Kadazzle
Emperor
In order to get a trade route, you need to see a tile which is adjacent to a city of the civ you are trying to get a trade route with, or obviously a road.
SGOTM 13 - Phoenix Rising
- Thread starter AlanH
- Start date
Heh, I agree knights are lame. Curs and cavalry are where it's at. Again, perhaps we should be planning to beeline nukes and then just wipe everyone out. Will depend on further exploration. Game is going well so far.
I believe you have to know where a civ is to get a trade route, as kadazzle says above
I believe you have to know where a civ is to get a trade route, as kadazzle says above
vranasm
Deity
That's false.
There are separate rules for water trade routes and land routes.
For water trade routes you have to find the city. After that every city that is land connected (even if you don't see it) is in the trade group and you can have trade routes with it (right now I don't remember which IC it was, but in one of that cookbook games we discussed it, with Dhoomstriker clearing the question).
So we will have to find Moscow to get TR's.
(As always if my memory fails me, you can always correct me, but in my last game that is on YT it is clearly to be seen, I didn't have TR's with GK until I used WB and found his city. What was interesting that I didn't have to see the city fully, but it was sufficient to get the WB into the cultural borders of the first city)
To the other question if it is sufficient when Cathy has Writing and open borders with us, I am not sure, but I think we should get the TR's if we find her.
bobbyboy29
I was saying boo-urns...
Sorry about not putting it into pause mode, my bad 
. We're all human I guess.
There's a lot of knights hate here. The thing about them is that in this game we should be looking to war as early and as often as possible. That's why I think we will probably need to go lower half of the tech tree first. (Hopefully we'll be able to return to lib line a bit after and nab something nice). If that's the case, knights make really great, mobile support for trebs (with maces etc...) in which case they're almost definately worth it. Just about anything can clean up after trebs but knights are medieval powerhouses in open field and decent stack protection (basically as good as crossbows vs. maces)
Anyway for the moment I think we should focus on where the galley goes. I think he only has 23 turns to explore before returning back so I say he goes to the stone site, wheels around north a bit before heading back home.
I'm not sure if he can make it to cathy in time or not, I think it's more important to scout out nearby city spots atm. The workboat should make it to cathy in time to decide where the 4th city should go and get some trade routes up.
. We're all human I guess.There's a lot of knights hate here. The thing about them is that in this game we should be looking to war as early and as often as possible. That's why I think we will probably need to go lower half of the tech tree first. (Hopefully we'll be able to return to lib line a bit after and nab something nice). If that's the case, knights make really great, mobile support for trebs (with maces etc...) in which case they're almost definately worth it. Just about anything can clean up after trebs but knights are medieval powerhouses in open field and decent stack protection (basically as good as crossbows vs. maces)
Anyway for the moment I think we should focus on where the galley goes. I think he only has 23 turns to explore before returning back so I say he goes to the stone site, wheels around north a bit before heading back home.
I'm not sure if he can make it to cathy in time or not, I think it's more important to scout out nearby city spots atm. The workboat should make it to cathy in time to decide where the 4th city should go and get some trade routes up.
Question for me are as follows.
1. How far away do we think the Russians are?? We got out three workboats. Could they be 8-10 tiles away?? If so how obvious will it be which direction if we head north? Lots of small islands could cloud this.
2. What are the trade routes with Russia worth over our internal ones over islands?2/3 as base commerce?
3. What would we use to explore the islands. Galley has 23 turns to do a loop trip. It needs to get back in time. We need to look at the stone site for food.
4. Finding land for a third city. We need an early war but we also need a resource to do this. Where will we find horse, copper and iron? Everyone is planning a horse war and we have no horse yet!!!
Overall we cant risk too many marble cities as they will not be great long term.
1. How far away do we think the Russians are?? We got out three workboats. Could they be 8-10 tiles away?? If so how obvious will it be which direction if we head north? Lots of small islands could cloud this.
2. What are the trade routes with Russia worth over our internal ones over islands?2/3 as base commerce?
3. What would we use to explore the islands. Galley has 23 turns to do a loop trip. It needs to get back in time. We need to look at the stone site for food.
4. Finding land for a third city. We need an early war but we also need a resource to do this. Where will we find horse, copper and iron? Everyone is planning a horse war and we have no horse yet!!!
Overall we cant risk too many marble cities as they will not be great long term.
Donovan Zoi
The Return
I'd venture to say they started with a water resource, so this is likely their 2nd WB we met. Since they didn't start with Fishing, there's a great chance they are only 10-12 tiles away.
Something tells me I'm not the one to answer that question.
Short term, it's more important to scout our immediate radius than to chase a small amount of trade at this early stage. We are able get trade with internal cities multiple times as opposed to one trade route per foreign city (which means that lifting the GLH early on wouldn't be a waste).Agreed, as it's pivotal to getting Mids later. Food or not, I feel that landing the Mids and Oracle may be worth two bum sites, especially since our capital will be able to pump out Settlers 4 and 5 at a pretty quick pace. I'd like to find some more food at both sites, but have a feeling that DS has left them relatively barren in order to offset the early wonder benefits.
We don't have AH yet, correct? Also no IW, so time will tell on each of these. I must apologize that my recent post set off a premature discussion about Knights (I am not a fan of them either, honestly, though they could be quite effective if we beeline). The main focus was to see how quickly we could get to our 2
Muskets. If Cathy is this close with the GLH, we will need to measure the best way to offset her superior tech if we decide we want to lift it from her. Sadly, this may mean bumping Alphabet up a bit higher than usual, to see what we are up against and plan accordingly.vranasm
Deity
I kind of tend to explore with the galley towards north, 23 turns of exploration are not really 23 turns, because it's 11 one way then turn around and run back.
So if we scout the stone island first we won't see anything from north probably.
otoh the bonus trade routes income will be probably marginal until russians build more cities. with only 1 city we look at 1c more...
I would not plan for early war without strategic and I would tend to go with metal based anyway, so even if we pop horses that doesn't mean for me we should tech HBR, build galleys and whip some HA's.
settling islands is imo bigger priority (and landmass for beachhead). AI's usually have big problems with settling islands, we should use it as our advantage.
That summed:
I would scout stone and try to find good city sites and ignore Russians until proper amount of explore turns since the 1 city is almost no benefit.
We should stick to our plan and hope we will have good site for city 3.
edit:
1 interesting tidbit about the scouting problem. We will need 4 turns to just get to the stone island, and 5 turns to the visible north island.
That means that the scouting possibilities are even more limited.
So if we scout the stone island first we won't see anything from north probably.
otoh the bonus trade routes income will be probably marginal until russians build more cities. with only 1 city we look at 1c more...
I would not plan for early war without strategic and I would tend to go with metal based anyway, so even if we pop horses that doesn't mean for me we should tech HBR, build galleys and whip some HA's.
settling islands is imo bigger priority (and landmass for beachhead). AI's usually have big problems with settling islands, we should use it as our advantage.
That summed:
I would scout stone and try to find good city sites and ignore Russians until proper amount of explore turns since the 1 city is almost no benefit.
We should stick to our plan and hope we will have good site for city 3.
edit:
1 interesting tidbit about the scouting problem. We will need 4 turns to just get to the stone island, and 5 turns to the visible north island.
That means that the scouting possibilities are even more limited.
Testing with galley.
I was able to circle back of stone island assuming it is not linked to a huge continent. (i doubt it) I then circled back to crabs island and was able to head north for 3-4 turns. My return route was about 7 turns. If Stone island is smaller we may be able to do 1 turn more north. On return route i explored back of 3 tile island to west too.
That being said if our capital builds a workboat it can quickly head back north and find the Russians. A few turns won't kill us. We may well find other Ai by heading towards the Stone. Let's not assume the map is not too obvious.
If we go directly north there is a small chance we may not find the Russians pending how the islands are laid out. I think we do need to scout out the stone. Doing a circle of the islands will allow us to know if we need a WB near stone city or if it can explore map after worker.
If we plan to settle marble city anyway theres no reason why kadazzle couldn't play out all the scouting stopping if he finds anything.
Overall i vote for a circle route and then a brief trip up north before heading back. Remember each tile we have to back track over is 1 less tile explored of map. Seems wasteful.
I was able to circle back of stone island assuming it is not linked to a huge continent. (i doubt it) I then circled back to crabs island and was able to head north for 3-4 turns. My return route was about 7 turns. If Stone island is smaller we may be able to do 1 turn more north. On return route i explored back of 3 tile island to west too.
That being said if our capital builds a workboat it can quickly head back north and find the Russians. A few turns won't kill us. We may well find other Ai by heading towards the Stone. Let's not assume the map is not too obvious.
If we go directly north there is a small chance we may not find the Russians pending how the islands are laid out. I think we do need to scout out the stone. Doing a circle of the islands will allow us to know if we need a WB near stone city or if it can explore map after worker.
If we plan to settle marble city anyway theres no reason why kadazzle couldn't play out all the scouting stopping if he finds anything.
Overall i vote for a circle route and then a brief trip up north before heading back. Remember each tile we have to back track over is 1 less tile explored of map. Seems wasteful.
bobbyboy29
I was saying boo-urns...
+1 for this. I think we should wait to hear if there are any dissenters but once this is agreed on, Kadazzle should play out his turnset.
That's exactly what I've been doing in my test games. The fact that the galley has to return (as opposed to an exploratory workboat) favours a circling route.
Also, I agree with vranasm that there may not be food readily available near the stone, we need to check this out because it may force us to have a re-think.
Kadazzle
Emperor
I vote for building a Workboat - I completely forgot about Overseas trade routes. I don't think the Russians are more than 14 tiles away, which is 7t. The early commerce will make a difference, it's at least +4C right off that bat.
stuge
Emperor
I wouldn't be hellbent on exploring towards Cathy right now. We still need writing for any foreign TRs. So I don't support building an extra WB right now, unless someone can find a way to fit it into Bobby's plan.
Gumbolt's idea for galley scouting sounds fine to me.
Gumbolt's idea for galley scouting sounds fine to me.
Where are you planning to build the workboat Kadazzle??? We will have the cap growing to size 4 building a LH/ workboat. To get a workboat quickly you will need to whip it.
Building in Rheims seems strange as we will be building LH and Wb to whip. I don't mind the workboat build suggestion but how will you fit it in Oracle plan without delaying it.
On my test game we had 2 workboats roaming by about 1750bc. For now we have a galley for 23 turns. Why rush a workboat? When the galley stops exploring I had a workboat take over. I personally would like to see a workboat explore south of marble at some point too.
I really don't like voting on things before we have even debated a new strategy or the concept. It is great to suggest a work boat build but explain how it fits the big plan, how you would build it and why it is better.
i think this is most efficient as it scouts for future city sites and has less duplicated land travelled by the galley.
vranasm
Deity
I don't understand the +4 bit. I would suppose capital will run +3 with finding Moscow. We should have soon settled 2nd city and will have natural +2C, that makes the whole thing 1C difference anyway.
Cathy should not have more then 1 city (if Buffy doesn't lie somehow).
Btw if Cathy really has only 1 city, does it mean DS made her some lame small island for 1 city without much expansion before sailing?
Cathy should not have more then 1 city (if Buffy doesn't lie somehow).
Btw if Cathy really has only 1 city, does it mean DS made her some lame small island for 1 city without much expansion before sailing?
Kadazzle
Emperor
I tried tweaking your plan, but really there's not much you can do unless we want to delay our 3rd settler and 2nd worker, which I believe is something we don't want to do. I'm fair game without building the workboat. However, I think the Galley should scout towards the North rather than the stone - I wouldn't mind losing a turn scouting with the Settler if it means we get the trade-routes much earlier. If we assume Cathy started with Sailing + Fishing for the GLH, she'd be very close to Writing anyways.
bobbyboy29
I was saying boo-urns...
We can check if cathy has more than one city or not. Just in game speak to her and see if she has any cities she's willing to offer 
.
We can possibly get the workboat out a bit earlier in rheims by whipping it before the lighthouse but that costs us some food. Overall, I don't think we need to get a workboat out too soon because it's basically sacrificing hammers, food for commerce at this point and I really feel the focus should be on maxing out hammers and food. It seems like everyone's on board with this.
Kadazzle presents a good argument for scouting north. However it does rely on us blndly deciding to send the settler to the stone without knowing whether there's food there or not. Also, the wb should reach cathy by about the time we get writing, so unless she techs it significantly earlier than us we won't gain too much from it.
.We can possibly get the workboat out a bit earlier in rheims by whipping it before the lighthouse but that costs us some food. Overall, I don't think we need to get a workboat out too soon because it's basically sacrificing hammers, food for commerce at this point and I really feel the focus should be on maxing out hammers and food. It seems like everyone's on board with this.
Kadazzle presents a good argument for scouting north. However it does rely on us blndly deciding to send the settler to the stone without knowing whether there's food there or not. Also, the wb should reach cathy by about the time we get writing, so unless she techs it significantly earlier than us we won't gain too much from it.
Thing for me is we will be ready for third city around 1700bc!! We need the stone scouted before then. We will need open borders before we can get trade routes. The Wb will find the Russians soon enough after 1700bc.
We know Russia has one city. We don't need to explore to find that. Will she grab lots of island sites?? Hmmm.
The question for me is what is more important scouting our third city site or finding the Russians.
Personally I think we should scout city sites (Stone/crabs) using circle plan as that decision is due by 1700bc. Finding the Russians capital can be done slow time. I still don't buy the trade route ideas. We could well find other Ai east of the stone anyway.
Oh the team at 1650bc have not yet built Oracle. Their culture is still 2 a turn. I figure they have stopped turn before or perhaps failed. (Unlikely)
@ Vranasm - I suspect she has a lot of seafood and is slow to expand. This is emperor not immortal level.
We know Russia has one city. We don't need to explore to find that. Will she grab lots of island sites?? Hmmm.
The question for me is what is more important scouting our third city site or finding the Russians.
Personally I think we should scout city sites (Stone/crabs) using circle plan as that decision is due by 1700bc. Finding the Russians capital can be done slow time. I still don't buy the trade route ideas. We could well find other Ai east of the stone anyway.
Oh the team at 1650bc have not yet built Oracle. Their culture is still 2 a turn. I figure they have stopped turn before or perhaps failed. (Unlikely)
@ Vranasm - I suspect she has a lot of seafood and is slow to expand. This is emperor not immortal level.
Can we talk binary research!
What impact will this have on our tech plan and how many beakers do we gain by this?
Bobby! Did you test the impact of using only 100% science vs 100% tax on your test run?
Going forward wb vs galley scouting
Kadazzle either needs to post a test save to prove how he will build the workboat and gain the trade routes and why this is better or we need to stick to our current plan and focus on how the galley should explore.
Next turnset
We need a plan by Kadazzle so at least we can debate this. Are we happy with 12 turns for this? Plan needs to state exploration route, if you are sticking to bobby's plan and any thoughts on binary or other impacts on our game.
We need to keep the game play moving so we keep up with other teams!
What impact will this have on our tech plan and how many beakers do we gain by this?
Bobby! Did you test the impact of using only 100% science vs 100% tax on your test run?
Going forward wb vs galley scouting
Kadazzle either needs to post a test save to prove how he will build the workboat and gain the trade routes and why this is better or we need to stick to our current plan and focus on how the galley should explore.
Next turnset
We need a plan by Kadazzle so at least we can debate this. Are we happy with 12 turns for this? Plan needs to state exploration route, if you are sticking to bobby's plan and any thoughts on binary or other impacts on our game.
We need to keep the game play moving so we keep up with other teams!
Kadazzle
Emperor
Binary research and the research where you switch it only works if you're gaining commerce or getting multipliers. As far as I know from the plan, we're not going to be gaining any commerce until we either get trade routes or settle the second city, so it doesn't matter.
Well come 2475bc we will have a second city and be losing 1 commerce a turn.
Essentially you run 90% science for 18 beakers vs 20 beakers @ 100%. I did some testing but I was somewhat rushed. I think we may lose some science from not running binary as the game rounds down the beakers.
It is worth some testing. You may be right about lack of multipliers. I gotta hop out for the night. ttfn all.
vranasm
Deity
yep this early game we could lose 1 commerce due to rounding issues.
