BOTM 16 Pregame. Starts March 15, 2009

[jesusin]

Happy to hear any comments/critiques!

Very solid plan for a cultural game

I like to get CS before Lite-Music, it is more efficient that way, but if Gandhi is in the game you are risking being first to Music.


Don't ever build Moai if you don't have Stone. If you have stone, be sure not to build Moai, unless you are playing a very very long game (Gold medal or Space Race).

There are tables telling you which leaders would never dow at Pleased. Use them!



I will be very careful with happines in the early game. I've had great happiness problems in archipelago maps before.

 

[jesusin]

I'm not sold on the whole Sistine thing. If you were going to run 2 GP farms as legendary cities...maybe. Very expensive and time consuming to build on an archi map, no visible marble, production is hard to attain, and not industrious leader. I agree with almost everything else you wrote about the wonders.

The +2cpt per specialist of the Sistine's is irrelevant, you are right.

But the +5 per religion building which is also doubled after 1000 years isn't. You build a monastery and a temple early and before you know they are producing 26 raw cpt!!! Better than 4-5 cottages!

 

[jesusin]

The adventurer save means I've a starting workboat but I found that I was working one of the unimproved seafood tiles (Northern clams) to prevent whilst retaining that lovely 3 so I don't know that the (2nd for me) workboat is immediately necessary though I can't really think of what else to work on productively at that point?

I'd advise you to learn to love your

If you grow beyond your happy limit, you have a that consumes 2 food and produces nothing.

If instead you leave a 5 food tile to work a 2 food tile, then you are losing 3 food getting nothing in return.

 

[Rajaat]

I have hardly played games on archipelago, but I was wondering whether a space victory is harder or easier to accomplish than on continents or similar landmasses.

Due to a high likelyhood of "everyone" making contact prior to astronomy, will the tech race be crazy, or will the lack of rivers and inland grasslands etc. balance it out?

 

[beestar]

Don't ever build Moai if you don't have Stone. If you have stone, be sure not to build Moai, unless you are playing a very very long game (Gold medal or Space Race).

I understand Moai being very expensive if built without access to Stone - it always takes me centuries to construct - but what's wrong with building it if you do have stone?

b*

 

[jesusin]

I understand Moai being very expensive if built without access to Stone - it always takes me centuries to construct - but what's wrong with building it if you do have stone?

b*

It's still too expensive unless you have a lot of time left.

Basically I find its ROI (Return On Investment) too slow.



Would you accept the following deal?
- You lend me 300 (I can't remember the real cost right at the moment) hammers now.
- I´ll pay you 5 hammers a turn starting in 30 turns and till the end of the game.

If the game is less than 90 turns from completion you'd never accept sucha deal.

If the game is 91 turns away from completion you should never accept, either. You will get a payback of 305 hammers, 5 more than invested. But 5 lousy hammers aren't enough to compensate for the 90 turns delay in your building schedule.

I'd say it would be hard to decide if the deal was proposed when the game is 150 turns away from completion. You give 300 now, you receive 600 total, but they are delayed. Is it better to accept this deal, or is it better to build a bunch of Maces with your 300 hammers and get 2 or 3 cities with them? I don't know.



So when you are considering if you should build Moai in your game, please consider what other investements you could do with your hammers and choose the one you think you will get more return with. In my particular play-stile Moai is only worth it in Space Race games.

 

[adrianj]

It's still too expensive unless you have a lot of time left.

Basically I find its ROI (Return On Investment) too slow.



Would you accept the following deal?
- You lend me 300 (I can't remember the real cost right at the moment) hammers now.
- I´ll pay you 5 hammers a turn starting in 30 turns and till the end of the game.

If the game is less than 90 turns from completion you'd never accept sucha deal.

If the game is 91 turns away from completion you should never accept, either. You will get a payback of 305 hammers, 5 more than invested. But 5 lousy hammers aren't enough to compensate for the 90 turns delay in your building schedule.

I'd say it would be hard to decide if the deal was proposed when the game is 150 turns away from completion. You give 300 now, you receive 600 total, but they are delayed. Is it better to accept this deal, or is it better to build a bunch of Maces with your 300 hammers and get 2 or 3 cities with them? I don't know.



So when you are considering if you should build Moai in your game, please consider what other investements you could do with your hammers and choose the one you think you will get more return with. In my particular play-stile Moai is only worth it in Space Race games.

This being an immortal level game, I would not expect to be receiving any fastest finish award comparable to a HOF submission. So at the time Moai is ready to be built (say, turn 70), I would fully expect the game to continue at least as far as turn 200. For me at least.

Plus, we are dutch. If your strategy anticipates you will be teching as far as Steam Power and you'll be building dikes, at that point in time you will be very pleased you had invested in Moai for the 223 tiles.

let's not forget this is archipelago - a typically hammer poor map. If the best your cities can do is 6 per turn from just the city tile and maybe a couple of mines if you are lucky, then your Moai city is a powerhouse in comparison.

Also, as the city grows, Moai will be returning more than 5 per turn, especially assuming you've selected a city site for its vast number of coastal tiles. With a forge, and if the city is your bureaucratic capital, you could be reaping the rewards of your 300 hammer investment much sooner than 90 turns.

 

[Deckhand]

mabraham, thanks for the test map
I just built the GLH on turn 55 1800BC
y'all have given me a nice road map for first 55 turns, tell me more
what do I research after masonry? what build after GLH? (warrior - galley - settler - warrior - settler ?) i need all the help i can get
game starts in 2 hours!

 

[smitsk00]

@ Deckhand
My most succesful expansions/lib race wins were actually when put the GLH overflow into a Granary, whipped it, buils a galley, then whipped a settler to go to the pig island. Then, I just built Warrrior, Settler, Warrior, Settler, whipping when possible. I reasearched straight to MC, Machinery and traded them around, searched Compass if I couldnt trade for it and got harbors up ASAP! Good Luck!

It been a really great pregame! Thanks for the test map, mabraham, it helped a ton! Although, everything will probably change with the real map. Good luck to all!!

 

[jesusin]

This being an immortal level game, I would not expect to be receiving any fastest finish award comparable to a HOF submission. So at the time Moai is ready to be built (say, turn 70), I would fully expect the game to continue at least as far as turn 200. For me at least.

Plus, we are dutch. If your strategy anticipates you will be teching as far as Steam Power and you'll be building dikes, at that point in time you will be very pleased you had invested in Moai for the 223 tiles.

let's not forget this is archipelago - a typically hammer poor map. If the best your cities can do is 6 per turn from just the city tile and maybe a couple of mines if you are lucky, then your Moai city is a powerhouse in comparison.

Also, as the city grows, Moai will be returning more than 5 per turn, especially assuming you've selected a city site for its vast number of coastal tiles. With a forge, and if the city is your bureaucratic capital, you could be reaping the rewards of your 300 hammer investment much sooner than 90 turns.

That's all true.

There are two points I would like to improve on a bit yet:

- Your decision is not "I will reap great rewards from Moai, let's build it", but "I will reap more rewards from Moai than from any other way I could invest my hammers on now, let's build it"

- I was originally answering to Moai in the context of a cultural game. In that context:
...... If you will need 200 turns to win in normal speed after having built Moai, then you will lose the game.
...... Playing a cultural game at Immortal will lead to a faster result than if it was played at Monarch or Prince level. (This last sentence is based on my experience in Vanilla, I could be very wrong here in BTS).

 

[cas]

The +2cpt per specialist of the Sistine's is irrelevant, you are right.

But the +5 per religion building which is also doubled after 1000 years isn't. You build a monastery and a temple early and before you know they are producing 26 raw cpt!!! Better than 4-5 cottages!

I know you're a culturemaster Jesusin but I disagree with building Sistine on this map and leader unless you find a) marble and b) a good production site to build it.

The +5/double for religious buildings only works if you have a state religion. Sometimes it is better to give up a state religion to keep from painting a bullseye on your civ...or rather a second bullseye since you will probably be lower on the power chart going for culture. If Monty is next door with Budhism, do you really want to be running Taoism ? I mean, he may backstab you anyway but I'd rather keep him 'pleased' and bribe him to attack someone else...versus an auto -4 diplo modifier for different religions.

To me, Sistine with this map/leader is too much of a gambit. You might be able to run a state religion, or you might not...depending on a lot of variables in the game. Grabbing Music 'asap' and building an expensive wonder early (as the OP said) is a lot of investment for something that may not pay off.

Anyway, I hope pnp_dredd uses that strategy now...so he can let us know if it worked as he planned.

cas

 

[Niklas]

The game has now started!

Find the starting saves here. If you experience any technical issues with this game, please contact me via PM. Good luck to all, and see you in the First Spoiler Thread!

 

[mabraham]

I am curiuos how you prevented growth and still got the GLH earlier? Interesting...I will investigate.

It's about the differential value of hammers and food at different points of the opening. Your opening city is rich in neither hammers nor food - and the rest of this analysis ignores the central tile. Leaving the governor in charge will probably see you work a 2f3c tile, making only your free hammer from the central tile. As your population grows, you'll get your WB in 30 turns as the governor keeps working your other 2f3c tiles. Now your city has access to a 5f3c tile to work for the rest of the game.

However had you worked your 2h plains hill for the three turns before the border expansion, and then your grassland forest, you get your WB in 10 turns. Work a 2f3c square while it travels to the fish. Then for the next 3 turns you can work your 5f3c. You grow on turn 14 to work another 2f3c tile so your civ is working 7f6c, grows again on turn 18 to work 9f9c, and again on 21 to work 11f1h9c (or something else).

With the hammer-poor strategy, you get to work 2f3c for 11 turns until you grow to size 2, and then 4f6c for 12 turns until you grow to size 3 and then 8 turns at 6f9c until your WB is built and emplaced on the fish.

Clearly more food has been generated on the strategy, since you're on size four before the strategy. Probably also more The possibility of getting BW and whipping complicates the analysis (the strategy should be getting BW ASAP), however at some point you'll have produced more food with the strategy than the , and in the fullness of time, more commerce than you gave up.

The value of early hammers is higher than the value of early food, because you have a way to convert those early hammers into more food than you gave up. If a worked fish was only 3f3c then the break-even point is probably past 30 turns, and thus probably not the right thing to do. This presupposes that the value of really early commerce is negligible compared with the early food gain. That's obviously not true if you're in a race to get a religion-founding tech!

The same thinking applies to many Civ4 setups immediately you can build a merchant specialist. Your civilization is converting commerce to gold and beakers through the slider. Often you've managed to build more libraries/monasteries/academies/universities than markets/grocers/banks in the early-to-midgame. A merchant specialist gets 3 and a science specialist gets 3. Running one of these has the same effect on the production of - both prevent you working some tile that might generate . The is more valuable, because when your civ is breaking even, it permits you to send more of your through the slider to at a higher multiplier rate than the rate for . The relevant quantity is the weighted sum of your multipliers for and . From the F2 display you can tweak your slider rate to get a feel for which set of multipliers is larger across your whole civ.

The one turn does make a differece b/c it means that I have my second city out one turn faster too!

Up to a point, yes. Also relevant is the state of your city post-GLH, since getting the GLH earlier might mean you've not got any overflow or have a lower population, which will actually increase the time to get a second city out.

I tried teching Alphabet after GLH too, but I found that I got much more in trade if I teched MC instead. Usually only one or two AI had Alphabet, so I was able to get it and trade it around a bit (but not too much!!).

Success will vary with the number of AIs you have met.

I'd advise you to learn to love your

If you grow beyond your happy limit, you have a that consumes 2 food and produces nothing.

If instead you leave a 5 food tile to work a 2 food tile, then you are losing 3 food getting nothing in return.

The penny drops, finally. Especially if you're going to whip away this population later, the above is clearly right. It's not clearly right if you have a tile better than 2 to work.

mabraham, thanks for the test map
I just built the GLH on turn 55 1800BC
y'all have given me a nice road map for first 55 turns, tell me more
what do I research after masonry? what build after GLH? (warrior - galley - settler - warrior - settler ?) i need all the help i can get
game starts in 2 hours!

Your GLH needs trade routes, so you'll need writing and open borders agreements - but there's not an immediate rush because those routes won't come up for some time after the GLH is built. I suspect the AIs need to have acquired Sailing. Anyway, you should be left on your own to learn from your own mistakes!

 

[mabraham]

Yep. I just got GLH 1880BC (turn 53) on my contender test map above. Note that the above strategy does not build a warrior, and does not require one. I used prevent-growth while building the WB, and switched immediately to worker despite still being at population 1.

Actually you can do slightly better by putting a few turns on a second WB while growing to size 2 before switching to worker. Those couple of hammers probably won't decay away by the time GLH is up.

 

[MarkM]

mabraham, i'm not allowed to say much since I've already started on this game, but your analysis (which was a very interesting read, thanks) ignores the fact that commerce can also be measured as hammers, indirectly, in the opening turns of the game. The three coins from the sea can get you to BW (which creates hammers from food) quicker. The earlier you start on that, the more you can do, as in this situation the main constraint is waiting for unhappiness to subside ...

But maybe you are right, if I crunch the numbers. Oh well, too late for me now, so I'm not gonna worry too much about it

 

[mabraham]

mabraham, i'm not allowed to say much since I've already started on this game, but your analysis (which was a very interesting read, thanks) ignores the fact that commerce can also be measured as hammers, indirectly, in the opening turns of the game. The three coins from the sea can get you to BW (which creates hammers from food) quicker. The earlier you start on that, the more you can do, as in this situation the main constraint is waiting for unhappiness to subside ...

I do agree with you - in various scenarios getting you access to a tech can be worth (e.g. BW), or (Agriculture, Pottery), or more (Wheel, Sailing), or (founding a religion) or whatever. The whole early game is about building a multifaceted resource base as rapidly as you can.

BW is not a strong determinant in this particular opening scenario, because you need to be at population 4 or more for most of the time building GLH (200) to actually work your three mines for most of the hammers. A final 2-population whip adds only 30, IIRC. Thus you've also used only one or two forest chops at 20, and maybe some flow-on from a whip of the lighthouse.

The fastest route I've found so far actually only whipped twice - 2 population each time, once on lighthouse and once on GLH, for a total of about 90 (wonders cost twice as much to whip, or something). If you've bee-lined BW and got it in turn 20-odd, then you would have time to whip three times before getting GLH in the early turn-50s while not incurring excess unhappiness. At best, that seems likely to generate an extra 30 on your worker-flowing-on-to-lighthouse build (if you've gotten sailing up quickly enough!), which you've delayed while working the 3 tiles to get BW early. That may or may not delay your mines and may or may not thus delay GLH, despite getting more from whipping!

 

[GoodGame]

One goal: REX seaside river towns, with hammers at a premium.
Victory: Probably a cultural victory or domination through culture, with space as an alt victory.


Strat:
REX, REX, REX (always settling on a river site). Money should never be a problem in this kind of situation
Get workers developing the highest hammer city + Moai, then colossus and GL in that city. Go for Currency early, and the massive trade route income should make anything possible.
Avoid astronomy, while more REXing/conquest.
Fill the world with orange, then put longbows in all the cities, then decide on a victory.

Opening: probably settle in place but look south 1 tile for the view.

Open question: Religion vs. luxuries? The map will decide....

 

[MacBalt]

If anyone is still around here...

I'm not usually a big fan of wonders on Immortal level, but with all the talk about the Great Lighthouse I thought I'd do some tests to see what the fuss is about. It has worked out all right so far, but the thing that really bothers me is the Merchant Great Person Points. Normally I prefer my first GP to be a Great Scientist for the Academy. The GLH comes so early it messes up the capital's gene pool pretty badly. I know bulbing currency is an option with the merchant, but I'd welcome any other ideas (or reassurances) about what to do with him if he pops up.

Going to try a test with as fast a second city library as I can manage, but even with plentiful forest to chop (which doesn't look likely) I doubt it would be able to pump out a 100% gene pool Great Scientist faster than the capital. Anyone have any other ideas?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

If anyone is still around here...

I'm not usually a big fan of wonders on Immortal level, but with all the talk about the Great Lighthouse I thought I'd do some tests to see what the fuss is about. It has worked out all right so far, but the thing that really bothers me is the Merchant Great Person Points. Normally I prefer my first GP to be a Great Scientist for the Academy. The GLH comes so early it messes up the capital's gene pool pretty badly. I know bulbing currency is an option with the merchant, but I'd welcome any other ideas (or reassurances) about what to do with him if he pops up.

I usually send my merchants on trade missions. The cash you get from them is usually enough to keep you at 100% science for quite a while (maybe 20-30 turns).

And yeah I'm still around. Not expecting to start the game for at least a few more days....

 

[cammell]

Im practicing Mabraham's (thanks ) game.
I went to 1AD having GLH and PIRAMIDS builded, running REP+CS.
I think next step is to research CivS to change civics to Bureaucracy, but dont know what may be next, would like to go to war, preferably with Stalin - but have low prod ratio, maybe i should wait till cities become more productive with those dikes and then attack?
Any suggestions ? Would appreciate
Cheers
This is a stuff announcement - attached file is Mabrahams game, not BOTM16