SGOTM 15 - One Short Straw

With agriculture coming earlier...
Worker first seems better than settler first. Having the mines to grow into actually helps a surprising amount.
Not only that, but worker-grow-settler works just as well as worker-settler, and gets extra exploration turns in.
 
With the map info we now have, settler first doesn't look as good. It would need fish near the deer or something like that.

We can get agriculture 3t sooner via Meditation. These 3t seem to carry forward too, even getting us to a point with -TW-pottery-masonry where we may have time to fill up SH before it's built.

I forget, are we capped at 120g from SH? Or can we get even more by partial building it in multiple cities?
 
We can get partial builds for it in as many cities as we like, but let's not go overboard with it just yet - although there is a time and place for it - researching Masonry and then putting hammers into wonders sounds an awful lot like researching instead of rexing :p
 
We can get partial builds for it in as many cities as we like, but let's not go overboard with it just yet - although there is a time and place for it - researching Masonry and then putting hammers into wonders sounds an awful lot like researching instead of rexing :p
Normally I'd agree, but RapidEX usually begets RDR (RapidlyDyingResearch). We can run some tests, but I'm thinking that SH+GW...+ToA might be a killer combination. It's roughly the equivalent of an early GM for ass-kicking research, depending on when ToA gets finished. Even our second city slightly delays our research, to say nothing of the third, fourth and fifth.

I'm still thinking we want to beeline Optics no matter what (for tech trading) and ideally we'll have 2-3 coastal cities which can 2pop caravels 1t later, along with Hindu Missionaries or at least scouts. If we're going to take Meditation, all the more reason to find out asap if we need Astro.

EDIT: Plus, we'll need Masonry soon anwyay for The Oracle. I don't trust this map and I'd like to see us slingshot MC asap. TO guarantee the slingshot and to get started on building a GE so we can sooner focus on spamming GSes.

EDIT2: Building settlers stops growth. That's fine normally, but here I think we want to spam cottages. So instead of building settlers we could grow to pop6, working lots of cottages as they come on line, while throwing hammers into SH/GW and building roads to wherever our settlers will go. Those cottages will be giving us 4cpt in 30t. Non-trivial.

EDIT3: BW will come on line about T53, depending on whether we add Fishing or not, so we'll alos have some chops to spam settlers, if needed.

.
 
With the map info we now have, settler first doesn't look as good. It would need fish near the deer or something like that.
Given the generous Resources of the last few games, we can't count on Neilmeister being that nice again... although if he really wants people to go for Cultural Victories, he had better have given us plenty of Health Resources or at least a means of trading for them pre-Astronomy.


We can get agriculture 3t sooner via Meditation. These 3t seem to carry forward too, even getting us to a point with -TW-pottery-masonry where we may have time to fill up SH before it's built.
As long as we are okay with Lightbulbing Philosophy before the Astronomy line OR are willing to forego Code of Laws (no Courthouses) on a high-Maintenance map), then I'm see no problem with going for Meditation except for one possibility:
- Could we get beaten to Meditation?

I guess we just have to trust Neilmeister's cryptic comment and be assurred that going for eitiher Meditation or Polytheism after settling on Turn 1 is supposed to be a "lock" as long as we beeline said tech from the start.

I wonder... is there a way for him to have, since all of the AIs' Cities were pre-settled, to have had them all start researching a particular tech? Doing so and having each AI research a non-Meditation, non-Polytheism tech could have been a fair way of ensuring that all teams have a fair shot at founding Hinduism (assuming that doing so is technically possible).

As for researching Meditation for Lightbulbing, it appears that Philosophy comes before not only Astronomy but also Optics. So, if we wanted Caravels before Philosophy, we'd definitely have to skip Code of Laws for a while.


I forget, are we capped at 120g from SH? Or can we get even more by partial building it in multiple cities?
Oh yeah, good point--we're only capped at 118 Gold per City.

Note that we can't get 119 Hammers if all of our Hammers are doubled by the Stone and we can't get 120 Hammers since we'd have otherwise completed the Wonder.


As for expanding versus Failure Golding, we can certainly do a combo, where Forests get Chopped by Fast Workers into Settlers and additional Fast Workers and then Mines are built whereby newly-founded Cities can fake-build Wonders for Failure Gold, which helps to pay for the Maintenance Costs of spamming additional Cities... if it weren't for Maintenance Costs, you could theoretically perform an infinite City sprawl type of concept, only limited by the amount of land, but it's Maintenance that generally stops you. If we plug that hole somewhat by fake-building Wonders, then yeah, we can expand quite a lot... BUT, we'd probably want Courthouses sooner rather than later.
 
If we get beaten to Meditation, which is faster than Poly, then we also get beaten to Hindusim...
Not necessarily... what I meant was that Neilmeister might have exclusively tested founding Hinduism via a Polytheism beeline.

Although, if he is so confident that any team can do it such that it can be a game-losing condition, then I highly suspect he found a way to set the AIs' initial techs to non-Religious techs... but, nothing stops him from having set those who start with Mysticism to research Meditation if he were under the mistaken impression that an AI learning Meditation would have just been a "waste" of a tech.

All that we can do, though, is pick one of those two techs and tech toward it. I'm fine with going for Meditation and assuming that Neilmeister did his homework, as long as we're all okay okay with delaying either Code of Laws or Optics. In other words, I don't really care if we won't be the first to Meditation... we'll cross that bridge if and when it comes and then whine and complain if it does happen. ;)
 
The point is, if an AI beats us to Meditation, they'll beat us to Hinduism whether we tech Poly or Medit. Neil can't stop them from choosing Hinduism once the game has started.

ANd if that happens (to any team), Neil will just have to cancel the game and say, "Oops, sorry guys..."

EDIT: Well, I suppose Neil could take that team's save and cancel the Hinduism and give that AI somethings else, but that's a bit hoaky, plus, who knows if Hindusim will still deliver after that. 'Twould have to be tested, but that's not our problem.
 
Keep in mind that we have an Uber AI opponent that is already collecting an additional 10? gpt with the Buddhist shrine. That could come into play quite a bit in this game. It makes an overly aggressive Oracle slingshot a bit riskier, right?

In any event, it seems that we're all on the "worker first" page. Should we start discussing warrior scouting so that I can get the road on the show? Also, is everyone comfortable with Meditation first?
 
ANd if that happens (to any team), Neil will just have to cancel the game and say, "Oops, sorry guys..."

I can assure you that Neil tested this as soon as ZPV brought it up. If there was an issue I "assume" he would have sent out the "Oops, sorry guys..." post already. :mischief:
 
Keep in mind that we have an Uber AI opponent that is already collecting an additional 10? gpt with the Buddhist shrine. That could come into play quite a bit in this game. It makes an overly aggressive Oracle slingshot a bit riskier, right?
Precisely why I want to uber-beeline the MC slingshot.
In any event, it seems that we're all on the "worker first" page. Should we start discussing warrior scouting so that I can get the road on the show? Also, is everyone comfortable with Meditation first?
There's still testing to be done on worker first, btw.

1. Is it better to get the worker in 10t and agri a turn later than #2?
2. Is it better to get the worker in 11t and agri a turn sooner than #1 (working 2f1c from the start)?
3. Is it better to grow between worker and settler? I haven't tried this, so I don't know when it gives agri. This last one afffects exploration somewhat.
 
Got it. My gut says that it's better to get the worker a turn later and Agriculture a turn sooner (options #2). The only thing the worker can do is build mines that won't be worked for some time. The sooner we get the corn irrigated the sooner we'll kick our growth (and food hammers) into high gear.

Regarding option 3, I think it depends. If we find an awesome city site during our first 10 turns of exploration, building a settler at size one starts to make sense. If not, then at least one warrior and re-assess...

EDIT: Having fast workers means that we can finish partially-built mines without missing a beat (or a worker turn).
 
If we want to grow Delhi to size 2 before building a settler, then this happens in the 2f/0h/1c variation:
We don't start the corn farm right away because we get more hammers in the settler by finishing the mine that's in progress (1 turn left) and only then farming the corn.
i.e. We don't get the corn any sooner, don't get the settler any sooner, get the second built warrior out much later, and lose a few hammers.

It's a really nice idea, but it just doesn't look like it works in this case.

edit: Building the settler before growing, without additional resources, doesn't quite seem justified - we get the city 4 turns earlier, but are a little over warrior's worth of hammers down by the time the capital's grown to size 2 (and the grow first scenario completes its settler).
 
^^ Yes, we wanna complete both mines for the settler build and start farming corn after that, I think. Haven't tested with Medi first. In the previous Poly tests, I was 2t behind on research for the farm, so it should work out well now.
 
I'm okay with the faster worker, working the forest from the start. Researching Meditation.

I don't think we have enough information to decide about anything beyond T11, completing the worker build, because we have three possible sites we might want to settle sooner:

1) Marble
2) Deer, on the river for TRs w/o TW
3) Along the river to the north for TRs w/o TW

So I think our explorer should focus on those possible sites. He can't do all three, but he could do the first two by T11. After that he could head to the north.

That leaves exploring to the west for an additional warrior or two, if we're not going to build a fast settler.

So my tentative proposal for exploration would be T2 SW, T3SE, then along the SE coast until we know all about the deer site.
 
OK, I just ran two quick tests.

Option 1: Worker on T11, War 2 on T15, War 3 on T20, Agriculture on T20, Settler T30, 8 OF hammers, 130/187 beakers in BW
Option 2: Worker on T12, War 2 on T16, War 3 on T21, Agriculture on T21, Settler T30, 0 OF hammers, 138/187 beakers in BW

There are a ton of places where the testing could branch. For example, I worked the mine for one turn to rush the warrior out but then worked the FP so that we could grow to 2 before starting on the settler. I did not test any settler at size 1 variants.

In my two tests, we're trading 8H for 8C. 9 times out of 10, I'd take the hammers over the commerce. We also have 2 extra warrior-exploring turns in option 1.

So, I think I agree with LC that option 1 (faster worker) is the way to go.
 
PPP

T1: Build Worker. Work 2F1H tile (city governor does this automatically). Set research to Meditation.

T6: Borders expand. Work 3F1C tile (city governor does this automatically).

T11: Learn Meditation. Select Hinduism (please don't let my touch pad force me to pick the wrong one in the game... :D)

Exploration will be as LC suggested: SW -> SE -> along the SE coast to explore the deer site.

Take screen shots of the F8 Victories and F9 Demographics and F9 Top 5 Cities screens each turn.
 
I'd rather you make saves each turn than screenshots. The save offers more info from the Demo screen than a screenshot.
 
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