SGOTM 14 - Kakumeika

[frogdude]

I've got the save. I'll start working on developing a plan.
Main focuses will be following the GLH plan with StoneCity, and seeing how best the capital can pump out settlers/workers (and granary) over the next bunch of turns.

 

[Kaitzilla]

I am beginning to get a sense of Shulec's unease. I've taken a 2nd look at his concern about going for culture or diplo victories.

At normal speed a wheel map takes forever to cross. It is 64 tiles wide and 40 tall, and due to world wrapping and starting in a corner, we have to walk every one of them.
It would take a horse on a road 15 turns to go from one side to the other (10 with Engineering).
It would take a galleon 26 turns to go from the top right to the bottom left.
It takes about 35 tiles to walk from capital to capital using only spokes.

Open up a future age wheel map and take a look.
When considering these large distances, remember on normal speed:

T50=2000BC
T100=375BC
T150=800AD
T200=1400AD
T250=1700AD



Quick Thoughts on Victory Conditions again:

1)Domination - The terrible middle terrain, 68% dom limit, and virtually every single city on the coast means we won't need 45 cities, we'll need more like 80.

2)Conquest - No vassals and normal speed will make this quite difficult.

3)Diplomatic - Random AI and paired AI will make diplomacy a head scratcher. Eliminate two pairs of AI and then have another pair vote with you against the larger 2nd pair? How do paired AI vote? This has the real possibility of being the fastest win if the smaller pair can be made friendly and will vote for you.

Or it would, if the wizard wasn't on an island spamming an islands heavy civilization with the wicked witch of the west (Monty?) guarding his front door 50 tiles from our capital. (Worst case)

4)Cultural - Wonder spam complicated by the fast AI teching at start of game. Not exactly a lot of prime cottage land. Not a financial, spiritual, or industrial leader. Aren't swimming in religions either. Whoever builds stonehenge will probably take the 4th religion when they bulb theology. Sadly, emperor appears to be the difficulty where wonder vs. cottage spam is a draw on speed.

5)Religious - Not allowed in this SGOTM

6)Space Race -


In the early game, elepults using a culture bridge could smash nearby civs.

Later, with a charismatic leader, it should be easy to get 3 promotion horses.
Combat I Curaisers with March and a Medic 3 Great General Chariot would smash cities at a pretty fast clip if we could get a big tech edge.

Sending a settler along for when oceans are encountered would allow us to quickly rush buy an invasion fleet (if we own pyramids).

Blimps could occupy conquered citys and help bombard nearby defenders.



I'm thinking Diplo victory has a real chance of being fastest since we can quickly go up the middle of the tech tree with bulbs. We do get cheap universities . Side track to get curaisers and send a force of them with a settler to go teach the wizard a lesson.

Another alternative is to draft draft draft like mad and beeline railroads.

Or we could try to get 8xp galleons somehow. +2movement points would allow 6 movement point galleons around the edge of the map.



With everyone starting so spaced out, it seems like the AI won't be at war with each other much until borders start touching (Past T150?).
Burke will have to walk about 20 tiles west to reach the west witches spokes.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Great work on the Turn Set and Report, Kaitzilla!

More thoughts on our desired Victory Condition:

For long term goal, we should reconsider a Domination Victory with the proviso that we can reach and destroy the Wizard. A Conquest Victory may be the best option, assuming all AIs and the Wizard can be reached via land. Both of these victories can be achieved earlier than any other legal victory

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[mabraham]

I played the test game up to the current position. Cities, culture, , non-Burke units and gold are correct. We've got one bonus beaker. I gave the East Witches Pottery to approximately correct the beaker scaling. I made no attempt to terraform the land or fix Burke.

 

[bcool]

At normal speed a wheel map takes forever to cross. It is 64 tiles wide and 40 tall, and due to world wrapping and starting in a corner, we have to walk every one of them.
It would take a horse on a road 15 turns to go from one side to the other (10 with Engineering).
It would take a galleon 26 turns to go from the top right to the bottom left.
It takes about 35 tiles to walk from capital to capital using only spokes.

This could be alleviated a little bit by galleon or galley chaining. Probably faster than beelining railroads for sure even if we had to use settlers and forts to cut a few paths through the spokes for us. (maybe vassalage and theocracy to build a lot of 4 xp boats)
Or buying a ton of boats with GG settled city (and one of the 2 civics)

With that said, those distances are going to be a problem.
We certainly could bulb through/liberalism to Mass Media quite fast.

Domination with an aggressive backup plan to bulb out/liberalism to Mass Media if it looks like diplomacy is going to be possible? (a smaller team has the same religion that we choose to adopt?)

 

[shulec]

So..., you're alive Tachy! Chime in!

 

[Manco Capac]

So..., your alive Tachy! Chime in!

Thanks. And...what the hell! I ceased reading for 3-4 days (I didn't logged in but was still following your deeds before those few days) and the post count exploded. Lot of work to catch up. Not really much for now unfortunately.

 

[mabraham]

4)Cultural - Wonder spam complicated by the fast AI teching at start of game. Not exactly a lot of prime cottage land. Not a financial, spiritual, or industrial leader. Aren't swimming in religions either. Whoever builds stonehenge will probably take the 4th religion when they bulb theology. Sadly, emperor appears to be the difficulty where wonder vs. cottage spam is a draw on speed.

Cultural is looking quite good to me. These first three cities will be reasonable legendary sites. The first two can have about 10 cottages each, plus some wonder culture. The gems site can probably build HG and plan to run artists. Those all have enough hammers for the cathedrals after some early wonder and missionary spam. A site around the northern river mouth will be the primary GP farm. Some secondary sites might also produce a GArtist apiece. Philosophical is quite useful as a trait for this victory, because it ought to translate into at least one extra GArtist, if not two. Shwedagon Paya for early Philo+Paci+Caste+Rep could be great. GLib and Parthenon also options. We have all the multiplier resources for whatever cathedrals and wonders we want, and will have no problem settling the necessary 9-10 city sites (for 3 temples each in each of 3 religions) without a war. We'll probably have to rely on spontaneous religion spread, unless we get lucky with Confu or Tao. We don't have to run an early war for land - but if we learn of a nearby AI capital that would farm artists well, that one could be a legendary site. We only really have to defend the spoke choke point if someone DOWs us, assuming we control the ocean culture bridges.

 

[bcool]

4)Cultural - Wonder spam complicated by the fast AI teching at start of game. Not exactly a lot of prime cottage land. Not a financial, spiritual, or industrial leader. Aren't swimming in religions either. Whoever builds stonehenge will probably take the 4th religion when they bulb theology. Sadly, emperor appears to be the difficulty where wonder vs. cottage spam is a draw on speed.

Cultural is looking quite good to me. These first three cities will be reasonable legendary sites. The first two can have about 10 cottages each, plus some wonder culture. The gems site can probably build HG and plan to run artists. Those all have enough hammers for the cathedrals after some early wonder and missionary spam. A site around the northern river mouth will be the primary GP farm. Some secondary sites might also produce a GArtist apiece. Philosophical is quite useful as a trait for this victory, because it ought to translate into at least one extra GArtist, if not two. Shwedagon Paya for early Philo+Paci+Caste+Rep could be great. GLib and Parthenon also options. We have all the multiplier resources for whatever cathedrals and wonders we want, and will have no problem settling the necessary 9-10 city sites (for 3 temples each in each of 3 religions) without a war. We'll probably have to rely on spontaneous religion spread, unless we get lucky with Confu or Tao. We don't have to run an early war for land - but if we learn of a nearby AI capital that would farm artists well, that one could be a legendary site. We only really have to defend the spoke choke point if someone DOWs us, assuming we control the ocean culture bridges.

Cultural still has a big risk associated with it. We don't know how hard the wizard will be to find and/or kill. If the wizard is a unit then I would imagine that it has to be at a minimum on an island to avoid either it killing an AI or an AI accidentally killing it.
That probably means we will need astronomy (although the wizard might be reachable by galley).
Worst case would be the wizard is only reachable by paratrooper/nuke.

 

[mabraham]

Cultural still has a big risk associated with it. We don't know how hard the wizard will be to find and/or kill. If the wizard is a unit then I would imagine that it has to be at a minimum on an island to avoid either it killing an AI or an AI accidentally killing it.
That probably means we will need astronomy (although the wizard might be reachable by galley).
Worst case would the wizard is only reachable by paratrooper/nuke.

Sure, but we can still time our GArtist bombs to win the turn we kill the Wizard. Still it's another 30+ turns before we have to start committing to a victory condition.

 

[bcool]

Thanks. And...what the hell! I ceased reading for 3-4 days (I didn't logged in but was still following your deeds before those few days) and the post count exploded. Lot of work to catch up. Not really much for now unfortunately.

Welcome back You really don't have to closely follow all of the testing that we did. Most of it is not relevant anymore since we decided to go with the GW & GLH.

 

[bcool]

Sure, but we can still time our GArtist bombs to win the turn we kill the Wizard. Still it's another 30+ turns before we have to start committing to a victory condition.

In a traditional cultural game you shut down research after liberalism and go 100% culture. Great Artists speed up achieving Legendary status but they are not the primary vehicle to rack up the culture.

You have to slow a cultural game down to get the techs and/or units that will likely be necessary to kill the wizard.

We can try a nontraditional cultural game that uses espionage to produce a legendary city, and maybe we can get one city up to legendary with just great artists. And another city perhaps with wonder culture. That would enable us to continue teching if we needed to do so.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Woot! We are one month into the game.
I think I learn more playing this Sgotm than reading on any strategy forum.


Welcome back Tachywaxon

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

In a traditional cultural game you shut down research after liberalism and go 100% culture. Great Artists speed up achieving Legendary status but they are not the primary vehicle to rack up the culture.

You have to slow a cultural game down to get the techs and/or units that will likely be necessary to kill the wizard.

We can try a nontraditional cultural game that uses espionage to produce a legendary city, and maybe we can get one city up to legendary with just great artists. And another city perhaps with wonder culture. That would enable us to continue teching if we needed to do so.

For Cultural Victory, we can make one of the legendary cities a great artist farm which typically is only about 20% to Legendary when the 1st and 2nd city become legendary. Since the great artist farm's primary source of culture is artists, we can fire artists when we need to slow down the rate to provide enough time to destroy the Wizard. (In recent years, making one of the three cities a great artist farm has become the fastest way to win a cultural victory; I personally consider this the traditional way; three cottage cities is the older historical variant.)

On the turn the Wizard is destroyed we culture bomb the great artist farm to legendary with our stockpile of great artists.

We don't have to set the culture slider to 100% when we complete Liberalism and adopt Free Speech. We can keep research 100% until we find and estimate how long it will take us to destroy the wizard. We may even use the espionage slider too. However, I suspect that we will want a high culture slider, since we want our first two cities to go legendary ASAP.

We are planning to complete The Pyramids and Representation, so our great artist farm will provide a significant amount of research on its own (4 Bpt per artist).

In addition to destroying the wizard, we may need to prevent AI teams from winning considering how much faster they can research. So we will need to build a large military while winning via culture.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Welcome back Tachy!

You have been missed.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[bcool]

Okay, what I meant by this post about a cultural game...

Spoiler :

In a traditional cultural game you shut down research after liberalism and go 100% culture. Great Artists speed up achieving Legendary status but they are not the primary vehicle to rack up the culture.

You have to slow a cultural game down to get the techs and/or units that will likely be necessary to kill the wizard.

We can try a nontraditional cultural game that uses espionage to produce a legendary city, and maybe we can get one city up to legendary with just great artists. And another city perhaps with wonder culture. That would enable us to continue teching if we needed to do so.

In my opinion cultural games in general are difficult to win before 1500 AD or so. And so I believe they are already a bit slow compared to the times that we could achieve with other victory conditions.

In an ideal cultural game you can devote most if not all of the commerce after liberalism into culture by putting the slider at 100% culture. I understand that some of the culture will come from the artist specialists themselves and some from wonders, but the vast majority of at least 2 of the legendary cities' culture usually comes from using the cultural slider and lots of commerce from cottages, etc.

And on top of the late date we would most likely not be able to devote all our resources to producing culture and the necessary temples/cathedrals for decent victory date. We would likely have to spend some time teching rather using 100% culture. I understand that we could prevent the accidental cultural victory by holding back on bulbing the great artists. But that really wasn't my point.

So in my opinion culture is slower than most victory conditions even before you consider the complications of the wizard.
I don't think we will be competitive if we go for a cultural victory, unless we develop a novel way of doing it.
I think it is too much to expect to have a large army, continue teching some with the slider, and finish a cultural game with a competitive date.

edit: cross post (edit: emperor cultural games are difficult to win before 1500 AD... at least for me)

 

[Kaitzilla]

Looking at Diplomatic Victory on paper, it doesn't really work out if Wizard is a Civ.
If we eliminate the north witches and east witches to get a very high population, that leaves south and west witches.

Assuming the wizard is a civ teamed with the wicked witch of the west, we would have to attack and destroy half the west witches.

Due to the south witches having the 2nd highest population, they'd become our opponent in the UN election.
I doubt we can convince the wicked witch of the west to vote for us after a declaration of war at the end of our game.



Cultural Victory is more straight forward. Build Parthenon, Statue of Zeus, and most importantly Sistene's Chapel before 500BC and they will produce 20 each after 1000 years in 500AD. That is 12 Towns worth of base culture.

Also, building a temple and monastary of the main religion in each of the legendary cities before 500BC is also huge. With Sistene's they produce 12 and 14 in 500AD.



I tried the spy thing into culture. It takes 3 espionage points to spread 1 culture, so you would need ridiculous espionage modifiers to pull it off. You will also need an army of spies, and between 10,000 and 100,000 espionage points to spread 30,000 culture. I wouldn't attempt it on normal speed. It is just too slow. To get the necessary espionage you have to go all the way to communism.

I'll attach a culture game I had from long ago if anyone wants to play with the idea.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Looking at the diplo screen, Ragnar starts out with -3 relations for a different religion. Any clue to which AI personality does that?

The only other thing I see is that Mansa starts out annoyed with Ragnar and Asoka and that the feeling is mutual.
Ghenghis Khan starts at -1 relations for a different religion.

 

[mabraham]

Okay, what I meant by this post about a cultural game...

In my opinion cultural games in general are difficult to win before 1500 AD or so. And so I believe they are already a bit slow compared to the times that we could achieve with other victory conditions.

Sure, but is domination/conquest realistic on this very large map, with lots of AI cities, by those times?

In an ideal cultural game you can devote most if not all of the commerce after liberalism into culture by putting the slider at 100% culture. I understand that some of the culture will come from the artist specialists themselves and some from wonders, but the vast majority of at least 2 of the legendary cities' culture usually comes from using the cultural slider and lots of commerce from cottages, etc.

I envisage we would time our 100% culture run for when we've organized the timing for killing the wizard. If we need high tech then we keep teching past Liberalism, but other than setting up and running a GArtist farm and two heavy cottage cities, along with the missionaries, temples and cathedrals. Our side cities have to get started on their temples early, but our legendary cities will be able to flex until we have an idea of what tech level we will need before the culture run.

And on top of the late date we would most likely not be able to devote all our resources to producing culture and the necessary temples/cathedrals for decent victory date. We would likely have to spend some time teching rather using 100% culture. I understand that we could prevent the accidental cultural victory by holding back on bulbing the great artists. But that really wasn't my point.

It doesn't have to be a fast culture victory, per se. It has to be faster than any other form of victory under these conditions.

So in my opinion culture is slower than most victory conditions even before you consider the complications of the wizard.
I don't think we will be competitive if we go for a cultural victory, unless we develop a novel way of doing it.
I think it is too much to expect to have a large army, continue teching some with the slider, and finish a cultural game with a competitive date.

That depends how large an army we need - and whether it is quicker to build the army to take out the wizard, and the other armies to take out the AIs for a military victory, or to build the wizard army and then switch to culture production while it travels. We don't know enough to consider this question yet.

edit: cross post (edit: emperor cultural games are difficult to win before 1500 AD... at least for me)

That's turn 220 or so. We can't get any kind of civ-killing army anywhere before turn 120... That's not a lot of turns for a military victory on a big map. I guess we should play out some different VCs on the test game to have some idea what is possible.

 

[bcool]

Right now I think diplomatic has the best shot at beating a cultural victory.

That's turn 220 or so. We can't get any kind of civ-killing army anywhere before turn 120... That's not a lot of turns for a military victory on a big map. I guess we should play out some different VCs on the test game to have some idea what is possible.

3)Diplomatic - Random AI and paired AI will make diplomacy a head scratcher. Eliminate two pairs of AI and then have another pair vote with you against the larger 2nd pair? How do paired AI vote? This has the real possibility of being the fastest win if the smaller pair can be made friendly and will vote for you.

Or it would, if the wizard wasn't on an island spamming an islands heavy civilization with the wicked witch of the west (Monty?) guarding his front door 50 tiles from our capital. (Worst case)

We don't need to win a diplomatic game at the end of a gun.

I can see how we could win a diplomatic game by aggressively spreading the AP religion. AI's will switch to the AP religion and stay if they have enough cities converted to that religion for them even if they have founded a different religion.

If we get 2 pairs set up in the AP religion and maybe take out 1 of the other pairs, and the other pair that isn't in the AP is our rival for the election then we could win the election.

Right now I'm betting that the wizard is a unit. And difficult to get to, The advantage of a diplomatic game is that is causes us to bulb out to physics quickly so we would have a lot of the prerequisites to kill a difficult to find Wizard.

I understand the diplomacy with team is a head scratcher, but I think it has the best chance at an early victory condition.

Domination is also a possibility. I was playing one of those out awhile back when we thought it was 3v2v2v1. Drafting and galleon chaining can get a ton of units across the map very fast. If we plan for galleons and drafting then we can win a game like this one via domination pretty fast No? certainly before T220. In the prior sgotm game on an island map (which wasn't flat admittedly) conquest times and domination times were quite a bit more competitive than 1500 AD. (it is a bad comparison to sgotm13 since so much is different... it was epic speed, world wrap was on, islands allowing free movement by galleon in all directions) however pre 500 AD conquest, 670AD conquest, 1265AD conquest, 1405 AD domination.

If we did exactly what gypsy kings did in 1265? bulb out to chemistry and astronomy and then maybe liberalism for steel. Built a massive fleet of galleons, drafted muskets and built cannons and galleon chained the armies across the map couldn't we win this game before 1500AD? I'm assuming cannons here since it is unrealistic for these AI not to have feudalism before we more than 1 team.

The land in this game is a bit better than the land in sgotm13 too.

Here is my save from a domination attempt. It is T158 and I'm 4 turns from cannons and have a significant force of galleons macemen and treb. And I'm no domination/conquest expert. Nor did I think too carefully about possible strategies using horses or drafting. This is brute force domination.
I think it would be possible to get domination in 50 turns from the point of the save. And if we do conquest/domination right, I suspect we could do better...