SGOTM 14 - Fifth Element

BLubmuz said:

Now the focus is: where to settle the Capital? what to build first?
so please let's limit the discussion to this until WithTea finishes play.

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I am cool with the roster. I think the big difference in timezones is having an effect on the thread activity. I usually post during the day and wake up the next morning to 2-3 replies that happened overnight.

If there is a second seafood I think 2E for the capital. Without more seafood I still say SiP or maybe 1N is best. 1w probably covers a resource, 2SE is too unknown as is 1W1NW. It's too bad the PH 1E doesn't pan out.

worker/archer/archer/settler is my feeling for early production. It seems pretty ominous to me that we were given archery though. . . maybe worker first is a bad choice?

I think we first need to agree on the warrior movement. After that we can talk about the other issues. We need to get moving in the discussion but we have plenty of time to mull over the early details.

As in the last several games, the first 100 turns will likely determine the winner. Based on this, we can afford to spend a few days discussing the first 10ish moves. (as long as we are actually discussing).

So as it stands right now I think NE with the warrior is the best choice but understand, I may change my vote if a better argument comes along.

Warrior move: please correct me if i'm wrong, but the debate is between NE or SE. All the reamining possibilities won't help our decision on where to settle the Capital.

So, as i noted earlier, NE is the best move, even if it reveals less tiles than SE.

NE for me.

Another note about my schedule: UT is correct when he says that the winner is decided in the first 100 turns and that is better spend some day discussing than go in a hurry.

The schedule is intented to give a reference, far to be mandatory or anything. Being this Normal speed, being 75 turns in the game after 28 or 40 days changes nothing. Provided we spend this time discussing, testing and analyzing any strategy and MM possible.
I still remember my analysis in SG8 (wonder crazy) where one of the strongest players i met, WastinTime, thought it was impossible for us have CS from the Oracle in a safe date and i managed to demonstrate it was possible with one of my best MM plans ever. and we did it, but damn Shaka ruined our game.

I vote NE as well.

The roster looks good to me. Will try to get warrior move and post tonight, but probably should wait until at least Saturday before commencing anything else, so everyone can mull over the info gleened. 1st city placement and all. Also we will want to decide what the first build is. Probably worker, but maybe people will want to wait on that.

Moved Warrior NE. Promptly eaten by Bear!

My initial instinct on seeing that land is SIP, simply to save a turn of movement into a place which won't be clearly any better. Not only does 1W probably lose a resource, but also the oasis. I'll update the test save with the new info.

edit - but see my argument in the next post, where I begin thinking that 1W ain't so bad...

updated test save (those rivers were bastards, but I think they're correct now). Here's a screenie of the test save, and the save itself (Rev 5). Let me know if you spot any differences.

screenie:



One very interesting finding upon examining WithTea's screenie: That's the edge of the map to the East!

This probably makes a move to the West more interesting, to place us closer to the center of the map. Also, Barbs will be less of an issue as that is one less direction for them to arrive from.

The lack of world-wrap limits the types of map that could have been used to create the scenario. There's a list of map types here. Interestingly, the most likely (unmodified) maps to produce the land we see would be "hub" or "wheel". However, we shouldn't read too much into our small visibility area.

Is there any way to work out the amount of land on the map (as opposed to water), and the total number of tiles? These could also help to narrow down the map-type.

Now that I know all of this, settling 1W is looking more and more attractive as a turn-0 location. Can someone with the official save please gaze into the fog down the left hand side and let us know what you think is there?

Note that if we move settler 1W then we'll get even more info about what's over that way.

Keen for others to have a good look around and post their thoughts!

pnp_dredd said:

Let me know if you spot any differences.

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Sheep should be on a grassland, spice should be on plains.

Great move, WithTea!

Now we can start our fight on where to settle.

Moving W, following dredd's reasoning, seems a good choice. But we must let room for a coastal city near the stone.

Or we can climb that hill and bet on some resource N.

Or... let's see your proposals, then i will list them and put on a vote. Not strong preferences for now.

Another option can be to jump with the settler on the hill W. there aren't great things here, aside some food.

pnp_dredd said:

updated test save (those rivers were bastards, but I think they're correct now). Here's a screenie of the test save, and the save itself (Rev 5). Let me know if you spot any differences.

Click to expand...

Rivers can be easy if you use right-click to delete the unwanted placements. I can do anything i like with them.

So, you draw it roughly, then you refine it with r-c and redraw if needed. The direction is important. You must always start from the land and move to the sea.

neilmeister said:

Sheep should be on a grassland, spice should be on plains.

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Thanks Neilmeister!. Also, the sheep is not forested, and the spice is. A pity, I really liked the look of that floodplain-spice! Fixed all of those things and amended the save. I kept it as Rev5 as it's got 0 downloads.

I think that ph by the crab/stone/oasis makes a great site for a future city, which rules out settling the capital 1N. I would say 1NW or 1W1NW but I think losing the corn/cow in exchange for sheep and mystery tiles is too risky.

I also noticed the map edge to the east. This could mean that westward expansion is a huge priority, but like I said 1NW or 1W1NW is a big risk, and 1W loses us a lot of hammers if a resource shows up. Aside from being on top of a strategic resource though, 1W is a tasty city site. Corn, Sheep, Cows, 2PH 1GH, 3 riverside grassland and spices as well as whatever is west of the lake.

However, if this is a wheel map type then expansion N and/or S is likely a bigger priority. I don't know anything about hub map types though.

Now that we've seen the coast, know that we are on the eastern edge and there isn't a second seafood, I'd have to say SiP. Keep the cow and the corn, pray for metal/horses 1W, chop out a rush with all those forests. Also leaves us enough room for a stone/crab/oasis city later.

If the general consensus ends up being settle 1W though, I think on turn 1 we should put the settler up on the hill 1S of the sheep first to reveal more tiles. If we don't see anything amazing we can always come back down to the lakeside plains and settle on turn 2. Losing a turn would be well worth it if we find gold/gems/something amazing up there.

Edit:

Can someone with the official save please gaze into the fog down the left hand side and let us know what you think is there?

Click to expand...

+1

My best guess on what I can make out. SE of sheep desert anything bonus like flood/oasis unknown. S of that plains forest 60% w hill. S of that underlying grassland not even a guess to anything else. N of sheep underlying grassland is again all I can make out. N of spice plains forest. NE of spice grassland forest. N of oasis plains. Following around to coast more forest, plains. W of cows plains forest. S of cows grass then going E plains, grass, grass NE grass w/coast and river. Good third city if we don't take the corn.

I really do think the odds of the plains W being copper/iron are terribly high. Not in favor of 1W for capitol. 1NW swaps cows for sheep, and loses corn. It makes cities two and three coastal and viable with known lands/resources. Though I'm not convinced it's a better choice than simply staying put.

Some misc thoughts about the game in general

Watch out for witches - possibly a high level unit like in BOTM41.

Need to destroy Wizard of Oz - may or may not be a combat unit. Could even be a spy, I suppose, though that would be near impossible.

Don't know if we need Astronomy, don't know how far up we need to tech. Tech fast anyway.

Thinking on a meta level, why would it be necessary to forbid Religious wins? Normally it's because it's 'too gamey' or 'too fast'. However, if it were possible to win by domination or conquest before Religious, then there would be no need to forbid AP victory - the fast rushers would win anyway. So this suggests to me that fast Conquest/Domination is not possible, certainly not before a religious victory would typically be won. It may also imply that the Wizard can be defeated without needing, say, Modern Armor or Paratroopers.

With so much unknown, early scouting will be critical. Keep track of what direction we meet AI units from, demographics, etc.

8 other AIs seems like a lot for a Standard map. Maybe its the usual crop of AIs + the Wizard team. Are there unusual demographics?

I agree with Beestar that the setup seems to lend itself to not allowing for early conquest/domination. Also it said normal barbarians in the description and never mentioned aggressive AI so I don't see the reasoning for giving out archery unless:
1. The AI are close and were given additional starting units/other advantages and are likely to attack from that standpoint or
2. it really was inadvertent.

Either way, I don't think it is likely that we need a defender any earlier than in a normal game. With that said, we will need to decide on the initial build after we decide on the settle location. I really like Meow's choice of 1W1NW. That would get us:
1. A spot in the westerly direction (where stuff is likely to be) and on a hill so more defensible
2. Sheep, spices, whatever is on the spot 1W, several forests, fresh water and
3. Leaves room for 2 more good cities (1 near stone and 1 to get corn and cows).
edit. 4. We can settle on T1 and that move reveals quite a few squares.

My second choice would be 2E1N. That gets us stone, crabs, corn and oasis. And it's coastal to promote faster exploration with a WB.

Either way I don't like the worker first build. I like to grow a bit before we build the worker. A warrior or archer to send out exploring while we grow if we go with 1W1NW or WB ->WB if we settle 2E1N would be my preferences.

INTERESTING STUFF HERE!!!


I was exploring the starting save and found a couple of interesting things:

1. Under the demographics screen, our number of soldiers is 8000 while the rival best is 22000, average is 17800 and worst is 13000. Essentially all the AI have 2X or more troops than us on T0. So I thought that was a bit weird so I explored further and:

2. Under victory conditions screen->Conquest: number of rivals is 4, but the description says there are 8 AI. Hummh... 8/2 =4 ...


So I just did a little testing ...



If you create a custom game in BTS (not buffy), it will allow you to create teams. If you then load that save go into WB and then save and then load buffy and choose play scenario (thanks to JesusOnEez for the details on how to do the details: mesix and I used to play team games against team AI years ago) you can open a game where the player is single but the AI are on teams and ..... (wait for it) .....

The opening demographics show that the AI has 2 -3 times as many troops and ....
that there are only 4 AI even though I created the original save with 8 AI.

Not really sure what this will mean for the game but it looks to me like we might be playing against team AI and if that is so then we have a WHOLE different game on our hands.

What thoughts have you guys got on this?

Premise: the Emperor AI starts with 2 archers and 2 scouts. Monarch is the last level where there's a difference between Civs starting with hunting and the others.
Did a quick test in WB:
1 warrior counts 2k soldiers
Archery counts 6k
1 archer counts 3k, skirmisher and bowman counts 4k
scout counts 0
mining counts 2k
the wheel counts 4k
Hunting counts 2k
fishing counts 0, like agri and myst

Thus the difference in soldiers is due to the starting techs
The first city pre sttled changes nothing in soldiers. Population starts counts with larger numbers (don't remember exactly).

the best case can be Mansa which starts with mining+the wheel and being Emperor with achery and 2 skirms (the 2 scouts do not count). 2+4+6+4*2=20

22 is definitely too much for a single emperor AI. Your reasoning can be correct.
OTOH 22 seems a bit low for 2 paired AI, unless the map maker deleted some unit, maybe 1 archer (or equivalent) each to confuse the players.

Wow, good catch with the demographics unclethrill! Perhaps the good and bad witches are paired together? Good/Bad witch of the West, North, South, East = 8AI on 4 teams. It would make for some interesting Diplo for sure Although I'm not sure the mapmaker could have pulled this off with random AI personalities checked.

I like 2E1N as a later city site if we end up moving away from the corn. However, it would take two turns of movement before it could even be settled as a capital though. I don't think it's worth it.

Kudos Unclethrill! Nice legwork.

My inclination right now is to stay put. Later on we could share resources away if things are going well. We aren't going to have to worry about what to do with pop 20 guy. Entirely feasible to use the oasis early to pump up the capitol and then when it's going well, switch the oasis over to the stone. Same for lower city and corn. I'm not a fan of taking two turns to find greener grass. Though I am somewhat swayed by the defensible hill argument.