Hmmm, maybe we can use the "earned Happiness point" from the Gold in order to 2-pop-whip a Galley after Settler 3, so that Worker 1 has its own ship for transportation purposes?
So, it sounds like we have general agreement in terms of moving WB Explorer #3 around the southern part of the eastern island, followed by sending both WB Explorers #1 and #2 to reveal the Gold City's fat cross.
It sounds like it might be a real stretch to do so. Don't forget that the other OSS game where they Oracled Machinery was on Prince Difficulty level.
Even with Gold, our third City is going to eat up a lot of our Commerce due to Maintenance Costs.
However, there's nothing wrong with Oracling Metal Casting and then running an Engineer Specialist, freeing up our tech research to go after other useful techs like Alphabet or Code of Laws. The resulting Great Engineer could be used to either Lightbulb Machinery or to build us a Wonder.
We probably don't want to hog too many Religions, in that case. If we were to get Hinduism, would we delay researching Code of Laws until after someone else founds Confucianism?
Turn 69, 2275 BC rolls around and the Hinduism debate is immediately resolved: Hinduism was founded in a distant land.
WB Explorer #3 heads towards the east via the southern edge of that Desert + Silk island... and discovers another Clam Resource! Two Clams plus a Plains Hills square will make for a reasonably decent City.
Vicky's Work Boat has made another appearance. She is clearly doing her very best to get to the west, but if you recall, we had to enter our Cultural borders just to be able to make that crossing. So, she's "stuck" on the east side of our Cultural borders until one of us learns Writing and we decide to Open Borders with her.
Can Clam + Gold compete with 2 Clams + PH Mine? Well, we won't have to find out... because it's not just Clam + Gold. It's 2 Clams + Gold... no, wait, the other Work Boat moves and it's actually MAGICAL Fish + 2 Clams + Gold. WTF LOL LIKE OMG WHATEVER K K LIKE ANYWAYSSS LIKE WOW AND STUFF. Sorry, my speech abilities digressed there for a minute.
I'm still going to suggest that we only net one Seafood Resource and send the other Work Boat out to explore, but we could also aim to net 2 of them and whip a replacement Work Boat Explorer after growing for a bit. No point netting both Seafood if we're going to immediately whip when just having barely reached City Size 2.
Of course, since we seem to have a "Cultural block" set up, we COULD delay western exploration, and should there be an AI that way, Vicky won't be able to meet said AI for a while, anyway.
Still, Magical Fish + Gold is probably "good enough" to start with such that we can keep one Work Boat in the west for exploration, no?
Then we'll have to guess whether to head south to the Dye and explore west or head back north into the Tundra and Ice and see if we can explore west from there.
Spoiler:
Note that I queued up our next build items... Settler that was just whipped, followed by a Galley, a Lighthouse, and the already-started Work Boat 6. I hope that it's not bad manners to have queued-up some already-agreed-upon build items.
Turnset Summary: Turn 44, 2900 BC to Turn 69, 2275 BC
Okay, I have submitted the game and I consider this fact as marking the end of my turnset, which ran from Turn 44, 2900 BC to Turn 69, 2275 BC.
As an aside, I will say that whenever I see that line on the submission confirmation page about "Game status: Incomplete," my heart does a little jump, since I am so used to submitting completed XOTM games.
I decided to follow LC's suggestion and I Chopped the Forest on Turn 69, so that we won't have to worry about remembering to do so on Turn 70. There is no functional difference, really, since the Settler has more than sufficient overflow-Hammer-ability to maintain all of the Forest-chopped and excess whipped Hammers for use in Galley 1.
So, in summary of the turnset: we focused heavily on squeezing out as many turns of Work Boat exploration as possible, both by whipping and by sacrificing 1 Food in order to get extra turns' worth of exploration.
In so doing, we were able to sufficiently map out the inner ring of islands. In addition, we were able to successfully determine many "dead ends" in the second ring of islands, a fact which will make deciding where to explore in the future a whole lot easier.
We met our first AI, Vicky, who was not the founder of Buddhism, nor was she the "builder" (aka "receiver") of The Great Lighthouse. She has a Work Boat explorer to the SE of our lands, circling the Stone island, but won't be able to go any further west until we get Open Borders with her.
Out of all of our exploration, we found what appears to be a hand-crafted awesome City 2 location, as well as the "relatively obvious but still decent" nearby Stone City. It is likely that several teams will settle near the Stone and will try for Stonehenge.
We WILL NOT need Cultural borders to be popped for our second City for a LONG TIME, so chasing after Stonehenge is going to be a questional move for us.
This fact will help us to focus our Hammers on building The Oracle.
Unlike in the test saved game, Vicky only has 1 City, as opposed to many AIs at this point of the game having 3 Cities. Likely, she has a heavy-seafood start, which is quite common for England--slow to start but quick to get going once their Seafood Resources are netted. Sending a Galley her way early (even empty) could feasibly allow us to pillage her Seafood Resources back to the Stone Age. Getting Copper "early on" appears to be less likely of an option, given how we have many decent City locations to settle, but this minimal investment in war might be a great way to handicap one of the AIs... and then, if needed, we can always buy peace before she retaliates, thanks to having Pillaged some of her Resources plus the amount of time that will pass before she can reach us.
Despite an extensive turnset with many screenshots and a lot of micro-managed exploration decisions, we have only just whipped our Settler 2 (the Settler for City 2), which will complete on the next turn (Turn 70, 2250 BC) and will board the Galley (Galley 1) that will get completed a turn later (Turn 71, 2225 BC).
These actions will occur in the next turnset, as we have managed to learn Sailing on Turn 69, 2275 BC, 1 turn ahead of schedule, thanks to having met an AI that knew Sailing (Vicky). Teams that went for Sailing before Pottery would probably miss out on this research bonus, even if they got to meet Vicky early.
The non-exploration part of the PPP went pretty much according to plan, with, as I said, the exception of getting Sailing 1 turn early. Thanks to the hard work of many people putting in a ton of testing cycles, we had a well-optimised approach and I was more than happy to help execute the finer details of our finalized plan.
Thanks go out to my teammates for their help and patience in helping me to work through all of the tricky little Work Boat movements... we only BARELY revealed the big fat cross of the Gold City on this turn, meaning that every single little saved-movement point helped us in meeting this goal. Thank you!
Below you can find the Session Turn Log for the last couple of turns and a link to the latest saved game. I plan to update the test saved game shortly and plan to upload it as part of another message.
Spoiler:
Here is your Session Turn Log from 2375 BC to 2275 BC:
Turn 68, 2300 BC: Paris will grow to size 6 on the next turn.
Turn 68, 2300 BC: You have discovered Sailing!
Turn 68, 2300 BC: Hinduism has been founded in a distant land!
Turn 69, 2275 BC: Paris has grown to size 6.
Turn 69, 2275 BC: Paris has become unhealthy.
Turn 69, 2275 BC: Paris has become unhappy.
Turn 69, 2275 BC: Paris can hurry Work Boat for 1? with 16? overflow and +1? for 21 turns.
Turn 69, 2275 BC: Clearing a Forest has created 30 ? for Paris.
EDIT: Note that I decided to leave the game unpaused. However, I have left our Warrior 1 unfortified, so that its turn can be skipped by pressing the Spacebar whenever you feel that you are ready to advance the turn. That way, an accidental Enter-keypress cannot advance the turn after you happen to move your last unit for the turn. It's probably going to be a good policy to skip this Warrior's turn at the end of every turn. Doing so has saved me more than a few times in XOTM games.
In case you are wondering, skipping a unit's turn will still give it the Fortification bonus... one does not have to press the "f" key in order to get the Fortification bonus, but simply needs to leave a unit on a square without moving it.
^ Not that we should ever need the warrior's fortification bonus in Paris. I expect to see him there 3000 years from now
And ummm... yeah. We know where city #2 is going! Double clam + PH all the way!!!
Seriously, any team that doesn't settle the gold spot for #2 is going to be in a world of hurt - it even comes with magical fish!
Ras, you're officially up. The two main things I see short term are (a) exploration and (b) how to MM the new city. Long term, we need to start thinking about Oracle and whether we want to consider rushing Vicky. Any other big picture items we need to keep in mind?
Latest Test Saved Game, updated to Turn 69, 2275 BC
Note that Vicky has founded 2 Cities in our test game but only has 1 City in the real game. I decided to just let her have this second City, since we don't know how close she is to settling her second City in the real game.
Discussing Strategic Military Resources is a worthwhile topic. Here are some options, off of the top of my head:
1. Do we beeline Iron Working (usually a bad idea and much better to trade for it) in order to be able to Chop and Mine the Copper and/or reveal Iron?
2. Do we research Animal Husbandry to see if we can reveal a Horse Resource?
3. Do we "bite the bullet" and settle on the Copper?
4. Do we research Archery and using Hills-based Archers to choke the AIs (I'm sort of joking, sort of not--we'll want Hunting for the Fur Resources at some point)?
5. Do we just wait for a long time before we build any land-based Militaristic Units and just focus on REXing and Wonders, plus a possible "pillage the Seafood run" on Vicky?
I am attaching more Demographic Info screenshots to this message. However, I had to go through and pillage a ton of my old attachments just to be able to make room for this .zip file (I was at my quota limit for uploading the test saved game and hence I received the same error message that we saw when attachments were failing... fortunately, it was a different problem but with the same error message... which is a very bad programming practice to use, by the way).
So, I'll attach the remaining screenshots here, but will remove the file after a couple of days. It's either that or else I will have to start "pillaging" a lot of the test saved games that I uploaded earlier... which I may end up having to do at some point anyway.
Since this file is hosted on the CFC servers, anyone can download it, as far as I am concerned, but act now, as it is here for a limited time only!
EDIT: The .zip file has been deleted (otherwise I wouldn't have been able to keep providing nice uploads to the CivFanatics forums).
Well, any team that settled T62, as mdy wanted to do, on the gold, which would have been easy to find if you expored westward, which was also the obvious direction to go, given limited time to explore, has a HUUUUGGGEEE advantage over us. If any top team has that advantage over others, it is GAME OVER.
Luckily, we know that the DUcks went pottery-sailing.
OK, I will review Dhoom's set and the save file this evening (will be afternoon for most of you) and draft a PPP to be discussed over the week end. I plan to play either sunday evening or in the beginning of next week (or later if we haven't consensus ofc). I think the Oracle needs some testing in particular: which techs are doable, what is the limitant factor for each target (ie for COL, marble could be usefull, for machinery or CS prolly not), etc...
@LC: I respectfully disagree. Never underestimate people potential for sloppiness (and really if some have settled gold t62, well there is really nothing we can do for now )
edit: I would also like to run longer tests including the mids. Generally I am not a fan as it is way too costly, but DS put an insane amout of food here... could be a game breaker if we can land it and use it early on.
AI_1 = Pop 6 City + Pop 1 City (151000 Rival Best)
AI_2 = Pop 5 City + Pop 2 City
AI_3 = Pop 6 City
AI_4 = Pop 5 City
Victoria = Pop 5 City (F8 Domination limits)
AI_6 = Pop 3 City (21000 Rival worst)
Either AI_3 or AI_4 also has a second Pop 1 city, not sure which.
This seems a bit low to me for Emperor, but I'm not sure. Wonder if the GLH AI is gimped somehow (Pop 3).
Soldier numbers still seem a bit low - it's a 25k to 34k range (with Vicky at 31k). The base value should be something like = 3 Archers + Mining + Hunting + Archery + Wheel + Pop 5 = 25. Vicky doesn't have BW yet (no slavery), so she probably either has 2 more archers, or Sailing + 2 warriors or something.
Spoiler:
Pop 1 = 1000
Pop 2 = 6000
Pop 3 = 21000
Pop 4 = 48000
Pop 5 = 90000
Pop 6 = 150000
We uncovered 23 tiles wide of the map so far, btw. That's just over a quarter and we see further islands in both directions.
Discussing Strategic Military Resources is a worthwhile topic. Here are some options, off of the top of my head:
1. Do we beeline Iron Working (usually a bad idea and much better to trade for it) in order to be able to Chop and Mine the Copper and/or reveal Iron?
2. Do we research Animal Husbandry to see if we can reveal a Horse Resource?
3. Do we "bite the bullet" and settle on the Copper?
4. Do we research Archery and using Hills-based Archers to choke the AIs (I'm sort of joking, sort of not--we'll want Hunting for the Fur Resources at some point)?
5. Do we just wait for a long time before we build any land-based Militaristic Units and just focus on REXing and Wonders, plus a possible "pillage the Seafood run" on Vicky?
1 - Vicky knows other AIs so if we get alphabet, we should be able to pick up IW pretty easily.
2 - Unless we're attacking with chariots (unlikely), I think it's unnecessary at this point.
3 - If we're going Oracle-Colossus, we will have to as I don't think we can get alphabet in time to clear the jungle.
4 - Seems pretty unlikely. We will need hunting but archery choking sounds like a bad idea (what with the AI whipping).
5 - We will want triremes if we're going to declare war I think. Otherwise we won't be able to protect our coastlines etc. We'll also want triremes to fight off what will likely be an annoying barb issue on this map.
I think we need extensive testing right now. The way I see it the goals are:
1) Expand fast and grow/develop cities fast (settlers + WBs + maybe Galleys)
2) Tech MC and build Colossus
3) Possibly build Pyramids - I'm probably against, given that we're not likely to tech very deep in the tree (maces and trebs, maybe), and it's a big investment even with stone. Would help if the stone city was slightly more convenient to settle and develop.
4) Tech Writing and establish TR's
5) Continue exploring - locate Vicky and hopefully further AIs; circumnavigate
We don't need MC until we're ready to build TC, IMO. Not sure how Paris builds and copper-settling stack up against research pace.
Masonry and AH are options, but not very good ones probably.
AIs seem a touch slow so far, so we may be looking at a relatively late Alphabet trade? It doesn't make sense to self-tech it unless we meet more AIs, but stuff like IW and Math is so much better in trade, and early Currency would rock here...
Following up on the demo data a bit.
Some AI is stuck at pop3, someone has little production. Maybe the same AI, isolated in some rubbish bin.
T57 Some AI probably researched BW
T58 Some AI probably researched BW, one of these two probably the backward pop3 AI (there was a one-turn glitch where the smallest pop was pop4--revolt?)
T59 The non-GLH CRE AI settled a city
T63 GLH 2nd border expansion. Either for +13 tiles or someone settled a city for part of those 13 tiles.
T65 Non-GLH gained 5 tiles, evidently by City2 border expansion, suggesting it had immediate religion spread
T67 Some AI settled a city
T69 Hinduism was founded in a pop1 city
Still no wonders built.
---------------
Now, get a load of Vickie's graphs:
Spoiler:
For a while Vicky was working 11f10h (not sure if pop4 or pop5). Now she's pop5 working 12f9h. Notice how she hasn't changed her f/h for the last 10t or so. Meanwhile, her GNP fluctuates wildly between 20 and 23. Her espoinage and culture graphs haven't budged an inch. How in the world does she manage to do that??? Is she switching back and forth between techs? DId she just meet a series of AIs who had already researched what she's teching? Wacko.
At pop5, Vicky is churning out 21f+h. We produce 25f+h, so her capital is weak. She hasn't built much yet, 2wbs, a wkr, a couple of archers, and probably a galley and a lighthouse. Judging from her f/h ratio, there's a good chance she's working tundra mines, so she might well be to the NE more than E. Also likely that she has 1 or 2 corns that are unirrigated.
We'll see what kind of land she has around her, but it might be useless and easy to stone-age her.
Why aren't we considering other techs as well? Honnestly oracling machinery doesn't look good because we prolly won't have the production base needed to exploit it at time.
I would test COL and CS as well (ie writing -> myst -> poly (med? or is it to speed up lit?) -> PH -> COL -> math traded).
Also I am not sold on the fact that we won't have to research stuffs like rifling yet.
@Dhoom: loving the archer rush of doom! (I don't think choking with archers has advantages over oracle, colossus, or just getting a first trade bait, so we might want to pass on it for now)
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Her espoinage and culture graphs haven't budged an inch. How in the world does she manage to do that??? Is she switching back and forth between techs? DId she just meet a series of AIs who had already researched what she's teching? Wacko.
