SGOTM 14 - One Short Straw

[Mitchum]

I've done some more testing, and you can fit another warrior in at the very start (i.e. worker-warrior-warrior), but it's not without cost. Specifically, 19 hammers and 12 GPP. Similarly NY can build a warrior by 2000BC if necessary, but I'm not sure yet that it is.
It'll be a long long time before there are enough cities on the map for the barbs to start invading, so it's just a question of exploring and defogging areas we really don't want a barb city to spawn.

Preventing barbs from spawning can go a long way to making our opening much easier and less stressful. True, barbs may not enter our cities yet. However, if we don't have access to horses or copper, it's very hard to move warriors out to spawn bust when there are already barb archers roaming around. We'd almost be forced to build a bunch or archers to slowly expand our fog busted area outward. If we get our warrior into position early enough, our barb problems would be much easier to manage.

I just thought of one additional advantage to early BW; we find out where copper is before we settle our second city. It's possible that there is a good, nearby city site with copper that may open up a possible axe rush.

 

[shyuhe]

How does the alpha beeline play into the Oracle?

 

[ZPV]

How does the alpha beeline play into the Oracle?

We can't trade for Mathematics or Code of Laws in an Oracle-friendly time, and frankly after sacrificing production for Alphabet we'll probably have better things to build. If things work out that way, then great, but I wouldn't plan on it. Even Meditation and Polytheism are not guaranteed, since not all the AIs research them early, unlike the worker techs.

 

[shyuhe]

Hm. We could try oracling something like currency. Although I imagine commerce will be a limitation if we try.

 

[babybluepants]

I was thinking of Oracle Currency, yes. I think in this kind of game, a great intermediate goal would be getting to 6 cities with Currency asap. From my save it's doable in 1000 BC, from ZPV's in 1120 BC, on one quick attempt.

I really don't like the Alpha beeline. It's too inflexible. Rusten and/or Duckweed have said something like Wtg @ 4 cities, Currency @ 6 cities. Earlier Wtg and/or Alpha may boost immediate tech, but sacrifices quite a bit. I feel my save isn't even fast enough in terms of expansion. Namely, Hammurabi is about to take my wheat spot 1t before I can get there. By the time we get out settlers 4 and 5 in ZPV's save, we could lose 2-3 good sites. Also, barb archers in the 1500 BC era are a real concern, if we don't establish some fogbust by T50. To me stunting early growth for early Alpha only makes sense if we intend to be hyper-aggressive in the late BC's. AbsoluteZero does it on deity, combined with elepult rushes, for instance. In that case, you don't really care about WFYABTA or boosting the AI research too much. It is, however, entirely situational - makes sense on constrained deity starts, where you would have trouble even getting the 6 good cities.

I guess I would much rather have 5-6 strong cities with Currency in 1000 BC, then 3 cities with CS. And, we really don't even have a chance of Oracling CS in this game, unless we find a 2 gold second city (which we incidentally need immediate Mining for anyway).

Edit: to clarify, I'm not particularly happy with my save either. Since we have a few days regardless, I would prefer we try some alternate approaches to the opening.

 

[ZPV]

I was thinking of Oracle Currency, yes. I think in this kind of game, a great intermediate goal would be getting to 6 cities with Currency asap. From my save it's doable in 1000 BC, from ZPV's in 1120 BC, on one quick attempt

Really, we need a final goal, to know if this is the right intermediate goal.
Fast conquest, on Normal speed, even if it requires Astro, is too short a game for SGOTM.
So I think we'll need some advanced tech to destroy the Wizard. That means fast teching. The AI on Emperor is not fast enough to help us with late techs.

So how do we get there?

Edit: to clarify, I'm not particularly happy with my save either. Since we have a few days regardless, I would prefer we try some alternate approaches to the opening.

For a hard ReX, crab/oasis city does not get founded as city #2 - a developmental city is fine, but that's a science one (i.e. it has some ancient commerce and can grow some cottages for the capital) rather than a production one.

My instinct is for a mixture between horizontal and vertical growth - expanding as quickly as maintaining fast tech allows. If the land we reveal in the opening turns screams "ReX", then so be it. Our starting area doesn't, to me - it says we want a lot of worker techs (AH,Mining,BW,Wheel,Pottery +Writing+Myst), really rather quickly, even before we worry about going up the tech tree.

I'm not satisfied with the exploring/fogbusting potential of the save I posted - although I care more about the exploration side of that (i.e. the t20-30 warrior(s)).

 

[babybluepants]

I agree. I thought we'd be founding crab city in tests to make comparisons easier. Also, because it's the only city we know for sure is there, based on the starting screenshot.

I was playing around with settling 1N this morning, btw. Initial tech (to BW) is faster, but it drops to the same level as my previous 1E test by T50, while giving up some production (from cow vs. oasis, I guess).

 

[babybluepants]

Really, we need a final goal, to know if this is the right intermediate goal.

Sure, except this is exactly the major criticism I have against the Alpha beeline. My current thinking is that the lack of a clear final goal means we need an intermediate goal that sets us up for a variety of midgame approaches. Generally speaking, to me that implies more cities and more production faster; which in turn means fast Currency, followed by fast COL/CS, if you don't wanna tank your research rate in the late BC's.

Fast conquest, on Normal speed, even if it requires Astro, is too short a game for SGOTM.

Did you notice the last game?

 

[ZPV]

Sure, except this is exactly the major criticism I have against the Alpha beeline. My current thinking is that the lack of a clear final goal means we need an intermediate goal that sets us up for a variety of midgame approaches. Generally speaking, to me that implies more cities and more production faster; which in turn means fast Currency, followed by fast COL/CS, if you don't wanna tank your research rate in the late BC's.

Urgh. I see it the other way around - it's easier to turn trees and citizens into emergency hammers than it is to catch up on tech once you've expanded too quickly. I'm not suggesting OCCing it, I just have the focus a bit different.

Did you notice the last game?

Nope, just a rule of thumb. Some teams might not go through their roster twice if the map was right for it.

 

[babybluepants]

Urgh. I see it the other way around - it's easier to turn trees and citizens into emergency hammers than it is to catch up on tech once you've expanded too quickly. I'm not suggesting OCCing it, I just have the focus a bit different.

I know. We disagree on what constitutes "expanding too quickly", and, more importantly, on what constitutes an acceptable tech pace in the early game. Also, it's not at all easy to convert trees and citizens into settlers for spots that have been taken by others.

I have a feeling that the team consensus will lean towards your test, however. I find that save really poor in terms of exploration and worker idling. How do we rectify that? I'll play around with it tmr, as well.

 

[ZPV]

Maybe the mapmaker gave us horses and this is all academic. We'll see what happens. Much of the support for my save is... noise from me.

Yeah - I didn't do any exploration, and didn't bother to build the 1-2 mostly useless farms (since there's a river in my test that we don't know is there in the real save). I'll think about ways to improve this too. Maybe the worker could fogbust for us once the animals have died out.

 

[babybluepants]

The crux of the problem is that we need lots of early techs. I would ideally go with Wheel before Wtg, but have nothing to build in the capital without a library available.

Your approach is to get quick Alphabet and just take a number of those early techs. The problem there is your worker sits for 25 out of its first 35 turns in existence, which is a bit crazy. Slotting in Wheel ahead of Alpha or even Wtg (don't know the timing on your library) would help that a bit, I guess. I wouldn't trade Alpha itself for less then BW+, IW or Monarchy. It comes too quickly in your save for the latter two. On the filp side, slowing down Alphabet means that AIs will likely get Wtg before we can trade it away for other small techs.

What are we willing to trade for with early Alpha? Medi/Poly/Masonry/Sailing are unlikely to be available. Hunting/Archery/Mysticism are a bit silly to take WFYABTA hits for. That potentially leaves Wheel, Pottery and BW before the better techs appear. Is that right?

Edit: xpost. Yes, we do have 13t of exploration during AH. I wouldn't actually decide on these matters before then.

 

[babybluepants]

More test runs. 1N is not as good as SIP. In the other one, I don't know what to research after Wtg.

 

[ZPV]

What are we willing to trade for with early Alpha? Medi/Poly/Masonry/Sailing are unlikely to be available. Hunting/Archery/Mysticism are a bit silly to take WFYABTA hits for. That potentially leaves Wheel, Pottery and BW before the better techs appear. Is that right?

There are Wheel, Pottery, Mining, BW at the very least; Sailing is not beyond reason.
We are Charismatic, so trading for Myst does make sense. Masonry won't be possible, and Med/Poly are unlikely. Hunting we can avoid unless we find a hunting resource. WFYABTA shouldn't be too much of an issue on Emperor - there won't be too many midgame techs the AI are useful for, and we can always schmooze an AI or two up to friendly.

 

[babybluepants]

Is there a good reason for getting Alpha asap? So we have a better chance of trading away Wtg? If we went for Mining before Writing, I can get Alpha on T56, and there's no delay on library or gpp compared to your save (ok, 6gpp + I have an extra warrior). I like that better. At least we can potentially keep our worker employed with mines, and options other than Alpha remain open longer.

 

[Mitchum]

I'm not a fan of getting Alpha too early. As bbp says, if we get it too early, we won't get as much value from it. Luckily we don't have to decide right now.

 

[ZPV]

Is there a good reason for getting Alpha asap? So we have a better chance of trading away Wtg? If we went for Mining before Writing, I can get Alpha on T56, and there's no delay on library or gpp compared to your save (ok, 6gpp + I have an extra warrior). I like that better. At least we can potentially keep our worker employed with mines, and options other than Alpha remain open longer.

The reason is we have a ton of worker techs we want, to develop our capital properly, and Alpha is the fastest way to get them all. To be able to trade writing for them instead of alpha is just a bonus.

"To give our idle worker something to do" isn't a good reason to research a tech.
"To unlock a worker-improvement we really really want" is.
Mining before Writing falls into the first class, IMHO. We can build an extra warrior before the settler and library at much less cost than that.

 

[mdy]

Checking in.

I'm reluctant to commit to an alphabet beeline, before we know who our trading partners in the near future will be. Depending on the situation an early alphabet could be worse than useless. We do want a lot of worker techs, but this is no different to man other SGOTMS where we managed without an early alphabet. In my experience unless you are trying to get an expensive tech with the Oracle production is more critical than beakers in the early game.

 

[shyuhe]

Don't forget that if our nearest neighbor is Toku, our alpha beeline will backfire gloriously.

Does the alpha beeline choice affect our initial tech choice? I had assumed that it doesn't but I may be missing the point.

 

[Mitchum]

Don't forget that if our nearest neighbor is Toku, our alpha beeline will backfire gloriously.

Does the alpha beeline choice affect our initial tech choice? I had assumed that it doesn't but I may be missing the point.

Or an AI acting like Toku... This will be tricky. We may meet Mansa who is actually Toku in disguise. I guess we'd know based on whether or not said AI will open borders.

I think all tests have been AH first, so we don't have to decide on the Alpha beeline until after AH at least.