SGOTM 15 - One Short Straw

[ZPV]

Yeah, settler to stone, warrior SE. On turn 1, are you thinking of going S, or onto the marble? (I prefer the latter because it's the quickest way to explore all of marble's BFC, and the west. It's not a huge difference though. Maybe the extra tiles in the east will be gems, wheat and pigs.)

 

[LowtherCastle]

I'd take it one step at a time. First the warrior, to see if there's anything to discuss. If nothing, then the settler to the stone. Then we have ot decide whether we've seen enough to settle the stone or move the warrior S or SW first.

 

[babybluepants]

Marble's probably better. I was still thinking of 1S because the old screenshot showed a river that way.

Edit: xpost

 

[LowtherCastle]

On turn 1, are you thinking of going S, or onto the marble?

S defogs more to the east before heading west, both tell the same about the BFC on T1. We have to decide about settler or worker next on T1, so further info about the BFC is a bit irrelevant, I think.

We might want to go a bit further SE first before animals spawn, then come back to the hills and woods.

 

[ZPV]

S defogs more to the east before heading west, both tell the same about the BFC on T1. We have to decide about settler or worker next on T1, so further info about the BFC is a bit irrelevant, I think.

We might want to go a bit further SE first before animals spawn, then come back to the hills and woods.

Ok, I think you're right. But still there's no need to make that decision until t1.

 

[LowtherCastle]

A possibly stronger choice is to go with fewer tiles defogged but more of the western river tiles. On T1 we'd see up to 4 or even more river tiles, which are abviously much stronger than not. That might have more potential to sway our decision about settler or worker first.

 

[LowtherCastle]

The problem with going SW first is that it seems less effective in the short term for exploring, because I thnk we want to explore that river thoroughly, so going SE first frees the warrio up to go toward the SW.

 

[babybluepants]

Now that the river ends at marble, why are we even going east with the warrior? Should we maybe go SW on T0? The river and corn are both in that direction.

Edit: xpost

 

[ZPV]

A possibly stronger choice is to go with fewer tiles defogged but more of the western river tiles. On T1 we'd see up to 4 or even more river tiles, which are abviously much stronger than not. That might have more potential to sway our decision about settler or worker first.

I'd like to see as much as possible on T1, to see whether we think the two BFCs are identical or near-identical. Settler first is pretty much only an option for something high-powered like settling on the marble, right? So that's what we need to figure out, I think.
I wonder if those marble-south tiles are now on a different river.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

a) The river to the south stops at the bottom of the screenshot. It was definitely custom-made, Dhoom

Hmm, then all bets are off, particularly about it leading to a coastline.

b) It looks like there are 9 other civs, 2 in one team.

Trollololol! Oh, Neilmeister, that trickster! I wouldn't be surprised to find out that one of the teammates was the Barbs!

c) All 9 rivals have a city already; Buddhism has been founded and spread to each of them. The Mahabodhi has been built.

Bwahahahaha! Well, the Apostolic Palace just took on a whole new flavour... Religious Victory with us being locked into Hinduism is going to be tough as nails, whereas if the Apostolic Palace gets built by a Buddhist AI, then the AIs will have a TON of Hammers to use against us.

Not only that, but a Buddhist Apostolic Palace could spell our instant doom to a Religious Victory loss as soon as we capture a Buddhist City, thus we really can't let that be built as a Buddhist one.

Thus, even if we don't go for an AP Victory, it will likely still be worth our while to chase after that Wonder... and perhaps even just build it ourselves in Hinduism.

There are 1784 land tiles, but the population score component shows 0/1165
That means there are a lot of tiles which don't yield much food.

The scarier part is that many of those squares could be islands of Peaks that cannot be claimed via Domination, meaning that Domination and Conquest may take nearly the same amount of City captures, but without Conquest having the option of razing AI Cities. Tough times, indeed.

The map is Cylindrical, Tropical, Low Sea level.

Astronomy might not be required and might not even help if there aren't that many seas or at least if there aren't that many coastally-accessible AI Cities.

It's odd that a Tropical map would have so little Food... doesn't Tropical usually have a ton of Grassland? I'd imagine that there are some nice areas of the world (unless the entire map was edited, in which case Neilmeister just created a lot of excess work for himself), but the rest has a lot of plopped-down Peaks (if he's really mean) or Tundra (if he's fairer--are you listening, Neilmeister??? ).

I have a hunch the Buddhist holy city is unreachable.

With all of these customizations, I wouldn't put it past Neilmeister. Now we just need to trick an AI to go into the World Builder and remove Buddhism from one City, which should auto-destroy the Shrine in the Buddhist Holy City.

At least one AI will have a lot of Gold for trade...

If we go for a military victory, we'll need to avoid a Buddhist Apostolic Palace - that would be very painful.

Heck, we would need to avoid one for any Victory. Even if we went for Cultural, which would probably be the Victory Condition with the least amount of Cities required, we'd WANT Religions to auto-spread to us (including Buddhism), whereas any other Victory Condition would likely result in us getting Buddhism at some point anyway, due to having to build more Cities.


Diplo or Religious Victory MIGHT be slightly easier after Liberalism gets spread around (for Free Speech), but AIs tend to stick to a Religion longer than they otherwise would if other players are running said Religion, so don't count on them switching to Free Religion.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I'd like to see as much as possible on T1, to see whether we think the two BFCs are identical or near-identical. Settler first is pretty much only an option for something high-powered like settling on the marble, right? So that's what we need to figure out, I think.

Warrior to SWS leaves 4 BFC tiles fogged, whereas SES leaves 3 BFC tiles fogged. More or less the same.

So which is more important:

1. Knowing the river tiles on T1
2. Knowing 1 more BFC and mapping a possibly safer, possibly more effective scouting path.

 

[ZPV]

The scarier part is that many of those squares could be islands of Peaks that cannot be claimed via Domination, meaning that Domination and Conquest may take nearly the same amount of City captures, but without Conquest having the option of razing AI Cities. Tough times, indeed.
[...]
It's odd that a Tropical map would have so little Food... doesn't Tropical usually have a ton of Grassland? I'd imagine that there are some nice areas of the world (unless the entire map was edited, in which case Neilmeister just created a lot of excess work for himself), but the rest has a lot of plopped-down Peaks (if he's really mean) or Tundra (if he's fairer--are you listening, Neilmeister??? ).

Global Highlands matches the land/population score numbers pretty well.
That could make for virtually any land formation, and any of the mountain patterns are feasible.
edit: ironically, one of the maps I rolled to test this had both stone and marble on plains hills, in the initial BFC.

Tropical just makes the belt of jungle at the equator a bit wider, and the ice and tundra at the poles a bit narrower.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

ZPV, since they all start with Buddhism and will probably all revolt to Buddhism this turn, how does that affect whether they try for Poly?

Are you thinking what I'm thinking (Agriculture first)?

Nahhhh, I'm not really up for that. While it could work out in our favour, it would be a boring 4 months to have to sit it out in shame.

Even if a few other teams make a successful gambit, we can still beat them!!!

1800 tiles!!! Ok, maybe domination's not the quickest after all...

How does that number play out? I mean, do you know roughly how many squares on the map we'd need to own and approximately how many Cities we'd need? Say, perhaps esitmate that each City only has its fat cross for Cultural Borders and that somewhere around 1/4 of each City's squares are water.

Unless they have the Buddhist holy city, they'll switch to Hindu or Judaism as soon as they found them. I've done some testing with this in preparing one WOTM.

Except that we don't know if:
a) The Buddhist Holy City owner is Isabella or someone that is likely to found Judaism
AND
b) We have to found Hinduism
AND
c) The number of Cities in a Religion plays a heavy factor, so if the AI that founds Confucianism/Christianity already has 2 or 3 Buddhist Cities, they will be far less likely to switch Religions, even with a free Missionary

So, we pretty much have to count on a predominantly-Buddhist-State-Religion world.

What could he have done to make sure weaker teams win?

If there is an unreachable City, Neilmeister could have nerfed it so that this AI can't expand to additional Cities, making them less likely to build late-game Wonders. I'm not sure how it works, but some AIs will build Stonehenge and The Great Wall with only one City but later Wonders are rarer to be built if they are stuck with only 1 City to their names.

He could have made the Buddhist Holy City so easy to capture that any team could capture it.

A lot of the terrible land could be in the AIs' fat crosses or surrounding them, giving them far more terrible land to work with (and far more terrible land for Conquest/Domination to capture).

He could have put in several non-Religious AIs, which would mean that there would be:
i. Less Religious hatred toward us Hindus
AND
ii. Less competition for Religions, meaning that we could feasibly found all other 6 of them for an easier Cultural Victory

BOth rocks have westerly hills that will quickly defog extra tiles. Furthermore, the warrior sees less on the Marble and on Marble1W than he sees from Marble1E or Marble2E.

So should we send the warrior SE, planning to send it S on T1?

Before we move the Warrior, though, are there any plans to do any fog-gazing?

I suppose that I could take a crack at doing so.

 

[ZPV]

Warrior to SWS leaves 4 BFC tiles fogged, whereas SES leaves 3 BFC tiles fogged. More or less the same.

So which is more important:

1. Knowing the river tiles on T1
2. Knowing 1 more BFC and mapping a possibly safer, possibly more effective scouting path.

4 tiles vs 3 tiles isn't too bad - somehow I thought it was worse than this.
Ok, I now have no strong opinion on SE-S vs SW-S. If we miss something important we can blame neil,

 

[ZPV]

How does that number play out? I mean, do you know roughly how many squares on the map we'd need to own and approximately how many Cities we'd need? Say, perhaps esitmate that each City only has its fat cross for Cultural Borders and that somewhere around 1/4 of each City's squares are water.
[...]
So, we pretty much have to count on a predominantly-Buddhist-State-Religion world.
[...]
Before we move the Warrior, though, are there any plans to do any fog-gazing?

1. We'd need 1059 tiles for domination - equivalent to 51 fat crosses with perfect placement.
2. A Buddhist world is not necessarily a love-fest. With Aggressive AI and the right leaders, peaceweight differences, etc, could lead to wars and long-running feuds before religious plusmods dominate.
3. There's nothing to see. There are some grasslands. There's a forest. There's a hill or two.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I say we get a move on. As in, bbp take your choice of SE or SW and let her rip. (I'm still in fast mode from that g'dang SG14...)

 

[Dhoomstriker]

There's a Forest NE + NE of the Settler (+1 Forest for the Stone location), but yeah, fog-gazing probably isn't going to tell us all that much.

I'm all for moving 1SE but will be okay with 1SW, too.

 

[Mitchum]

I'm fine with warrior SW or SE too.

 

[babybluepants]

Went SW:

Spoiler :

Nothing interesting. I'll just move the settler to the stone in a bit.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I'll just move the settler to the stone in a bit.

I'm fine with moving the Settler to the Stone. There's not enough Food visible to justify settling on the Corn (not like we were ever serious about that option, were we, LC? ).