (no mysticism though)

A different path than mabraham's (probably worse since we would have limited scouting done with just the original warrior) However, tech is better? (skipped mysticism while mabraham didn't) and that might be a limiting factor in this start.
 

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Did some testing off the 1W site. I deviated from the mabraham plan after the worker was built. I went and worked the corn rather than the sheep. The reasoning is that the farm gets up faster than the pasture, and I'm also on the right side of the world to then go work the cow straight after.
Downside is the loss of a little commerce, so this plan will certainly be behind most otherwise techwise, but I did have some stuff to show for it.

By turn 44, I had built 2 settlers (one founded into a city on turn 43), 2 warriors, 2 workers and had changed to slavery.
Bronze working was on turn 34. I then started on wheel+pottery, but one thing to note is that side cities had little to do when founded, and depending on where their tiles are, they may need mysticism for the monuments. That, and the economy was tanking fast. In the real game, we may need to pay more attention to roads for the trade routes.

Build path was Worker -> Warrior -> Warrior. Second warrior timed with the growth to size 4, and from there built Worker -> Settler -> Whip Settler (those last 3 had 2 chops going into them). I'm not convinced the whip was right as it took me a couple of turns to recover, but had another worker+warrior out in those last couple of turns.

I've got some more detailed notes on tiles worked if needed, but in practice, this approach could be fined-tuned and I'm sure a couple more food/hammers could be eked out. mabraham's spreadsheet will come in handy for that.

The test game is a complete lakes map with start location modified to be like ours. There was stacks of contacts starting at turn 9. So we might be able to compare that with our game to try and gain insights into the scenario.


P.S. Noob question: Is the first turn turn '1' or '0'?
 

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I think while a diplomatic victory might be harder with random personalities it has a good chance of being the one we could finish the fastest. I think we need to keep this in mind when we are interacting with the AI. There have been some very fast Diplomatic victories lately (Tachy...)

One thing that worries me about Diplomatic is that we will have to take out the Wizard. If the wizard is well liked, then picking up a bunch of 'You killed our friend!' won't help much.

Of course, on a good day, we can bribe everyone into taking out the wizard....
 
In my opinion, we should focus on Normal speed Conquest Victory and assume we will have enough time to destroy The Wizard of Oz later before killing off the last Civ.

Kaitzilla may have some good tips for starting a Normal speed rush; he's made a least a few impressive early military victories at Normal speed.

The key elements are:

1) Researching Bronze Working, Animal Husbandry and Iron Working very early.

2) Connecting all strategic resources.

3) Chopping and whipping an early rush stack(s).

Remember, its cheaper to capture a city than build a Settler and found a City.

In later rushes, Horseback Riding and Construction can be added which will permit Horse Archers, War Elephants and Catapults.

We do need to plan fall back Victory Conditions, in case Conquest is too difficult or impossible. Domination Victory may be a good fall back Victory that can be achieved quite early.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
A different path than mabraham's (probably worse since we would have limited scouting done with just the original warrior) However, tech is better? (skipped mysticism while mabraham didn't) and that might be a limiting factor in this start.

We would need a plan for border pops for side cities (or to not need them before libraries) - which might Mysticism. At the same time, we would need a plan to keep the economy afloat, which means at least one of pottery or writing arriving in good time.
 
One thing that worries me about Diplomatic is that we will have to take out the Wizard. If the wizard is well liked, then picking up a bunch of 'You killed our friend!' won't help much.

Of course, on a good day, we can bribe everyone into taking out the wizard....

and

In my opinion, we should focus on Normal speed Conquest Victory and assume we will have enough time to destroy The Wizard of Oz later before killing off the last Civ.

Kaitzilla may have some good tips for starting a Normal speed rush; he's made a least a few impressive early military victories at Normal speed.

I was imagining a diplomatic victory at the end of a sword. So we would still do early rushes, etc. Just we wouldn't pass up opportunities to make friends and think about how we can get the tech for a diplo victory in mind.

P.S. Noob question: Is the first turn turn '1' or '0'?

I believe it starts at 0 (since that is what is displayed on the 4000 BC turn.
 
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