SGOTM 04 - Geezers

Looking at the save I see Thrallia was right to doubt Gyathaar's placement of the settler. We would have needed to settle another city to claim that copper otherwise.
 
With Khan down south it's an interesting question where we should settle our second city.

Gems city to the south of us would be nice and near. However there's a fair amount of jungle to clear. Subject to seeing where the horses are I would be inclined to go for Gold city instead. It's not that much further away. There's less jungle to clear. The gold will do just as well in keeping the citizens happy. Lastly it will allow us to block off the northern half of our land from Kublai's settlers. We'll have to research Mysticism but we probably needed to do that fairly soon anyway.

Btw it's interesting to note Gyathaar's impassable peaks in the north. :)
 
yeah...I was doubting myself until I saw Htadus' test save...it had a blue circle 1E from where we were deciding to settle...there was no difference in the terrain, so it had to be a hidden resource moving it. Sure enough, in the test saves there was copper 1 tile out of our borders, and in the borders of the blue circle in the test. After that I decided we had to have copper or horses in our new capital thanks to the move.

I was hoping it was copper, of course, cause it's placement gives us a 2f3h tile! A huge boon for settler/worker production, and for great production while not losing food.
 
With Khan down south it's an interesting question where we should settle our second city.

Gems city to the south of us would be nice and near. However there's a fair amount of jungle to clear. Subject to seeing where the horses are I would be inclined to go for Gold city instead. It's not that much further away. There's less jungle to clear. The gold will do just as well in keeping the citizens happy. Lastly it will allow us to block off the northern half of our land from Kublai's settlers. We'll have to research Mysticism but we probably needed to do that fairly soon anyway.

Btw it's interesting to note Gyathaar's impassable peaks in the north. :)

I too agree the gold site is preferable. However, I would like to place it on the river delta (5W &1N)west of us and next to the fish. It will give us 5 food (for real:p ) 3 commerce and can handle food needed for the city to work 2 of the 3 gold. Also we will be able to irrigate the 3 plains.

Alternatively I would prefer the non gold plains hill next to 3 gold (4W and 2S). This would get to share the pigs with capital to grow but will have corn also. This could be better.

BTW Thrallia good call on moving north.
 
I too agree the gold site is preferable. However, I would like to place it on the river delta (5W &1N)west of us and next to the fish. It will give us 5 food (for real:p ) 3 commerce and can handle food needed for the city to work 2 of the 3 gold. Also we will be able to irrigate the 3 plains.

Your first choice is definitely the better of your two suggestions. I can see the merit of Thrallia's suggested site, not least the fact that no expansion is needed to claim the gold. I think I do prefer your site. I'll have to have a play with a dotmap tomorrow so that we don't inadvertently block out good sites.
 
I see I am next. Is it 30 or 20 turns that I get the pleasure of going on this adventure :D ?

I found this in the SGOTM03 thread:

markh said:
Usually the first player plays about 30 to 40 turns if the techpath is agreed on and not much is happening during these turns anyway. Then the following players play 20 and once everybody played a set we go with 10 turns per set.

Time for sleep now. I'll look at your thoughts tomorrow.
 
Fantastic efforts so far, guys.

Yes, I am on still on holiday, but I have taken a break from the rustic isolation of the beach and found a place to get online and connect with the world again.

I don't have a lot of useful comments to make as it is quite difficult to analyse the position from the forum posts alone.

I guess would ask a general question about our overall early game strategy with regard to Khan - in terms of if and when we engage in war with him. I assume that with constant war with Ghandi, we will always have to have enough military protection to defend ourselves against him. Thus we will always have to cover our back, although he doesn't tend to be the most aggressive guy around.

So, do we intend any sort of rush at Khan?

Also, while I am here, can someone explain how we do the diary of turns that we do? Is it automated in any way, or do you have to type it up manually as you go along? What does IBT stand for?
 
Would it be worth it to insert roads before AH finishes to hook up the copper?

When looking at the save I picked the same spot Htadus did (next to fish) as second city site.

I think we need to get a warrior or scout south soon to find out how much room is between us and Khan. I'd still be interested in south city site as possible third city but it depends where he is.
 
Do we really need another scout? I don't think I have ever built a scout in any of my games. Surely there must be more important things to build at this point. Maybe I have been underestimating the value of scouts.
 
I don't usually build any either but ours died and we have a lot of black area out there still. Since it is mostly jungle though it is probably better to send a warrior out then a scout but I think we lose the ability to make warriors when we hook up the copper? Here's the map so far since you can't download game:


(Signs are from Thrallia)
 
Thanks for that. I wonder how Htadus is getting on. I see that only four teams have submitted a save at all so far. We're well under way, I think, and we do have the most posts (there should be an award just for that).

I'm not sure what some of the notes on that map are trying to say, but I am inclined towards settling south. I like the look of getting hold of that gold at some point soon, given that we can't see Iron or Horses yet.
 
Thanks for that. I wonder how Htadus is getting on. I see that only four teams have submitted a save at all so far. We're well under way, I think, and we do have the most posts (there should be an award just for that).

I'm not sure what some of the notes on that map are trying to say, but I am inclined towards settling south. I like the look of getting hold of that gold at some point soon, given that we can't see Iron or Horses yet.

I will not play tonight since I will be settling 2nd city. We will discuss the merits of the site and then proceed from that point on.

I have changed my mind to the alternative location I identified earlier since it is the better spot in my mind. It has better defense, will have pre improve site to work (the pig from the cap) and we can have 27 commerce per turn with just 5 citizens. Can you imagine the research speed on this site.
 
The reason I chose my spot was for a lack of overlap and the fact it had a food resource and could reach all 3 golds...however, I learned in the last SGOTM not to be against a site simply because of overlap. I'm somewhat against founding a city simply to use the pigs, since I think we planned on using those pigs to allow a super production capitol. That's why I chose a site that fit all 3 gold and could reach fish. Founding on the river would be good as well.

Jenarie: we have not researched the wheel yet, so we can't build roads yet...that also means that once the copper is mined, we'll gain the bonus hammers, but won't gain access to copper yet. That means we can continue to build warriors until whenever we wish to build a road.

Harbourboy: I proposed a scout soon after because early exploration is very important for determining where we can settle, where we want to 'create' or borders at for awhile, and to find our opposition. Since our scout died, we need another unit to do so. We could use a warrior, since human barbs will likely show up soon.

As far as our relations with Khan...he's definitely going to be destroyed sooner or later, as we want all warmongers kept unable to bring any harm to Gandhi. It is somewhat mean of Gyathaar to give us such a great area in terms of production AND commerce when we want to lose the game :(

Finally, I think after we reach AH, Masonry, and possibly Agriculture, we should rush Writing>Alpha>Mathematics and trade everything away to anyone we know. Alphabet first. The tech pace needs to be furious, and since we don't know WHO will be a good trade partner with Gandhi, we need to trade any non-military techs everywhere as fast as we get them. Alphabet is important because it is the #1 most limiting factor in early AI tech advancement. The faster we get it and trade/gift it away, the faster the overall tech pace will increase and the sooner it will do so.

I say Mathematics early as well because without marble or stone we need some heavy chopping to get the Pyramids and Library...if we prechop the forests between tile improvements in our cities, then we should get Math in time to gain +50% on all chops and build the Pyramids before anyone else does.
 
Jenarie: we have not researched the wheel yet, so we can't build roads yet...that also means that once the copper is mined, we'll gain the bonus hammers, but won't gain access to copper yet. That means we can continue to build warriors until whenever we wish to build a road.

Is why I asked: "Would it be worth it to insert roads before AH finishes to hook up the copper?" I meant wheel when I said road... can't you mind read? ;)

I usually prefer scouts to scout but if sending it into the jungle a warrior = scout as far as movement and has extra survivability. We have one already so if we hook up the copper we could replace the warrior on city garrison with an axeman and send the warrior south.
 
I have no access to the save now as I am at work, so I will have a look tonight to state my opinion on the second city site.

Our decision to move the settler and not settle in place paid off. Great. :goodjob:

I think I like to have Khan gone sooner than later, so I think we should plan our first war while he is still in expansion mode. Khan's UU is Keshik ? Should have an eye whether he has horses around.

@ harbourboy : we type the notes manually. I always have the editor running in the background and just alt+tab from the game to the editor to type my notes for each turn. Afterwards I just simply copy and paste my notes from the editor into the post here. As already mentioned we just play a few turns, so it is not much work.

IBT stands for the interturn when the AIs make their moves.

One more thing for our "newbies" : make sure that your autosave is set to autosave each turn (I do not remember which value it has in the .ini file), so if the game crashes you can load the autosave from the current turn. You then have to replay your moves as before, so even if you lost a city or units you should play it as before. I think there is a guide in the rules which file has to be edited and how for the autosave.
 
The reason for sharing that one crucial tile is to accelerate the growth of the goldsite city fast. 3 times fast for the first growth and 2 times fast for the second growth while using one gold mine. That is approximately double the science gold. This city has a capability of nearly 70 raw gold when developed with about 20 shields without the use of Pigs. I did not account the effects of Bio and railroads. Also overlap wont hurt this game since we can never really maintain very large population in this game even with police state due to constant war.

Last argument for the site 4W and 2S: After we get to population of 5 (current happiness limit) and one border expansion, we can work 3 gold tiles, corn and another tile of choice until we can get irrigation to some of the grass lands. Capital wont hurt either with corn (6f), clam(5f) and Lake (3f + 3g) with LH.

Summary.
Pro:
  1. Faster growth to use gold fast.
  2. Can use all 3 gold with 5 pop (or 4 pop and halt growth)
  3. 4 tile move from Cap for better offense. Yes I meant offense :D as in best defense. Have couple axes between cap and gold site as a rapid reaction force.
  4. 4 tile move to sugested south city site and same defense plan.
  5. Not a coastal city for long run commerce city.

Con:
  1. Share an important tile.


Capital is not going to suffer and we need this city to grow fast as possible.

I am not a coastal city fan unless there are couple of resources on coastal tiles since we are very limited with what we can do. Even for a financial cive cost will only give no more than 4 gpt (w/Colosus) while a town give five or six.
 
I think we need a third city as soon as possible too. Even with the jungle, I prefer settling the coastal city to south, next to Gems. It will help us during our campaign to get Kahn out or maginalize him.

Tech wise I vote for Ag, Wheel and Pot before writing. We need to farm, connect copper and gold sooner than later and need to use the food to its max.

Just as much as the wheel we need galleys and Tireames for the narrow divide. Even Gandhi is going to want to claim some fishing nets. So we need to interject it here some where.

How well do we think we are going to be able to trade techs early?

I want to officially say not going to build the oracle is a mistake. :sad: (in the second city to get CoL or MC) But I guess we have to plan for the Pyramids. Oh by the way do you guys ever go for WWonders to get cash for 100 percent science in mid game?
 
The reason for sharing that one crucial tile is to accelerate the growth of the goldsite city fast. 3 times fast for the first growth and 2 times fast for the second growth while using one gold mine. That is approximately double the science gold. This city has a capability of nearly 70 raw gold when developed with about 20 shields without the use of Pigs. I did not account the effects of Bio and railroads. Also overlap wont hurt this game since we can never really maintain very large population in this game even with police state due to constant war.

Last argument for the site 4W and 2S: After we get to population of 5 (current happiness limit) and one border expansion, we can work 3 gold tiles, corn and another tile of choice until we can get irrigation to some of the grass lands. Capital wont hurt either with corn (6f), clam(5f) and Lake (3f + 3g) with LH.

Summary.
Pro:
  1. Faster growth to use gold fast.
  2. Can use all 3 gold with 5 pop (or 4 pop and halt growth)
  3. 4 tile move from Cap for better offense. Yes I meant offense :D as in best defense. Have couple axes between cap and gold site as a rapid reaction force.
  4. 4 tile move to sugested south city site and same defense plan.
  5. Not a coastal city for long run commerce city.

Con:
  1. Share an important tile.

Perhaps I'm missing something but your new preferred second city site (4W, 2S) does not have access to the pigs until it expands so how do the pigs make it grow faster? Are you sure you don't mean 3W, 2S? Btw we need Mysticism so that we can build an obelisk to get the cultural expansion.


I am not a coastal city fan unless there are couple of resources on coastal tiles since we are very limited with what we can do. Even for a financial cive cost will only give no more than 4 gpt (w/Colosus) while a town give five or six.

Couple of reasons why we may want coastal slightly more in this game. Ragnar's UB is useless without coastal cites. We want to find out whether Ghandhi is sharing his land with any other civs and who are those civs. The only way to do that is send a WB or other naval vessel round there to see. For that we need a coastal city on the other side of our land from the capital.

I agree it doesn't have to be the second city but it should be soon. The gem city may take a while to settle and will cost a fair amount in maintenance.
 
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