SGOTM 19 - Xteam

[Frederiksberg]

@Hawk: I don't like to delay settling the city. How many turns are we talking about? It's convenient to have overlap between the capital and our 2nd city. The plan is that the 2nd city can have the corn tile when the sugar tiles are farmed. If there are more resources down south we can settle another city to capture them. I find it highly unlikely that we shouldn't be able to find ~8 spots to settle. We can already see 4 good sites and the river with the flood plain is also a candidate depending on what else is down there.

@CP: Asoka's capital is a holy city and will have 60% defense before we get there. Our axes will have very low odds. So we need 2 axes per archer + one more to handle unfortunate RNG + one or two more to handle an extra whipped archer. So 5 axes if we feel lucky and 7 if we want to be ~99% certain. From what we can see Asokas capital is quite poor. We need a closer look. And the cost of building 6 axes is 210 hammers while a settler costs only 67 hammers. So it's 3 times as expensive to capture as it is to build. There is also the problem that axes are hard to 2 pop whip while settlers (and workers) are very easy to 2 pop whip.

We need to build some warriors for fog busting and exploration. Perhaps some archers also because the warriors are vulnerable to barb axes and spears and will have to retreat when a barb appears. The barbs should not be underestimated and that's another reason I doubt that very early war is feasible. Best fog busting is done by settling cities. We don't want barb cities to spawn because they will be defended by 3-4 archers and far from easy to take.

In SG16 our biggest mistake was to go to war too early. I think we went to war when we had ~7 cities. Plastic Ducks, who won settled ~14 cites before they started war.

 

[leif erikson]

Agree we need some more fogbusters, as we need to find some more city sites.

Should definitely build Marble city and a city to the north that has both clams and rice, looks like a fairly good production city.

Asoka's capital looks pretty good to me. He has Ivory, for War Elephants, and a river that we can cottage for commerce. It also has a lot of forests to chop, hammers for whatever we need. Having a religious city never hurts either...

Was going to make a dot map but find there really isn't enough info to make one that is intelligent.

Lastly, we have discussed Currency because besides the trade routes, it also provides a valuable tech to trade for Alphabet when it becomes available. Agree that it will be nice to get Calendar as well. And Construction is never far from my mind.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Construction may be preferable as the first tech. It will also trade for Alpha and with cats we can take down a 60% city with axes and then be able to build WE's.

 

[leif erikson]

Perhaps the question we need to ask ourselves is whether our priority is to REX with cheap settlers or whether our priority is to go to war to take good city sites?

 

[Cactus Pete]

Perhaps the question we need to ask ourselves is whether our priority is to REX with cheap settlers or whether our priority is to go to war to take good city sites?

If we can do both (rex while building axes then cats), it will give us a better chance of winning.

 

[leif erikson]

Can we do them simultaneously and well?

 

[Frederiksberg]

My suggestion for the remainder of the set is to settle 1W of pig and build Stonehenge there. We can have it T32 or T33. I think we are going to want the free monument to expand our cultural borders. That way we get excellent fog busting and we can plan our cities with the fat cross in mind.

I've done a little testing and it seems like we need lots of workers. In my test I reached the limit for unit cost with workers and fog busters. 4th city could go to gold/rice. We might want to wait for Currency before the 5th city is founded. The economy was quite bad after that.

I don't see the feasibility of an axe rush before we have a decent core of cities but go ahead and test it if you don't believe me. With unit cost from a stack of axes we will likely go broke fast.

Calendar and Construction are not immediately tradeable with Alpha unless the AI with Alpha also has Math. That's one reason I prefer Currency now. The other reason is that we might need to build wealth for a while. And as soon as we have both Currency and Alpha we can possibly trade for some of the religious techs and sell them for gold. That could be very important to keep our research up without slowing the REX too much.

In the early game commerce is the key because the map is commerce poor pre Calendar. And I'm convinced we need to keep focus on economy while doing a controlled REX. War can come later. It would be nice to have an estimated date for Feudalism so that we can establish when the window closes for an axe/sword/cat attack vs archers.

 

[The-Hawk]

Tech after Math is not an easy decision until we get a better look at the lands immediately around our capital. We are about a dozen turns from math, so that decision can be deferred. I agree we should get our second city out asap. Then maybe the next build after settler->granary in the capital is a warrior to explore south. The worker to the N can show us what is around the horses and then further north. This gives us more data before we decide on Currency.

 

[leif erikson]

My suggestion for the remainder of the set is to settle 1W of pig and build Stonehenge there. We can have it T32 or T33. I think we are going to want the free monument to expand our cultural borders. That way we get excellent fog busting and we can plan our cities with the fat cross in mind.

I'm ready to go along with this plan. Certainly, let's get the city built.

I've done a little testing and it seems like we need lots of workers. In my test I reached the limit for unit cost with workers and fog busters. 4th city could go to gold/rice. We might want to wait for Currency before the 5th city is founded. The economy was quite bad after that.

The economy crashing is my experience as well.

Would really like to see more of the area south of the Marble along that river line. If there is any food around, could be a good commerce city.

Calendar and Construction are not immediately tradeable with Alpha unless the AI with Alpha also has Math. That's one reason I prefer Currency now. The other reason is that we might need to build wealth for a while. And as soon as we have both Currency and Alpha we can possibly trade for some of the religious techs and sell them for gold. That could be very important to keep our research up without slowing the REX too much.

Basically agree with your points. Let's get Math and see where we are and we can decide next tech then.

In the early game commerce is the key because the map is commerce poor pre Calendar. And I'm convinced we need to keep focus on economy while doing a controlled REX. War can come later. It would be nice to have an estimated date for Feudalism so that we can establish when the window closes for an axe/sword/cat attack vs archers.

Went back and looked at an earlier test and Feudalism had not been researched by turn 70, when I stopped.

Agree commerce is a key part of this game.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Tech after Math is not an easy decision until we get a better look at the lands immediately around our capital. We are about a dozen turns from math, so that decision can be deferred. I agree we should get our second city out asap. Then maybe the next build after settler->granary in the capital is a warrior to explore south (need a second worker too). The worker to the N can show us what is around the horses and then further north. This gives us more data before we decide on Currency.

Concur. What about pausing there and testing?

 

[Htadus]

Do you want your cake and Edith too?

Then capture Edith and let her make the cake with all the river side commerce and capture gold. What ever

First, forget about what SG16. It was on Emperor level and had some good surrounding land to want to expand on our own. If you see that kind of land around us please send me that map because the file I downloaded is just crap. Oh yeah, BTW, did anyone else noticed the iron or coal mine that the map maker left for us? So back to this game.

It is a great idea to build a city or 2 before attacking the Gray Capital of aggressive Asoka. (Finally a trait befitting one of the most blood thirsty leaders of history.) But we do not want him to die off. That would not be the best use of a Immortal AI who will continue to try expand and build workers.

So. Because we are a Rax civ it won't take that long to do a little expansion, even to build up to 3, double pop whip settlers for 3 cities,the problem is there is no good land to get so freaking excited about. But let just say we do just that and expand to 4 cities total because we can. We should do it in an intelligent manner. That is to build workers to build roads to the potential sites ahead of founding and to immediately improve tiles for the city. Oh yes before I forget it. Since science is the bottleneck, lets cottage the riverside sugar instead of farming it. We can farm the other. I am in agreement about that pig city since it also will have marble in it. But it would be better if we can see what is laying just south of that area. Stone? who know? Personally, I would rather place a blocking city near the Bizz on the lake with Ivory, cow and rice in the BFC and just start building axes, but that is my personal style. This way I can make sure I have direct acces to the Gray capital without having to go through his second city. I would just ignore the road for that kind of crazy move.

So please consider delaying the settler until we have the road build to the pig site if we are going to found that as our first city. I personally think we should build a worker before but I do not care to argue about it.

About the time we build our 2nd city Immortal AI should be building its 2nd city. This is when I would attack with about 6-8 axes but we do not need to hurry since AI will be in the expansion mode for another 20-30 turns after that second city giving us some space but it will also add more culture to that city. We can have OB with Asoka and know how many defenders are in the capital before attacking and plan accordingly.

Sorry I have no more time to make this argument. But I will cast my self with the currency next group. I think and am sure of AI leaning alpha soon enough as well as math but we need math now. I am not in favor of SH over a rush for the record.

 

[Cactus Pete]

"did anyone else noticed the iron or coal mine that the map maker left for us? " I certainly didn't. Where is it?

"I am not in favor of SH over a rush" Concur.

 

[The-Hawk]

So please consider delaying the settler until we have the road build to the pig site if we are going to found that as our first city. I personally think we should build a worker before but I do not care to argue about it.

If worker starts roading immediately and we let the capital grow to pop 4 before switching and whipping, the road is done in time.

(need a second worker too).

In my testing, I built settler -> granary -> warrior (to go N and hold city 3 spot) -> worker. This got the second worker out in time to road up to the northern site. However, as I said before, I am thinking we need another warrior asap to scout south and have a look at our neighbors lands.

My suggestion for the remainder of the set is to settle 1W of pig and build Stonehenge there

I generally am not a fan of Henge, but I do see some merit if we are REXing. On the other hand, whipping monuments where needed does generate some hammers.

Calendar and Construction are not immediately tradeable with Alpha unless the AI with Alpha also has Math. That's one reason I prefer Currency now. The other reason is that we might need to build wealth for a while. And as soon as we have both Currency and Alpha we can possibly trade for some of the religious techs and sell them for gold. That could be very important to keep our research up without slowing the REX too much.

Lots of merit in this. Early axe rush with the poor commerce on the map could break us. Of course this might be a reason to beeline GLib as well.

 

[leif erikson]

Did a couple of tests this morning. Both focused on early war with the Constantinople(?).

In the first, I follow tech path Math to Construction and our economy suffered, a lot.
edit - also built 4 cities, including the Gold City up north, that may have helped the economy collapse.

In the second (uploaded), I followed tech path Math to Currency and I think this is the way to go.
edit - In the second game, only built 3 cities.

However, also think we will need to have Construction to attack, as you can see in the save that is attached.

edit - forgot to add that barbs are a pita!

 

[The-Hawk]

Leif, very useful test . It certainly shows the risks of an early axe rush... your economy is tanking from the units costs and there is always risk we will come up against long odds without cats.

I would conclude from the test that we should not go for half measures. I.e. mix Currency (a REX tech) with an axe rush. In your test, currency is not helping much, would have been better off with construction next. We should either commit to REX (currency and settlers) or commit to early combat (lots of axes asap, maybe before city 3).

I'm starting to lean more towards Fred's view. Our neighbor is a bit far for a pure axe rush. We probably are better of REXing aggressively, then going after him with cats.

 

[leif erikson]

Actually, Currency is helping quite a bit. I used up the entire 200 additional Gold we received getting to this point and was still negative before getting Currency.

In addition, there are now trades we can make with Currency that should help us.

 

[Cactus Pete]

So, Hawk, are you advocating rex/Currency, then Construction/rush?

 

[The-Hawk]

So, Hawk, are you advocating rex/Currency, then Construction/rush?

I am leaning that way. I think we can play through Math and settling city two before deciding. Hopefully we will have a better idea of future city sites by then.

EDIT: Btw, I went into Leif's save, used WB to drop a few cats onto the Axe stack and took two cities. Maintenance from them will be pretty intense.

 

[Htadus]

@CP, the mine is 3SE of the Ethiopian capital.

As for the idea of Gray capital is too far away for a rush, it is only 8 tiles west and 1 tile south of us and if we have 2 workers roading that way we can have the road built in no time...ok about 9 turns. The gold city, which is a useful city, is 7 north and 3 tiles west of us. I am pretty sure that will have more maintenance attached to it.

Well I am glad at least all are seeing the point of currency being important. If we choose to not rush Asoka during his expansion, I hope we give consideration head to Literature after currency is learned instead of heading to construction.

I have about an hour to mess around today. So I will post a game of what I am suggesting. If it is a fail, I will state so.

 

[leif erikson]

In the first game I played this morning, I built the Gold City. It is killer for maintenance, especially since I built it so that food was in the initial 9-tiles, which left the Gold for the BFC. So no commerce bonus until we get the borders expanded. Between the army and Gold City, we were losing 1 unit per turn at 0% research.