SGOTM 02 - The Real Ms. Beyond

AlanH

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Welcome to your C_IV SGOTM 2 Team Thread. Please use it for all internal team communication, turn logs and discussions. Subscribe to it to receive notifications, and do not visit the other team threads for this game until you have finished. Please also subscribe to the Maintenance Thread for this game, where teams and staff may post non-spoiler information of general interest.

This game will be played in Civ4, patched to v1.61.

You are cast in the role of Tokugawa, mighty leader of the Japanese. Tokugawa's brother has left the island city of Kyoto to avenge the death of his wife and only son. He has travelled to a distant land without finding their murderer. So the brother of Tokugawa will settle and found a new Japanese colony, and the Japanese have sworn to conquer the rest of civilization in order to hunt down and destroy their enemy.

The game is on a Standard size fractal map, modified as only Gyathaar knows how, at Epic speed. All victory conditions are enabled, but the laurels for this contest will be awarded to the fastest teams to achieve a Conquest victory. The number of AI rivals has not yet been revealed. It will be played using version 1.61 of Civ4 with locked modified assets.

Individual start files for all teams will be available on the SGOTM Progress and Results Page at midnight, server local time, at the start of August 8th.

Here's the start position.


Map Parameters
Playable Civ - Tokugawa of Japan
World size - Standard
Difficulty - Monarch
Landform - Fractal, hand modified
Game Speed - Epic
AI Aggression - YES!
Barbarians - Raging!!

Please visit the following link to ensure that you are adequately prepared:
Civ4 SGOTM reference thread

Notes:

A. ONLY Civilization IV v1.61 is supported for this SGOTM. All teams will compete for up to four awards - the Gold, Silver and Bronze Laurels for the fastest finishes, and the Wooden Spoons for the lowest scoring finisher.

B. All teams must play the sponsored variant - victory will be awarded for the fastest victory by Conquest.

C. All saved game files uploaded to the server are parsed through software that extracts and archives data about your save, including reload count for each turn set.

I'm sure you'll enjoy this game :D
 
Rats - not the first here. But, here are my very early views ... we are playing a SG Chaos game where the pranksters have a lot of fun with worldbuilder (giving the barbarians battleships for one). Anyway, they gave us a city right down on the southern border. It started in revolt so wasn't costing us anything. As soon as it came out of revolt, it was costing us 9 gold and our tech went from 100% to 40%. This will be a problem for SGOTM II as soon as we found our second city and will get much much worse with each city (distance maintenance will be a killer).

So, we will need to move our capital(!) prior to building our 3rd city.
 
Zalson, reporting as enlisted.

Hopefully the two aren't that far away, indeed. As for where to place the capital, I think it really depends on, of course what we all have around us. Right now, sending it over to the plains tile to grab the fish and rice for fast growth, and keeping the floodplain viable, seems like a good idea. However, my civ skills are a little bit rusty... but the end of the order should let me warm up a little bit... oh, and get my damn computer fixed!
 
Dear Ms. Beyond,

Your humble servant Compromise checking in.

I was deeply saddened to learn of the tragic death of your (Tokugawa's) brother (I assume that Ms. Beyond is just a codename). I trust that sweet vengeance will soon be yours. I endeavor to help you as much as my poor skills enable.

From the information you've sent thus far, I have the following comments:

Your capital--Kyoto--is well suited to become a beacon of slavery. It appears to be built on a plains hill, given that it is set to grow in 17 turns and can produce a workboat in a mere 23 turns.

I recommend that the city be placed on "high food" and "high commerce". I recommend the following build order: workboat (to fish), warrior, workboat (to crabs), workboat (to fish), workboat (to crabs). Building the workboat first and sending it to the fish will enable maximum growth (and therefore max commerce) as quickly as possible. The warrior prevents a no-military unhappiness penalty from affecting the city. Going to the crabs next removes a health penalty.

Once reaching size 5 in Kyoto, however, I recommend setting the city to "don't grow." No sense supporting unhappy citizens. The exception is when we have a building we plan to queue up and poprush, such as the library we'll want as soon as possible. Then, I think we'll want to whip that to completion on the second turn of production, while still leaving as many people as possible working the coast for commerce. We can discuss more micromanagement as the time approaches.

Concerning the second city.... We've essentially got two disconnected empires here. It'll be a while before the resources from one are available to the other. Also, I took the liberty of cropping the minimap out of one of the screenshots. I then zoomed in on that so I could see individual pixels. I have calculated that each square on the real map is just about 3 pixels on the minimap. This means that the second settler is 37 horizontal and 4 vertical squares away from Kyoto. A quick worldbuilder test reveals that the maintenance cost for this city as soon as we place it will be 7 gold-per-turn (gpt)!!!

Using worldbuilder, the first barbarian animals are likely to appear in the interturn between 3850 and 3820BC. The first barbarian troops should appear in the interturn between 2650 and 2620BC. In 2260, and perhaps before, barbarian troops will move toward cities. Settlers *can* pop barbarians from huts!!!

I recommend the following, perhaps bizarre, opening set of actions: use the settler and the warrior to explore while researching archery!!! On the turn that Archery is discovered, found the city and make the first build an archer.

It would be great if we could find a good city spot on a plains hill for the extra hammer and hill defense. In a normal situation, I'd recommend just moving the settler one tile northwest (NW) from its current position and settling there, but given the huge gpt hit that founding the city will incur, I recommend the delay.

Obviously, we'll want the settler to be safe from 2-move barbarian animals by 2650BC and no hut popping by the settler before then, but we can get some good exploring done in those few years.

The next set of moves is a bit constrained by what is discovered, but I'd likely recommend researching pottery, mining/bronze, and writing before anything else. Writing is for a library in Kyoto; bronze is for enabling poprushing, pottery is to make our cities worthwhile. Second build in the new city (Osaka is it?) should probably be a worker. Then maybe a barracks, but we're getting ahead of ourselves a little bit.

Just some thoughts.

In your service,
Compromise
 
Dear Ms. Beyond,

I also wanted to mention some thoughts I have about how frequently to question we advisors of yours (i.e.: how long should the turnsets be).

I read through a bit of Team Peanut and Team CFL's SGOTM1 reports. One of the striking things about those reports is how often someone made a decision of critical impact to the team with little input from the team just because it was their set of turns to run. Most succession games (SG's) that I've seen set it up so that the first few turnsets are very long compared with the later game. The justification for this is that "nothing much is going on" and so the first few players need to play more turns to have the same level of "action."

I'm not convinced. What I notice is that a great number of game-changing decisions are made in the first 100 turns or so. Where to place cities, what to build first, what to research first, where to explore, etc. These are crucial decisions because mistakes made here affect the rest of the game.

I recommend, and like all my recommendations, it is very open to discussion, that early turnset lengths be very limited: 5 or 10 turns maybe. This way, the critical early decisions can be decided by the team, not just by the first couple of players. Also, everyone will get to have an impact on the first 100 turns of the game!

In a recent (and my only) SG--RB19--there was one turnset where I just felt...off. I didn't feel confident about anything I was doing. I wasn't thinking clearly, and I just knew it. Instead of the usual 10 turns, I cut my turnset short to 5 turns. Good thing, too. Examination of what I'd been doing by Sullla (even though he raised an eyebrow at my cutting short the turnset) revealed that I was off. Bad techs, bad builds, strange citizen assignments.

So, I recommend that if anyone feels like they don't know what's best to do: stop and ask for advice, or stop altogether for a while. The advisors for this thread all agreed to ask for much discussion before taking action; we should take advantage of that!

I'm here to learn, to help and to have fun! There are so many great CIV players signed up for this event on the other teams that winning is a longshot. But if we play well and have a good time with it, I really don't care. (And by playing well, I don't mean playing without error; I mean playing the best each of us can at that moment.)

As always, I look forward to being your advisor.

Serving you proudly,
Compromise
 
I'm at work so I've only had the time for a cursory analysis but here are my thoughts:

It is an interesting proposition to delay founding our second city for a little while. Our research rate will be severly hampered by the maintenance costs and I, like compromise, would like to have archery researched before we start getting barb incursions of any note (remember raging barbs!). Bronze working is also of utmost importance for slavery, obviously.

What happens if we found a religion? If we do, will it go in our capitol or in our new city? I'm not sure. It would be ungood if it showed up in our capitol because we couldn't spread it until astronomy.

Delaying the founding of our second city is very counterintuitive to me, and I'm not convinced it is the correct strategy. It's worth thinking about, though.
 
Checking in.

I agree on the early palace move, and I also agree on not playing too quickly, allowing for team discussion.

Maybe one solution would be to not have a "set" number of turns to play? Say that people can play 5-15 turns, as long as they are playing according to group consensus. Like compromise says, if at any point you feel your game is off, or that you're making decisions that you're unsure about, I think that's a good time to stop, save, and figure it out. I hope that I can count on everyone to be fairly active with advice given. We don't want to play too quickly, or too much at a time. having said that, we don't want to take TOO long, so try and stick to the regular 24/48, as long as we know what we're doing. IMHO there's nothing magical about ending on an "even" year, other than the fact that it's a good reminder to stop and avoid "one-more-turn-itis" :)

I will also do my best to post a "summary" post periodically, hopefully at least after each turn. I've seen too many SGs go awry because someone settled 1-off where the group wanted to settle, because the dotmap was 3 pages ago. In this summary post, I'll post the roster, as well as the key points in various areas (diplomatic, tech, settling, building, religion, etc). Againn, having said that, I don't want to be TOO anal about stuff like this. While I think that it's good to get consensus, the ultimate goal of this is to have fun. Still, there's 8 of us, and it's no fun for someone to do their own thing that the other 7 don't want. As I posted in the RB thread, I was looking for people to communicate and get consensus, and since you're all here, I am assuming that's what you want too.

According to the signup thread, there are 8 of us. We have heard from myself, compromise, ruff_hi, Snaproll and Zalson. We still need to hear from: BeefOnTheBone, EL_OSO, and Kodii. I'm going to tentatively set the roster just going down the line of how alan assigned us. If there's a particular order that you'd like, speak up now.

I think in Kyoto we should build workboat * 4 first, whipping as soon as we can. We only need a warrior to prevent military unhappiness at size 5 I believe. And I don't think we need to worry about barbs there for quite awhile :). We should also build a workboat / galley to explore if it looks like we can. Though it would be my guess that Kyoto will be isolated till Optics. Speaking of which, that should probably be our first (mid-range) tech-goal. We start with Fishing and The Wheel. Seems like BW or archery are good tech choices. Both require 2 techs, but I think BW is better. Especially if we're going to delay the 2nd city. Once we get BW, we don't have to worry about having copper in our 2nd city's radius, we can just settle wherever the copper IS :)

We definitely need to figure out how much maintenance costs we're going to get, and empirically whether or not it's worth it to settle ASAP. It might be a matter of having to find a high commerce tile (gold/gems?) to settle next to. If we're losing 7 gpt, we definitely want a high commerce 2nd city or we're going to really hamper ourselves economically.

And remember, our goal is fastest conquest.
 
SUMMARY POST:

Roster (temporary for now - feel free to submit changes):
Regoarrarr (up)
BeefOnTheBone (on deck)
Compromise
EL_OSO
Kodii
ruff_hi
Snaproll
Zalson

Diplomacy:
Rivals to meet: Unknown - we need to check this ASAP via the victory page once we get the save. Remember everyone is a potential enemy since we have to win by conquest.

Technology:
Mining->Bronze Working has been suggested. Masonry for palace move would also be handy, as well as generally making our way to Optics / Astronomy. Archery too since there are raging barbs, though if we have copper, axes would be better. Optics also require Machinery, which we'll need for Samurai (also Civil Service)

Settling:
It has been suggested we hold off on settling the 2nd city due to the huge distance maintenance (-7 gpt). Does this take into account that we're organized? It says -50% civic costs, though I don't know if that includes distance maintenance.

Builds:
I think workboat first in Kyoto is the obvious move. After that, probably another workboat or 2, though we'll also want a library in there. Heavy use of the whip. Don't be afraid to let it grow unhappy if we can whip it down. Try to whip every 15 turns.

Religion:
I think we want one. I'm not sure how the holy city is determined - anybody know? All I know is that whenever I play and found a religion with 2 cities, it always gets founded in the 2nd city (not capital). So that's good. We should probably try for Confucianism or Taoism

Any other categories that should go in this?
 
Checking in, peeps - looking forward to this one, although I'm rubbish with raging barbs (I tend to neglect defences far too much as it is) so might need some prodding.

I reckon Compo (heh) could be on to something here - the maintenance will be huge for an initial founding and we'll need to place early cities very carefully. On Monarch I think we'll need a warrior in Kyoto before we get the 4 workboats out, not sure offhand. Given that we're going to have high maintenance costs until we can move the palace, an early religion and shrine would be a bonus - we'll have plenty of commerce in Kyoto, so maybe we should try to snag one relatively early. On raging barbs though I'm not sure if that'll be too dangerous, and we wouldn't want it founded in Kyoto if we can help it, so in fact we might be better off not doing so until at least 2 cities have been founded in the East to minimise the chance of it ending up isolated (assuming border pops in Kyoto don't reveal any coast tiles nearby, which seems unlikely).

Tricky.

Incidentally, the capitals in my nick are only the Bs. I don't know why, but it looks really odd to me with the others in...
 
I know I'm spamming but hey one team already has 35 posts in their team thread - let's go people!!! :)

It looks like we're just about guaranteed to have the religion founded in our 2nd city
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=169716&page=2

One possibility would be to take CoL from the Oracle, but if we build the Oracle in Kyoto, then that's where our prophet is going to come, and we'll have no easy way to get him to the holy city to build the shrine (till Optics)
 
The holy cities are allocated to the city with the least culture (according to people in 'RB19 - True Cultural Challenge'). This means we should found our second city before getting our first religion to stop it going to Kyoto.

Exploring with the settler is an option (and an interesting one at that). However, we mustn't get that settler killed (would totally ruin game for sure). Also, Kyoto is a worldbuilder special - that is, added by hand (well, it looks like one to me) while our settler has been placed by the map scripted (and thus likely to be at a very nice position).

I'm learning towards archery for the first tech (raging barbs).
 
The problem with archery first, is that we first have to do Hunting. If we're going to research 2 techs, why not the much better (and not THAT much more expensive) Mining and Bronze Working (170 beakers vs. 100). Yes, we then we need to build a worker and hook up copper too, but do we really need Hunting and Archery (assuming we can build axes in time to not get killed, of course) :)
 
Jeez I'm spamming again.

@Compromise - 37 tiles horizontally which way? wrapping across the minimap or not?

Because if it's 37 tiles wrapping, we might make it worth our while to move the settler to the east side of the landmass it's currently on, since that might get it a bit closer
 
Good point. It looked like Compromised knock up a shadow game - do you have a save you can post so we can all experiment and get some hard numbers re dates, maintenance costs etc.
 
Hey all, quick reply here since I'm rushed.

(I'll drop the Dear Ms. Beyond format since it didn't catch on.)

I did whip up a shadow game, but I forgot to save it separately, and I overwrote everything :cry: :cry: :cry:

But I did whip up another quick one to test the capital.

It is on a plains hill (otherwise the workboat would take much longer). If our first build is a workboat and works the fish, then our second build really should be a warrior. Otherwise, our 2nd workboat completes one turn before we go to size 5 and have an unhappy person. So, the build order in our capital should be: workboat, warrior, workboat*3.

In fact, we don't need the other 3 workboats. It's just that there's nothing else to build. If our border pop reveals coast that we can travel to, I suggest sending a couple workboats off in search of the rest of the world!
 
Compromise said:
(I'll drop the Dear Ms. Beyond format since it didn't catch on.)
Thank goodness for that!
 
Okay, here are my notes that I used to figure out the distance between the capital and the settler:



Above is a cropped screenshot of a blown up version of the minimap. This section is near the capital. The circle is 15 pixels in diameter and covers all 5 visible tiles. Thus, each square in the game is 3 pixels in the minimap. The center of the city is at coordinates (27,44).



Above is a cropped zoom of the region of the minimap where the settler is. This time, the circle is 12 pixels in diameter. (I used the circles to verify the 3x3pixels-per-gamesquare calculation.) The center of the settler's location is at (139,59).

Thus, the center of Kyoto and the center of the settler are (139-27, 59-44) => (112,15) pixels => (37,5) game squares apart. (Off by one pixel in the x-direction because one game square is probably not *exactly* 3 pixels wide.)

(I think I wrote (37,4) in my other post. This one is correct, but it doesn't matter much.)

When I plugged an island and a settler in these locations in that (deleted) shadow game, my income at 100% science went from 0 to -7gpt, all of it due to city distance maintenance.
 
I'm torn between archery or BW first. Essentially, the BW path is more of a gamble but also will pay off it it works out. No points for second place... Maybe a beeline to BW and then settle the first city on copper? Awful risky (especially if copper doesn't show...)
 
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