SGOTM 15 - One Short Straw

Okay, so I played through sort of a variant using magnusmarcus' tech path with the 2-pop-whip approach.

Now that we don't have the early Zlatorog Worker, I think that we're one Worker turn short on being able to Chop the Forest underneath of Crab Rangoon, as per Mitchum's Worker actions. So, instead, I simply built two Road segments--on the GRiv 1W of the GRiv Corn and on the GFor Riv 1S of the GRiv Corn.


Also, rather than starting on a Library in Gem City, I just built a Warrior. Rather than dumping Hammers into a Barracks in Delhi, I also started on a Warrior (which received 7 Hammers in one turn) that I stopped building in favour of buildng a Granary. That said, there might be some wiggle room whereby we complete the Warrior and are able to go with delaying Pottery (so as to get the bonus Flasks from Fishing).

Still, it looked like starting on that Granary ASAP via learning Pottery with magnusmarcus' tech path will allow us to 1-pop-whip Delhi's Granary sooner.

In Nature's Candy, I worked the unimproved Gem, then the Pastured Pig as soon as it was Pastured, then instead of growing in 1 turn on the last turn of working the Pig, I worked the Gem Mine for 2 turns. I'm not sure that I even needed to work the Gem Mine for 2 turns there, since I ended up with some extra Gold when learning Hunting.

I couldn't get Hunting to come at the same time as our Zlatorog Worker was completed but otherwise, techs came at good times--pretty much the same times as when they came in magnusmarcus' plan, meaning that we can delay working the Gem Mine in favour of working the Pig Pasture sooner.


I did accidentally believe that we had the Great Scientist coming 1 turn too early, so on the turn that we 2-pop-whipped, rather than working 2 Scientists and no other squares, I worked the Corn and Copper squares... Delhi's Granary will be ready to 1-pop-whip a turn or two (I forget which) after The Oracle is complete, right around the time that we have a half-full Foodbox, but then we'd delay The Oracle by 1 turn, so we probably don't want to end up doing that.


So, what I am going to suggest that magnusmarcus try is to use Mitchum's citizen assignments for Delhi (i.e. which squares and Scientists to work), Mitchum's Worker actions for the two Workers in the west (except for altering the bit about going to Chop the Forest under Crab Rangoon and instead building Road segments to the NW + NW of the Marble and then to the NW of the Marble*, as I stated above), but then using magnusmarcus' Worker actions for the other two Workers.

I'm not 100% certain about the tech path--I haven't really tried Mitchum's, since I didn't decide to start building an early Work Boat, but if we're okay to complete Warriors in each of Nature's Candy and Delhi before we start on Granaries, Mitchum's tech path might work out. Otherwise, if we want to start on the Granaries in those two Cities ASAP, we'll need to go with marcusmagnus' tech path, but it seems to be that we don't need to work an early Gem Mine and really can work a Pig Pasture sooner instead.


* Note that these Road segments cross over top of a River, so they won't be connected to each other... unless we learn Construction early on... which we plan to do. ;)


I updated the test saved game slightly--the Barb Archer will now wander around, I got rid of Hinduism in Zlatorog (but once you get a tiny bit of Culture like we did, you can't bring the Culture level back to 0--1 Culture is as low as you can go--so we have 1 extra Culture there), and I renamed the units so that they have similar names as in the real game (with the exception of an unnamed Fast Worker in the real game which I named "Fast Worker 3 (Unknown)" in the test game. I also gave Warrior 2 (Jack) his 1 Experience Point.


I think the trickiest part of this turnset is going to be how to handle that southern Archer.

To help the discussion on that subject go, I took a screenshot and numbered our Warriors according to how they are numbered in the real game and labelled them according to the names that magnusmarcus was using. Hopefully, this visual representation will help us to clarify which Warriors we are talking about using against the Barb Archer.

Spoiler :
 

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I was busy with IRL stuff yesterday. (I spend all day fixing other peoples problems and that probably colored yesterday's post).
I'll get back to testing this afternoon and attempt to put a plan together the team can approve /reject.
 
Now that we don't have the early Zlatorog Worker, I think that we're one Worker turn short on being able to Chop the Forest underneath of Crab Rangoon, as per Mitchum's Worker actions. So, instead, I simply built two Road segments--on the GRiv 1W of the GRiv Corn and on the GFor Riv 1S of the GRiv Corn.

You should be able to chop the forest under Gems City without the Zlatorog worker. I followed magnusmarcus' worker actions in the SE, meaning that I build the road at deer-S rather than on the deer resource. It should work.

Also, rather than starting on a Library in Gem City, I just built a Warrior. Rather than dumping Hammers into a Barracks in Delhi, I also started on a Warrior (which received 7 Hammers in one turn) that I stopped building in favour of buildng a Granary. That said, there might be some wiggle room whereby we complete the Warrior and are able to go with delaying Pottery (so as to get the bonus Flasks from Fishing).

I'm okay with the warrior in Gems City since it won't be connected via roads and that warrior will not convert into a spear. I'm opposed to delaying the granary in Delhi, so if we do start a warrior rather than a barracks for one turn, it will turn into a spear by the time we complete it, which should be fine because we could use one as a stack defender in case Toku gets horses.

In Nature's Candy, I worked the unimproved Gem, then the Pastured Pig as soon as it was Pastured, then instead of growing in 1 turn on the last turn of working the Pig, I worked the Gem Mine for 2 turns. I'm not sure that I even needed to work the Gem Mine for 2 turns there, since I ended up with some extra Gold when learning Hunting.

I thought about working the mined gems for one turn instead of the pastured pigs but I think in the long run, the extra food is much better than the extra commerce. The sooner that city hits 4 pops, the sooner it can 2-pop its granary and the sooner it can continue to grow and whip other things.

I couldn't get Hunting to come at the same time as our Zlatorog Worker was completed but otherwise, techs came at good times--pretty much the same times as when they came in magnusmarcus' plan, meaning that we can delay working the Gem Mine in favour of working the Pig Pasture sooner.

:goodjob:


I did accidentally believe that we had the Great Scientist coming 1 turn too early, so on the turn that we 2-pop-whipped, rather than working 2 Scientists and no other squares, I worked the Corn and Copper squares... Delhi's Granary will be ready to 1-pop-whip a turn or two (I forget which) after The Oracle is complete, right around the time that we have a half-full Foodbox, but then we'd delay The Oracle by 1 turn, so we probably don't want to end up doing that.

Delhi will grow back so quickly I'm generally in favor of 2-pop whips rather than 1-pop whips. If we do a lot of 1-pop whips, the city will reach its :mad: limit sooner...

So, what I am going to suggest that magnusmarcus try is to use... snip... Mitchum's Worker actions for the two Workers in the west (except for altering the bit about going to Chop the Forest under Crab Rangoon and instead building Road segments to the NW + NW of the Marble and then to the NW of the Marble*, as I stated above)[/quote]

We can chop that forest and I'm not sure the value of those extra road segments is at the moment.

I'm not 100% certain about the tech path--I haven't really tried Mitchum's

In my latest test runs, I was skipping Fishing and getting Pottery ASAP. I think sooner granaries trumps the 20% bonus (~15:science) we get get by researching Fising first.

I think the trickiest part of this turnset is going to be how to handle that southern Archer.

Agreed. We need a clear plan here.
 
I was leafing through the BtS Reference Guide on the plane yesterday, which got me to thinking about:

Longer-Term Thinking

Victory Condition

On a typical donut map, I assume that Domination/Conquest could be won quite easily with maces, cats and trebs. However, the last two SGOTMs have been winable with those same units. Do we think that this is all we'll require for this game too? Or will we have to go deeper into the tech tree for either Astronomy or more powerful units? Something to think about.

Tech Path

If we are going down the Conquest/Domination path for victory, the sooner we can get to maces and trebs the easier our fighting is going to be and the sooner we'll win. I'm also not too thrilled about going up against bowmen (+50% against melee units) with axes although with enough cats it's possible.

That means that we'll have to research all of Metal Casting (702), Machinery (1092), Engineering (1560), CoL (546) and Civil Service (1248). That's 5,148 :science: total. Other optional techs include IW (312), Calendar (546 -> for bananas) and Currency (624). If we (or an AI) learn Alphabet, we may be able to get some of these via a Peace Treaty.

I've been looking at the GS bulbing preferences and there is no easy way to bulb Machinery or Engineering without first researching a ton of other techs including all the way through Astronomy. A GE could bulb Machinery as soon as we get him.

At our current (i.e. after completing the Oracle) sustainable research rate of 30:science:/turn, that will take a long, long time. Obviously, we'll be able to run the science slider a bit higher with gold from capturing cities and possible fail gold, but our expenses will be going up as well.

If we're on the same page that we want maces and possibly trebs (Engineering is also good for troop movement), then we might want to think about getting a GE. Which leads me to...

Pyramids

This is a costly early wonder at 500H. However, any time we have stone, we should at least consider them, right? Being Spiritual makes the 'Mids even better because we can swith in and out of civics with no anarchy.

I assume that we'd be in Police State (+25% military unit production and -50% WW) for most of the game. So in a sense, we spend 250H in one city and distribute them throughout our entire empire through the entire 25% bonus. It's impossible to get the 25% due to rounding, so let's assume that we can get 17.5%. So it will take 250/17.5% = 1,429 base hammers to break even. Assuming I did the math right, it takes a long time to break even just looking at this 25% bonus.

The -50% WW will help us later in the game, but it's hard to quanitfy that.

Being able to use Representation can increase our science rate, but I don't see us running a lot of scientists unless we have to research deeper into the tech tree. Plus, if we don't need Astronomy, GSs are of limited value for bulbing.

In any event, I just wanted us to decide soon whether or not we want to make a run at the Pyramids... likely after we have our stack to take out Toku.


@LC, I can't remember if you took this into account when determining what the 'Gawa brothers have been building, but since Toku is Aggressive, they get double production speed of barracks.
 
We currently have 188:espionage: against Tokugawa. We need 88 to see his demo data and 222 to see his research. With how much he's spending on us, I don't think we'll ever see what he's researching before his dead. Plus, LC has been able to do a good job of figuring out what he's researching anyway.

I think now is the time to switch EPP toward Hammy. Thoughts?
 
Quick thoughts

At least one of Dhoom's two roads to Nature's Candy gets it closer to being connected to Delhi, which it needs to have Hinduism spread. We want that possibility asap, so connecting it to Delhi is a relatively high priority, especially since it's only 4 tiles away and has a high spread percentage.

I think switching espionage to Hammy is a good idea immediately.
 
More thoughts:

I think we need granaries asap in Delhi, GEL, and Nature's Candy, because they all need to whip cats. So I think Mitchum's plan which leaves one chop for for Nature's Candy is probably a little better.
 
Mitchum said:
You should be able to chop the forest under Gems City without the Zlatorog worker. I followed magnusmarcus' worker actions in the SE, meaning that I build the road at deer-S rather than on the deer resource. It should work.
I was able to Chop the Forest underneath of Nature's Candy (Gems City). I just wasn't able to Chop the Forest underneath of Crab Rangoon (Crab City).


Mitchum said:
I'm opposed to delaying the granary in Delhi, so if we do start a warrior rather than a barracks for one turn, it will turn into a spear by the time we complete it, which should be fine because we could use one as a stack defender in case Toku gets horses.
It's a difference of 8 Hammers (the Warrior or Barracks or The Pyramids or The Great Wall) will have 7 base Hammers going into it.

We'll only be making 3 Hammers per turn at the time, so it would still take 3 additional turns to complete the Warrior, but we may end up needing this Warrior if all goes poorly with the Barb Archer in the south.


If, on the other hand, we suffer no losses against the Barb Archer in the south, then we could possibly consider dumping those 7 Hammers into The Great Wall (for 14 Failure Gold) or into The Pyramids (to go along with the myth that investing Hammers into a Wonder somehow affects whether or not AIs will choose to build said Wonder).

I'm sure that there are some teams that will build The Pyramids, but we won't really have the Hammers to even consider that possibility until we have captured some AI Cities.


Mitchum said:
I'm okay with the warrior in Gems City since it won't be connected via roads and that warrior will not convert into a spear.
Again, we might not need said Warrior for a while if all goes well vs the Barb Archer in the south.

Alternatively to completed it before the Granary, it could just get a couple of Hammers until we learn Pottery, then we would build the Granary ASAP and finally we could whip that Warrior once we grow Gems City to Size 3, giving us 15 overflow Hammers into a Granary, a Warrior, and some excess-overflow Hammers being converted into Gold. Doing so is probably better than working a marginal square in Gems City at Size 3 (although the alternative is to work one of Delhi's Grassland Hills Mines, which isn't a bad choice, either).

We might be able to 1-pop-whip a Granary if we first 1-pop-whip a Warrior and overflow 15 Hammers into the Granary. Since it costs less Food to grow from Size 2 to Size 3 twice than it costs to grow from Size 2 to Size 4, particularly if the 3rd citizen doesn't have an amazing square to work, then it might work out better this way... although, a Grassland Hills Mine IS a pretty decent square. Anyway, it is Food for thought. :p


Mitchum said:
We can chop that forest and I'm not sure the value of those extra road segments is at the moment.
I'll have to redo my test where I don't fire the 2 Scientists in Delhi for a turn and also confirm that we can work the Pig as soon as it is Pastured until we grow Nature's Candy (Gems City) to Size 2, but once I do so, I think that you'll understand a bit better that those 2 Road segments just basically replace the movement of the two western Workers on their way to Crab Rangoon's (Crab City's) Forest and two of their Chopping actions... since a Forest requires 3 turns of Chopping, I couldn't find a way to get that third Chop in without the Zlatorog Worker existing, since we needed to finish Quarrying the Marble and if we spend 3 turns Chopping Crab Rangoon's Forest, we end up being short on Quarrying the Marble by 1 Worker turn. That's all that I was talking about there--I was definitely Chopping the Nature's Candy's (Gems City's) Forest.


Mitchum said:
In my latest test runs, I was skipping Fishing and getting Pottery ASAP. I think sooner granaries trumps the 20% bonus (~15:science) we get get by researching Fising first.
It does if we build the Granaries ASAP. If, however, we build Warriors before the Granaries, there may be space in the tech path to squeeze in Fishing first, although it may be harder to make it work with us working the Pig Pasture in favour of the Gems Mine.

It's hard to say if we'll need those Warriors (say, if the Barb Archer in the south becomes the Terminator and kills 2 of our Warriors down there, we'll almost certainly need more Warriors) or whether we'll want to start on the Granaries ASAP, in which case it makes sense to get Pottery before Fishing using magnusmarcus' tech path.


Mitchum said:
If we are going down the Conquest/Domination path for victory, the sooner we can get to maces and trebs the easier our fighting is going to be and the sooner we'll win. I'm also not too thrilled about going up against bowmen (+50% against melee units) with axes although with enough cats it's possible.
In the back of my mind, I've been thinking about grabbing Toku's Horses and using them against Hammurabi, but then again, there's no guarantee that Toku even has Horses.

As for BtS, 2-movement-point units are KING compared to Vanilla, since the BtS AIs love to mass-whip in BtS in order to create their armies. You can catch so many AIs with their pants down in BtS using 2-movement-point units. If we can find a source of Horses, I'd much rather beeline Horseback Riding (and Archery) than go straight for Maces + Trebs.

It's a different animal if you're attacking via land than via the ocean.


Of course, if The Pyramids are still around after finishing off Toku, we might even Lightbulb Philosophy and run a Scientist economy to push us through to Astronomy, which WOULD give us the sea advantage and would allow us to attack any overseas AIs (such as the theory that Ragnar is to the west and only reachable by Galleon).

An important relevant question: can we get circumnavigation on this map type?


If most of the AIs' capitals are on the sea, as per our test game, then attacking from the sea could be a very strong play.



Mitchum said:
We currently have 188 against Tokugawa. We need 88 to see his demo data and 222 to see his research. With how much he's spending on us, I don't think we'll ever see what he's researching before his dead. Plus, LC has been able to do a good job of figuring out what he's researching anyway.

I think now is the time to switch EPP toward Hammy. Thoughts?
So, wait a second, we don't even see any info of use on Toku despite all of our EP spending? In that case, it is tempting to switch Espionage Points targets.

That said, I still think that I'd rather delay switching until Toku is dead, so that Hammurabi isn't convinced into spending more EPs on us. Around that time, hopefully we'll know Code of Laws and can start building Courthouses, meaning that out of the gate, we'll be able to apply a lot of Espionage Points' pressure on Hammurabi before he starts spending too much on us. Of course, that's going under the assumption that he is not spending most of his EPs on us currently--if Hammurabi is already spending roughly 4 to 5 EPs on us per turn, then I'm fine with switching EP targets to him now, otherwise my vote is to wait until we're close to being able to put more than 4 EPs on him passively (i.e. without using the Espionage Slider).
 
At least one of Dhoom's two roads to Nature's Candy gets it closer to being connected to Delhi, which it needs to have Hinduism spread. We want that possibility asap, so connecting it to Delhi is a relatively high priority, especially since it's only 4 tiles away and has a high spread percentage.

Agreed. With the 2-pop whip plan and chopping the forest under Nature's Candy (i.e. Gems City), the workers still have one spare turn each to build a road before they have to head to the marble. We just need to be sure that they put the road on the right tile. They have a bit more flexibility in my test in that they aren't building a road just to be able to climb the pigs' hill and pasture on the same turn.

One of the marble workers can head back to Nature's Candy, finish the road and chop the forest after the marble is quarried. If we plan to build a warrior here, it needs to be completed before the road is built or else the warrior becomes a spear... unless we delay Hunting for some reason.
 
LowtherCastle said:
I think we need granaries asap in Delhi, GEL, and Nature's Candy, because they all need to whip cats. So I think Mitchum's plan which leaves one chop for for Nature's Candy is probably a little better.
In that case, the best plan probably is Mitchum's 2-pop-whip with most of his two western Workers' actions plus marcusmagnus' tech path with marcusmagnus' other two Workers' actions.

So, we can probably aim for this approach and then be prepared to pump out a Warrior before a Granary in Delhi should we lose both Warriors in the south to the Barb Archer (although the timing of creating that Warrior wouldn't work all that well, so we really don't want to lose both Warriors to the southern Barb Archer).


What's going to be the Barb Archer's behaviour if we settle adjacent to it? Will it attack our City or will it leave our Cultural Borders?

What about if we settle such that our Cultural Borders are just beside the Archer--will it come for our City or must it wait for the "AREA_AI_MASSING" trigger to be switched to the "KICK_YOUR_BUTT" trigger before the Archer will enter our Cultural Borders (wrong names for the triggers but you should get the picture of what I mean).
 
That archer in the south could delay settling Marble City which will delay the Oracle. I think we need pre-agreed events where magnusmarcus will stop play so that we can assess the situation with respect to where the archer is, where Toku's archer is, how many cities are on the map, etc. Another stopping point may be the turn we have to decide where to dump our hammers in Delhi.

BTW, I misunderstood your chopping issue, Dhoom. I had stopped choppoing the forest under Marble City as well so that the worker up north could get Zlatorog on its feet faster with a chopped granary and/or camped deer. Of course, if we're happy with Zlatorog just working the gold for a bit, that worker could be used to speed up Gems City instead. EDIT: and we could delay Hunting until we need it!!
 
I would put pre-granary Delhi hammers into barracks. We'll want some XPs for axes to get at least one up to Woodsman II for worker stealing and fast scouting beyond Toku. Furthermore, I would like to see us get a Level-4 unit asap, in case we decide to build the Heroic Epic in Kyoto, which should be a massive unit producer with three food tiles and all those hills. Literature should easily pay for itself since we can also build NE and create a boatload of failed gold in the process.
 
Mitchum said:
With the 2-pop whip plan and chopping the forest under Nature's Candy (i.e. Gems City), the workers still have one spare turn each to build a road before they have to head to the marble. We just need to be sure that they put the road on the right tile. They have a bit more flexibility in my test in that they aren't building a road just to be able to climb the pigs' hill and pasture on the same turn.
I didn't really see much flexibility with these Workers... they need to arrive 1 square away from the Marble in order to Quarry the Marble.

In order to get to the Marble, they will need to either enter a Forest or climb a Hills square. In order not to lose a Worker turn entering the Forest or climbing the Hills square, we need to end the Workers' turn 1 movement point away from said Forest or Hills square. I could only find a way to be one square away from one of these squares and still get in Worker actions on the prior turn.

I.e. NW + NW of the Marble, then NW of the Marble.

NW + NW of the Marble could also be a partial Farm instead of a Road, but a Road seemed to make more sense at the time, since we'd actually complete the Road and thus might find a use for it again in the future.


LowtherCastle said:
I would put pre-granary Delhi hammers into barracks.
Okay, I suppose that I could live with 1 Barracks. I could see how it would be nice to get a Woodsman II Axeman, as he could then go hunting for Barbs in the hopes of getting up to a total of 10 Experience Points.

It is unfortunate that such an Axeman won't actually gain increased odds versus any of Toku's Archers, but it could definitely be of use... Barb Warriors and Barb Spearmen would be particularly fun candidates to run into, with the hopes of eventually getting a Woodsman III healer.


That said, if we have troubles with the Barb Archer in the south, then these Hammers will probably need to go into a Warrior instead, although if we lose two Warriors to the Barb Archer, we may actually need something stronger (a Spearman or an Axeman) to deal with it.
 
@Dhoom

If we chop the forest at Gems City-1E, then the workers have to build a road for one turn at gems(resource)-E for a turn so that they can climb the hill and pasture the pigs on the same turn. EDIT: Or they could just climb the hill on one turn and pasture the next, but we may as well get some action out of them, right?

Since I'm chopping the forest under Gems City, the workers are free to climb that hill and pasture the pigs on the same turn without the road because they are standing right next to said hill. So, the pigs get pastured one turn sooner AND the turn saved by not building the road is available after the pigs have been pastured and the gems mined. That is where the two "free" worker turns come from with my worker actions. They can be used to build a road, pre-farm a tile for either Gems City or Marble City, pre-chop the forest we saved for Gems City, etc.
 
Dhoom, those two workers could also road NW of the forest, then chop the forest, then quarry the marble. That way the worker going back to Nature's Candy can finish that chop on the way and that gets the Crab granary done quicker.
 
Dhoom, those two workers could also road NW of the forest, then chop the forest, then quarry the marble. That way the worker going back to Nature's Candy can finish that chop on the way and that gets the Crab granary done quicker.

That sounds like 4 worker turns (road-NW and chop) unless you were thinking of having one worker build a partial road and the other do a single chop. IIRC, we only have 2 worker turns to play with.
 
Bulbing to Trebs and Maces

If we think that getting to trebs and maces is important and we want to bulb our way there with GSs, there is the option of skipping Fishing. If we don't learn Fishing or Civil Service and we learn Alphabet, Aesthetics (needed for Literature and the epics anyway), Calendar (bananas), IW and MC, we could use two GSs to bulb Engineering and Machinery.

This gets us trebs and maces much quicker and allows us to run scientists to suppliment our research. It also allows us to leverege our Philosophical trait. The drawbacks to skipping Fishing for so long are that we can't net Marble City's crab (+2:food:) and we can't send out any exploring workboats.

If we don't do this, what do we plan to do with any non-GEs we generate? Settle? Golden Ages? Bulb up the Astronomy line?

Just thought I'd throw that out there... chop... ;)
 
In the test game the archer appears to be fortified on the forest tile where marble city needs to go.....

What is the possibility this is the actual behavior?

What are you guys doing in the test game to deal with this?
 
I would suggest that you plan for success. Go into WB and remove the archer completely. Then make sure you have the MM down to complete the Oracle as we've always planned. Then, during your turnset, pay attention to this archer and stop for advice if you see anything at all that prevents you from following your plan.

On top of that, you need to have a separate plan for what to do with the warriors and how to lure the archer into attacking us at low odds. Maybe the best bet is to try to lure the archer to the east toward the fish and the grassland, forested hill right about the time our settler is headed down to found Marble City.

EDIT: Keep in mind that we need to keep the south spawn busted with our two warriors, the barb archer and Toku's archer to prevent yet another barb spawn to contend with.
 
I forgot to say that the barb archer fortifying on the forest is not normal behavior. Is it possible that he killed Toku's archer and is simply healing? Barbs tend to wander aimlessly while staying away from cultural borders and off of resources until we reach the 30-city limit and they start beelining for our cultural borders, cities and improvements.
 
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