SGOTM 15 - Maple Sporks

Interesting set nocho. Nice job.

Well I guess Toku is close. I had a thought while waiting for computer to boot this morning that neilmeister could have placed scouts from Toku and Hammu to make us think they were nearby. No need to think about that now.

I don't have time to look at save now but I will try to get test save updated tonight.
 
Plenty to think about indeed.

We shouldn´t forget about the risk of AP defeat.

The cost of the Oracle is not only 75h for Oracle but 100h for the settler and the worker turns developing marble which could be devoted to chopping.

I´m tempted to suggest forgetting about any wonders before building a stack. In that case maybe rax instead of settler while getting copper mined and connected then build/whip/chop axes.
 
I'm not sure either way. A lot depends on how long it would take to get out a SoD (both with and without Oracle). I agree that now is the time to start testing extensively. Not only should we find out how long it takes to get enough axes, but also we should determine how many is enough axes and what will be the state of the empire if we build Oracle and what if we don't.
 
I'll take the 2 out of 3 on my wishful predictions!
Well done nocho! Too bad about the warrior and the loss of TR income, but overall a successful set!

I think for blocking Hammu we just settle 1SW of the gold. It picks up deer and gold. Very similar to Golden Fleece but coastal. And we have a nice choke point 2NW of the city on a forest tile. Put up a fort and he ain't getting thru by land.

Hammu really can't screw up placing a city near wheat as it will be the only resource barring an iron pop.

How far away are we from the next border pop? If it is close we may not need to settle marble right away. Save those hammers for some axes or Oracle.

Speaking of Oracle...I think that is the only wonder that we would want to consider at this point. I imagine the the Mids will be a good target after we take out Toku and likely still available.
Stonehenge still being available at 2000 BC is a good indicator of that methinks.

I would definitely like to test out not going for the Oracle. I think taking his 3-5 cities out early will be compensation enough for losing the free tech. With a gems city and 2 gold cities (I think settling Antlers of Gold over Crabby Marble may be preferable) our commerce should be pretty solid. Plus, we will have many riverside cottages popping up across the empire. My point ultimately being...would we really use caste/rep during a military buildup? Again, more testing required.
 
My point ultimately being...would we really use caste/rep during a military buildup? Again, more testing required.

Good thing about SPI is the fact that it offers some insane flexibility. You can basically cycle between Police State/Slavery and Rep/Caste every 5 turns. Later on between PS/vassalage/slavery/theo and Rep/Burreau/Caste/Pacifism.

Basically Oracle/Mids are the wonders I'd hate to give up on personally.
 
Good thing about SPI is the fact that it offers some insane flexibility. You can basically cycle between Police State/Slavery and Rep/Caste every 5 turns. Later on between PS/vassalage/slavery/theo and Rep/Burreau/Caste/Pacifism.

Basically Oracle/Mids are the wonders I'd hate to give up on personally.

I wholeheartedly agree that SPI provides excellent flexibility that we will definitely take advantage of...no argument there.

I think that Oracle would be excellent, of course, I just don't want it if it ends up costing us the axe rush on Toku. I really don't want to deal with protective longbows...especially without the benefit of horses (which hopefully Toku has!). And that will likely be what we face if we don't pull off this axe rush.

Mids are almost required if we plan on warring the whole game. The Police State/Vassalage/Slavery/Theo combo is a potent one indeed. I just think it is a calculated risk right now to delay them for a while longer.

I don't mean to come off as argumentative so I hope I'm not. I'm really just putting some ideas out there. Playing Devil's advocate if you will.

I just remember SGOTM 13 where we waited until maces to start our attack when we could have used axes and kickstarted our conquest.
 
I fully understand your concerns. We'll just have to come up with a good compromise between full military commitment and wonder whoring. Going all in with axes will kill our tech rate whereas delaying attacking Toku will lose the momentum. Decisions, decisions....

Ooh btw...we don't need to slow-build all the axes. Once Writing is done we may want to shut down our research and build a couple of warriors which can then be upgraded into Axes. Capture gold too can be used for the upgrades. Also if a city has nothing to do (which I highly doubt will happen), it can always invest into SH/TGW. Remember, you can keep doing this Warrior->Axeman until you acquire Hunting.
 
As for the dotmap, I was thinking something along these lines:

Spoiler :
 
My preferred wonders (in order of building): SoD, Pyramids, AP, Parthenon/Glib.

I´d rather rush Toku earlier with 8-10 axes than rush him after Oracle with 15+axes.

However we can all express thoughts and opinions in a vacuum and it would be more convincing to compare a few test games (i.e axe-rush vs Oracle>axe-rush).
 
Couple of map questions.

It is turn 50 - so for the AI that would mean they reach 100 :culture: and their capital borders will pop for the second time? So did they pop already or will they pop after we hit enter? I'm trying to figure out where to place Babylon and Kyoto. From the look of the culture around Hammu it would seem like it's the capital with a 2nd border pop. But when I look at Japan it seems like its too soon for his 2nd city to have popped the borders (he has 3 already). Long and short of it is where to place the AI cities? Any thoughts in this regard would help a lot.
 
I think the Oracle may very well fit in an aggressive approach. I remember reading the ducks extensively discussing whether to take construction or currency from the Oracle in their very early conquest victory in SGOTM 13 I think it was. IIRC they actually took currency, but since all those TRs were overseas in that game they were more valuable than they would be here as our victim is our next door ugly neighbour. Maybe we can convince pigswill by taking construction from the Oracle? :p

Another very important aspect of the Oracle is the priest points they generate. I think it would be strong play to produce a GPr to bulb theology. Theology is rather expensive to self-tech (500 beakers), while at least in my mind we really can't allow the AP to be buddhist. If we eliminate Toku by definition we'll have a bud city in which case presumably all AIs and us have bud, thus triggering the AP victory vote if the AP were bud. So by all means we should build it and make it hindu. I think we'll have a reasonable window for that though (no need to have it 1000BC so to speak) but that doesn't mean we shouldn't actively seek to get theology. Of course theology gives the interesting theocracy civic which plays well with an aggressive approach.

Personally I wouldn't mind declaring a bit later if that means we'll have access to catapults and not much later theocracy for double promo units of the bat. If the city where we have the Oracle builds a cheap temple after PH (we're SPI!) and hires an extra priest when we have Oracle, we can generate that priest in just 10 turns (we're PHI!).

I see a lot of synergy here!

In pure number of turns I think we can build Oracle in just 1 or 2 turns with 2 synchronized chops and maybe some whip overflow. For this we would have to tech masonry, PH, (pottery), writing, math. I think that must be very doable, especially with the gems and cottages. Then for the theo bulb we'd only need poly and mono, by all means quite doable too in the time after finishing the oracle.

Oh, I remember now that theology (which imo is unavoidable) negates the bulb path to engineering as it opens up paper and then edu. If that is such, then we actually can just tech fishing should we build the marble city. As paper is above astronomy, bulbing early astro will be quite complicated too btw.

And yes, we should test things. :) Anybody started yet? :mischief:

Lastly, I can agree with Ororo's dotmap. However, I wonder if we should even settle those filler cities. We'll likely end up with an awful lot of cities so I'd be rather pickey about what we settle. I guess everything we settle should be rather stellar or give an important resource. I'm also now wondering about the blocker for Hammu. If he's next on our kill-list let him spend the hammers on settlers and let us just swallow up the benefits.
 
I highly doubt that we'll have time to research Math pre-Oracle. We can test it but it's likely going to be 1000BC or even later, which is a serious gambit.

I say we take good old CoL and shut off our research after Writing for Warrior->Axeman upgrades. This should be doable by T66 (1400BC or something like that) at latest - I'm taking our current tech rate into account, gems can very well shave off a turn or two.

I have a specific plan in mind, which I'll try to present to you once the test save is ready and my estimation is that we'll have Oracle->CoL and 5(?) Axes in 16 turns. SoD should be ready in 20 turns. (probably not in position though)
 
@Norvin: I think Babylon's borders can't be configured by 2 cities so I'd presume his cap with a 2nd border pop 4N1W of that cow.
Osaka was Japan's 2nd city, so his cap is likely 4S2E from it.

@Ororo, curious about the plan! Does CoL have a specific place in it? If not, MC could be an option too maybe?
 
Nope...CoL is there so that we have a really fast rush recovery. Plus Caste is just awesome for a PHI leader. Pair that with Rep from Mids, which we'll most likely build after rushing Toku and you'll get an obscenely high tech rate. The kind of thing we'll need for a fast victory.

Metal casting on the other hand only offers happiness from forges, but that shouldn't be much of problem because we already have Gold+Gems+religion and cheap temples if necessary. It's a great trading chip but that's not much of a use to us since the AIs will probably not trade with us anyway.
 
Forges give extra prod too. :p And MC is a more expensive tech on the way too more military stuff. By going CoL we also take away a religion for some possible religious friction in the budfest... And we'll be taking theo too! You're not after philo bulbs, are you? ;)

Don't get me wrong, I like CoL too, just gauging options here. However, so far it's not a food rich map so in practice the awesomeness of caste may be limited. Not many places can sustain more than two specs we can also get from a library.

I do want to test a construction sling still btw. I was definitely hoping for something quicker than the 1000BC you mentioned... Maybe I'm too optimistic though.
 
If we can tech fast enough we can definitely pull off a 1 turn Oracle.

Wait until Math comes in and then...
2 chops at 30 hammers each(chop the forests 1SW and 1SE)
With the marble bonus that is 120 of our hammers straight away.
A whip overflow of any kind along with our standard hammers will be plenty enough to 1 turn the Oracle.

Now it is only determining whether we can win the Oracle race if we tech all the prereqs in time.
 
My concern about Oracle is not getting it built in time, anything after 1500bc is a risk in my (limited) experience, the jucier the tech the higher the chance of failure. Another consideration is that if we delay rush until after Oracle then we also delay Pyramids which also increases the risk of not getting it.

The worst case scenario is (failed) Oracle>delayed rush>(failed) Pyramids. Its quite possible that I´m being too pessimistic.

I´d rather go for early rush>Pyramids. So I´m thinking that we keep with three cities and prioritise copper after trade routes then build axes asap. Minor micro point is that rivers will save us a few turns on roads.

edit: with a cheap temple and priest specialist we can produce a prophet in 17 turns, this may be better to do in a secondary city as capital will be busy building pyramids.
 
Whew, it is getting tougher and tougher to replicate what is going on. Hopefully, this is close - though I'm sure there are going to be errors.
 

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Thanks Norvin, I'll try to do some testing this weekend. I'm really wondering in what ways the situation will differ with and without oracle.
 
Thanks Norvin, I'll try to run a sin of my plan now...
 
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