SGOTM 15 - Maple Sporks

Thanks Norvin. Time for some practice.

edit: need to get the micro right.
 
Basically the purpose of this plan is max hammers and max commerce to achieve both a quick Oracle and a decent number of Axes. Oracle is in (AI hasn't built any wonders in the test save) and I've built 11 axes so far. (T71)

Apart from the obvious war, the future plan would be to grow our cap to size 6 on warriors/axes, switch to Caste, run 4 scientists while chopping the Mids.
Spoiler :




As you can see, I've settled the marble site 1E of the original spot, because this way it can receive 3 chops to conveniently build The Oracle in 3 turns.
We are up to 5 workers which is ok but 6 would be ideal... I didn't whip in Golden Fleece but maybe should have.

I'm attaching the spreadsheet which explains the city builds/worker moves. If this plan sounds interesting, I can provide tile yield micro as well.
 

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What did you tech? (can't access your save right now as I'm at work)
 
Masonry -> Priesthood -> Writing (Last column in the spreadsheet)
 
Nice run! Some questions:

- I understand why but is it essential to settle Marble there? I'd really prefer the other spot...
- Did you try with oracle in cap? Maybe it can be done in 1 turn.
- Maybe squeeze in pottery? Extra discount on writing, workers could cottage pearly swine earlier.
- Did you use the corn from Osaka? If we do get that tile which is not certain, we might whip GF. Attacking Osaka on turn of DoW would be very sweet too.
 
Nice run! Some questions:

- I understand why but is it essential to settle Marble there? I'd really prefer the other spot...
- Did you try with oracle in cap? Maybe it can be done in 1 turn.
- Maybe squeeze in pottery? Extra discount on writing, workers could cottage pearly swine earlier.
- Did you use the corn from Osaka? If we do get that tile which is not certain, we might whip GF. Attacking Osaka on turn of DoW would be very sweet too.

1) The other spot can't get 3 chops.

2) I don't like the priest "pollution" in cap :p Plus it would really hurt to lose 3 forests in capital - the opportunity cost is 2 Axes or 1/4 of the Mids.

3) Pottery is ok. This is just a personal preference since this way I could upgrade an extra warrior into Axeman. And apart from that mine from the last 2 turns I couldn't really spare any worker turns for cottaging (improved special tiles, chops and roads were more important.)

4) This is possible but we can't really rely on it. Corn would be a very sweet tile though and inmy estimation it could allow for maybe 2 whips in Golden Fleece? Agree that taking Osaka on turn of DoW would kick ass. Btw in my attempt, Toku built another Archer in Osaka but sent him exploring. I wonder how many archers will he garrison in the actual save. I love the fact that Osaka is not on a hill and hopefully neither is Kyoto (although neilmeister could have helped Toku to make the early rush a bit harder.)
 
Masonry -> Priesthood -> Writing (Last column in the spreadsheet)

I can't open the rar-file either. I can just about read the forum and open pdf's.

Anyway, we might be able to squeeze a bit more out of the Oracle if we dare to risk it.
 
Maybe we should build the Oracle in Pearly Swine instead. It also has 3 forests available to its south... Besides we can settle marble on the original spot (I really think it's much stronger with bananas) and we don't bother the cap with it either. In your run Pearly Swine doesn't seem to build anything really essential anyway. If needed it can take a mine from the cap at some moment.

It would also free up MarbleCrab for a more concentrated war contribution. Chop some barracks and get some extra axes.

Then some lose remarks with respect to your run (which by no means is criticism, more things I wonder about whether they can be done differently and so that I remember when tonight or tomorrow I can actually test stuff :p):

- Pearly Swine doesn't get its pasture until quite late. Presumably you mine gem first to tech as fast as possible. I'd like to try with pasture-mine, or at least pasture directly after mine.

- I'm wondering about the 2nd whip in capital. Is it even logical to get a worker from here after the barracks? Maybe extra worker can be head from PS (especially with pasture ;)).

- I think the road network can be optimized. The road through corn and 1S of cap can be replaced by one SW of cap. The road 1N of marble seems redundant, or it better heads NE from marble towards the front. The road to Osaka could maybe better go 1S. Minor stuff, but hey, all things help. :)

- Those 11 axes, is that 8 built + 3 upgraded? Or 11 built and still 3 warriors for upgrading?

- Like the idea of hiring 4 scientists with caste in the cap while chopping the mids, but are we sure it'll have enough base hammer that way to get it built? Possibly we can do the 4-spec thing in Golden Fleece if we have corn (which we certainly will once we tackle Osaka :D).

- Related, I'd still like to pop a priest for that theo-bulb. Maybe after Oracle in the same city build/whip temple to hire priest and speed that first GPr up? From then on concentrate on GSs. Edit: depends on religion spread of course.

- Are we cool to tech fishing soonish? This in relation to the engineering sling so I'll specifically ask Ororo. Point being that after theology the whole engineering sling collapses onto itself anyway...
 
Maybe we should build the Oracle in Pearly Swine instead. It also has 3 forests available to its south... Besides we can settle marble on the original spot (I really think it's much stronger with bananas) and we don't bother the cap with it either. In your run Pearly Swine doesn't seem to build anything really essential anyway. If needed it can take a mine from the cap at some moment.

It would also free up MarbleCrab for a more concentrated war contribution. Chop some barracks and get some extra axes.

Fair enough, you have a point here. Though we must find something to build for those 8 turns until we get Priesthood. Seems like warrior is our only choice since we won;t have copper online at that time (quarry on marble, mine on gems and road for trade routes and access to resources are more important imo). Taking mine is ok, since cap should be whip its settler for the overflow into worker (3-turn worker is really nice) and will work its best tiles - corn farm and fp farm.

As for MarbleCrap/MarbleCrab I wouldn't build Barracks there. Not enough hammers... Growing to size 2 doesn't help either since we'd need at least a food neutral tile (grassland copper for example) to feed the Marble.
Another crazy alternative would be to settle the city ON Marble which saves a lot of worker turns and lets us work the Copper tile. This could be a beast early game city if we manage to grow it to size 3 (3 hammers for the city tile, 4 for the copper tile, 2x 3 for GH tiles = 13 hammers total which is a freakin 3-turn axes). Worth at least a thought imo.

Then some lose remarks with respect to your run (which by no means is criticism, more things I wonder about whether they can be done differently and so that I remember when tonight or tomorrow I can actually test stuff :p):

That's perfectly fine, nocho. I'm not of a micromanager so I'm fully aware of the fact that some of my decisions are suboptimal.

- Pearly Swine doesn't get its pasture until quite late. Presumably you mine gem first to tech as fast as possible. I'd like to try with pasture-mine, or at least pasture directly after mine.

We CAN do that. However, the price is a delayed Oracle. Or if we settle on Marble, we might have some spare worker turns. (another + for that site) However, Gems is a much stronger tile if we're aiming for an early rush (aka max commerce, max hammers build). So IMO Mine->Pasture>>>>Pasture->Mine.

- I'm wondering about the 2nd whip in capital. Is it even logical to get a worker from here after the barracks? Maybe extra worker can be head from PS (especially with pasture ;)).

It' simple. I needed the capital to grow to start whipping. Barracks was the obvious choice here. Then I needed something to 2-pop whip into an Axe. Worker was the only choice since cap produces too many hammers to 2-pop whip axes. +there could have been some overflow so no deliberate working crappy tiles to get 4/35 hammers. The point about rush is we need things quickly so even if the worker takes only 6 turns in PbS, that's too slow for us. Whipping Worker only takes 2 turns. Extra 4 worker turns is a 1 and 1/3 of a chop.
It might be worth a test but I'm pretty sure it jsut delays our Axes production.

- I think the road network can be optimized. The road through corn and 1S of cap can be replaced by one SW of cap. The road 1N of marble seems redundant, or it better heads NE from marble towards the front. The road to Osaka could maybe better go 1S. Minor stuff, but hey, all things help. :)

You're right. I tend to overbuild roads.

- Those 11 axes, is that 8 built + 3 upgraded? Or 11 built and still 3 warriors for upgrading?


8+3. Though with PbS building the Oracle, we can build more. Once again, all we need is worker turns and a quick copper mines (=worker turns). Another + for the Marble site.

- Like the idea of hiring 4 scientists with caste in the cap while chopping the mids, but are we sure it'll have enough base hammer that way to get it built? Possibly we can do the 4-spec thing in Golden Fleece if we have corn (which we certainly will once we tackle Osaka :D).

Once again - you're probably right. But this exceeds the limit of the next set so let's not worry about that yet.

- Related, I'd still like to pop a priest for that theo-bulb. Maybe after Oracle in the same city build/whip temple to hire priest and speed that first GPr up? From then on concentrate on GSs. Edit: depends on religion spread of course.

Actually I like the idea of spawning GP for the eventual Theology. What I don't like is building the Oracle in our cap, which desperately needs its trees for other important stuff.

- Are we cool to tech fishing soonish? This in relation to the engineering sling so I'll specifically ask Ororo. Point being that after theology the whole engineering sling collapses onto itself anyway...

I don't know... I still think Engineering is doable. We'll have to bulb Philosophy but since we're forced to religion and we're SPI we can just switch to Pacifism... Then it's just a matter of teching Aesthetics, Alpha, Math, Contruction and spawning those 2 Great Scientists. Once Engineering is in, we can safely bulb Theo, build/chop the AP (which the AI won't build for a loooong time - now doner gone by 2000BC) and tech fishing. I'm not forcing you, but please consider it...
 
I'm going to try a test game with Oracle built in PbS and city settled on top of the Marble. It might be a bit cotroversial but I feel I should give it a chance to shine.
 
Also...guys, how do you feel about the Oracle? I think I've shown that it's definitely worth it. CoL (or Metal Casting) is worth 20+ turns at our current research rate.

3 chops = 60 hammers for a not marble-boosted stuff which isn't even an equivalent of 2 Axes.

However the same 3 chops = 120 hammers for the Oracle thanks to Marble.
 
Admittedly settling on marble also crossed my mind. Please try! :goodjob:

As it invalidates crab we needn't worry about fishing either. :lol: For the engineering sling we'll also need to selftech MC and IW, right?

As to other points, I'll try to do some testing myself first to get a better feel for the speed of things. :)

Edit: xpost. I'm totally pro-Oracle but I guess you knew that already. :) Especially if engineering bulb is still a possibility I start liking CoL more and more.
 
MC is necessary. IW on the other hand can surprisingly be skipped (though knowing where the Iron is nice!)
 
Hmmm... There is a problem with the Oracle in PbS...in some of my test games it doesn;t get border pop until T70 or so, because of late random Hindu spread. Makes it a bit unreliable. Gonna try The Oracle in GoldenFleece.
 
Why is the borderpop an issue at all? :confused:

Btw, IW is above machinery and engineering in the bulb list, so I think we need it. MC seems to be bulbable too, but maybe 4 GSs is a bit too much to ask for. Or maybe not. :)
 
Do you get the same amount of hammers if the chop is outside your borders?
 
Trolling the AI:

Spoiler :




1 less axe this time, but we'll have 10 axes in Golden Fleece next turn. And there is this chance to culture flip Osaka :D
 
Do you keep getting the "The server is too busy at the moment. Please try again later." message as well?
 
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