SGOTM 13 - Gypsy Kings

So I was reading Duckweeds article again and thinking about our overall strategy and it got me to thinking.

My thinking is that we will probably need an early expansion phase, a heavy tech phase, and then a heavy hammers phase. We conquer the world during the final one.

??? What wonders do we REALLY need to get us up and running and off of Elba ASAP?

As normal, we only want wonders that give us a serious ROI by substantially enhancing our chosen game strategy. IMO that should be falling into place by about T70 when we have information about our location, what land is available and where the AIs are/are not. So we should go for Pyramids only if we're wanting to run substantial quantities of specialists, Colossus if we can see ourselves working many coast tiles, Oracle if it leverages access to the foregoing or an important tech (e.g. CoL for religion+Caste)

??? What will allow us to GROW ASAP, and stay financially solvent while we do it?

IMO one of Pyramids, Colossus, early AI KO, or early Currency will be necessary. However we don't want to start to limit our thinking until about 60 turns in.

??? If we need Astronomy, how best to get there ASAP?

IMO bulbing to Liberalism running the first city as a GP farm shortly after we get CoL.

??? Domination or Conquest?

That might depend how monstrous the GLH-bearing AI is. In some scenarios, they have to be the first target, and that won't lend itself to Conquest. Neither will millions of little islands, unless they don't all get settled.

??? How far into the Military tree do we need to go?

I can't see us overcoming our slow start with anything sooner than our UU musketmen and trebs. They may need Astronomy or Steel backing them up. None of my test games have (looked like) been getting a war machine rolling until 1000AD.

GLH is not an option of course, so what do we have to work with? I think we need to assume that we won't have stone or marble at least in the very beginning. We know we have seafood and lots of it. This means working coastal tiles almost all the time. I think The Colossus could prove to be the most valuable early wonder especially if we get copper on 1 of those grass hills.

Yep, Colossus could easily be best, and works with our cheap lighthouses. We use the whip for hammers, and while re-growing we have each 2:food: returning 2:food:3:commerce: working a coast tile. My reservation is that we need a plan for :hammers: during the war phase.

Colossus+whipping
Suppose we have a city at size 8 with lighthouse and granary on two clams and six more coast tiles. That returns 2+2*5+6*2-16=8 food, 1 hammer and 25 commerce each turn. That's more than enough food to whip 4 population and regrow in a 15-turn cycle (23+24+26+27 < 15*8). At size 4 it returns 2+2*5+2*2-8=8 food, 1 hammer and 13 commerce. Interpolating linearly, we get 8 food, 1 hammer and 19 commerce on average. We get 180:hammers: from the whip (assuming we have a military unit of that size to whip) every 15 turns, so the total return is 8 food, 13 hammers and 15 commerce per turn. (That might be a bit high on the commerce - not all cities can have two clams and six more coast!)

Caste workshops
Suppose we have a city at size 8 with lighthouse on two clams, 4 grassland and two plains tiles which have all been workshopped. That returns 2+2*5+4*1+2*0-16=0 food, 1+4*3+2*4=21 hammers and 5 commerce per turn. If/when Chemistry comes online, this goes up by 6 hammers. We also don't need to worry how large the unit is and the whip-timing when we choose to build it. We've had to spend six lots of 8-9 turns workshopping (I forget how many) during the earlier :science:-push when this city was probably running specialists with the food.

In either scenario we might be running HR/Rep/Police or Nationhood or have a forge and I think those effects are about the same in each case, where relevant.

Caste seems to return higher relevant yields during the :hammers:-phase, if we have the land available. We'll need to organize more than 1 worker per such city to get the infrastructure built before war-time. Caste is a bit sucky while we're growing the population to the size where we want to run our pile of specialists - especially if it's been pillaged by whipping. Here's where the 3-wonder idea comes into its own - but it's not a wide window of gain.

During the :science:-phase, the Colossus+whipping strategy between size 8 and size 4 returns the same amount as above. Caste at size 6 running four specialists returns 2+5*2-12=0 food, 1 hammer, 5 commerce, 4*3=12 gold/beakers and 4*3=12:gp: (these may or may not become a Great Person some time). That is vaguely comparable Colossus+whipping (more :science:, light on :hammers:), but we haven't considered the extra 4*3=12:science: from Rep, or the :science: value of the Great People that pop, or maybe Pacificism or the National Epic. IMO, Caste gives clearly higher returns than Colossus+whipping provided we arrange for suitable multipliers (NE, Rep, Pacifism), if we don't need to build much infrastructure during the :science:-phase. What kind of infrastructure support do a million UU musketmen, Galleons and siege really need? Barracks. Granary to get up to size. Forge if the city is bored. Courthouse if it's far enough away. Theatre to get the Globe Theatre. Some of those will get whipped before the switch the Caste, too.

We could cottage that land instead, which will give a commerce return that starts low and may never reaches its maximum (Democracy and PPr may never be on our tech list, FS doesn't rate to be better than Slavery), requires a bunch of worker turns before it gets going, and really doesn't synergize with whipping. Cottaging a massive Bureaucratic capital can only happen if we can find/capture a good site, and build the Palace and all the infrastructure fast enough.

The bottom line (IMO)
To my mind, all that adds up to running Caste System from about T150 onwards for the rest of the game. It also synergizes with Nationhood during war, because you run poly-artists in the city, first to get a border pop, and then until you get 10% culture to enable drafting out of the captured city. Given the desire to use Caste System, Pyramids offers better prospects than Colossus. Note that there were prereqs - there has to be land to workshop, and workers to do it. As I've said before, if our available land is a pile of 2-tile islands, then Colossus plus maybe Moai-Bureaucracy capital is the way to go.

Do we really NEED the Oracle? Could those hammers be better spent on galleys and units as we work our way out into the islands?

Yep. The Oracle would have to fit a plan, delivering faster access to the piles of stuff we need - :science: or :hammers:

Pyramids? We are going to be whipping like mad. We may not have the population to actually run very many specialists, especially early. The Pyramids are only really valuable if you are planning on running a specialist economy, is that our plan? I am not convinced.

Well, there's some numbers for you to consider above. If there's counter-arguments I've not considered, or under-weighted, please raise them :) I think we should whip up to T150-180 or so, then spam specialists for a while to create our tech lead, then conquer the world.

I have been convinced after more play testing that settling in place and getting city #2 up ASAP is a better option than settling on the plains hill UNLESS there is room to settle north on the island somewhere.

Yeah, if it extends north, further consideration might be required. I still like the early extra hammers from working the PFH, however.

What about bypassing the religious techs all together, Mysticism possibly excluded because of our trait.

Tech path something like Fishing>Mining>BW>Pottery>Sailing>MC>Writing>CoL>Math....CS

Plausible - if Bureaucracy synergizes with the rest of the plan. Sailing should precede Pottery IMO - our organized Lighthouse is half the size of our Granary. Writing may need to be earlier if we've got 3:commerce: trade routes to pick up.

The problem I see is if we do indeed need Astronomy. Once we get CS, we lose the opportunity to bulb our way to Astronomy.

If "bulbing" means more than one GS on Education (or whatever)... where are those going to come from, if not a pile of scientists running Caste (and preferably Rep)? You probably spent one on an Academy too?
 
I note that there's been a second change of plan regarding the date the save comes out.

By my calculations, the save is available in 15 or so hours' time, and should be up at 1700 my local time (Australia). I think we should detail someone to move the warrior, save and re-upload. Every team's going to do that move, so we give nothing away to the people watching the graphs. I'm happy to volunteer to do that, if people agree.
 
I note that there's been a second change of plan regarding the date the save comes out.

By my calculations, the save is available in 15 or so hours' time, and should be up at 1700 my local time (Australia). I think we should detail someone to move the warrior, save and re-upload. Every team's going to do that move, so we give nothing away to the people watching the graphs. I'm happy to volunteer to do that, if people agree.
A good idea, and OK by me. 0600 UTC would be 0100 local here (USA Eastern time Zone).
 
Sure move the warrior and upload that would be nice :)

Don't forget that the pyramids increases our happiness by 3 in 4? cities. That is a big benefit all by itself. We might be seriously deprived of happiness resources as well as isolated.

Because we are planning to whip these wonders with OF from settlers, building the wonders doesn't significantly slow our expansion down. I definitely think at least one wonder is critical for our success, and I think if we can get all 3 wonders (colossus, pyramids, and perhaps oracle if testing shows it helps) we will be in a much stronger position than otherwise. Of course we need to do some more testing with more updated info on the game.

Thanks mabraham for testing out my idea :goodjob:

I hope I can give it a real go with updated information Friday/Saturday (edit: by testing not, of course, with the real game).
 
I note that there's been a second change of plan regarding the date the save comes out.

By my calculations, the save is available in 15 or so hours' time, and should be up at 1700 my local time (Australia). I think we should detail someone to move the warrior, save and re-upload. Every team's going to do that move, so we give nothing away to the people watching the graphs. I'm happy to volunteer to do that, if people agree.
We CAN'T upload the save after the warrior move! You are not allowed to upload 2 saves with the same date, and the starting date of 4000bc won't change with the warrior move.

I will be preparing the roster order later today given the change of start date. In the past, my basic way of of determining roster order has literally been by drawing names at random with consideration given to requests for inactivity at the beginning of the game. If/when we had a high number of NEW members to the team, I sometimes drew the names from 2 "pools", old and new alternately so we were able to mix new players in early but assure that there wasn't a long stretch of turnsets by exclusively new players.

Because of the warrior move, the 1st turnset here might be 2 turns only, but I'm not sure yet, (thinking cap on). Basically the procedure WILL BE, move the warrior, take a SCREENSHOT, save and CLOSE the game, POST the screenshot in the thread for discussion and further testing if the we see something that changes our testing to date.


Don't forget that the pyramids increases our happiness by 3 in 4? cities.
But Monarchy/Hereditary Rule increases the happiness in ALL of our cities by however many cheap MP's we can station!

This is VERY IMPORTANT...
To minimise the impact of a crash you *must* have auto-saves set to happen every turn. Then you should be able to reload the latest autosave and replay the moves and decisions you made during the current turn. You should notify me if you have to do this. To do this, edit the ...\My Games\Beyond the Sword\CivilizationIV.ini file using Notepad, change the interval to '1', and save it:

In addition, I now check my .ini file BEFORE EVERY playing session as sometimes computer crashes or updates or whatever seems to reset the .ini file to it's default state which is saving every 5 turns I believe. Also, please find the setting that "creates save on exit" so you don't accidentally quit without saving. I know, no one would do that, except for possibly even a CFC moderator who shall remain nameless. :mischief:
 
Don't forget that the pyramids increases our happiness by 3 in 4? cities. That is a big benefit all by itself. We might be seriously deprived of happiness resources as well as isolated.

There's also the chance of using Police State. Hopefully war weariness won't hurt us much, but +25%:hammers: to military units would have to be in the mix for consideration.
 
We CAN'T upload the save save after the warrior move! You are not allowed to upload 2 saves with the same date, and the starting date of 4000bc won't change with the warrior move.

Ah, good point :eek:

I will be preparing the roster order later today given the change of start date. In the past, my basic way of of determining roster order has literally been by drawing names at random with consideration given to requests for inactivity at the beginning of the game. If/when we had a high number of NEW members to the team, I sometimes drew the names from 2 "pools", old and new alternately so we were able to mix new players in early but assure that there wasn't a long stretch of turnsets by exclusively new players.

Because of the warrior move, the 1st turnset here might be 2 turns only, but I'm not sure yet, (thinking cap on). Basically the procedure WILL BE, move the warrior, take a SCREENSHOT, save and CLOSE the game, POST the screenshot in the thread for discussion and further testing if the we see something that changes our testing to date.

Indeed.
 
T79 1-whip settle onto Oracle, 42:hammers: overflow
T97 done Oracle->MC
T114 done side Forge, work on the Great Engineer
T129 (or so) done CoL+Confu
T148 Pyramids got built by an AI

Gave up, still about 17 turns short of building the Colossus.

I'm thinking our machine does not have the legs for the triple-wonder run. Note that this AI time beats my best Duckweed-Pyramids run, too.
 
Sailing should precede Pottery IMO - our organized Lighthouse is half the size of our Granary
I am unclear here a bit. I have tested a bit both ways, and I think it comes down to how fast we need to settle off the island. If there are better sites off island, then Sailing 1st makes sense for the early galleys as much as for the Lighthouse. But if we can live with just 2 cities for a bit, the early Granary makes our whipping dramatically more efficient. I think if there is land north, which could create a stronger #2 city, then I would lean to Pottery 1st. Sailing 1st if we have to settle #2 east where we have been testing.


If "bulbing" means more than one GS on Education (or whatever)... where are those going to come from, if not a pile of scientists running Caste (and preferably Rep)? You probably spent one on an Academy too?
Maybe not on the Academy early if our Capitol is not super strong.

The standard bulb path to Astro requires 4 GS's....bulbing Machinery/Optics/Astro(2). We need to research Alphabet/Calendar/Compass and avoid Meditation/Civil Service.

So how do you generate those GS's?

The Great Library gives 2 free scientists + 2 assigned + NE nets 26 GPP/t. 24 of 26 are GS points....we need 150/300/450/600 for a total of 1500 points which is 58 turns AFTER all of the above is in place. We know that we will actually be generating some GPP BEFORE all is in place, we just don't know exactly how much. So how fast could we actually generate 4 GS's? What if we don't NEED Astronomy? How much faster could we move if it was researched even if all the AI's were galley accessible? Galleons move twice as far and carry 50% more, seems like a decided advantage on the surface at least.

@ Mab...please check your PM's.

The GE adds 150 points to our GPP total IF we want to bulb to Astro also. Not a huge deal, but a definite delay if Astro is required. Astronomy is also very effective for trading overseas obviously, which is something to consider. On the downside, it negates the effect of The Collossus. :(
 
Just a quick note - I always set in my Civilization.ini:
Mods = \Mods\BUFFY-3.19.003

This makes the MOD automatically load when you start BtS. It has the side effect of giving you a heads up if the .ini file DOES change (it is known to happen!). You'll know it's changed because while BtS is loading you won't see all the BUFFY loading bits.

I also highly recommend the BUFFY setting "Save on Exit". And then always load the the most recent automatically generated save.
We CAN'T upload the save after the warrior move!
The save may not be uploaded - but there is no rule against loading it, moving the warrior, taking a screenshot, exiting, then continuing from that point. We can do a lot of planning with just that screenshot!

Edit: Hah, I really should read all posts first - Ronnie said all this :goodjob:
 
As normal, we only want wonders that give us a serious ROI by substantially enhancing our chosen game strategy. IMO that should be falling into place by about T70 when we have information about our location, what land is available and where the AIs are/are not.
:agree:
Discussing various wonder strategies at this point in time I do think is interesting and fun, but not necessarily helpful.
 
Thanks for having my back aj! :)
 
We CAN'T upload the save after the warrior move! You are not allowed to upload 2 saves with the same date, and the starting date of 4000bc won't change with the warrior move.

You can upload the save after the warrior move. They have changed how this works (they rename the file to xxx2). We did this numerous times in OSS last SGOTM.
 
You can upload the save after the warrior move. They have changed how this works (they rename the file to xxx2). We did this numerous times in OSS last SGOTM.
That's great - we should definitely do this then.
 
But Monarchy/Hereditary Rule increases the happiness in ALL of our cities by however many cheap MP's we can station!

In such a limited start even producing 1 warrior for each city is somewhat hard. When the extra happiness under Hereditary Rule allows us to run another scientist or work another ocean tile I'm not that excited by having lots of cheap MP. The maintenance on the units almost cancels out the benefit.

But an extra scientist under representation really makes a big difference.

If the pyramids is possible I think it is the strongest wonder on this limited start.

Next would be the colossus (although that is limited if we have to get Astronomy to reach the AIs since we would be motivated to obsolete our wonder as fast as possible).

The oracle is something that probably returns more :science: for :hammers: invested than anything else we could build. However it might limit our expansion. We could Duckweed-whip the Oracle, it would slow the Oracle down a bit but could be a nice compromise btwn expansion and the benefits of the Oracle.

We are competing with other human teams, so if we don't take some risks then we are doomed to lose to other teams who take those risks and get the rewards. So in my mind it is what risk (wonder or wonders) do we want to shoot for. What provides the most benefits at the lowest risk without sacrificing too much expansion or other goals like exploration.
 
I want to start a pool as to who we think the AI opponents are going to be.

My guess is Germany/Spain/England/Russia/Portugal/Holy Rome
 
I want to start a pool as to who we think the AI opponents are going to be.

My guess is Germany/Spain/England/Russia/Portugal/??? still working on #6
What am I going to win? :mischief:
AlanH said:
Following your defeat by the Sixth Coalition you have been forced to abdicate and exiled to the remote island of Elba. ... Also, your opponents aren't exactly the countries of the sixth coalition - DS admits he took a bit of artistic license!
From this tiny bit of information from the sign-up thread, and from reading the link about the Sixth Coalition, I'm going with (and used in my Test Game)...
  1. England/Victoria
  2. Russia/Catherine
  3. Spain/Isabella
  4. Portugal/Joao II
  5. No Sweden Civ, so I went with everyone favorite Viking, Ragnar the Horrible
  6. Prussia/Austria is a toss-up, I went with Germany/Bismarck, but could be HRE/Charlemange
Perhaps a more interesting question to start thinking about what we need to do to take out our AI opponents, and is there any strategy that can be employed to counteract their UU. For instance, it's probably a given that England will be one opponent. It could be advantageous to attempt to take them out before they get to Rifling and can start building Redcoats, especially if the English leader is Churchill with his Protective trait. Of course, Protective Longbows behind the cheap Protective City Walls is no bargain either.

EDIT: cross=post with R1's edit
 
What am I going to win?
This is just for fun :) ....nothing to win.

I think I actually might like your guess now better than mine in one respect....Ragnar...
DS admits he took a bit of artistic license!

Level: Notionally Emperor, but this is a difficult map for warring.
If Ragnar is here with the GLH, he will be very strong.

This got me to thinking about the map a bit. I wonder if it is based on a Big and Small where the "Big" is shaped something like western Europe. We start in the islands to the west of Europe, there could be smaller landmasses to the NW + N (of the Big) holding England and Vikings respectively. Closest to our start would be Portugal and then Spain, Germany and Russia to the east on the main continent. Islands are accessible to Portugal with their Carracks....

This would make for a difficult warring challenge for sure!
 
This is just for fun :)...
This got me to thinking about the map a bit. I wonder if it is based on a Big and Small where the "Big" is shaped something like western Europe. We start in the islands to the west of Europe, there could be smaller landmasses to the NW + N (of the Big) holding England and Vikings respectively. Closest to our start would be Portugal and then Spain, Germany and Russia to the east on the main continent. Islands are accessible to Portugal with their Carracks....

This would make for a difficult warring challenge for sure!
I hadn't considered trying to place the Civs on a Western European map close to their actual locations, that would be interesting. I keep hearing all these stories about evil map makers, so of course, the Sixth Coalition is probably still in place, and all of our AI Opponents are on "Team 2"! :devil:

You can win the first turn :D
:eek: What's second prize? :joke:
 
Top Bottom