SGOTM 11 - One Short Straw

[shyuhe]

Early pacifism would essentially function as an early NE in the seafood city to the west. That city will take forever to build NE (in fact it probably shouldn't build it if we can get pacifism early) so it'd be nice to be able to milk the additional +100% GPP early. With stone and philosophical, we should give a high priority to getting Oxford up early, and bulbable GS's will help towards that goal.

The fishing city has two fish (each +4 surplus with lighthouse) and pigs (+4 surplus) and cow (+1). Throw in a grass farm and you're looking at a size 12 city running 7 scientist That's base 21 GPP, 42 philosophical, 63 with pacifism/NE, 84 with pacifism + NE. Run that for 100 turns and you get... 8400 GPP That's 80% of the GPP needed to get our magical 11 people.

 

[shyuhe]

OK, I swear I'll stop the thread spam after this. MC may actually be a pretty good oracle target, as we want to start farming an engineer sooner rather than later. To the extent we're going for a diplo VC, the engineer is the biggest luck factor in our equation.

 

[Silu]

Was there some specific reason you wanted to avoid bulbing Philo (perhaps to get it before Alpha which we might not want to get)? Avoiding bulbing Philo to bulb stuff like SciMet or Printing Press instead doesn't quite add up. MC Oracle sounds good to me if we want to be more sure (surer?) about it, and in the SGOTM that sounds like a good principle

 

[Mutineer]

A few points.
1) If we mine silver we should not whip city below 3. we want to work this silver all the time and before we build granary re-grow time is big.

2) I do not see what the hurry with connecting cooper.. it is a long way to barbs.

3) I believe we should play map. Stone is the only way to get ahead, but building or by using fail gold. If one want to speed up rex and research, it is the way.

4) Masonry.. we want to use org religion early then later and we do plan on getting some sort of religion, from col or form philosophy.

5) there is a lot of stone wander to play with, I do not understand dismissive attitude..

6) My current research propose if well-Masonry, in order to keep maximum flexibility.

 

[shyuhe]

Was there some specific reason you wanted to avoid bulbing Philo (perhaps to get it before Alpha which we might not want to get)? Avoiding bulbing Philo to bulb stuff like SciMet or Printing Press instead doesn't quite add up. MC Oracle sounds good to me if we want to be more sure (surer?) about it, and in the SGOTM that sounds like a good principle

I mostly want to avoid bulbing philo to free up a GS that we can use on an academy without slowing down our overall bulb plan. The only downside of oracling MC is that we have to whip/chop a forge pretty quickly for it to really make it worth the trouble.

 

[mdy]

1. From the looks of it, we're not going to have any trading partners till Optics. To know for sure, we'll now need a wb because of the island to the SW. = coastal city + fishing + wb

It looks unlikely that a civ can be contacted that way, the North looks like a better prospect for exploration.

3. Do we want to focus on REX, beakers, both?
4. Do we want The Oracle? If so, what tech do we take?
5. If CS, do we want to cottage Delhi (+50% of 20 commerce = . . . 10 commerce )
6. If machinery, how much sooner do we get our post-Optics (if any) trading partners?

I think we need to be strong in both. The production/commerce boosts from CS are probably the best way to do this and to leaverage the silver. I think a Machinery slingshot would be slower on balance as the AI's would not have much that is useful to trade when we contacted them. CS would also allow us to bulb along the paper education path for an earlier Oxford.

7. If we settle stone + share corn + partial SH or GW, how does that affect REX/Oracle?

I don't think that Stonehenge or the Great Wall are worth building, a few axes will be enough to deal with the brabs, and a few turns in Caste System will be a cheaper way of getting the border pops in our later cities if we get an early COL. The Pyramids however would be extremely useful given the number of Scientists we will be running, this alone should make masonry worth researching for the stone. As the Pyramids are built much later than the Oracle by the AI, so we could delay starting it till after we had finish the Oracle.

8. If we settle 2-fish, do we go for AH-FIshing next?

Fishing is one tech we could potentially delay in order to focus on the CS sling. Maybe wheel-A.H-Writing?

9. How do we leverage our silver versus teams settling in place leveraging their copper?

The best way to do this is probably to grab an expensive tech from the Oracle we would not otherwise get.

Anybody want to give consideration to a 2 pop worker whip followed by growth to three then chopping the settler?

We probably don't have an immediate need for a second worker before the next city is founded, I was thinking of us building a second worker after we have regrown from the settler whip.

The fishing city has two fish (each +4 surplus with lighthouse) and pigs (+4 surplus) and cow (+1). Throw in a grass farm and you're looking at a size 12 city running 7 scientist That's base 21 GPP, 42 philosophical, 63 with pacifism/NE, 84 with pacifism + NE. Run that for 100 turns and you get... 8400 GPP That's 80% of the GPP needed to get our magical 11 people.

I think we could get the NE built here fairly quickly if this city only ever built workboats/library/National Epic. I think this would be a good 3rd city site.

Why are people talking about settling the Silver? An ice Silver is unworkably HORRID, at 0/1/4. Unless there is triple seafood the city would be doomed into suckiness forever. I can see ten better settling spots.

I agree this site would be amongst the last I would settle.

 

[LowtherCastle]

My vote: thread spam = yes

I'm still looking for:
1. Where we're headed.
2. Rationale (how to get where we're headed)

For example:

1. Oracle-Philo:
Rationale: Focus on a mostly specialist economy. Slingshot relatively easy to accomplish. Leverage both our philo and religious traits. Unlock Castes early. Use stone for Pyramids-Representation, since we're running a SE. Get two religions early. Lock down Philo so we can slingshot Lib-Radio. Works well with REX.
Cons: Philo path doesn't help much with early post-Optics exploration, if needed. SE doesn't leverage +100% unis/Oxford unless we cottage spam some city (capital). Most likely can only run 5 sci at pop7 in 2-fish city till we meet other AIs to get more happies or build the Mids. (Is only 5sci a con? )

2. Oracle-CS:
Rationale: Leverage Bureau, eventualy +100% unis/Oxford. Early CoL for religion and specialists for philo trait. Cottage spam capital.
Cons: Relatively difficult to accomplish. May slow down our REX. Need happies to cottage spam capital.

3. Oracle-Mach
Rationale: Earlier post-Optics exploration. Gain tech trading partners sooner for Middle Ages techs. Start working engineers sooner.
Cons: Relatively difficult to accomplish. May slow down our REX. May miss out on Confucianism, have to bulb Philo early to guarantee religion. Could even miss out on Philo if an AI bulbs it.

Edit: I don't like how I did this too much. Maybe someone else can do it better.

 

[mystyfly]

We neither know where iron nor where horses are. It's very likely one of these strategic resources are between us and zara. Denying the strat resource to him, getting more land while restricting his expansion are both good reasons imo. And you can't say the land is so bad with tons of grass, a few forests and all the river tiles. It's not a no-brainer to hurry to settle this land though, I understand if ppl wanna pass it up, but I wouldn't.

Seems like we all (well, most of us) want the oracle, fine. Question is, what tech to pick. CS and philo are risky while MC is not really worth it imo. Early pacifism is great and it ensure we get a religion soon (if zara fails to found any religion we're screwed). I'm just unsure whether we're not taking a big gamble if we want to tech CoL before finishing the oracle. If we want to play safe we can always just take MC for the beakers.

As to barbs, I too don't consider them a real threat. Without further boosts, dehli's borders will pop in 40 turns btw. Still, barbs on emperor are a joke.

 

[Silu]

I'm warming a bit more to the Philo route, though I wouldn't so easily count out the "easy" Oraclicizings of CoL/MC. Since we started with Mysti and have a commerce resource, there is very little opportunity cost in "just" taking the Oracle without basing our whole early game around it as a gambit. It CAN go very fast as well. The evil mapmaker could have HC on another continent with 2 river Gem + BFC Marble for all we know.

 

[mystyfly]

IMO CS is not worth it with the land we have available. Also, the only other early wonder I'd like to build are the mids as we have stone. Land + mids + early pac + philo = huge SE.

If we can take philo off oracle we could tech more or less mc > machinery > compass > optics while backfilling stuff like IW, maths (?), currency, whatever available from zara and then bulb paper/edu/etc. Another argument for philo/CS over machinery off oracle is that should we fail to get the oracle, we're in a better position. If we're halfway through teching MC, what can we do then?? If we're halfway through CoL we can finish col and just adopt CS as it's a civic we'll want to run anyway with that land.

It's always important to leverage your advantages and play the synergies. We're spiritual, if we manage to oracle philo, we can alternate between OR/slavery and pac/CS... There is hardly a more efficient way to use the resources earlygame. That is, IF we pull off a philo sling...

 

[LowtherCastle]

LC: OK... Why? And isn't a normal attachment enough so I have to do this?

Any attachment is fine. Obviously, you already knew all about that. I just didn't want you to upload it to the official SG page.

Why? To check the sabotage building. Looks like Zara finished a worker next turn (3250bc). You could check to see if the sab-bdg dropped to zero. It also looks like he'll finish his first wb in ~3t

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

We neither know where iron nor where horses are. It's very likely one of these strategic resources are between us and zara. Denying the strat resource to him, getting more land while restricting his expansion are both good reasons imo. And you can't say the land is so bad with tons of grass, a few forests and all the river tiles.

No need for the save to comment this Even if he does have a strategic resource, I don't see a way to keep the cow tile (only food positive tile) without going wonders in that city... I would rather have a second city very productive for the empire, and not totally focused on keeping its tiles... Furthermore the site is good after Machinery+RP+state Property Before really not stellar till then... more later

edit: the site has a floodplain also, but it will be culture pressed badly as well...
edit2: I am talking with Mysty in IM, my point isn't that a city near the river can't work, just I would go for the best sites first, even if it means Zara a little bigger (reminder, we can't kill any AI, and an accidental culture flip of capital can happen so fast sometimes )

 

[shyuhe]

Philo is easier to sling than CS - you only need col + meditation whereas CS additionally requires math. If we work the silver, I'm fairly confident (without testing) that we'll finish col around the same time that the oracle completes (without aggressive chopping).

 

[LowtherCastle]

3) I believe we should play map. Stone is the only way to get ahead, but building or by using fail gold. If one want to speed up rex and research, it is the way.

The only way? Surely the fastest research path right now is to beeline Writing, rush-build a library, work 2 sci and get a GS for bulbing Math or building an academy. I think our problem here is that we have lots of luke-warm options and no obviously great one. Yes, we want stone. The Pyramids are a no-brainer. Two-fish city is a no-brainer. But each one has serious drawbacks at this point in time.

There's no doubt in my mind that the ideal research path is either:

1) TW-Pot-Wtg, because the timing is perfect for poprushing the granary, then poprushing the library. This probably the only way to do a serious slingshot, or
2) AH-Wtg and poprushing the library without the granary would get the GS a bit sooner.

1) is better combined with REXing Delhi and gives us roads, but 2) gives us cattle and we have two sites that need pastures.

What I don't get is how early Masonry/stone speeds up our research all that much. The stone city will be a net-drain on our research, providing only 2cpt. It's a city we want, but why next? The river city at least provides us 4cpt with one cottage. I'm not necessarily arguing against Stone CIty, I just don't see its immediate benefits.

Edit: Okay, without defogging those two tiles at the stone, we really don't know what we're talking about here. In fact, we're kind of screwed. If there's an AH resource there, we want AH next. If not, then TW or AH.

 

[LowtherCastle]

deleted ....

 

[mdy]

An advantage of CS is that it effectively allows us to proceed along two tech paths at once: We can research the rest of the basic techs and then proceed along an optics beeline whilst using Great Scientist to bulb paper/philosophy/education for an early Oxford. Our capital location is a very good one for Bureaucracy, normally the capital ends up getting cottaged, even in specialist heavy games. This tech will also help us with Rex/Tech significantly more than any other tech. With a Maths bulb CS is really no more difficult than Philosophy.

Oracling Machinery would be more risky than CS by this route and would prove to be pretty useless if it turns out we don't need optics to meet other AI's. (This still isn't certain, they could be on an island to the north, or we could be at the tail end of a larger landmass.) What techs would the AI' have to trade with us that we wanted anyway? Not much probably.

Philosophy can be easily bulbed by a GS unlike the other two techs so if we want an early philosophy we don't need to Oracle it. It would have another disadvantage, in that we would get 2 very early religions. With 1 our religion should spread to all our cities/Zara easily without the inconvenience of having to build missionaries. If we had 2 we would inevitably have to build some to get the pacifism bonus in all our GP farms, and perhaps to ensure Zara sticks with the right one.

Oracling CS would allow us to run a super strong early specialist economy with pyramids and pacifism, whilst also allowing to have an early strong bureaucratic capital, and an earlier Oxford.

I agree that there is no point researching masonry until just before we are ready to start the Pyramids.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Is there anyone else wondering about the optic beeline? I wonder how we can make that while hoping for liberalism -> radio. having the maps to locate resources shouldn't be that hard, and we will have to vassal some folks anyway (speaking of which, any guess about the military techs needed for this task? a small rather than big detour would be cool...).

about Mids: ofc no point of masonry before starting the wonder... but if we wait too long we might find ourself being beaten (breaking open doors is cool...). What I wanna say is that I don't want to be beaten by our overconfidence... missing the mids because we thought we had time is just a shame, and as I don't see much way to predict the completion time, delaying it is just taking risks (in deity challengers, we were still talking about the possibility when an AI completed them... that was fun at time, but I bet it wouldn't be here).

 

[LowtherCastle]

Here are my quick and dirty estimates of when we would finish the final techs for the Oracle slingshot:

                 via pottery     via AH        tech slingshot

CoL w/acad       1575bc          1575bc        Philo
                                     
CoL w/bulbMath   1400bc          1425bc        CS

MC               1450bc          n/a           Machinery

Notes:
1. Via pottery assumes that we settle the river city and cottage it and one river tile in Delhi.
2. Via AH assumes we settle something else and DOES NOT take into account the maintenance cost of the extra city/ies, so these dates are optimistic.

 

[Mutineer]

There is point in immediate masonry, simple because fail gold. Build stonehenge with stone for couple turns, here gold enough to speed up tech. Detour to masonry actually will speed up tech rate. We will have 3 opportunity for fail gold. Stonehenge, GW, and Mids straight away.

Fail gold from stonehenge is a good bet actually. So, previous estimates could be beaten by using thsi mechanism.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Off the top of my head...SH is likely to be done in the next 30-40 turns, right? We need ~19t to research TW-Msry, then ~10-14 turns to connect the stone to Stone City, so that 29-33t just to connect the stone. Then we need turns to put hammers into SH. Meanwhile, Stone City is lowering our reserach rate to 90%.

Do you see it differently, Mutineer?