ALC Game 22: Arabs/Saladin

[Nares]

From what I remember, Louis is the most wonderspam happy AI from vanilla CIV.

I doubt much has changed.

 

[Mknn]

If the colors on those resources are correct ...

Doh! Stupid colors ...

 

[BalbanesBeoulve]

While he does spam wonders, he's also a warmonger. He usually can't do both at the same time though.

 

[Bandobras Took]

Offhand, I've always thought it a bad idea to park a city close to a creative leader in the early game to try and steal resources. It tends to backfire.

I'm going to speak again in favor of archery. Even if you discover Bronze somewhere, you've still got to hook it up before you can get something other than warriors. Having a few Protective Archers to guard your expansion phase is a safer bet.

 

[CivCorpse]

I vote for the pretty map.

 

[Nares]

This is where I stopped, because I thought we should discuss what to research next, among other things.

Everything.

What are the benefits of an early religion? It seems to be the only thing going for you.

Temples, which work well with your Spiritual trait, but Priesthood seems out of the way currently. And now that we have an early religion, should we even make an effort to pick up other religions? It's looking like the other civs are guaranteed to be engaging in some sort of religious lovefest by the time we get there.

Hunting, Archery, Pottery, Writing. Screw religion or wonderspam. Run scientists while growing your cottages. As of now, I think we only need one for an Academy in our capital. Afterwards, run priests for settling.

Let us know when Monotheism no longer offers founding a religion. Hopefully it's founded far far away.

 

[joyodongo]

I've played a shadow game until BC2700 following the same tech path (see my previous post). When I got my 2nd warrior i took him out of the city exploring as well... When he was 2 tiles far from the BFC a horde of 4 barb archers came and took Mecca

After reloading and leaving the warrior within in didn't happen again. After reloading again and taking the warrior out it happened again 1 out of 2 times more...

Is it just bad luck or does it mean that in emperor you don't have to leave your city alone?

 

[Gliese 581]

I've played a shadow game until BC2700 following the same tech path (see my previous post). When I got my 2nd warrior i took him out of the city exploring as well... When he was 2 tiles far from the BFC a horde of 4 barb archers came and took Mecca

After reloading and leaving the warrior within in didn't happen again. After reloading again and taking the warrior out it happened again 1 out of 2 times more...

Is it just bad luck or does it mean that in emperor you don't have to leave your city alone?

Ok someone can correct me if I'm wrong here, but this is what I think is going on.
Each game has a random seed that determines what is going to happen, every time you change a decision, the seed changes so something else might happen, but if you go through the exact same motions you will have the same thing happening again and again no matter how many times you reload unless you've ticked the options to generate a new seed with each load when you started the game.
So for example, I'm also playing a shadow game and my first two turns were exactly the same as Sisiutil's so I also popped fishing from the hut.

 

[Validator]

Ok someone can correct me if I'm wrong here, but this is what I think is going on.
Each game has a random seed that determines what is going to happen, every time you change a decision, the seed changes so something else might happen, but if you go through the exact same motions you will have the same thing happening again and again no matter how many times you reload unless you've ticked the options to generate a new seed with each load when you started the game.
So for example, I'm also playing a shadow game and my first two turns were exactly the same as Sisiutil's so I also popped fishing from the hut.

You've got the general idea right although the specific technical details are a bit off.

What happens is the game's Random Number Generator (RNG) generates a series of random numbers that will always be the same when starting from the same seed. The random numbers are used in many different ways by the program, such as barb spawning, BtS random events, hut "rewards", combat results, AI decision-making, etc. Each time one of these randomness influenced occurrences happen it uses the next number in the RNG sequence.

Since the default setting saves the seed when the game is saved, if you make the exact same moves when starting from the same save you'll get the same results from each of these random occurrences every time (the same random number in the sequence is used to resolve each random occurrence). As soon as you deviate in your actions there is a chance that a different number of random numbers will be used than was used during the initial playing. That effectively throws the RNG sequence off, so each random occurrence will use a different random number, and therefore may turn out differently.

So to use the example of the nearby hut in this game if you move the warrior directly to it and pop it on the second turn you'll always get Fishing from it. If you wait and grab it on the next turn you'll probably get something different since many additional numbers in the RNG sequence will be used in resolving the additional game turn.

I don't know if that makes it any clearer, but that's what's actually happening behind the scenes.

 

[kazapp]

I've played a shadow game until BC2700 following the same tech path (see my previous post). When I got my 2nd warrior i took him out of the city exploring as well... When he was 2 tiles far from the BFC a horde of 4 barb archers came and took Mecca

After reloading and leaving the warrior within in didn't happen again. After reloading again and taking the warrior out it happened again 1 out of 2 times more...

Is it just bad luck or does it mean that in emperor you don't have to leave your city alone?

Four barb units? Sounds like a random event to me - sure you didn't get a message someone-or-other had "assembled a horde to ravage the world" or the like?

I once played a Ramesses game where I was happily War Chariot rushing my neighbours, and thus had bypassed Archery, and didn't have a Copper in sight, when suddenly four barb Spearmen appeared! Tell me that was a coincidence...

Turned out they weren't interested in the usual rape and plunder - instead they had all bought tickets on a around-the-world tourist trip , they walked right through my empire (surrounded by nervous WC's) and disappeared into the wilderness, but that's a story for another thread...

 

[vicawoo]

I'd grab the corn sheep city and then the seafood silver city. I wouldn't skip the crabs, because I'd rather have it run specialists. The rest of the land between you isn't so great, he can grab the incense if he wants. The food to the right is food rich and will make for some good whipping/specialists, that is, a FE.

You're pinned in, so your medium term objective is to kill Louis. I'd go archery for now, then bronze working, then pottery or writing.

 

[Validator]

In regards to the Green Silver city (Validator's blue), I prefer ignoring the Crabs in favour of grabbing more Fresh Water tiles. With a Lighthouse, each is worth 3 for a collective +6 . The Crabs can only offer +3 by itself.

Your site for the silver city will provide a bit more food, but it also requires somewhat higher population to get there. If we assume that those cities would be working only the positive food tiles and then as many specialists as can be supported, my site allows 5 specialists at pop 8, and that's as good as it gets. Your site allows 4 specialists at pop 7, 5 specialists at pop 10 and 6 specialists at pop 13. One other issue to keep in mind is that some of the lake tiles may be lost to French culture.

Which site is better? I'm not really sure. But it's probably not significant at this point since neither site seems to offer enough to warrant settling it early. Louis will probably have a city in that area by the time Sisiutil will be ready to settle there.

As to the differences in the rest of our city site locations:

Your city site in the center (white) seems to be located where it is to get an oasis tile, but at the expense of adding a number of low quality tiles into the fat cross. I'm not a big fan of oasis tiles since they can't be improved. I'd rather go for more tiles that have medium to long term potential

Your city site on the south coast (blue) is definitely better than my white dot in that area. I was thinking of using the fish to feed a whaling city, but it's probably not worth it.

Your city site to the SE of Mecca is on the only hill in the area (although it is a plains hill). I would rather settle next to the hill so it can be mined to provide some production. Your site would have to whip any buildings constructed there. That may not be a problem since Saladin is Spiritual. But it still may be costly to have to switch out of Caste System for 5 turns every once in a while just so that this city can whip something.

Again it seems that the main reason for your red city's location is that it grabs the oasis tile, again at the cost of bringing a lot of low value tiles into the fat cross. I strongly considered putting the city SE of the lake to gain the fresh water, but figured that given the number of health resources that fresh water wasn't worth getting the low quality tiles in the north. My city site would also grab the incense with its second border expansion.

I'm not sure there's much reason to block Louis moving eastward. Those sites aren't the greatest and probably wouldn't be a horrible loss ... definitely not worth tanking our economy early to 'steal' from him.

I wouldn't go quite that far. Any site with 2 food resources is pretty useful. Also keep in mind we don't know where copper/iron are going to show up. IMO it really comes down to how long it's going to be before Sisiutil is ready to take on Louis. There isn't much quality land on the eastern part of this continent. Sisiutil may have trouble keeping up. And one more city for Louis, one less for Sisiutil isn't going to help.

When it comes time for war this city will also provide a good launching point for attacking France.

The issue is whether the economic hit from settling there early is worth the medium term gains from having an additional city. Sisiutil will need to decide.

 

[Munch]

Some could-be-bad news: someone else founded an early religion on the 14th turn.

I kept my fingers crossed and assumed that this was someone like Isabella researching the cheaper Meditation technology. I kept researching Polytheism.

There's no need to 'keep your fingers crossed', you could have determined easily whether Christianity was founded from the Meditation tech! If you had clicked your green research bar at the top of the screen it would have shown all techs available, including the Meditation and Polytheism thumbnails, only one of which would have the little hands praying symbol. That would be the tech yet to be discovered, and the tech yet to give a religion.

 

[teamdresch]

I'm betting one of those unforested grassland tiles in your BFC has a metal - go Bronze Working!

 

[Nares]

Sorry, but I can't seem to upload a dotmap atm.

I would put one city 2N of the Sheep that are West of Mecca.

I would put one city 2E of the Sheep that are Southwest of Mecca.

I would put one city 2W of the Corn that is North of Mecca.

I would put one city 1N of the Crabs that are Southeast of Mecca.

 

[r_rolo1]

Louis + Marble = Wonderspam......

This means that Louis can be a nice target for a early war ( not necessarily a rush... in fact it is better to give time for Louis to build a useful wonder or two ). This means that you should go BW for now .... After that beelining the UB becomes #1 priority. IMHO Archery does not worth the price now ( but sometimes I get archery from Internet.... )

 

[ace94d]

My two cents:

Start research on Bronze Working and take a chance! Look at all those spots: Plenty of Bronze places! Plus, you have some floodplains, and with Fishing, maybe could get another city out there that has some commerce! If it fails, Hunting---> Archery won't hurt TOO much.

My city ideas, which are probably not too good:

One above the crab to your west. Grabs Silk/Pig/Crab with minimal overlap with Mecca.

One spot further up from OTAKU's Yellow site. Less overlap with his Corn-Production site, and allows slightly better coast-to-unforessen coast transportation. Also has less harder-to-work plains, though it does lose out on a hill.

The blue Fish/Sheep/Silk area.

The White city.

The Corn-Production city.

In that order.

 

[patagonia]

With a distant silver the only pre-calendar happy (and even then only silk and incense around), the +2 from religion and temples is sure going to come in handy. Good job Saladin's found Allah.

I vote for hunting > archery next to keep the barbs at bay (there's a lot of desert between you and Louis for them to spawn in) and settling the second city on Validator's red dot since it's by far the strongest location available to you. That would be my HE city a little down the line - it's got great production early and gets even better later in the game when you can replace riverside farms with a watermill on every tile there.

None of the other locations currently on offer are that great so I'd wait to see where bronze pops up before taking the plunge on city number 3. If no bronze, I'd settle Validator's white dot to pick up pigs, crabs and wheat 3rd. It's a site safe from AI expansion (and therefore not normally a priority), but the easiest spot to run a pile of specialists from (possible NE city) so the sooner you can get a Madrassa whipped there and hire some priests the better. Blue dot's the only other viable alternative for that role, but is a real stretch at this stage, especially with French culture to contend with.

Hunting > archery > BW > pottery > (priesthood) > writing seems like a good tech order from here.

==========

Edit:

One thing that may be worth considering is the mechanics of religion spread. Coastal cities are good in this regard since they open up trade with more distant neighbours, but do you need to know sailing yourself for this, or do only they need to know it? If you do, then sailing becomes a higher priority if your plans are to convert Sulieman (as does getting an exploratory workboat out).

 

[joyodongo]

You've got the general idea right although the specific technical details are a bit off.

What happens is the game's Random Number Generator (RNG) generates a series of random numbers that will always be the same when starting from the same seed. The random numbers are used in many different ways by the program, such as barb spawning, BtS random events, hut "rewards", combat results, AI decision-making, etc. Each time one of these randomness influenced occurrences happen it uses the next number in the RNG sequence.

Since the default setting saves the seed when the game is saved, if you make the exact same moves when starting from the same save you'll get the same results from each of these random occurrences every time (the same random number in the sequence is used to resolve each random occurrence). As soon as you deviate in your actions there is a chance that a different number of random numbers will be used than was used during the initial playing. That effectively throws the RNG sequence off, so each random occurrence will use a different random number, and therefore may turn out differently.

So to use the example of the nearby hut in this game if you move the warrior directly to it and pop it on the second turn you'll always get Fishing from it. If you wait and grab it on the next turn you'll probably get something different since many additional numbers in the RNG sequence will be used in resolving the additional game turn.

I don't know if that makes it any clearer, but that's what's actually happening behind the scenes.

Yes, I also got fishing from the hut... so, it was just bad luck, or did the RNG-or-whatever detected that I left my city alone and in emperor it deserved a higher probability of a 4-archer-horde??? .

As far as the next-moves, I'd bet for BW. There SHOULD be iron or copper in the BFC with only 1 resource so far...

 

[oyzar]

Building workers with alot of food in the food bar just feels sooo wrong... It hurts...