Competing VC's

[Habitus]

If sending him else where then I'd say Corn+Ivory spot then settle Sheep, catch up on workers and then settle on cow + tundra fish to get us 6 cities. By then it be time to see if Cat+phants or a Rifles/Cannons (Spy + Cuirs) is best for getting any more cities.

 

[mystyfly]

It's too early to decide a medieval war.

There's plenty of jungle anyway so fishing > writing > IW. There's most likely iron on one of the suspiciously unjungled tiles.

What would you have the Worker do at Bombay before moving on? Just Mining a Hills square or two?

Mine PH, road PH, mine GH (road it too if borders didn't expand yet), pasture cows, pasture horses. Gems city can't make much use of worker turns until its borders popped.

Cow is the only Food Resource for that City, right?

Correct. However there are exactly 2 1F-tiles so nearly everything can be workshopped And with so many river tiles this city is even better.

Any thoughts on teching? We can't trade for techs, if I recall correctly, so would we good to go straight for one of Currency or Construction or Civil Service?

I thought we didn't turn off "No Tech Trading" in the end after all. Not sure... shyuhe?

Is a Chariot-only attack going to be suicide?

How do you want to build sufficient chariots in a reasonable timespan?

Also, is the expectation that I will whip Settlers or is it better not to whip Settlers?

As said in the report, best to finish the current settler and whip the last one imo to get the land sealed ASAP.

@mysty

I would like to know why you prefer jungle city over that nice corn+ivory (on PH) spot...

if anything I would probably think about some elepult war for the improved jungle once AI's get hold on it a bit.

if you settle that spot you would feel forced to get IW "soon".

Planning to capture it *soon* might work. Might not too. Without it we have significantly less land and less resources. Also willem didn't settle when I moved down there and the green spot is still open - I doubt gems would be open for long, again, it's most likely bordering ham's capital so it's gonna be high priority to him.

Is teching IW early bad? It's no expensive tech. If we're allowed to trade, we might do an unconventional MC route which is a great trading chip. Otherwise (@dhoom) going straight currency/col/cs is probably best. Again, IW is not a big detour and should be high priority anyway. We do not have copper, remember?

I also kinda dislike elepults unless we have a special window of opportunity (like backstabbing or weakly-defended border cities). I must admit however I'm not so used to immortal AI teching/wars anymore. But in my other SG we just got screwed (deity though); we noticed our neighbor is in WHEOOH and some instantly suggested building a cat army and assault his cities... a few sets later we abandonned the game as we couldn't even hold our city. What I want to say is, such an early war might sound tempting in theory, but usually without a real tech advantage regarding units, it's mostly destined to fail.

After the 2 Settlers we'll need to catch up on workers before settling on the cows, and possible tundra city i think. Cutting workers to rex for land is fine aslong as we then catch back up after the rex

I'd of settled the corn + ivory too, but the gems + ivory + cow city isn't a bad settle, improve the cow while building a monument, once monument is done start pumping out workers for us, whipping extra pop off (first worker possible improving grass hill/ivory) from building monument if any. With not being able to trade techs we'll need IW at some point anyway and you usally don't self tech it as the AI love it so its easy to trade for

We can't improve cows until the borders popped.

Hmmm, vranasm has a good point in that those two "really good" Gem squares seem to be Junglified. Yuck.

I suppose that it is my perogative to pick up that Settler and send him elsewhere...

You're not seriously considering to give up such a city site??


edit: @dhoomstriker: I'd wait with playing until everyone (or at least most) gives their opinion. Shyuhe and rolo haven't so far and that's nearly half the roster

 

[Habitus]

LoL, just re checked the SS and realised its not in the inital 9 for improvement The grass hill after settling the corn+ivory.
I'd actually only improve the hill the worker looks to be on now at GP Farm, then road it, horses, 1W of Horses, the riverside grassland, then ivory, by then the Corn + Ivory will hopefully be settled so you can do grass hill for gem city then corn + ivory for that city before roading back to capitol. This will get the trade routes up quickly and most cities shouldn't need many improvements now as after a settler for sheep most will build workers who can then improve extra tiles for the city as they start to grow again.

 

[vranasm]

lurker

@mysty

thanks for explanation.
I have the feeling that on S&T is a bit frown on selfteching IW on high levels (if you have tech trades), but if you are allowed not to tech trade then selfteching IW is obviously fine. I would even make it a priority then considering the land and everything.

ivory+gems make fine happy sources

 

[mystyfly]

Dunno, I stopped following S&T mostly a while ago as most of the stuff posted there got less and less interesting to me ("I show you one screenshot of my last game, please tell me why monty captured all my warrior-guarded cities while he was cautious and in WHEOOH forever").

Thing with trading on "high levels" is that the AI techs very fast and you often get a lot in trade if you research stuff the AI doesn't prioritize like aesth, MC, CoL for example. But there are situations where you tech stuff you wouldn't usually do yourself like maths if you plan big-scale chopping or want HG. Here we'll want IW for rex and strat resource. Another example is nationalism. If I have marble I usually go for the taj in the renaissance war buildup and selfresearch it. However if I don't plan to build it myself I can get it in trade easily in time to be able to draft.

Another argument for selfresearching IW may be that we will have a much longer game than usual and probably piss off some people so we shouldn't be accumulating WFYABTA too soon. IW is no expensive tech.

 

[r_rolo1]

S&T changed a lot since Civ got out, since a lot of the poster that understood something of the game got to play civ V or simply took a vacation of that forum ( myself included ) ... I find that the discussion level has dropped somewhat ( thankfully some returnees had helped to steam the tide ). I'm seriously surprised, for a example , to see this week a poster playing deity and arguing with some kind of seriousness that somewhat deity AI ( note, only deity AI ) could see the queues of the human and not backing out even when showed with the code ... and , to add shame to injury, even trying to rub post count and play level against another poster that was calling him out on that it looks that nowadays getting to Deity is far easier than in my days , I guess

On topic, I'm not sold to settling on the jungles ... ok the city has a lot of potential, but maybe it is a bridge too far for our current abilities. I would actually settle in the ivory spot befire Willem grabs the corn with a culture pop. But anyway IW is a sure need with our jungle filled city #2.

Anyway, we need to think in how to wage war ( we are pretty much locked in the worst part of our continent , so some headbanging is needed regardless of the VC in hand ). We have no metals to be seen and IMHO it is too late for chariot warfare. If we don't have any metals , I think we will need to resort to phant + cats warfare ...

 

[mystyfly]

Looks like I should have "accidentally" overplayed by 1t

C'mon guys that city is great for any VC it is already in place and will surely be lost if we return the settler that is on the very tile. If we go IW now that city is up and running in no time at all. The settler for corn/ivory spot will be done soon too (could be whipped even), we shouldn't lose that site anyway. Settling gems now means we get gems + ivory, ivory slightly behind in culture war with willem, gems not that productive for a few turns, but returning the settler now means we lose another bunch of turns without 3rd city and most likely lose gems site too.

Agree we probably need to war sooner rather than later but before we can seriously discuss this we should get some more intel (map, AI strat resources, AI techs).

 

[Habitus]

Going IW and if we get Iron we can start off with swords + cats from pre built swords and move over to phants. I agree chariots is too late, but HA is a possibility if we don't fancy waiting on cats. This is all assuming we want a war pre-lib, I'd settle the jungle now its there, I just wouldn't of gone there before corn+ivory

 

[r_rolo1]

Oh well, the settler is already there, so it might be less bad if we settle the city anyway ...

 

[shyuhe]

First things first:

shyuhe (played)
Rolo (played)
mysty (played)
Dhoom (UP)
Habitus (on deck)

I'm fine with settling the gems spot or retreating to the corn/ivory. Both are solid spots. We can't tech trade (although we can receive IW in a gift if the AI comes by with free handouts). So I think we will want to pick up IW very soon regardless of how we go so that we can figure out if we have metals. I'd hope Delhi does, since otherwise it's a pretty mediocre capital.

Our war will likely be phants + cata + spear cover.

As for the S&T forum... the quality has dropped a lot lately. It's very unfortunate. I think the high level games being played in the SG and SGOTM forums are far more interesting.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Any thoughts on where to fit in military units, either in terms of which Cities to build them in or where in the build queues of each City to place them? I think that all that we have access to are Warriors at the moment... but... the issue being that if I start on a Settler, Worker, or even some random other build item that is not a military unit, then we could be stuck with our pants down and forced to watch as the Barbs raze a City, due to the rule of being unable to change a build item.

So, should the new Cities perhaps build a Warrior as their first build items?


By the way, why are we not allowed to trade techs again? Doesn't that situation make the game especially hard for players of all Victory Conditions? Particularly in a game where people don't seem to want to build Cottages, I'm wondering where we are going to get all of the Science required to:
a) Tech enough to get a military advantage
b) Tech enough to be able to build The AP if people keep dinking around and avoiding the Religious techs
c) Tech enough to be able to afford to be able to pour on the Cultural slider or to be able to actually build a Cathedral if people keep dinking around and avoiding the Culture-based techs
d) Tech enough to be able to complete The UN if people keep dinking around and avoiding the Mass Media techs
e) Tech enough to be able to complete the majority of the tech tree before the game ends

I'm not petitioning to lift that restriction (yet), but it would be nice to know the reasoning behind it.

 

[shyuhe]

The rule is to avoid the gifting of techs to the AI for an easy +4 diplo (for the diplo victories). If it makes the game harder, so be it. I'm pretty sure that everyone on this "team" can crush immortal AI under normal settings so a little challenge shouldn't be too bad.

A few warriors may be a good idea, but I'd like to grab the corn/double ivory site relatively quickly. If we get those spots, we really can't get barbs except from the 2-3 tiles in the north and to our east.

 

[mystyfly]

Getting cheap diplo is one thing, gifting just researched rifling to every AI might be desasterous for any war attempts.

A warrior or two sounds ok to me as we need MP anyway but I doubt we'll see much barb activity due to the compactness of civs and many AI units swarming around. Better be safe than sorry though. Especially north of Delhi could still spawn nasty surprises IIRC. Though I generally prefer fogbusting than fighting archers with warriors, they may be put to better use by fogbusting than by guarding cities just yet.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Some initial impressions from looking at the saved game:
- Babylon has a Bowman down to 0.4/3 Health just to the north of our capital. Along with Willem's Scout also being up there, we won't have to spawn-bust that area for quite some time.
- We're 2 turns away from building the next Settler, so I might as well just plop down the Jungle City and use the new Settler for the Corn + Ivory location
- I don't mind whipping the Settler which comes afterwards for the Sheep + Ivory western location, although I am thinking that I'll probably grow to Size 6 and 3-pop-whip the Settler instead of 2-pop-whipping it
- The capital is working a Grassland Forest instead of an unimproved Flood Plains square, so there's an opportunity for us to gain +1 Commerce per turn, yaaaa
- The SE City and the soon-to-be-settled Jungle City both have AI units roaming near them. So, our lands look to be reasonably-well spawn-busted except for the Sheep + Ivory area, so I'll probably send one of our existing Warriors over there instead of exploring "the great unknown"... exploration can happen after we've secured our area via spawn-busting

 

[shyuhe]

Sounds good. The land to our south and east is jungle so it'll be better to let the AI clear it and have us conquer it with phants/catapults.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Oh yeah... one thing that I'd like to ask before I play: is there any issue with me using BUG + BULL? I.e. Will using both of those have the possibility of messing up the saved game for someone else? If yes, would I be fine by just using BUG?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

- I don't mind whipping the Settler which comes afterwards for the Sheep + Ivory western location, although I am thinking that I'll probably grow to Size 6 and 3-pop-whip the Settler instead of 2-pop-whipping it

Actually, I am not certain that I can do so cleanly... growing in Size implies building a different build item... which must be built to completion according to a strict interpretation of the intention of the rules. However, you would think that we'd have a bit of leeway here, i.e. if we:
Step 1) Complete the build item that was placed in the top of the build queue on a prior turnset
Step 2) Start a different build item ourselves
Step 3) Should be allowed to queue-swap since we haven't actually stopped building anyone else's choices and would only be queue-swapping our own choice or choices

I.e. I would like the flexibility to:
Complete the current Settler, since someone else chose to build it -> Be allowed to partially-build a Warrior or a Building since it is my chosen build item -> Be allowed to interrupt my chosen build item since I chose it and since it won't be messing-up anyone else's choice -> If I cannot complete either build item by the end of my turnset, I must set one build item to be the "current" build item.

At that point, I would leave both build items in the queue, so that the next player knows that we invested Hammers in both build items, but the next player would only be required to complete the first build item.

Then, in future turnsets, should one of my chosen build item selections not have been completed, I would LOSE the ability to queue-swap it, since at least one other player had spent some turns building (this situation would probably only come up for Wonders or buildings in a City that makes only a couple of Hammers per turn).

I think that the spirit of the rule is to prevent people from queue-swapping out selections that happened on a turn prior to their current turn. However, it would be nice to have the flexibility, within the current turnset, to be able to queue-swap between items that were started within the current turnset.

What do you guys think?

 

[r_rolo1]

However, it would be nice to have the flexibility, within the current turnset, to be able to queue-swap between items that were started within the current turnset.

I agree with that. Not only it makes sense gamewise , but also avoids people gaming queues by dropping heavy wonders on them.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

also avoids people gaming queues by dropping heavy wonders on them.

Well, you'd still be stuck completing a Wonder if the previous person left it at the top of their build queue.

The only flexibility that you gain is temporary, during your turnset.

It also might just make things too complicated...

For example, say that I had 10/100 Hammers invested in a Settler and 2/15 Hammers invested in a Warrior. I leave the Settler at the top of the build queue, so the next player has to complete the Settler but not necessarily the Warrior.

However, it becomes unclear as to what happens if the next player starts up on the Warrior again... do they need to complete the Warrior since I had started it or can they also queue-swap after building the Warrior for 2 more turns, say, to starting on a Worker? I'd probably say that they could queue-swap, since they had completed the Settler.

The biggest concern that I can see here is people "forgetting" which build item was the first one and then accidentally breaking the rules because they are so focused on what kind of queue-swapping they are able to do.

So, yes, from a gamewise perspective, it makes sense to allow it, but also, after we're out of the Settler + Worker spamming stage, we probably won't really need to do much queue-swapping anyway.


Thus, although it's a bit frustrating, I think that I'll just stick with the current rule as written, while maintaining a forward-thinking mindset of preventing people in the future from accidentally breaking a rule.


I'll also just stick with BUG without BULL for now, until someone can confirm/deny whether or not using both would have the potential to mess up the loading of the saved game for other people.

 

[Habitus]

If i read the rules right once you've completed the current build at the start of your turn you can do anything to the Queue until the end of your turn. The next person only needs to finish what you leave it building and can ignore anything else in the Queue, so basically what your saying is somewhat the rule anyway just you can't do anything until after the initial build is completed.

I have both but i think think when you load the game if you have both loaded it will unload bull as you start the saved game since it was started without bull loaded.

*edit*

So yes after the settler putting afew turns into a warrior the person before started and then switching is fine as warrior wasn't top of Queue at start of your turnset.

*edit 2*

O i suggested sending our 2nd or 3rd warrior north to spawnbust but i think we lost our exploring warrior so both went with settler to escort it. So 1 of them should be free to go back north to spawn bust, and the other could try spawn busting around our desired sites. Corn + Ivory may be ok as Willem settled near it so that area is somewhat spawnbusted from the culture sight