SGOTM 03 - Geezers

Sam_Yeager said:

Sums up footy guys in general doesn't it? Though I suppose they're American football guys so apologies if I've offended anyone.

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I notice they've also done it with far less discussion than we've had so far. Couple of other teams submitted 1st saves too now.

nope, I think american football guys are probably more of a 'meathead' than european football guys are

I would have preferred going on ahead, but can definitely hit enter and explore a bit more and provide more screenies. I don't have to work today and classes were cancelled, so this is all the recreation I have to do (well, this and GOTM13....along with whatever chores my wife decides I have time to do today since I suddenly have an extra 7 hours lol)

btw, Sam, the reason you could do research in SGOTM2 is because we already had that island city set up.

Thrallia said:

I would have preferred going on ahead, but can definitely hit enter and explore a bit more and provide more screenies. I don't have to work today and classes were cancelled, so this is all the recreation I have to do (well, this and GOTM13....along with whatever chores my wife decides I have time to do today since I suddenly have an extra 7 hours lol)

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Well there you go. If you don't keep stopping to talk to us, you'll suddenly find 20 minutes later that you've finished all your turns and having nothing to do for the rest of the day (other than GOTM13 of course)

ok, here's a new screenshot for the northern expanse....of jungle

I think the forested hill we decided upon is the best course of action, if we go any farther north we run into lots of jungle and lose a fish resource.

Thrallia said:

btw, Sam, the reason you could do research in SGOTM2 is because we already had that island city set up.

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Yes, you're right. My apologies for doubting you.

Nice! Looks from the resource bubbles like our scout has found the equator. And if there is another civ on our starting island (continent?) that jungle should deter it from settling too near us initially (which unfortunately may reduce some of the advantage we may have gained by settling on the hill, compared to any teams that settled in place ). I don't see any reason in the new screenshot for Thrallia not to continue as planned.

I agree, to continue as planned. With all the jungle and needing IW to chop it I'm leaning towards sailing following BW. It may be easier to transport settlers etc. If a Civ isn't close then trying to steal a worker and get him back through jungle with Barbs licking there chops isn't easy. A dilema follows though. If no Copper do we beeline to IW or get worker techs started. Probably to soon to think about, but my mind is going nuts trying to figure out what the evil world builder (dare I say his name?) has concocted.

Looks nice. I would say play 30 to 40 turns, Thrallia. Maybe until we have researched BW. Then we can have a look again and the next one can take over.

DynamicSpirit said:

Nice! Looks from the resource bubbles like our scout has found the equator. And if there is another civ on our starting island (continent?) that jungle should deter it from settling too near us initially (which unfortunately may reduce some of the advantage we may have gained by settling on the hill, compared to any teams that settled in place ).

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Overall I still think settling on the hill is to our advantage compared to the inital spot.

Dagnabit said:

I agree, to continue as planned. With all the jungle and needing IW to chop it I'm leaning towards sailing following BW. It may be easier to transport settlers etc. If a Civ isn't close then trying to steal a worker and get him back through jungle with Barbs licking there chops isn't easy. A dilema follows though. If no Copper do we beeline to IW or get worker techs started.

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I think we need to bear in mind that part of our strategy was to focus on tech rather than try and steal a worker. Our increased production should let us get a settler fairly quickly to start working the flood plains. After that we need to start getting worker techs so that we can develop the flood plains. Let's wait until BW is in before worrying whether or not copper is nearby.

markh said:

Looks nice. I would say play 30 to 40 turns, Thrallia. Maybe until we have researched BW. Then we can have a look again and the next one can take over.

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Waiting until BW is researched sounds good to me. By then we should know what the island looks like and if we are sharing with any other civs.

sounds good, I'll finish up my set at some point today...my wife just told me to leave our computer room because she's christmas shopping...oh yeah, and she gave me a list of chores around the house. It might be nearly midnight server time before I am able to get done and play it out though

obviously, no rush, since I haven't even had the game 24 hours yet, just wanted to inform you all of that

The Save

Turn 1: Moved scout/settler posted pic for discussion
Turn 2: Moved scout and settler, posted pic for more discussion
Turn 3: I explore NW with the scout and find another possible city site, it has a lot of jungle but would eventually have gems and rice
Turn 4: I discover that the proposed site above would also include fish and cows! Moscow finally founded on the forest plains hill. Warrior only takes 6 turns to build!
Turns 5-7: There's a lot of gems up north in the jungles!
Turn 10: Moscow: Warrior>Warrior
Turn 11: Our scout survives an encounter with a lion while finding out we are actually on a pretty good sized island...the land we saw across the way from our original location is actually part of our own island!
Turn 13: Fishing discovered>BW started 23 turns for it. Moscow changes production to a workboat.
Turn 14: Mao is on the island across from our capitol. I saw his archer patrolling the coast.
Turn 21: Our island is completely mapped out and I see at least 5 good commerce sites thanks to all those gems although production may be a bit scarce. One decent site involves settling on top of a gem, but there's plenty of those for other cities.
Turn 22: Our island is officially dubbed 'Muskovy Isle' and a sign is placed in Muskovy Bay to advertise it as such
Turn 26: Workboat finishes and sets up camp on the clams. Moscow will grow to size 2 in two turns finally and another workboat has been started
Turn 27: Our scout survives its third encounter with wild animals, our warrior survives a fight with a deranged giraffe, and we meet Alex, who shares an island with Mao.
Turn 34: BW comes in and I set research to Sailing. Moscow will grow again in 6 turns, another workboat finishes in 4 turns, and our only source of copper is right next to our scout, within the fat cross of one of my proposed city sites.

I would propose we build two settlers immediately following the completion of this workboat. One to settle St. Petersburg in our original spot, the other to hop across the bay to the copper spot.

Neither one is very far away, although for the copper city we may want to wait until we've gotten some growth out of St. Petersburg to counter the distance upkeep. I do think Sailing should be next, perhaps followed by Writing>IW>Alphabet and then just trade for all the worker/religious techs we missed. We will want IW early to free up all those gems which means we'll need to whip out a couple workers when we get close to that point. I personally think that we've got a good shot at the Great Lighthouse too, although I'm not entirely sure where in our building we'll put it. Perhaps just chop it in St. Petersburg once we get workers.

Oh, and I made liberal use of the Civ Signs...I just found them today during a practice game and found them very cool

As a side note, Real Ms Beyond and footballguys both founded in place in 4000BC, the only other team to upload a save thus far is CFR and they did what we did it appears, took a turn to do nothing except scout the surrounding terrain. footballguys also appears to think this is a sprint not a marathon...as they're already up to 1330BC and only have 2x our current score.

Thrallia said:

The Save
I would propose we build two settlers immediately following the completion of this workboat. One to settle St. Petersburg in our original spot, the other to hop across the bay to the copper spot.

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Cool! Looks like I'm next so I'll go grab the save soon (or possibly tomorrow morning since it's 3.30am here in the UK)

Thrallia said:

As a side note, Real Ms Beyond and footballguys both founded in place in 4000BC, the only other team to upload a save thus far is CFR and they did what we did it appears, took a turn to do nothing except scout the surrounding terrain. footballguys also appears to think this is a sprint not a marathon...as they're already up to 1330BC and only have 2x our current score.

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Uh???? How do you find out about where they settled? I thought we weren't supposed to know what the other teams were doing?

well, I checked out the graph on the submissions and progress page...and they were producing culture from turn 1, which means they couldn't have moved anything other than their scout before settling in place

we are allowed to use those graphs for info on other teams, but nothing else except for the spoiler pages that open up(btw, I nominate either Simon or Sam to write ours this time)

Wow...are there any other hills?

This is going to be a hammer poor game it seem. Well for our goals gold is a good thing to have anyway.

By the way when do the Barb war/archers show up? About now is it not?

I am in favor of settling to claim the copper asap and IW following Sailing. There are way too many jungles out there.

On a side note. I just started my first c4otm.( any Civ4 game ever for that matter)..the anticipation and the suspension of tech and GW chase is a killer. I bearly fell asleep afterwords.
Sorry...I just had to let it out. Civ4 is a great game.

I just down loaded the save and will post once I look at it.

Initial thought is why haven't we switched to Slavery?

Thrallia said:

I would propose we build two settlers immediately following the completion of this workboat. One to settle St. Petersburg in our original spot, the other to hop across the bay to the copper spot.

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I don't think there's any point building two settlers at this point as we have no worker to build the copper mine. We also can't connect the copper as we can't build roads even if we had a worker. I would finish our current builds, probably whipping the warrior on it's last turn and then build a settler for SP, warrior to let Moscow grow and then worker.

Thrallia said:

I do think Sailing should be next, perhaps followed by Writing>IW>Alphabet and then just trade for all the worker/religious techs we missed. We will want IW early to free up all those gems which means we'll need to whip out a couple workers when we get close to that point. I personally think that we've got a good shot at the Great Lighthouse too, although I'm not entirely sure where in our building we'll put it. Perhaps just chop it in St. Petersburg once we get workers.

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Tech wise I think it's worth delaying sailing as we won't be settling the third city soon. There's probably a good chance that we'll find iron near Moscow/St. Petersburg. However rather than going for IW I think we should go for Agriculture and then Animal Husbandry to see if we have any horses nearby so that we can get something better than warriors to defend our cities. Another option is to go straight for AH and then go for the Wheel and Pottery. Pottery would be good for the granaries that we get half price. That then allows us to go for Writing for the libraries. After all we are supposed to be concentrating on science. If we don't have any horses within our fat crosses then perhaps we'll have to go for Archery.

Thrallia said:

well, I checked out the graph on the submissions and progress page...and they were producing culture from turn 1, which means they couldn't have moved anything other than their scout before settling in place

we are allowed to use those graphs for info on other teams, but nothing else except for the spoiler pages that open up(btw, I nominate either Simon or Sam to write ours this time)

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Ah. Understood - I hadn't noticed those graphs. Though I think there's something odd about the culture: It's showing us as generating culture from 4000BC, which we weren't.

Ta for the nomination. I'm not bothered either way who does spoiler pages.

I've downloaded the save and had a look around (without playing any turns) (It's showing turn 33). Moscow's progressing nicely, Thrallia!

My initial impressions are that we may well need iron working soonish because there's jungle everywhere. There's very few places on the island where you can get a city to grow beyond size 2 or 3 before the jungle causes problems. And there's no fresh water other than the two rivers near the start location, so irrigating to the other side of the island isn't feasible.

The copper site is I guess important to settle at some point to guarantee the resource, I'm eyeing up the spot midway between the copper and the fish, because anywhere else round there is hopelessly food-challenged (ie. nothing > 1 food except coast. Or grassland after jungle chopped). That tile picks up the fish, copper, and two gems, plus another hill, although with the downer that it has no production until it's borders grow (you'd basically have to chop an obelisk before you do anything else). Or we can get something that will hook the copper and give us production immediately but with practically no food Gythaar has definitely given us a challenge here. Talk about caught between the devil and the deep blue sea...

Having looked at the island, I'm now much more favourable to getting sailing early on (though not necessarily next - I can certainly see Sam_Yeager's argument for getting AH next, especially with that cow nearby), really to see if we can put a city on another island before the land is taken. Perhaps a foothold on greco-chinese lands? The jungle all over our island is going to be quite a deterrent to any AI thinking of landing (even allowing for the AI being possibly slow to discover sailing), which gives us a bit more time to settle Muskovy Isle. And almost every spot on our island is going to be really production-challenged too - perhaps we'll have better luck on a neighbouring island?

We'll definitely need cities on other lands, of for no other reason than we've got vertiually no resources to trade down the road, just a ton of gems. Luckily, we are planning on winning by diplo, which means we won't need as much production as if we were planning for space race.

as for next techs, I agree AH makes much more sense, perhaps followed by Sailing. That may depend on what we see on other islands, which is why I think we should not bother with more than just the warrior that is half built for now...I think we should build workboats while allowing moscow to grow so that we can get them out there exploring.

If we go down the AH>Pottery>Writing road then we can get OB with greece and china and I would estimate we could meet between 8 and 12 civs easily using just 2 workboats exploring in opposite directions(since we are alone on our island and there's very little space for barbs I don't think they'll be a problem or that we'll need more than a couple early warriors) Obviously, we'll want Alphabet as soon as we meet a bunch of guys, though we should probably steer clear of trading anything with Toku or Izzy...they always seem to be hated by nearly everyone.

On the subject of tech trading...we'll want a fairly advanced tech like IW or HBR that we can trade to other civs cause I doubt we'll want to give up Alphabet immediately.

on the plus side for our island...we don't plan on needing a ton of production for awhile, early war seems to be out, and once we've got IW researched and St Petersburg and Moscow fully stocked on food stuffs, we should be able to fairly quickly subdue our island and produce quite a few good science cities, if nothing else.

DynamicSpirit said:

Ah. Understood - I hadn't noticed those graphs. Though I think there's something odd about the culture: It's showing us as generating culture from 4000BC, which we weren't.

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you're right...I didn't notice that, so it doesn't check each turn, it just averages out the final stats in the save over the course of the turnset...which means footballguys didn't move cause their culture hit the point ours is at 3 turns sooner and ream ms beyond moved once because theirs hit the same point as us two turns sooner and one turn after footballguys.

It'll be interesting to see how long it takes us to make up the 2-3 turn difference in scores for us moving so long.

I suggested earlier building the settler first. At the time I hadn't noticed that two forests the worker could chop are on hills so once mined there's no loss of ongoing production from chopping. I've now done some rough calculations and as a result I'm now erring more towards building worker first:

Settler=150 hammers, worker=90. At size 3, working 2 clams+forest we can build either of them at I think 9 hammers/turn (May be 8. I've noticed the game often gives a hammer less than you'd expect by calculating the surplus food/hammers). So 10 turns for worker, 17 for settler. If the worker chops the two hill-forests, that gives 60 hammers, reducing the settler cost to 90. So worker+settler = 20 turns. May be a turn or two longer as I think it's 5 turns to chop a forest + walking time; if so, worker can't chop them quite quickly enough. May be 12-13 turns for settler with some hammer overflow.

That looks to me like so nearly the same time for worker-chop-settler as settler-alone that it may be worth doing worker first.