BOTM 14 First Spoiler

[Gosha190]

Oh, yeah: your WB gets eaten by a barb galley just before contacting Musa.


By the way, I found a bug, I'm not sure if it is caused by the game or by the HOF mod. I didn't know Musa. I didn't know it was Musa. But looking at worst enemy info...

I find out that bug in the resent deity botm. There is one another interesting thing. Sometimes you can see in a diplo screen that one of AIs is your worst enemy is it possible that it is just info for AIs hwo want to be my friend

I have no time to finish my game so far. I began to play it while I tryed to open SGOTM save at a late night and made 10-15 fast moves. Settled in the place (there was no time to think about...). Later I played in a 2 session up to 500AD.

My aim must be fast domination this time, but I am not sure now about that...
I made a lot mistakes in choosing research path.

By the way, the best place of my game is CS in 1600BC from Oracle and killing Pacal in 2500BC. After CS I'v lost too much time before I began war with other AIs.

 

[Htadus]

I agree about the work boat getting eaten up by the barb gally thing. It purely sucks.

I was not going to play this game since my disc has a crack and there is no gurantee that the game will start. One in ten the game starts other time the disk is not readable. Well anyways after finishing the Santa game I just double clicked on the game and low and behold, the game started. Yahoo.

So it was an aimless game played after playing about 4 hours of WOTM.

Moved inland thinking I will build a GP farm on the forest tile the warrior is on. Settled on turn 1 in a junk spot that turned out to be great with 2 food and copper.

After seeing Pacals spot, we just had to have it. So after building 5 Axes with CR1 we took the capital and the gem city. So I thought I will go for a fast conquest and start building all the available wonders . Great focus. Got Pacifism from Oracle and ran a priest for the first GP for Theology and next was meant to be for CS but instead I had to trade for Monarchy a few turns before and now the GP want to discover Islam. Anyways we build the GLH, Mids and missed the HG by one turn. BY the way all the AI are accessible via gallies so It will be a war game though ineffective as it will be due to just poor playing.

 

[lroumen]

I started rather well considering I rarely ever tried this level.

I blocked Pacal a little late from expanding to the West. I had to build 2 cities to block the chokepoint. He became Buddhist and it spread to my towns and I soon found out that Sitting Bull also adapted Buddhism. I decided to play along, hoping that one day they might build the ApoPalace.
We soon became merry friends, though they were much quicker on the research. I was bigger in land mass, but I really had problems getting my research above 30%. I spammed cottages everywhere and slowly but surely I was able to beeline a few useful techs to get my research and income stabilised.
Sitting Bull has a city at the bottom left, but I blocked him with 2 cities. Pacal has the entire right hand side of the continent, but my side is bigger. I'm also creeping up on culture from his chokepoint city.... flipping it may be impossible, but I can always try later on.


Just before 500AD I was too far behind in techs with Pacal, but Sitting Bull did have some to trade. I noticed that I was level with espionage so I switched strategies. I got alphabet and went pure espionage and put that slider to 40% and went to steal techs rather than research them (at a slower pace than stealing them). I think I've stolen about 20 now. All those useless low end techs cost about 50 points... that is not bad I think.

Pretty soon I stole Code of Laws as well as Engineering and I built Courthouses and Castles to fuel my espionage. I think at this point I would be okay switching to research but since I can just as easily steal them now due to all the discounts I think I will beeline to one particular goal for my research (like 10%, each taking 10 turns to research now) and steal the rest from Pacal and Sitting Bull (probably towards the democracy line to get the +espionage city improvements).


Analysis for Post-500AD: (though no spoilers)
I'm quite happy I left them alive, not to mention that they are now fully Friendly with me. I hope I can continue the rest of the game towards a victory condition. Which is still a good question. I might have to take on my allies since the AP is built for Judaism if I recall correctly. None of that came into my land. The other AIs are so far cautious towards me, though I did have to stop trading with one particular foe when requested. He's far away and already involved in a war so I'm probably safe as long as I get the rest on my side.

I think domination and conquest are out of the question until I catch up to Pacal and Sitting Bull and then manage to steer toward military prowess. Diplomatic seems like the way to go since I will have 2 AIs voting for me already. Apo is probably not an option but United Nations may be possible. If I also catch up on the teching I think Spacerace may also be okay. I can use the espionage to break down space ship parts, right?

 

[cammell]

Still plaing on this BOTM.
Much easier than latest "always war" i started stressed but suprisingly first meeting (Mayans) havent started a war

After quick walk with settler have founded city on starting position.
Next city, founded 1E from copper, quickly become best production one. Third city was founded near Mayans, next to sweet water lake. From there i lunched invasion on , have razed 2 theirs cities and took capitol.

Till 500AD had also city on east coast builded for stone access. Later i found Sitting Bull colonized south of the continent.

During that time managed to build oracle and piramids.

Now im at about 1250, have war declared by sitting bull (idiot) and preparing to raze his 3 continent cities to the ground. Thats MY continent, will share with no one.
Im second on scoreboard , still ahead in techs.
Not sure what would be better, going for space or conquest victory.

 

[jesusin]

jesusin, contender. Goal: fastest diplo.

The plan:

Gold or diplo? GLH, great research, concentrate on happiness, choose VC later. Pyramids if I can, pass Oracle probably.

First 20 turns:

Warrior W, finds nothing. Settle in place, because of the high food and because it's a PH, although it is not perfect in number of cottages. Next turn Warrior see's a possible culture bridge W.

Research Fishing, start Worker. Change from Worker to WB when available. I thought about finishing the Worker, to mine the sheep. I would have gotten 2 more worker-turns and 1 more hammer, but 9 food less. And eveybody knows my inclination for food.

While building the WB I was carefully planning my MMing in order to get 0 overflow when the Worker finished, in order to maximize food. Bum! since the WB took 11 turns to build, the Worker had lost 1 hammer. Why does the game forget to change so many things from normal to Epic? Worker built 1 turn late than possible.

Up to 1000BC:

Research: fishing-AH-mining-Myst-Sail-Writin-Masonry-Alphabet. Trade for Pott, BW and Hunt.
Production: WB-Worker-Warrior-Warrior-Settler(at pop3)- Warrior-Worker-Warrior-lh-Settler...
Cities:
1.- In place
2.- Corn,pigs,stone, silk,horses. Great production city.
3.- River, FP,corn,pigs, later copper. GPFarm.
4.- Far SW, fish, clam, river, sea. Moai later on (was that any good?).

Wonders:
Huge decision point upon 3rd city settling. I wanted GLH and Pyramids. I wanted 2WB and a Warrior to explore. I wanted a Chariot for protection. I wanted a GS for my Academy. I wanted a couple of early settlers. And some workers to go with the settlers...
My decision was to forget about GLH and concentrate on Pyramids, but delaying them a bit to get a WB first, while the second city got a Chariot and a settler out.
Pyramids 1050BC. Beeline CoL. I wasn't to build a single cottage the whole game.

Revolutions:
Cought budism, that Pacal and SB had too. Converted for happiness. Revolt to Representation+slavery.

1000BC stats: 4cities, 13pop. fhg=44, 20, 44. 29sust bpt, 250g.Stone, horses, 0happy, 4health. 3Wor, 6War,WB, Cha. 2Monu. 12cpt, 2GPPpt. 1WW,0NW,0GP. 13techs: Alpha, BW, Sail, Mason. 0/0 cottages. 0civs killed. 4.5hours.

Up to 500AD

Barb Galley kills my exploring WB before meeting Musa.
Revolt to Castes 500BC.
Failed Oracle by 11 turns, no wonder.
Built GLH in capital.
Pacal beats me to a barb city, so he is not confined to his peninsula.
Suleiman places a city in my continent, taking both sugar.
GS settled 260BC.
1AD stats:8cities, 38pop. fhg=110,63,169. 112sust bpt. 5Wor, 10units(Swo). horses, stone, Iron, copper. 2happy, 7health. 37cpt,4spt, 13GPPpt. 2WW,0NW,1GP,0GG. 26techs: Alpha, IW, MC, CoL, Lite. 2reli. 0/0 cottages used. 0 civs killed. 8hours.
Revolt to Bureaucracy.
Built GLib and NE and Moai.
Second pop is a GE at 67%.
Free GA from Music, becuase I was not ready with 6 libraries yet.
Fail to get Colossus.
Academy 400AD.
500AD: Education, use GA for GAge to revolt to slavery and OR to whip 6 Universities.

I've been noting carefully at how many relation points each AI went Pleased with me, in order to know when they will vote for me (5 relation points more needed).

 

[mabraham]

Research Fishing, start Worker. Change from Worker to WB when available. I thought about finishing the Worker, to mine the sheep. I would have gotten 2 more worker-turns and 1 more hammer, but 9 food less. And eveybody knows my inclination for food.

While building the WB I was carefully planning my MMing in order to get 0 overflow when the Worker finished, in order to maximize food. Bum! since the WB took 11 turns to build, the Worker had lost 1 hammer. Why does the game forget to change so many things from normal to Epic? Worker built 1 turn late than possible.

Can you clarify what mechanic you were trying to take advantage of here, please? You started a worker, then switched to workboat after researching Fishing. Then you were planning/doing micromanagement of the workboat and subsequent worker build to finish with zero overflow. Why was that objective? Meantime, your workboat took an unexpected number of turns to build so the worker lost a hammer. How/why?

Thanks in advance!

 

[kcd_swede]

Can you clarify what mechanic you were trying to take advantage of here, please? You started a worker, then switched to workboat after researching Fishing. Then you were planning/doing micromanagement of the workboat and subsequent worker build to finish with zero overflow. Why was that objective? Meantime, your workboat took an unexpected number of turns to build so the worker lost a hammer. How/why?

Thanks in advance!

Interesting discussion, and I'm not as good as Jesusin and usually don't bother such kind of micromanaging, but I think I understand his objective at least. (He can clarify better for you perhaps, but good exercise for me to put out what I think and hear the criticisms of it later).

Maximum Food is his primary objective. While building the worker, the food is 2:1 converted to hammers and is therefore "wasted" in terms of growth, said growth which enables working more food tiles. That is why it is important to finish worker without overflow -- only hammers overflow and excess food from last turn of build is lost, iirc.
I wasn't sure from Jesusin's write-up that he actually was concerned about overflow from the WB build, he was mainly concerned with getting that worker finished without overflow. Overflow from WB would be no loss unless leader is expansive trait (+25% on hammers during worker build). In this game there was not an expansive leader to get bonus during worker build (which would have made overflow from WB less valuable because it doesn't get bonus), so any overflow from WB build would probably be fine for speeding up Hammurabi worker builds, in my guess.

Hope Jesusim can correct me if I have wrong understanding.

 

[jesusin]

Can you clarify what mechanic you were trying to take advantage of here, please? You started a worker, then switched to workboat after researching Fishing. Then you were planning/doing micromanagement of the workboat and subsequent worker build to finish with zero overflow. Why was that objective? Meantime, your workboat took an unexpected number of turns to build so the worker lost a hammer. How/why?

Thanks in advance!

I have forgotten the exact details. Anyway, I think you are interested in the general principle, not the particular example.


1.- Changing from Worker to WB:

In a seaside start you can improve tiles by way of worker or by way of WB. Sometimes is better one, sometimes the other. I decided I prefered a WB this time (made some caalculations, got mcuh more food that way). If you don't have fishing, you can't put your first hammer into a WB. I could have put the hammers generated while researching Fishing into a Warrior or something else, but I thought it better to have a head start on Worker.


2.- Adjusting overflow.

While building the WB, on the last turn, I had the option of working a 2f1h tile or a 1f2h tile, finishing the WB that turn anyway. If I chose the second, I'd have 1 more hammer overflow, that would go into the Worker, but 1 less food in the granary. If that hammer would have helped to get the worker 1 turn sooner, I'd have chosen the 1f2h tile to get the worker sooner. If the worker is got the same turn anyway, I prefer to have 1 food in the granary than 1 hammer for the next build.

I did this kind of thing not only the first turn, in order to just finish the worker without any spare hammer, so that I maximized my food.


3.- Rotten hammers

When you put a unit in the queue, put some hammers into it, and then change your mind and build something else, the unit keeps the hammers invested. After 10 turns in normal speed, the hammers kept are less and less everyturn, I don't know the correct word for this in English, let's say the hammers get rotten.

Being Epic speed I hoped the rotting process would start after turn 15, not after turn 10. It did start sooner than expected, it laid waste to all my careful calculations and finally I got my worker 1 turn later than I could have.

I hope now you can understand what happened in my game. Was I clear enough?

 

[mabraham]

I have forgotten the exact details. Anyway, I think you are interested in the general principle, not the particular example.

Indeed.

1.- Changing from Worker to WB:

In a seaside start you can improve tiles by way of worker or by way of WB. Sometimes is better one, sometimes the other. I decided I prefered a WB this time (made some caalculations, got mcuh more food that way). If you don't have fishing, you can't put your first hammer into a WB. I could have put the hammers generated while researching Fishing into a Warrior or something else, but I thought it better to have a head start on Worker.

Sure, I understood that.

2.- Adjusting overflow.

While building the WB, on the last turn, I had the option of working a 2f1h tile or a 1f2h tile, finishing the WB that turn anyway. If I chose the second, I'd have 1 more hammer overflow, that would go into the Worker, but 1 less food in the granary. If that hammer would have helped to get the worker 1 turn sooner, I'd have chosen the 1f2h tile to get the worker sooner. If the worker is got the same turn anyway, I prefer to have 1 food in the granary than 1 hammer for the next build.

I did this kind of thing not only the first turn, in order to just finish the worker without any spare hammer, so that I maximized my food.

Ah, ok the objective you have is maximizing the food you have in the granary at the point you finish the WB, given the constraint of finishing the worker and WB at least as early as you would with any other strategy. This trades hammers overflowed from the worker (to whatever is next) for food in the granary at that time. Maximizing food probably causes city growth a turn faster at some future time, gaining more stuff than the hammers sacrificed when doing the maximizing of food.

The objective isn't actually to finish the worker with zero overflow (which was the source of my confusion) - the objective is to finish the worker with no overflow that could have been converted to pre-worker food while still producing the WB and worker on the earliest possible game turns. There'll be some pathological cases where (for example) your only option is a 1f2h tile or 1f1h tile, and in such cases overflow from the worker is better than none!

3.- Rotten hammers

When you put a unit in the queue, put some hammers into it, and then change your mind and build something else, the unit keeps the hammers invested. After 10 turns in normal speed, the hammers kept are less and less everyturn, I don't know the correct word for this in English, let's say the hammers get rotten.

Being Epic speed I hoped the rotting process would start after turn 15, not after turn 10. It did start sooner than expected, it laid waste to all my careful calculations and finally I got my worker 1 turn later than I could have.

"Rotting" is a perfectly good description. "Decaying" would also work.

Thanks again for the clarification.

 

[jesusin]

Ah, ok the objective you have is maximizing the food you have in the granary at the point you finish the WB, given the constraint of finishing the worker and WB at least as early as you would with any other strategy. This trades hammers overflowed from the worker (to whatever is next) for food in the granary at that time. Maximizing food probably causes city growth a turn faster at some future time, gaining more stuff than the hammers sacrificed when doing the maximizing of food.

The objective isn't actually to finish the worker with zero overflow (which was the source of my confusion) - the objective is to finish the worker with no overflow that could have been converted to pre-worker food while still producing the WB and worker on the earliest possible game turns. There'll be some pathological cases where (for example) your only option is a 1f2h tile or 1f1h tile, and in such cases overflow from the worker is better than none!

Right. You put it nicely.

"Hammer decay", thank you!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Hammer decay does not scale with speed. At all.

 

[Lexad]

The start doesn't change (10 turns, I believe, for units, 50 for buildings). But the decay-per-turn depends on build task size (scales to 50 iirc) and thus implicitly depends on speed. E.g. Settler on Epic speed will decay 2 hpt.

Edit: I did not remember correctly - we discussed it with Dynamic quite a while ago The hpt decay speed depends on already invested hammers, not the task size. For buildings it is at least 1% of invested, for units - at least 2% (at least stands for "no less than 1 hpt"). So, if you've invested 100+hammers in settler, he will lose 2hpt.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Interesting. How awkward. I never knew.