SGOTM 08 - Trash Team

[KingMorgan]

Regarding the marble in the start location, i believe we need a city on that island to connect it to the network. Anyone confirm?

As for Sury, we are EXP/CRE this suggests an early rex, depeneding on the map.
Does Big n Small spread the starts 5/2 or will there be some island/archpel start for an unfortunate?

Anyone know if you can take Domination by just conquering the big island? Also if Normal speed favours builders then do we really want to get mixed up in an expensive and time consuming war with maces? Will we have the cash to upgrade them to rifles?

If we were an IND civ then i'd be keen on a backdoor AP victory, once we'd built /taken enough wonders.

Lets hope we have Pacal next to us with stone and marble in his Captial BFC!!

 

[ese-aSH]

I fastly played a test map yesterday. Was alone with Caesar on my island and no marble / stone / iron (starting position very similar to the one here : cows, gems and crabs)

Had to wait for maces to fight his praetorians. On turn 180 (I stopped there, few turns after liberalism that gave me astro) I did control only a few wonders (palace, Oxford, HE, NE, Paya, Mausol, Moai, Dai Miao, Oracle, AW - this last one taken from caesar), but I am far from winning.
In such a situation I guess the best way is to go for domination because AI from others islands already control many wonders.

I am not sure if it would have been possible for me to grab a lot more wonders : no stone / marble is painfull. I should have build GL though (but had no islands to colonize to improve trade routes).

I'll make another try (and regen until I get marble close by ) but this time i'll spam wonders.

 

[ese-aSH]

Regarding the marble in the start location, i believe we need a city on that island to connect it to the network. Anyone confirm?

yes.
having a city on another island calls for the GLH

 

[KingMorgan]

Building the GLH will mean we miss GW,SH and possibly Oracle. Not to mention 'Mids + ToA

The GLight is a worthwhile build, but at the cost of possibly 3 cheaper wonders is it really worth it? If it turns out we are on Big Landmass will we leverage it enough, considering most of our cities could be landlocked?

Big n Small Map

I generated 5 maps as per the settings. This is the starting location results:

1. 6 Civs on Mainland 1 on Island
2. 4 on mainland 2 on secondary conti 1 on island.
3. 5 on mainland 2 on secondary conti
4. 4 on mainland 2 on secondary conti 1 on island
5. 5 on mainland 1 on island 1 on island

worst case scenario. we could be stuck on an very small island. it does seem that in the majority of cases there will be sea access pre optics. However a semi isolated start is not favourable without stone/ easy marble.

 

[stuge]

Building the GLH will mean we miss GW,SH and possibly Oracle. Not to mention 'Mids + ToA

The GLight is a worthwhile build, but at the cost of possibly 3 cheaper wonders is it really worth it? If it turns out we are on Big Landmass will we leverage it enough, considering most of our cities could be landlocked?

That's the thing. TGLH is very expensive for an early wonder, because there's no multiplier resource. There's no guarantee that there will be many islands/coastal spots around. For all we know, the mainland is beneath the fog of war to the west. Sinking chops into TGLH means that other early wonders become hard to get. Depends on the map, par normal...

Tonight or tomorrow I'll play a test game focusing on war. I'll only build wonders if opportunity calls. Stay tuned.

 

[blastoidstalker]

The great lighthouse is a very powerfull and very expensive wonder but it only works well in certain cases. It is best when we are on a small island that is galley acessable to several other civs , or a group of several small islands so you get the overseas bonus early. We can not know if this is the case to start, so we can not really address GL yet.

I do wounder about the Pyramids, as it produces GE's and Great people may be very important to the game so early representation could be very powerfull.

 

[remconius]

I have been considering a start turning the capital into a Great Prophet farm from the start.

Worker > Stonehenge > Judaism > Oracle > Theology (free)

This delays our expansion a bit, but gives a capital with Judaism and Christianity producing Great Prophet points from Oracle and SH (and potential priests). When the Great Prophets come in we can build instantly two religious wonders. We then store the other Great Prophets for religous capitals we capture without shrines.

After this we need to quickly expand to establish a base of about 5+ cities before grabbing some land of enemies. We build our base into a war machine with good warring techs (depending on resource) and maybe astronomy, high production cities, cash base to be able to afford a war. At some time we start attacking the planet, razing all cities without wonders to keep costs low and keep cities with wonders. If we get enough momentum going we can (hopefully) sweep across for a conquest victory in one fluid motion.

I think conquest is better, because domination only gives 60% of the world meaning we miss potentially 40% of the wonders. If we can get domination owning most wonders, great, but if not we need to conquer all!

I will be trying the feasibility of this in test games...

With regards to starting position... How about settling on the cow to get +1 food in the capital and have the capital act as a bridge between the two waters....

 

[ese-aSH]

starting tech : hunting + mining
for stonehenge we need Myst, for judaism mac + poly + Mono and priesthood for oracle (total 5 techs).

I'm not experimented in this kind of 'religious' starts (this would allow us to reach CoL ?).

Another possibility is the 'Oracle > MC > forge > GE > mids'

About domination/conquest : we dont care of cities that dont have any wonders, therefore any war should be limited to these cities then go for peace. AI tends to 'gather' wonders in 1 or 2 cities, with the exception of shrines.

 

[KingMorgan]

How about an Engineer farm?

 

[remconius]

I like the idea of a engineer farm, but I see three draw-backs.

The AI wont be building these wonders and will spend it's hammers elsewhere, like units..
While we finish wonders that can not be rushed in one go, we cant build units.
We still wont get our hands on the max number of shrines.

Of course the good side is that we get the benefits of the wonders, GPP and other benefits.

 

[KingMorgan]

I see a 4th draw back, not being IND or PHL it's just not optimal.

Is it a good idea to take 2 early relegions? A bit of inter faith AI hate is always a bonus.

 

[blastoidstalker]

I do not think we should focus on getting religions. The more shrines that the AI makes themselves the less we have to. We may end up with later religion or two but I think they are much less of a priority than boosting our research rate early, building units or making a couple of carefully selected wonders.


I do not see stonehenge as being worth it, particularily without stone. We are creative so the free monument does nothing for us. The great propher points are small and we do not need our great prophets early.

I see Oracle and Pyramids as early wonder goals. Any thoughts?

 

[remconius]

Two religions means we can build two shrines (=10 wonder points), which will spread their religion and gives us additional income in the capital.

Stonehenge's only purpose is for the Great Prophet points (although extra culture and centering the world helps)

Mids can always be beneficial.

 

[pigswill]

Regarding starting screenshot marble for Oracle is a complete (deliberate?) red-herring. To get the marble we need to research sailing, build a 60 hammer galley, build a 100 food/hammer settler, research masonry then start on the Oracle.

 

[blastoidstalker]

Stonehenge's only purpose is for the Great Prophet points (although extra culture and centering the world helps)

In my opinion I would rather build a settler or some workers than stonehenge. I think we will get more benefit from an extra city than stonehenge. This could change if we find stone and we can quickly chop it out. But from what I see now the reward is not work the cost. We will end up with it in the end anyway.

I agree with Pigs will that we should not get to distracted by the marble.

A question, will the borders of our capitol encompase it, due to it bieng across water. If we settle in place it is in our boarders on expansion 3, if we settled on the cow it would be in borders on expansion 2 (am I right on this?)

 

[pigswill]

We have to have a city on the same landmass as the marble to use it as a resource.

I'm now thinking that regardless of marble it might be worth going for an Oracle/CoL slingshot. Oracle gives us 2GP pts, enough to build Kong Miao if we found Confu (manageable on monarch if we target priesthood and writing). Any shrine iirc allows 3 priests which with enough food to feed them would enable us to generate further prophets as required (but Oracle on its own wouldn't generate enough gpp to compete with eg Glib). It would probably mean building Oracle before our first settler to get Confu and Oracle in same city so its kind of map dependent. However growing a city up to happy cap then spamming settlers and workers without whipping is a fairly standard strategy.

 

[jadex]

I do not think we should focus on getting religions. The more shrines that the AI makes themselves the less we have to. We may end up with later religion or two but I think they are much less of a priority than boosting our research rate early, building units or making a couple of carefully selected wonders.


I do not see stonehenge as being worth it, particularily without stone. We are creative so the free monument does nothing for us. The great propher points are small and we do not need our great prophets early.

I see Oracle and Pyramids as early wonder goals. Any thoughts?

Agree almost completely:
Wonders, normally you build them because the benefit fits in your overall strategy. Now we just need them, at latest the turn we finish the game, so there is no point in building any and waste hammers on them. Let the AI build them. EXCEPT of course the wonders that fit in our tactics now, our tactics being a very fast tech rate to share techs to other AI to let them build wonders and very fast tech rate so the game is over in fewer turns. So I agree on going for the oracle. The pyramids would depend on conditions I guess: If there is no stone around, few forests and little food to get specialists running, then I guess the hammers could be spent better.

Another thing I think we should do is select 2 other AI to get a big tech lead with, preferably wonder happy industrious close by civs. We give them any stone/marble we have and give/trade them all the techs for wonders or even just all techs in general. That way they'll build most wonders, so wonders are located in (hopefully) less civs and less cities. That way there are fewer cities to keep in the process of conquering the world and the fact that only we and 2 other civs have a tech lead means it's easier to exterminate all the other AI (who'll have inferior troops/techs) in the process of conquest/domination.

This is very very general how I would see the game...

 

[KingMorgan]

If you build "Henge and Oracle then thats 2 GPros before the GLib. 3 for PHL leaders. The henge is a 2 chop wonder and will give 1 GPro, Oracle will help with the 2nd. Then run 2 scientists with the GL to produce GS. 2 settled GPs will give 4 hammers and 8(?) or more gold?

I'm inclined to settle in place, build worker, tech BW, pre chop for SH, tech to Priesthood, chop SH, REX, chop Oracle. At monarch i'm sure we can squeeze worker techs early on and still take SH and Oracle.

 

[pigswill]

It occurs to me that if we were facing 7 psychos (rags, shaka, bod, alex etc) it would be a different type of game than facing 7 industrious peaceniks (gandhi, pericles, ramasses etc).
Might play a psycho test game just for the sake of it.

 

[jadex]

Just made a testmap, including correct starting situation, don't know anything about opponents etc.. Haven't played myself, will do that later when I have more time. Have fun!