SGOTM 20 - Misfit Gypsy Nuts

[adrianj]

I'm not going to go to the trouble with drawing randomly from a hat or rolling dice. I've simply gone with a (mostly) alphabetical order.

@McArine ... I've placed you at the end, since I don't think you've posted in the thread yet.

The roster order is:

1. Haphazard1 Up Now!
2. da_Vinci On Deck
3. nocho
4. Ronnie1
5. Sleepless
6. McArine

Advising:
Ororo, adrianj

 

[haphazard1]

Do we want to play through production of the worker? Or should we continue step by step for a while longer?

I would like to at least move the scout NE-E and find out who controls those borders. After that I would move the scout 1 space per turn for safety. The warrior can explore a little along the mountain line, but never getting further from our capital than our visibility to make sure no barbs can slip past. Archer to fortify on its current hill to keep an eye on the south and east, but not risk anything else.

Stopping conditions would be meeting any AI, unexpected barbs attacking our units or approaching the capital, any other unexpected happenings.

Mostly just some cautious exploration while waiting for the worker to complete, as there is not much else we can do until we can start improving the capital. Grab screenshots of demos on T3 to check for creative AIs, watch demos and religion screens generally for changes.

 

[nocho]

I think going turn by turn for the first 2 or 3 turns would be wise, after that go to worker.

I think in the northern area the scout can make 2 moves a turn. It seemed clearly hinted from the description that (only) the south is perilous.

 

[da_Vinci]

Thinking ahead, what might we want the first build after worker to be? With an archer in hand, maybe it does not have to be a warrior. But with extra barbs, maybe it does?

dV

 

[haphazard1]

After the worker I assume we want to start growing. Not a lot of choices at that point: scout, warrior, barracks is about it. We already have one scout and with barbs roaming another would just die quickly. A barracks doesn't seem necessary for a little while, although the extra promotion would be nice to have. At least one or two warriors seems like a good idea, just to have some units we can send out exploring. Maybe even in pairs?

OK, if we stick to single turns for a bit longer:

Scout NE-E
Warrior into capital (on his way north)
Archer fortify on hill

Any objections?

 

[Sleepless]

Yep agree with taking it slowly for the first couple of turns. It does look like a barb cities boundaries to the East. Might have a couple of religions in it to pop borders in 1 turn..

If were on a pangea type map there could be a land route along the South to the land we can see East of the scout. Hopefully an Ai will then send out an exploring wb and lure our tireme away.

 

[nocho]

@haph, no objections... We're on worker and AH, right?

 

[Ororo]

Archer fortify on hill

Any objections?

Can somebody please test the combat results of two warriors attacking an archer fortified on a hill for 1 turn? 20 tries would be absolutely representative. I would do so myself but I have no access to my civ computer until tomorrow evening. If the Archer survives in 18+/20 games I am willing to take the risk.

 

[haphazard1]

It does look like a barb cities boundaries to the East. Might have a couple of religions in it to pop borders in 1 turn.

The same thought had occurred to me. This might give us early access to a religion (or two). But the border could also have popped from pre-placed buildings in the city, or even because the barb city was created in WB with a set amount of culture. I am not sure if the border would have popped before turn 0 ended.

If were on a pangea type map there could be a land route along the South to the land we can see East of the scout. Hopefully an Ai will then send out an exploring wb and lure our tireme away.

We are on a "modified" pangaea, whatever exactly that means. Pollux could have done almost anything with the map. I do like the idea of an AI drawing off that trireme, though.

@haph, no objections... We're on worker and AH, right?

Yep, Silver Lining is building a worker and we are researching AH. I did not see adrianj's comment about not selecting a tech until after I had played. But I can not really see any reason we would not research AH in this case so we can start improving our best tiles.

Can somebody please test the combat results of two warriors attacking an archer fortified on a hill for 1 turn? 20 tries would be absolutely representative. I would do so myself but I have no access to my civ computer until tomorrow evening. If the Archer survives in 18+/20 games I am willing to take the risk.

I tried to do a test in WB with 25 archers on hills, each with 2 barb warriors next to them with the generic "attack" script. But none of the barb warriors would attack -- they all just ran away. I guess I could try a test with us controlling the warriors and making the archer some random AI. But this would not capture any barb fighting bonus/penalty that would apply on immortal difficulty. Anyone know what that factor might be?

 

[nocho]

^ Regarding the odds against barbs, I thought that generally combat odds and outcome are essentially independent from level. The only thing is the free wins you get for the first x barb fights on lower levels. X would be 0 on immortal. So you could do the test against whatever AI, should be representative. But probably the warriors will just run away in the real game too... Or shelter in the fort.

 

[haphazard1]

I thought there was a general bonus/penalty against barb units, depending on difficulty? I think it was a bonus below Prince difficulty, and maybe a penalty above? But I am not sure, so maybe there isn't anything. Certainly we are not getting better odds at immortal.

 

[nocho]

If there is, then I'm unaware of it. I'm not in the opportunity to test it right now, but I think we can afford the gamble with the archer. I suspect the warriors won't attack anyway.

For me ok to move ahead as per post #105,

 

[Ronnie1]

I just ran 20 tests and am very confident in leaving the archer on the hill.

The first 5 tests only had 2 warriors in them. We survived all 5 of those tests with 5/10 warriors attacking. 2 times both attacked, 2 times both ran, 1 time they split duties. After that I put as many as 5 warriors in attacking range to ensure they would attack. Most of the attacks we had NO FORTIFY bonus. 3 times out of 15, all ran away. 1 time out of 20 our archer died to 2 attackers. He died to 4 attackers 2 times, died to 3 attackers 1 time. He survived 4 attackers 2 times, survived 3 attackers 2 times. All the remaining tests were a combination of survival of 1-2 attacks with the remaining warriors running.

I say proceed as planned in post #105.

Can I assume warrior will be hugging the mountains and the scout will be on the coast going forward?

 

[da_Vinci]

Can I assume warrior will be hugging the mountains and the scout will be on the coast going forward?

The #105 plan talks about warrior to capital, and heading north.

Maybe we want to take the warrior SW and then south to see what is around the deer? The idea of founding a city for hammers based on the deer as city #2 still appeals to me. So we might want to see the lay of the land down there.

Do we start with hunting? Or is the scout atypical for Mehmed? In any case, since we need hunting for the deer, maybe making some cheap MP warriors while we can is the way to go with builds after worker.

dV

 

[McArine]

Hello all, checking in.

I was on vacation last week, and has only just caught up with the posts.
I agree with staying put with archer, NE-E for the scout, and for only playing 1 turn atm.
Warrior, I don't see an obvious route for this atm, as I don't see the obvious place for our second city. I think it should go south, and see what's around the deer, since the scout is probably going north, and the archer is staying put, then we will be missing exploration in the south.

It's fine that I've been placed last in the roster, as I wont have much time to play the next 5 weeks. My calendar is pretty much full of more vacations and business trips. But come the 18th of august, I should be ready again. I will try to keep up with the posts, and come with comments whenever I can.

 

[BSPollux]

Nice to see you're here McArine!
Hope you'll enjoy the game, even if you're busy.

 

[haphazard1]

Good to hear from you, McArine! I hope your vacation(s) have been/will be fun!

OK, sounds like archer on hill is pretty safe, at least for the moment. And the scout can examine the north, moving carefully when entering unknown areas. The warrior could carefully check out the south, but I would like a little more info on the north to make sure there are not any lurking barbs close to our undefended capital before moving him very far south. We have time before we will be even close to having a settler ready to go, so playing cautiously should not cause us trouble.

I am grabbing the save to play one turn, will return soon-ish with results.

 

[haphazard1]

T1 played, more interesting map info and more barb excitement! This game is definitely off to an interesting start....

Scout moves NE-E as planned, found some interesting things both good and bad.

Spoiler :

A second barb trireme. Accessing seafood is going to be very expensive. But there is even more seafood present, so it may be worth it. Also, marble! Is that a different land mass, or is there a connection to the north? Even with a land connection I don't know if we could get the marble early enough for an Oracle attempt, but some careful (1 move/turn) scouting should find out. Also, plains cows for hammers...maybe including ship-building to clear the barb-infested waters?

The borders we saw are definitely barb, and are expanded. So probably that barb city has religious culture, although it could still be non-religious culture through pre-placed buildings.

The archer fortified on its hill, and I moved the warrior NW to reveal another mountain in the wall. As noted previously, I did not want to move the warrior too far from the capital until we know more.

I hit end turn, and the barbs attacked our archer! Fortunately he survived both battles, and is now 1.3/3.0 with 3/2 XP. We can promote him to partially heal, and at least for the next turn nothing should be able to reach him. So he can heal in place and keep fortifying, or we can retreat him. We could even move him into the fort, although without knowing if there are more barbs in the fog I think that is too risky. Maybe once he is at full health again?

Demographics showed a couple changes on turn 2:

Spoiler :

Rival best GNP went from 20 to 22, while rival average GNP actually dropped from 17 to 16. We also see a change in rival best hammers from 2 to 3, matching ours, but rival average hammers remains at 1 (rounding, presumably). So at least one AI shifted tiles for more hammers at the expense of GNP, but one AI increased GNP. Hmmm, confusing.

No moves made on T2 yet, what should we do next? I like scout NW, warrior not sure, archer to promote and heal in place. Thoughts/ideas/suggestions?

We actually had some log action this time. Upload log:

Spoiler :

Here is your Session Turn Log from 3960 BC to 3920 BC:

Turn 1, 3960 BC: Barbarian's Warrior (2.00) vs Mehmed's Archer (4.50)
Turn 1, 3960 BC: Combat Odds: 0.3%
Turn 1, 3960 BC: (Plot Defense: +25%)
Turn 1, 3960 BC: (Hills Defense: +25%)
Turn 1, 3960 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 29 (71/100HP)
Turn 1, 3960 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 29 (42/100HP)
Turn 1, 3960 BC: Mehmed's Archer is hit for 13 (87/100HP)
Turn 1, 3960 BC: Mehmed's Archer is hit for 13 (74/100HP)
Turn 1, 3960 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 29 (13/100HP)
Turn 1, 3960 BC: Mehmed's Archer is hit for 13 (61/100HP)
Turn 1, 3960 BC: Mehmed's Archer is hit for 13 (48/100HP)
Turn 1, 3960 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 29 (0/100HP)
Turn 1, 3960 BC: Mehmed's Archer has defeated Barbarian's Warrior!
Turn 1, 3960 BC: While defending, your Archer has killed a Barbarian Warrior!
Turn 1, 3960 BC: Barbarian's Warrior (2.00) vs Mehmed's Archer (2.16)
Turn 1, 3960 BC: Combat Odds: 38.1%
Turn 1, 3960 BC: (Plot Defense: +25%)
Turn 1, 3960 BC: (Hills Defense: +25%)
Turn 1, 3960 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 25 (75/100HP)
Turn 1, 3960 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 25 (50/100HP)
Turn 1, 3960 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 25 (25/100HP)
Turn 1, 3960 BC: Mehmed's Archer is hit for 15 (33/100HP)
Turn 1, 3960 BC: Barbarian's Warrior is hit for 25 (0/100HP)
Turn 1, 3960 BC: Mehmed's Archer has defeated Barbarian's Warrior!
Turn 1, 3960 BC: While defending, your Archer has killed a Barbarian Warrior!

Buffy log:

Spoiler :

Turn 1/500 (3960 BC) [11-Jul-2014 05:44:18]
100% Research: 9 per turn
0% Gold: 0 per turn, 0 in the bank

After End Turn:

Other Player Actions:
While defending in the wild near Silver Lining, Archer (1.44/3) defeats Barbarian Warrior (Prob Victory: 99.7%)
While defending in the wild near Silver Lining, Archer (0.99/3) defeats Barbarian Warrior (Prob Victory: 61.9%)

 

[haphazard1]

Looking at the combat info in the upload log, that was a lot closer with our archer than I really like. That first barb warrior did over 50% damage despite having 0.3% odds of winning. We are lucky not to have lost our (currently irreplaceable!) CG1 archer.

How to promote the archer? Combat I is always a good general choice, if we expect him to face more barbs in the open. Guerrilla I would work if we plan to keep him on that hill, but it does not match well with the CGI he already has since our capital is not on a hill. CGII could work if we put him in that fort, or retreat him to the capital.

 

[Ronnie1]

Happy travels McA! Sounds like a fun summer.

The 1st Warrior got very lucky to do the damage it did. In one of my tests, we survived 4 warrior attacks and finished with 2.1 health. My average survival health when surviving 2 attacks was 2.26. That was only on a sample size of 5, because some died on the 3rd attack and 4th attack. My average when surviving all attacks for which there is data is 2.12 on 11 data points. Those include surviving 1, 3, and 4 warrior attacks also.

I would promote him Drill 1 and heal on the hill.

Scout NW is the only option really. I believe he is safe to move 2 tiles also. I agree with whoever pointed out that the barbs were said to be to our south. The Triremes are a separate obstacle imo, intended make early contact more difficult by not allowing early coastal city development.

I would send the warrior SW now after more consideration.