SGOTM 15 - Misfit Gypsy Nuts

[da_Vinci]

Poly first is certainly the most "sensible" thing to do. I'm pretty much in agreement - I don't particularly like the idea that we could be out so early and have 3-4 months of no SGOTM!

So you don't want to replicate the da_Vinci Novgorod disaster?

Spoiler :

It was Novgorod, wasn't it?

Could we test the agri first start in some sims? What is prob of getting hindu if go agri first and all AI start with myst? If half start with myst? If one starts with myst?

How much boost is agri first, really? How many other teams may take that gamble? Enough that some will win the gamble? In which case you are out if you don't take the gamble?

Asking questions is what I do best ...

dV

 

[Grifftavian]

We can get the settler to ANY of those three tiles on T0. Settling T0 1E of the start or settling T1 on the Stone or Marble. There has to be another river to the north also because the Stone is riverside.<snip>

I never noticed the on the Stone. Time to clean the old bifocals again!

<snip>Edit2: Settling on marble is still T1, not T2. Rivers only affect movement via roads. Our settler can still cross the river and climb the hill in 1 turn.

Thanks! I finally figured that out when I started playing my Test Game this morning. In the Test Game, I settled on the Marble Hill, just got 1 in the city square as R1 said would happen.

<snip>
EDIT:
for the test map Grifftavian.

Your welcome! My test game doesn't have a river by the Stone Hill (bifocals & eyes ) I can add one if anyone thinks it's worth the effort. BTW, my test game is a very isolated start!

 

[Grifftavian]

IMO, going Agriculture first is too risky given the game requirements. Besides Mysticism, we start with Mining, so if we build a Fast Worker first, and it's completed before we learn Agriculture, he can always start building Mines.

I think going for a Cultural Victory would be an interesting challenge. Is everyone familiar with jesusin's War Academy article, Cultural Victory on the Higher Levels? I usually try and follow it when attempting a Cultural Victory!

 

[adrianj]

The da_Vinci Novgorod disaster was pretty bad, but this would be much, much worse.

There is perhaps some merit in testing how likely we could get Agri+Poly versus non-Myst AIs, but what do we do with the results of these tests? If the tests show a 20% chance we lose Poly, then that's still a 20% chance we could lose the game completely. What if it were 10%?

Spoiler :

Sounds a bit like the US Governments' spending justification to combat the war on terror!

And that's under ideal conditions, where no AI has Myst. This is an assumption we're making, but it could also be completely wrong.

The gain of Agri is something we could certainly calculate or play out in a test. I don't have a test game or proper mechanics handy, but that's never stopped me making guesses before! A wet corn is a very powerful tile to get running, where the farm adds +3/turn. Poly before Agri might delay it by 7 turns or so? 21 is essentially +1 population, which we could convert into having our first settler out maybe 3 turns earlier. That's pretty good, but I wouldn't say teams would be completely out of the hunt if they didn't take the gamble.

Edit: XPost with Griff, who reminded me about the alternative for the worker, which is to build a mine. That's makes the corn farm only an extra +2"resource"/turn, not +3.

Regarding the isolated start... that would be like a gift for a cultural game. We could almost play the whole thing in the test game and the real one would play out very similarly, assuming we founded our own religions and didn't bother going to war. My pick is that we aren't isolated, and sharing an island with a difficult to rush neighbour with a hilltop capital - Perhaps Sitting Bull or Toku. That's pretty standard Mapmaker practice I think.

@Griff - You might as well wait till we've got the actual save before modifying the test game. Good job making it

 

[mc-red]

IMO, going Agriculture first is too risky given the game requirements. Besides Mysticism, we start with Mining, so if we build a Fast Worker first, and it's completed before we learn Agriculture, he can always start building Mines.

I think going for a Cultural Victory would be an interesting challenge. Is everyone familiar with jesusin's War Academy article, Cultural Victory on the Higher Levels? I usually try and follow it when attempting a Cultural Victory!

Thanks for the link. I was messing around with your test save and built TOA and oracle after which I was spitting out great prophets at an unbelievable rate even when I wanted a scientist for education after theo->paper. Nothing really useful learned but the early mines as you suggest really speed up wonders post masonry.

Maintenance of the first city was only 1 gpt seemed low for emperor but I don't remember what it should be.

 

[mc-red]

The gain of Agri is something we could certainly calculate or play out in a test. I don't have a test game or proper mechanics handy, but that's never stopped me making guesses before! A wet corn is a very powerful tile to get running, where the farm adds +3/turn. Poly before Agri might delay it by 7 turns or so? 21 is essentially +1 population, which we could convert into having our first settler out maybe 3 turns earlier. That's pretty good, but I wouldn't say teams would be completely out of the hunt if they didn't take the gamble.

Is there a way using the demographics screen to tell when one of our rivals techs Myst?
Then we could put one turn into poly and keep an eye on demographics and switch to poly as soon as myst is teched.

 

[Grifftavian]

Is there a way using the demographics screen to tell when one of our rivals techs Myst?
Then we could put one turn into poly and keep an eye on demographics and switch to poly as soon as myst is teched.

aj is the expert on reading the Demographics screen; I think it may be possible to notice when an AI rival learns a new tech, but I'm not sure if you could tell if the tech learned was Mysticism or some other first tier tech like Ag or Fishing.

 

[Ozbenno]

Think that is right, Mysticism doesn't count as a military tech, so no-ones power would change so don't think you can pick it from the demo screen.

@mc-red - good to see you returning to the fray for another game!

 

[adrianj]

Oz is right, not much hope figuring out if an AI has learned Mysticism. It's possible to tell if an AI is researching a second tier tech (Sailing, Pottery, Poly, etc) because they get a bonus to their commerce dependent on the prereq bonus for researching. But that still wouldn't tell us if they're researching Poly or any other 1-prereq tech like Sailing.

If we had MET all the AIs, then we would be able to figure out how many AIs have a tech we don't have by using the Known-rivals-with-tech bonus. That won't work here of course because a) we don't know anyone, and b) we already know Myst.

If we follow the demographics astutely, we might be able to track any gains in power if the AI researches military techs like Wheel, Mining, AH, Sailing, Hunting and BW. Knowing that they have just teched a military tech is certainly a sign that they HAVEN'T just teched Mysticism. Still plenty of holes in this approach though.

 

[Sleepless]

Won't be able to put much input in till the weekend (Sunday) but some thoughts.

Settling the marble/stone. Without knowing the surrounding area it seems we would lack production whereas SIP or 1E still gets us plenty of hills. Personally I would SIP for even more production.

Settling stone v marble. Both give us 3h city tile (very good for the start) though we lose the extra commerce from a marble quarry.

Victory conditions with 8 AI the religious victory would be harder than normal but certainly do-able for the quickest victory condition. Generally speaking dom/conquest are the fastest after AP. Still don't have to decide just yet..

Saying that I would favour going for an AP victory with the early plan to Oracle Theology.

 

[Ronnie1]

The title of the game almost seems to lead one in the direction of the AP victory condition. The key is getting it spread to every civ before they adopt Theocracy or they close their borders to us.

It is doable for sure, we just need to get creative in our approach.

 

[da_Vinci]

The title of the game almost seems to lead one in the direction of the AP victory condition. The key is getting it spread to every civ before they adopt Theocracy or they close their borders to us.

It is doable for sure, we just need to get creative in our approach.

If a civ is Hinduless, and adopts theo, couldn't we spread it to them by going to war, taking one city, putting hindu in it, and either let them re-take it, or gift it back?

Or wipe them out is another option, right?

We will want most AI to have Hindu as state religion, won't we? Does that mean we need to found the other religions (or at least the early ones)?

dV

 

[Grifftavian]

If a civ is Hinduless, and adopts theo, couldn't we spread it to them by going to war, taking one city, putting hindu in it, and either let them re-take it, or gift it back?

I believe that would work. IMO, gifting the city back, after Hinduism is spread to the city, as part of a Peace Treaty would be more favorable in the long run than letting them retake the city.

If we can get an Open Borders Treaty with a Theocratic Hinduless AI Civ, and then gift them a Hindu Missionary, would they use it to spread Hinduism, and does that count as a non-State spread under Theocracy, since it was their unit after we gifted it to them?

Or wipe them out is another option, right?

Probably an option, but IMO we have to be careful about incurring negative "you declared war on our friend" attitude modifies with other AI Civs. We'll want them to vote for us when the AP Victory vote come up!

We will want most AI to have Hindu as state religion, won't we? Does that mean we need to found the other religions (or at least the early ones)?

dV

IIRC, every AI Civ needs to have at least one city with Hinduism, so that they are all Voting Members, before they AP Victory vote will come up.

I do think founding as many of the Religions as we can would be a good idea in this game. Helps control the spread of non-Hindu religions if we go for AP Victory, and lets us spread multiple religions to our Hindu Cities to build the Cathedrals needed for a Cultural Victory. Keep our options open for as long as possible!

 

[adrianj]

The OB + Missionary gifting is a viable way of spreading religion to Theocratic civs. Tokugawa is always a problem, and needs more extreme methods like city gifting. I'm almost certain that the mapmaker would put Tokugawa in this game simply to further hamper the AP victory.

Keep in mind that in order to win the AP vote, we will need at least one friend to vote for us. The AP cheese method allows you to have easy friends by sharing their religion, in this game that option isn't available to us so we would need old fashioned methods.

The simplest way to make friends is certainly to share Hindu with them and hope they convert. If they haven't founded any other religions themselves then this is a good way to go. The problem then, is that they could actually come up as our opponent in the vote.

Not sharing a religion implies that we need to overcome the "different religion" negative modifier, since the alternative is they don't have religion at all = not any Hindu = no AP vote option. Unless of course they went free religion, but relying on the AI to tech to Liberalism and then convert of their own accord isn't much of a plan since it's all our of our control.

Factor in the extra -1 (or is it -2?) hidden modifier for the Aggressive AI.

The only AIs we could hope to get friendly are those that really love early civics like Organised Religion or Hereditary Rule.

I'm pessimistic about an AP victory, but we could certainly keep our eyes open if the opportunity presents itself. I like the idea of aiming to found many religions, as it ties in well with a Cultural strategy. FYI - the fastest cultural victory for these settings in the Hall of Fame is 1530 AD by Lowthercastle. I'm sure we could do better than that with a well focussed strategy... but will 1500 AD beat the Conquests and Dominations?

My opinion is this: I'd like to aim 100% for a fast Cultural game. If it turns out that it is in fact the best strategy for the map, then we win. If it's not, then at least we can all learn something about how to play a great Cultural game, something the SGOTMs have been lacking I think.

 

[Conquistador 63]

I share adrianj's pessimism about the AP victory.

I think the mapmaker is trying to challenge the conventional wisdom that considers AP victory as the fastest and cheesiest, although some teams might try to challenge the mapmaker back.

However, IIRC agressive AI in BTS does not translate in an automatic -1 or -2 in AI-to-human diplomatic relations. I am not sure about the unrestricted leaders option purpose, though.

Also, I am not so sure about the effectiveness of hoarding religions. It could backfire, as in uniting the world in a buddhist alliance agaisnt the hindu heathens (that would be us!).

I agree a culture game could be fun, but I'd like to check our surroundings (terrain, resources, neighbors) before commiting to a fixed strategy.

EDIT:
the above does not exclude the viabilility of a conquest-fueled AP victory. We can play a military game to amass a large population, keep a few selected friends and spare the time and effort required to cross the land domination limits, (almost) voting ourselves for an AP win.

 

[McArine]

Checking in, with a new Win7 computer, and I'm going to get Civ 4 installed one of the following days.

My thoughts: Settling, I like the idea of settling on the stone or marble.
Tech, I'll vote for Poly first. Getting Agri first would be great, but I think it is too big a gamble.
Victory, I have no preference here, and I agree with C63 that we should check our surroundings before committing.

 

[adrianj]

I agree a culture game could be fun, but I'd like to check our surroundings (terrain, resources, neighbors) before commiting to a fixed strategy.

Victory, I have no preference here, and I agree with C63 that we should check our surroundings before committing.

Having the entire game all planned out before we even see the save is just something to do to pass the time

... with a new Win7 computer, and I'm going to get Civ 4 installed one of the following days.

It might save you some time if you read this thread first:
Installing Civ4 on Windows 7/Vista.

 

[Ozbenno]

I also think that an AP victory might be more difficult than we think, might be hard to get someone to vote for us with having to be Hindu the entire game.

 

[Sleepless]

Will point out one of the biggest AP cheese's is out. i.e change religions one turn before the AP is built and then go back to your original religion.

Ideally we need to limit the spread of hindu. i.e one city per civ is good. We would have to rely on other means for improving relations. Gifting techs for +4, resources +2, shared war... etc so might be do-able though I think agg AI makes it harder as well with more hidden negatives. Other option is share religion with 2 other civs and make sure one votes for us which would probably be a requirement.

Edit. Without knowing more about the surrounding area settling on the stone/marble could lead to a very poor production capital. Especially the stone if there are no more hills.

Double Edit. I also like the idea of a cultural game with the stone for early mids etc.

 

[Ronnie1]

I would not be so worried about production in the capitol. If there are not more hills, that means there will be lots of cottage space!