BB-01 open succession game--fast space race

[Lord Emsworth]

I've just spotted that there are two volcanoes. One is clearly visible. The other is SE of the spot that we talked about, where the river springs. Not sure if we really want a city there. I'm inclined to agree about spot C in Brasilbear's dotmap.

I am kinda split about that coastal spot. If we place it on the grassland, we can work the hill -- that's true. But that will eventually just make 1 shield difference (a CC on grass will get 1 shield, CC on a hill will get 2 when the town becomes a city). Also, the whole city radius will move north too and so trade a plains tile for a bunch of tundras.

I am tending to something like this for city placement:

Spoiler :

It is a little larger because I stitched several screenshots together. But it does show the coverage of the tiles.

 

[brasilbear]

bb, your pic is from the 2550bc save. Please make another map (with possibly new locations) using the pic or save E has posted. -> 2150bc.

Also, FP normally stands for The Forbidden Palace small wonder. You might want to find a different letter combo for future possible locations.

Opps, fixed it. I used FP to show two possible locations I might consider. Might want to move the D site one to the NE. The E site I'm also not a big fan of. The FP? show a general area I would look at. High shield due to mountains/hills feed by the flood plains.

I also didn't place anything by the gems or furs. Maybe on the next cycle of cities.

 

[LKendter]

I would get the gems and furs quickly with at least one AI visible. Happy and strategic resources are to important to risk losing.

 

[Kulko]

Look what I found here. 5 days ago I was checking if the SG Community is still alive and found only a few already running games, and as soon as I turn my back around a new one pops up.

Is this one already full or do I need to content myself with the lurker status?

Background:
Played Civ 3 for about a few years back in 2008/9 played a lot in SGOTMs and a few others.
I was an Emperor Level player playing succesfully up to deity in SGs. Right now I am relearning things a bit, but its conming back fast And I feel like I am doing ok in COTM 94 which is Demigod Archipelago.

 

[templar_x]

Is this one already full or do I need to content myself with the lurker status?

or?

 

[brasilbear]

Look what I found here. 5 days ago I was checking if the SG Community is still alive and found only a few already running games, and as soon as I turn my back around a new one pops up.

Is this one already full or do I need to content myself with the lurker status?

..snip...

Go ahead and take it from here. its an open game, with maybe a little discussion if you get stuck. monarch level might be too easy for you.

read back a few posts and take your turns! you don't "need" to wait for a group decision if you think its obvious (and maybe if its not obvious but you can explain your reasons).

goal is space ship as fast as we can get it off.

 

[Lanzelot]

I would move C to 2N of Babylon, so it can reuse the wheat. E is quite ok for reusing the cow. (BTW: is that a mine on the cow?? The turn log doesn't say anything about it... opening the save... ah yes it is Hey, we need to irrigate that tile asap!)

As to whether combining both wheat and cow into one town would have been better than the current location of Niniveh: aren't two 6-turn combos stronger than one 4-turner and one "regular" town? Of the course of 12 turns, the two combos produce 4 settlers and 4 warriors. The 4-turner + regular town produce 3 settlers and 6 warriors. The extra settler is definitely stronger than two warriors. (Only drawback is that we'll need two granaries instead of one.)

The question that we haven't discussed yet: where do we settle the third town? I would say, either at C in order to utilize the wheat asap, or on the river delta hill, so we can get some curraghs out quickly.

I just did a little trading experiment: we can sell Masonry to India for their 23g (we need to do that anyway in order to prevent them from wasting their beakers on it). But then no one would sell us WC, not even for 96g! (When reading the turn log, I thought you had already bought WC from the Incans for Wheel + 70g. That would have been a good deal. Now the Incans already have the Wheel and we get nothing for it...) In this game we need to trade whenever possible, even if the deal looks slightly bad. (Well, WC for 70g would not have been bad at all. The wheel can be disregarded, we would even have gifted it to them if they would have had nothing to offer.) That's the only way to keep the tech pace up. (After all, we want them to research at least some of the big guns (Poly, Currency, Construction) for us, while we do the sling shot and Literature...)

 

[brasilbear]

trading is really my weakness, i have a hard time pulling the trigger, always thinking i could get better and then i lose the advantage.

I'd actually settle B first, my rule of thumb being to settle toward India first, and we can fill in the north (our backyard) later.

My order would be:

B-then A-then furs/gems before I went north. Anyone post an "I got it"?

 

[Kulko]

IF we settle both A and B before the fur anyway I would see no gain in going B first. The risk of this order is that india settles the luxury before us, not that he can build 2-3 cities before we built our second.

On the other hand reaching the other continent sooner, will help us speed up the tech pace significantly. Therefore I would think A B Furs would be the better strategy.

So I take the save and play tomorrow (european daytime). Suggestions in the next 12 h will still be read. maybe I can also add a few thoughts myself in 1 hout or so.

 

[templar_x]

@ Lanze - mathematically and logically it should be clear that cet.par. there cannot be a difference between the two variants, given both have a granary...

but if you decide to build only warriors from the other town, then... uhm, yes... you will get only warriors.

don´t forget, anyway, that you will need lots of workers for the many towns, plus that the 2nd town may not automatically and easily produce "optimal" 6-turn-combo-units. therefore, it may be wise to at least start it off as a 2 workers/1 warrior-factory, which is much easier to set up.

the issue that is again overseen is the factor time. while you can set up ONE 4-turner very fast, and start to get the workers from it, TWO factories take considerably more time. in the meanwhile, those cities produce food, commerce and shields. that taken into account, i believe the 4-turner ultra-fast and another helper town building units and workers every here and there would have been stronger. but i of course have not tested it here either.

t_x

edit: just to state the obvious, it may still be, that you need a THIRD town to share the wheat occassionally, so that surplus food never gets wasted if both towns are about to grow with less total excess food than you have got available in one particular turn.

 

[Kulko]

Ok I checked the save and this wouuld be my plan:

Towns
Send settler to coast and settle on grassland start on curragh (see below)
Send next settler to the tile between furs (which would be nice RCP 6 location)

Worker Management
Repair irrigation at cow
Build a few more mines

tech
finish writing
Dont trade it
Start CoL
Hope India discovers something nice to trade for masonry.

City Placement
The reason why I would go foior the grassland is, that I would like two more rcp3 Towns in the SE, And I think that would get awfully cramped when we settle on the hill. OTOH the RCP3 location straight north is not likely to be used so we do not realy take another cities workable tiles by moving to the grassland.

 

[brasilbear]

Ok I checked the save and this wouuld be my plan:

Towns
Send settler to coast and settle on grassland start on curragh (see below)
Send next settler to the tile between furs (which would be nice RCP 6 location)

Worker Management
Repair irrigation at cow
Build a few more mines

tech
finish writing
Dont trade it
Start CoL
Hope India discovers something nice to trade for masonry.

City Placement
The reason why I would go foior the grassland is, that I would like two more rcp3 Towns in the SE, And I think that would get awfully cramped when we settle on the hill. OTOH the RCP3 location straight north is not likely to be used so we do not realy take another cities workable tiles by moving to the grassland.

Sounds good, can't argue with any of it. Good luck. By oversight left SGL on, so you might see one pop up after writing.

 

[Lanzelot]

Hope India discovers something nice to trade for masonry.

No, definitely a mistake. Get the 23g for Masonry! That will increase the likelyhood of India discovering something nice that we don't know yet. (And most likely in a few turns we won't get anything for Masonry anymore anyway...) And we don't need to "hold anything back" for trading later, because later we will have Phil, CoL and Rep, and these three techs should be sufficient to trade for the rest of the ancient age techs!! Provided that the AI has managed to discover the rest of the ancient age techs by then... And this the AI can do only if we make sure we keep them up to date as good as possible...

So let me repeat: if we meet a nation that is down a few techs compared to us, we take whatever deals we can get, and then gift the remaining techs to them! If this sounds strange to you: don't worry, we'll get everything back with interest later... I've tried that strategy many times in my research games (e.g. 1120 AD space ship in COTM86), and it works very well.

@brasilbear: sorry if last time I sounded like I was critizing you. Your turn set was fine, it was in fact Elephantium, who let the wheel deal slip by...

Let me comment a bit more on that deal, perhaps that makes it clearer how to tell good and bad deals apart:
The Incans offered Warrior Code (64b) and wanted the Wheel (69B) plus 70g.
At first this looks outrageous, they want a total of 139g while we get back only 64g, therefore Elephantium's reaction was completely understandable. However, if you take the following points into account as well, this would have been an excellent deal for us, and I'm very sorry we missed it:

• First of all, for the early techs the "window of opportunity" is very short. A few turns later it is gone, because they'll have discovered the tech themselves (remember they are paying only 90% on Monarch level) or got it from someone else. The decision was actually between "they get Wheel, we get WC" and "they get Wheel, we get nothing". Of course we should have taken the first option...
• Then, because of the special circumstances for this game (launch space ship as fast as possible), we cannot count the Wheel here, because we would have gifted it to them anyway in the case that they would not have anything to trade for it! So in fact the deal was only "Warrior Code (64b) for 70g", and now it doesn't look that bad anymore, does it? We are paying only 6g over price.
• And finally, you need to know: in the beginning, the AI usually charges an arm and a leg in tech deals, but in my experience this gets better, once one has accepted a few of those exorbitant deals. So we would have payed 6g for making them more polite and getting better deals in the future. Investing 6g in this is definitely not too much... Especially as it is good for us, if we get these "exorbitant" deals out of the way while the tech prices are still small, and then get good deals, when the techs start getting more expensive. Or in other words: better pay 70g for a tech that's worth only 64b than paying 700g for a tech that's worth only 600b...

OTOH the RCP3 location straight north is not likely to be used

In my opinion, the spot straight north has high priority, because it is the only reasonable spot from where the irrigated wheat can be used by a second town! Remember that the capital needs the wheat only for 2 out of 3 turns, so for the third turn (actually the second in each series, otherwise the capital won't pick a forest on growth!) we can give the wheat to another town. (Same for the cow, btw.) This speeds up general growth of our empire, and especially in the early stages of the game this boost is substantial.

 

[templar_x]

this needs to get underlined in two points:

EARLY TRADES IN A SCIENCE GAME - everything Lanzelot says is correct. i want to add: do not worry about giving cash for techs. the AI has hardly any opportunity to spend it at this stage anyway! and since you are going to out-everything the AI, you will have lots of chances to get ALL OF IT BACK SOON. so it is more like taking your money to the savings bank than really giving it to the AI.
BUT, what you gain from that is immense: the AI will not only give you some tech for your practically useless money (which will flow back to you anyway), but also will start research on the next useful tech for you!!! especially on low levels and in a science game, you should not see the AIs as competitors (they are none), but as other guys you have to assign jobs to. so, you have to let them do work for you!

NEXT TOWNS:
while i do not agree with your 2nd town site, which is clearly supoptimal in my eyes, it is absoluty correct that you are direly in need of that other town to share the wheat (and another one for the cow soon). or you build that town 2W of the capital, so it could get both food ressources, making it practically your third pop pump.

t_x

 

[Kulko]

Played by now and didn't see Lanzelots post beforehand.

The good:
We got writing and still have monopoly, CoL is in 13 turns
India got WC and sold it for Masonry and we still got the 23 g
First curragh in 3 turns
Forth town on Lux almost reached

The Bad
Still no town to share the wheat.
I didnt read his comment about the wheat on the second turn and due to my inexperience with 6-turn factories I might have messed up the pump. It needs to jump to a forest this turn in order to complete the settler and the wheat is empty.

PS: @ Lanzelot Which is your definition of north? Straight up or topleft as the grid goes?

Details:

Spoiler :

Preturn
Send the setller to the coast
Free one work near cow and start irrigating
IBT:
Port is Building the collosus
Barb has settled at A and attack would be over the river. Will have to wait until the Worker is finished and then cross the river first.

2110 BC (1)
MMing

IBT
Barb comes over to our side on the hill.
Finish Writing Start CoL
Fra starts Pyramids (?)

2070 BC (2)
MM Babylon, we need that Warrior back in Babylon. And a warrior factory to reduce our lux slider.

2030 BC (3)
tzzz

1990 BC (4)
The worker near A finally finishes his mine and the warrior can move on together with the settler. Next turn we will found our port.
IBT: Babylon Completes Settler --> Warrior

1950 BC (5)
Ashur is founded --> Curragh
warrior --> Barb Warrior wins (1 HP left)
finally a bit of freedom of moves

1910 BC (6)
Tzzzz...
IBT
Babs warrior --> Settler
Inca start Pyramids

1870 BC (7)
India has WC by now trade it for Masonry.
We are up Writing on everybody, and down Myst, IW, HBR on Port

IBT:
Niniveh Granary --> Warrior?

1830 BC (8)
War --> BarbWar 2 HP left

1790 BC (9)
Tzzz
1750 BC (10)
Tzzz

 

[Lanzelot]

PS: @ Lanzelot Which is your definition of north? Straight up or topleft as the grid goes?

Yes, straight up, just like on a compass:

      N
      |
  NW  |  NE

W ---   --- E

  SW  |  SE
      |
      S

So that was good luck with India...! (According to Murphy's Law they should have researched Masonry instead of WC... )

However, the settler is too far away from the core for my taste. That site will be too corrupt, and as long as we don't have a road there, there's no need yet to settle by the furs?! Also the settler travelled 5 turns to get there!! (And it will have to move a 6th turn, otherwise it'll cramp the first ring too much...) It could have reached much better locations in only 2 turns! We have again wasted a lot of resources.

If you really want to expand into that direction, then first wait until two road segments SE of Babylon are finished, then send a settler to site "B" in one move, settle, build another two road segments and finally send a settler to the furs in just 2 moves! That would have connected the furs much faster while at the same time doing something for the development of our core.

Anyway, I think we need to agree on a definite dotmap for the future. Here is my first draft. Actually, the more I think about t_x's idea of a town 2W of Babylon, the more I like it. It can utilize the wheat and the cow, whenever our two granary towns don't need them. Perhaps it's even worth to plan another granary there?! It could grow just as fast as Babylon and Ninive in a kind of 2-6-2 cycle?!

The reason why I want to move Ashur is: it's on the river so can grow to 12 quickly, even before Construction. For this having 3 tundra tiles in the BFC is not so nice. On the other hand, New City 4 and New City 5 will stay size 6 probably for a very long time, so they can use a few tundra forests for decent shield output. Also you have to consider: Eventually Babylon will be size 12, and then most probably all tiles between Babylon and Ashur are needed by Babylon. That leaves only two 2-food tiles for Ashur: the BG and one grassland. Not enough for a fully productive size 12 city. By moving onto the hill, Ashur gains the grassland where it currently stands, and another plain while losing 3 tundra tiles. I would switch the curragh to settler right away, to get the move over with before we waste too much growth.



What do you think? This would make a very nice-looking first ring. The second ring can then be planned, once we have a better view of the territory east of New City 2.

 

[templar_x]

for such a minor and only possible advantage i would not move Ashur, for sure. before the next cultural expansion from the cap you will not even have that 2nd BG for the town. where it stands, City4 won´t be needed for a long time.

and with a harbour, plus with forests planted in the MA, and irrigation of 3 grasses which should easily be possible, this town can grow to size 12 without a problem and even be a quite ok producer.

city1 at this point of time is quite a catastrophe. city2 seems quite without alternative after where you founded Nineveh. it could become a WF forever later. city3 cannot be said without a total concept, which really should be done before you continue. this way you may never leave planet earth, except by death.

t_x

 

[Lord Emsworth]

Got it.

The good:
We got writing and still have monopoly, CoL is in 13 turns
India got WC and sold it for Masonry and we still got the 23 g
First curragh in 3 turns
Forth town on Lux almost reached

The Bad
Still no town to share the wheat.
I didnt read his comment about the wheat on the second turn and due to my inexperience with 6-turn factories I might have messed up the pump. It needs to jump to a forest this turn in order to complete the settler and the wheat is empty.

That is not a problem. I'll rearrange the tiles so that
- Babylon works the wheat, 2 forests, 2 mined BGs and a further mined Grass when it grows. Tallies up to 10, just what is needed.
- Ashur gets a mined BG for 3 shields this turn. With just 2 further shields the curragh completes next turn.
- Nineveh gets the irrigated Cow, one forest, and one mined BG (will finish IBT).



What's the consensus on where to put the third and fourth towns? Are these NewCity1 and NewCity2? If so, I'll put them up.

Any ideas where to send the Curragh? Rather CW or CCW?

 

[Lanzelot]

for such a minor and only possible advantage i would not move Ashur, for sure.

Yep, you are right, this measure would be too drastic and throw us even further back than we already are. I got a bit "carried away" when I saw this town despite the fact that both of the latest dotmaps (Lord Emsworth's and brasilbear's) had planned that town on the hill...

city1 at this point of time is quite a catastrophe.

Again: yep. I think everyone needs to be aware that a "fast space race" is no longer possible. We have already commited too many mistakes, and as we know, everything that is done in the first 50 turns or so propagates exponentially, so we are now left with a growth curve whose slope is much less steep than it could have been:

• Me walking the settler for three turns instead of using the quicker site at W-SW was the first mistake.
• Elephantium first roading and then mining the cow instead of irrigating it right away has crippled our growth significantly.
• And then Kulko walking our precious third settler for 6 turns just to get to a corrupt place has given this game the death blow...

this way you may never leave planet earth, except by death.
t_x

However, this statement is a bit exaggerated... On Monarch we can get away with pretty much anything and still win...!


@Lord Emsworth: yes, I think NC 1 and NC 2 are pretty much the best we can do. I'll update my dotmap a bit, taking into account that we will leave Ashur where it is and delay NC 4 a bit.
My preference for the curragh would be counter-clockwise. We have already a pretty good picture of our south, while the north and west are still undiscovered. (Of course we can never be sure if and where there will be a passage to another continent, so a second curragh for clockwise exploration should follow asap.)

 

[Lanzelot]

Ok, how does this look like:



NC 6 could be moved 1N or NE, depending on whether that still leaves enough space for a second-ring town further north.

The FP of course depends on what else we'll find in that area.