SGOTM 09 - Murky Waters

Gyathaar just threw a spanner into our plans:

Gyathaar said:

Just so you know.. the game WILL have barbarians... if they pop or not in the game depends on how your give the techs to the civs...

If you give the techs to the civs in the worldbuilder, then no barbarians will pop during the game.. however if you do it by editing the WB file in a text editor, then they will pop
(the secret is what the StartingEra= line in the individual player sections in the WB file says)

Actually.. barbarians will be a bit meaner in this game than in normal games... so beware...

Click to expand...

So, what does this actually mean?

Erkon said:

Hmm, I don't get it to work. Worker, Settler (sneak in partly warrior to grow to 2), workers + library etc, Oracle in second city 1420 BC (Electricity 1360 BC). Agri, AH, Writing, Myst, Med, PH, Mining, BW. I would like to save two turns on the Oracle date.

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Are you maxing the overflow from the worker/settler into the Library/Oracle? I haven't tried it yet with BW.

Erkon said:

Gyathaar just threw a spanner into our plans:



So, what does this actually mean?

Click to expand...

It means we need to make a real test save...

Okay. This should work.
Thanks klarius. My updated save is now available in klarius' post just below.

My save changed.
LC, just save your game normally after your step 5 and upload the save file not the WB file.

Edit:
Or let me do it.
LC's save.

LowtherCastle said:

Are you maxing the overflow from the worker/settler into the Library/Oracle? I haven't tried it yet with BW.

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It may be possible to shave off two turns, and thus complete the Oracle 1580 BC, but it requires a bit more testing. Running scientists will delay the second worker, but perhaps by building the preserves after the farms and skip the windmills may do the trick?

EDIT: we may just as well wait until more of the map is revealed. Can we agree on worker and Agriculture first? Then LC can play six turns (after we have decided where to settle).

LowtherCastle said:

It means we need to make a real test save...

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Would the discovery of Electricity move us to modern age, and thus prevent barbs to spawn? Would it help if we gifted Electricity to other AIs?

Erkon said:

Can we agree on worker and Agriculture first?

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Only if we don't settle on coast.

Erkon said:

Would the discovery of Electricity move us to modern age, and thus prevent barbs to spawn? Would it help if we gifted Electricity to other AIs?

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Electricity is industrial not modern. Acquiring a tech no matter how will set the era for that civ. And the era influencing the barb spawning is the average era of all civs.
Barbs stop spawning in renaissance, so 3/4 of the civs in industrial (including barbs, but they will go modern first by learning SC) would stop the spawning of barb units.
Barb cities can still pop up until the game era goes to modern.

So, klarius, with our new understanding of the game settings, I take it this is no longer valid:Instead the AIs are starting with their usual ancient-age monarch speed for growth, building, and researching?

None of the era dependent changes apply anymore.

klarius said:

Only if we don't settle on coast.

Ahh, yes, of course

Electricity is industrial not modern. Acquiring a tech no matter how will set the era for that civ. And the era influencing the barb spawning is the average era of all civs.
Barbs stop spawning in renaissance, so 3/4 of the civs in industrial (including barbs, but they will go modern first by learning SC) would stop the spawning of barb units.
Barb cities can still pop up until the game era goes to modern.

Click to expand...

So if we trade/gift Electricity to two three/four AI, we could get rid of barbs around 1000 BC? Now, would that be preferable? Speeding up the development of the AI will help us in the tech trade arena, but may make them harder to conquer. Perhaps we don't need to grab that much land though, and paratroopers will be good enough against LBM anyway.
The barbs will learn our advanced techs on T20, yes?

EDIT: No, it's T34

Erkon, what makes you so sure there won't be 18 AIs?

I'm tending to agree with Erkon that we can't test this too much without knowing the map more. Driving me crazy here trying to find the POWER opening.
1. When klarius reminded us about turbo-windmills that freed us up from researching Mining, so I don't think mng-bw is it. Slavery is good for food-rich, hammer-shy starts, but if we want to crank out settlers and workers, then we don't need it.
2. Agri-ah-wtg + quick acad is an awesome use of our traits, but then Oracle supposedly puts our whole development back a bit (I still got Oxford in the early ADs).
3. Waiting for paratroopers to go beyond our first 6 cities slows us down at the AL-slingshot phase because too few captured cities have come out of resistance and gotten developed.
4. So I tried a corndog Oracle-Electricity beeline and got it on T33, 2020BC. That gives us some time to REX and build cottages, but I haven't gone further. This also dovetails with beelining Alpha and eliminating barbs, if we want.

Note: Anyone noticed how awesome settling NW would be on klarius' save? Even without knowing about the horses and copper, you get the fish, furs, and corns. I'm looking for gems up there on that grass tile in the NW fog.

Erkon said:

So if we trade/gift Electricity to two AI, we could get rid of barbs around 1000 BC? Now, would that be preferable? Speeding up the development of the AI will help us in the tech trade arena, but may make them harder to conquer. Perhaps we don't need to grab that much land though, and paratroopers will be good enough against LBM anyway.
The barbs will learn our advanced techs on T20, yes?

Click to expand...

We don't know how many are on the map. But if there are e.g. 6 (+ us + barbs) we would need to gift it to 4 to get the game era to renaissance. 3 if the others reach classical on their own.

BTW, the goal is not conquest, but space race . We only want to capture cities which help with this goal.

It's still 3% barbarian free beakers independent of game speed, so 34 turns at least.

LowtherCastle said:

2. Agri-ah-wtg + quick acad is an awesome use of our traits, but then Oracle supposedly puts our whole development back a bit (I still got Oxford in the early ADs).

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I'm not seeing the big advantage of a very early library. I end up with not even using scientists then immediately, because I want to build settlers or workers. The few beakers you get by an earlier academy don't warrant delaying development, IMO.

LowtherCastle said:

Note: Anyone noticed how awesome settling NW would be on klarius' save? Even without knowing about the horses and copper, you get the fish, furs, and corns. I'm looking for gems up there on that grass tile in the NW fog.

Click to expand...

Note the blue circle in the original screen shot. I put some resources up there but still didn't manage to get a circle there.

klarius said:

I'm not seeing the big advantage of a very early library. I end up with not even using scientists then immediately, because I want to build settlers or workers. The few beakers you get by an earlier academy don't warrant delaying development, IMO.

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That's the problem. Without knowing the map, there's no obvious best strategy. Lack of roads slows our settlers more than lib/acad. The lib/acad only delays one settler about 3t and returns 10-12bpt immediately upon completion, which buys us, for example, The Wheel for free in 5-6t.

So far I see 4 basic opening strategies:
1. CS-slingshot with wkr-wkr (T44 1360BC) then REX
2. Elect-slingshot (T40 1600BC) via bw with ? wkrs and ? settlers
3. Elect-slingshot settled on corn with wkr-wkr (T33 2020BC) via phood bee-line, then REX
4. REX with no Oracle

The main reason for early REX is to get our cottages built asap and/or perhaps to go on the early warpath. For straight REX, the best is probably agri-wheel although we don't need the wheel before the worker has farmed the 2 corn and windmilled the 2 (3?) barren hills. For cottages we need pottery and maybe (early) bw. To go on the warpath we need horses and/or copper.

If we don't care about cottages, then CS-slingshot is for sure the best option, because with cheap libraries and unis we can build Oxford really fast. I tested it.

We want a GE asap for Mining Inc., so we are then free to leverage our cheap GPs.

We need 15-20 cities eventually. Imo, starting that with paratroopers might be a bit late, because the cities are slow to come out of resistance and add any needed infrastructure.

Building all the parts takes 1 turn. We are research limited. We could of course build research or wealth with extra hammers. What do we want Mining Inc. for?

I mean, are all those hammers we could have got from the GE and all those hammers invested in executives worth it?

jesusin said:

Building all the parts takes 1 turn.

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That's not what I saw in Ironhead's and Dunamic's HoF Gauntlet First place finishes. Are you sure?

LowtherCastle said:

1. When klarius reminded us about turbo-windmills that freed us up from researching Mining, so I don't think mng-bw is it. Slavery is good for food-rich, hammer-shy starts, but if we want to crank out settlers and workers, then we don't need it.
2. Agri-ah-wtg + quick acad is an awesome use of our traits, but then Oracle supposedly puts our whole development back a bit (I still got Oxford in the early ADs).
3. Waiting for paratroopers to go beyond our first 6 cities slows us down at the AL-slingshot phase because too few captured cities have come out of resistance and gotten developed.
4. So I tried a corndog Oracle-Electricity beeline and got it on T33, 2020BC. That gives us some time to REX and build cottages, but I haven't gone further. This also dovetails with beelining Alpha and eliminating barbs, if we want.

Note: Anyone noticed how awesome settling NW would be on klarius' save? Even without knowing about the horses and copper, you get the fish, furs, and corns. I'm looking for gems up there on that grass tile in the NW fog.

Click to expand...

1. I agree that we don't need early BW to unlock slavery, although chopping forest may come handy for early Oracle. I get my best dates on the Oracle in second city if PH is completed before Mining/BW.
2. LC, I estimate that delaying lib+academy 10 turns will cost us 150 beakers. Is that a lot or just a piss in the Nile (aka fart in space)? I presume the focus is on Oxford, so can we gain more than 150 beakers by REXing a bit quicker early on?
3. Do you envision us to grab AL with Liberalism? Does that fit with Gunpowder/Rifling/Chemistry/Biology?

klarius said:

...BTW, the goal is not conquest, but space race . We only want to capture cities which help with this goal.

Click to expand...

I've never played a peaceful Space Race but I'm prepared to learn

klarius said:

Note the blue circle in the original screen shot. I put some resources up there but still didn't manage to get a circle there.

Click to expand...

ZPV wants to move the scout there, and both you and LC has shown interest, so that is then our candidate scout move?

LowtherCastle said:

That's the problem. Without knowing the map, there's no obvious best strategy. Lack of roads slows our settlers more than lib/acad. The lib/acad only delays one settler about 3t and returns 10-12bpt immediately upon completion, which buys us, for example, The Wheel for free in 5-6t.

So far I see 4 basic opening strategies:
1. CS-slingshot with wkr-wkr (T44 1360BC) then REX
2. Elect-slingshot (T40 1600BC) via bw with ? wkrs and ? settlers
3. Elect-slingshot settled on corn with wkr-wkr (T33 2020BC) via phood bee-line, then REX
4. REX with no Oracle

The main reason for early REX is to get our cottages built asap and/or perhaps to go on the early warpath. For straight REX, the best is probably agri-wheel although we don't need the wheel before the worker has farmed the 2 corn and windmilled the 2 (3?) barren hills. For cottages we need pottery and maybe (early) bw. To go on the warpath we need horses and/or copper.

If we don't care about cottages, then CS-slingshot is for sure the best option, because with cheap libraries and unis we can build Oxford really fast. I tested it.

We want a GE asap for Mining Inc., so we are then free to leverage our cheap GPs.

We need 15-20 cities eventually. Imo, starting that with paratroopers might be a bit late, because the cities are slow to come out of resistance and add any needed infrastructure.

Click to expand...

I share your view in general, and I'm not sure what is best. The lib/academy delays one settler, and all subsequent settlers three turns until the early roads pay back. Man, I'm totally lost when comparing early tech pace vs early REX. How can we discuss this? Perhaps by comparing 1AD status in our test games? Or is it gut feeling?

jesusin said:

Building all the parts takes 1 turn. We are research limited. We could of course build research or wealth with extra hammers. What do we want Mining Inc. for?

I mean, are all those hammers we could have got from the GE and all those hammers invested in executives worth it?

Click to expand...

We want to shave of turns on the last part, which will take us more than one turn. Mining Inc can perhaps save us one turn in the end, which is not marginally. We only need a few executives, and they are used to shift "useless" hammers in non-vital cities to "useful" hammers in component production cities. It's a way to shift hammers both in distance and in time.

I tried worker, settler, warrior => grow to pop2 etc
Agri, PH, BW
Oracle in second city 1660 BC
2 chops
1 turn to writing as of 1600 BC
4 workers + 2 warriors built

However, if AI run ancient age, then we're not in a hurry to complete the Oracle

jesusin said:

Building all the parts takes 1 turn. We are research limited. We could of course build research or wealth with extra hammers. What do we want Mining Inc. for?

I mean, are all those hammers we could have got from the GE and all those hammers invested in executives worth it?

Click to expand...

Upon further analysis, I agree with you that we can build the parts as fast as we can research the techs, unless we can get to researching 1 tech per turn in the end-game, but that would probably mean our earlier game was too slow.

Sushi and Mining, however, can raise the upper limit of our research, as explained here and here. If we don't need the hammers too much from Mining, then we can spread it to other AIs and use it for cash income, whether we build Wall Street or not. This costs very little in terms of executive hammers.

The only question in my mind is how fast will our game go. If it goes too fast, like last time, then corporations may not pay off, but with Gyathaar giving us early Sushi, I highly doubt it.

Maybe we don't need Mining, though. In this case, it is nice to not have to worry about popping a GE. That definitely frees us up earlier to use GPs for bulbing and a revolt-free GA. Perhaps we should plan in these terms. If we happen to pop a GE, all the better.

Some general strategy considerations:
IMO, the number of beakers we generate early are pretty unimportant. The winning team will be the one that can generate the most beakers from T100+ for the final push.
Even the Oxford date is not that important. A few turns delay there mean only a fraction of a turn in the end.

The question is what we have to do to have the killer empire later.
My opinion is that REX has the highest priority. Everything else has to stand back. Even in normal games this is true for space, but here with our early commerce improvements, we don't even run a real danger of over expanding.

In the long run there is only one city that profits from forest preserves (NP). All other cities need either cottages or workshops. And the balance is tilted somewhat towards cottages as we have cheap science multiplier buildings, so the hammer economy argument that you "only" need forge, factory and power doesn't really count.

LowtherCastle said:

That's not what I saw in Ironhead's and Dunamic's HoF Gauntlet First place finishes. Are you sure?

Click to expand...

You build parts while you research other techs that enable other parts. You leave a not too expensive part for the last researched part. You reserve the best production city for it. You chop the turn you get the last tech. The following turn you have the last part built. Time from last tech discovered to ship launched == 1 turn.

Erkon said:

We want to shave of turns on the last part, which will take us more than one turn. Mining Inc can perhaps save us one turn in the end, which is not marginally. We only need a few executives, and they are used to shift "useless" hammers in non-vital cities to "useful" hammers in component production cities. It's a way to shift hammers both in distance and in time.

Click to expand...

You can't build executives in useless cities but only on the vital ones you want to improve.