SGOTM 15 - One Short Straw

[ZPV]

Crap!
No, the worker steal went fine, but there's a lion in an unhelpful place:

There's nothing to do except not take risks with the worker, promote the warrior and start moving the other warrior toward Toku to be our threat.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Looks like Kakumeika completed SH on T40. They got 18 on T41, so either they have 2 cities, both with Hinduism and a monument or three cities with 1 Hindu and 3 monuments. I assume the former.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Crap!
No, the worker steal went fine, but there's a lion in an unhelpful place:

There's nothing to do except not take risks with the worker, promote the warrior and start moving the other warrior toward Toku to be our threat.

Crap. We forgot about that and the worker could have forewarned us... oh well, let's pray for some luck.

 

[ZPV]

Crap. We forgot about that and the worker could have forewarned us... oh well, let's pray for some luck.

27.3% odds of losing... of course the lion ends up on 58/100 HP.
Seems like my animal combat skills aren't up to it. That's two games in a row I've lost our warrior.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Okay, we move on. Let sober minds prevail. Let's make sure we get the fogbusting right here. The worker can do some to help.

 

[ZPV]

Okay, we move on. Let sober minds prevail. Let's make sure we get the fogbusting right here. The worker can do some to help.

Exactly. Time to post the save, to plan this properly.

 

[ZPV]

Here's the latest pack of saves:

 

[LowtherCastle]

That's one of the problems with debug mode, by the way. You lose sight of which tiles are fogged and defogged. I'm not using it any more, except for brief moments of specific tests.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Here's one solution:

T38
Worker-1N (scouts Corn-NW tile)-1W-1NW to safe hill
Warrior-1E

T39
Worker-1SW-1W (scouts 1 tile)-1NW to forest in our culture
Warrior-1E
Settler -1S-1SE

T40
Worker-1S (scouts area to ensure settler's move)- can retreat if unsafe
Settler-2SE
Warrior-1E to hill which should be safe from barb animals because of Toku's culture and hopefully safe from Toku's archers

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Q. Will we be able to get peace afterwards?
A. Yes. With AggressiveAI on, threatening a Japanese city with our warrior (by being within 2 tiles of it), the price of peace goes down so much that if we don't lose any battles, we can get peace for free.

Does the "threatening" action within the fat cross but not within the 1-square radius approach work if the AI's Cultural Borders have not expanded?

Actually, do Cultural Borders even get used at all or can we even "threaten" diagonally from 2 sqaures away?


From my anecdotal experience, if you park a Warrior within a fat cross but not within a 1-square radius, the AI seems to keep at least 2 Archers defending their City before sending out an attacking unit, but if you park your Warrior within the 1-square radius, that second Archer is allowed to attack (going from memory here).

Q. How long before we can get peace?
A. If we don't lose any battles, 5 turns.

Do we have to have ended a turn where we threaten an AI or can we just threaten them and get a Cease Fire on the same turn that we threaten them?

Q. What do we do about fogbusting, etc, now?
A. The 3-move fast worker is very useful.

I'm sure that you will be, but do your best to be very careful not to risk the Fast Worker's life... for example, I'm assuming that you'll find a way when scouting or spawn-busting to move to a square that can reveal all possible Barb Animals (such as to a Hills square) while still having 1 movement point remaining to be able to retreat on the same turn if a Barb Animal is revealed.

Better would be DoP, but I haven't tried to calc that yet.

Does an AI ever declare war after a Cease Fire? I mean, do they still wait at least the 10 turns regardless of how you ended the war?

Crap!
No, the worker steal went fine, but there's a lion in an unhelpful place:

Hmmm, while I've been reading and quoting, it seems that you have played on. At least the Lion will spawn-bust for us if it is nice enough not to attack our Warrior.

If our Warrior does survive again, I wonder if it makes sense to move our Fast Worker first and then move the Warrior for future turns, so that we can spot-check for our Warrior.

For now, we'll definitely want to take Combat I (no sitting around saving a promo when our unit could be under attack in a turn).

Err, nevermind, it seems that we've played on past that point, too.

So... I guess we need a new plan for how to threaten Toku.

That's one of the problems with debug mode, by the way. You lose sight of which tiles are fogged and defogged.

We should probably map out on a screenshot which squares that Toku's Cultural Borders will defog for us.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

27.3% odds of losing... of course the lion ends up on 58/100 HP.
Seems like my animal combat skills aren't up to it. That's two games in a row I've lost our warrior.

So, wait, have we actually lost the battle yet or are you just suggesting that the odds are not greatly in our favour?

 

[Mitchum]

Did you happen to start building warriors instead of a worker in the northern gold city as I mentioned in my last post or are we still building that worker? In either case, should we switch to warriors now?

 

[ZPV]

So, wait, have we actually lost the battle yet or are you just suggesting that the odds are not greatly in our favour?

We lost the battle.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

We lost the battle.

Okay, no worries. We pick up and move on.

I do like Mitchum's suggestion of building a replacement Warrior out of Zlatorog, if not 2 Warriors.

 

[ZPV]

Here's one solution:

T38
Worker-1N (scouts Corn-NW tile)-1W-1NW to safe hill
Warrior-1E

T39
Worker-1SW-1W (scouts 1 tile)-1NW to forest in our culture
Warrior-1E
Settler -1S-1SE

T40
Worker-1S (scouts area to ensure settler's move)- can retreat if unsafe
Settler-2SE
Warrior-1E to hill which should be safe from barb animals because of Toku's culture and hopefully safe from Toku's archers

A picture is worth a thousand words...
This looks like your plan, I think:

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Okay, that's one possibility.

T38 Fast Worker moves 1N onto the G Riv and spots a Lion--that's another possibility where we'll want different moves.


Another possibility is that the Lion goes:
End of our T38: NW G Riv For
End of our T39: S G Riv OR SE G Riv

In that case, we need a different Warrior action for T40, possible SE G Riv, but then Toku might have an Archer that is there to kill us. So, we'd probably instead move 1S onto the G Riv square that the Fast Worker is currently located on, so that we can hide out from the Lion.


Keeping the Lion alive is good thing, although it might get replaced later with a Combat I Barb Warrior... but for now, it will help to spawn-bust for us if we keep it alive.

 

[LowtherCastle]

A picture is worth a thousand words...
This looks like your plan, I think:

That's it. I think it gives you plenty of options. The lion will be moving away from Toku's culture. The problem with T38 warrior-NE is that there could be two lions in the forest now, not just the damaged one...

EDIT: Mitchum is right that sheep before gold is better (or is it?). The cost is 2 wkr-turns in exchange for 6f5c and G1E grows to pop3 just before border expansion. But that rules out your plan to safely defog a couple tiles, so we can get both workers pasturing on T42. An additional cost is 38 coins less by T47 and this might affect our BW completion thus possibly delaying Gems.

What to do after the workers finish pasturing is up in the air, because if one mines the gold for just 1t, then goes to Delhi to chop the Gems settler, we can get it out by T51. We'd have to MM the beakers to get BW by T47. The Zlatorog worker also chops the Gems settler. That leaves the other G1E worker to do something else.

I'm not sure we need a warrior now in Zlatorog. I think I'd stick with worker. G1E will produce quite some hammers and we won't need to put them into a worker.

 

[Mitchum]

Regarding the sheep, it only costs one worker turn (the one to climb the gold hill again), not two. With two workers pasturing the sheep, the eastern gold city will grow very quickly. I'd have both workers mine the gold hill, completing it 3 turns after the pasture (2 worker turns total lost with two workers climbing the hill and 4 worker turns to mine the gold). That should give us even more commerce, not less, right? Then one worker can head back to Delhi while the other one builds a farm or mine around the eastern gold city while waiting for BW and chops...

EDIT: This all needs to be tested out oviously.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Osaka put 4h into some build (not wkr/set), then when we stole the worker he switched to another build and has put 3h into it. The hammer factor for the sabotage production screen seems to be roughly 7.5. So currently we see 22. 22 / 7.5 = 3 hammers.

Toku pastured the prisonyard sheep just before offering his sacrifice to us.

 

[LowtherCastle]

So is there anything else to discuss before next turn? I think we'll need to stop next turn to work out the beakers for BW.