Deity challengers

[Duckweed]

Just a suggestion.

There is not many things to be discussed in the early stage and the only thing to be done in the set is the movement of 1 or 2 units. So I think it would be better to play a slighter longer set in the beginning instead of spending time on handing over. So can Rusten play a little more?

 

[obsolete]

20% bonus isn't worth it as the cows also provide commerce being on a river.

This is very wrong. And if you want to attribute a decent bonus to the cows, the most important thing is that it's 1 less movement to the cows than the Wheat, meaning cows would get a whole extra turn bonus of input.

But here is the sad part.. EVEN with such a full turn advantage, AND with the extra commerce.. AND the Wheat not getting the +1 food bonus for BC-insta irrigation, the wheat wins out.

Going Agg. first will end up putting MORE food into your city, AND having more beakers.

The rule of thumb is... Agg Beats AH. So unless your someone with Ramesses,etc. this is important.

Going AH here will force you to burn off 4 turns (3 due to extra movement bonus) while waiting for AGG to come in after you went AH first. This is terrible for a deity game. If you do the math, you'll have to wait until turn 27 to get both plots improved.

The only advantage cows have here is that you gain more hammers. Which, isn't really that bad.

 

[Dirk1302]

The wheat's not irrigated iirc. Very crude comparision to get a feeling of what is involved:

Reversing the techorder nets us ~20 beakers (2 turns shaved of iirc)

With our order we'll get cow improved after 18 turns, ah+ag = 22 turns iirc, so we'll get up wheat after 26 turns

Switching we'll get wheat improved after 20 turns we can move on to cow immed beginning turn 21 so cow's up turn 24

so on turn 18 we gain 4H/2F (comparision to unimproved cow)
On turn 24 obs order means we get to work wheat + cow as opposed to only cow and an unimproved tile = 2H/2F extra (conveniently comparing to the unimproved cow again) So our order gains 2H + 6H from working cow instead of wheat turn 18-24. So we gain 8H, lose 20C.

Since i did it by heart i can easily have missed something (is it 2 turns shaved of for example?, might there be less overflow after the 2 turns shaved off....). As for the comparision i'd say 20C is a bit better than 8H so obs may well be right but it won't be gamebreaking.

It confirms what i always say in threads about openings. If you want to really optimize the opening intuition is often not enough and you have to do some calculations.

 

[Rusten]

20 beakers isn't 20 commerce -- big difference. 8 hammers > 20 beakers (if that is what you arrived at).

I played the next set (up to agriculture) -- editing in shortly.

Our scout won't be able to explore the south-west due to barbarian activity so I try to find the other civ instead and hug Aztec borders. Unfortunately Montezuma has blocked the passage south.

And north. We are in the dark. Will be harder to decide what to do now.

The eastern city has desert in its BFC so that means the western city is Tenochtitlan (capital).

48/19 EP in favour of us now. The AI uses the EP slider from the start so he's putting about 4 per turn onto the other civ (or several).

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Just a suggestion.

There is not many things to be discussed in the early stage and the only thing to be done in the set is the movement of 1 or 2 units. So I think it would be better to play a slighter longer set in the beginning instead of spending time on handing over. So can Rusten play a little more?

Before the server crash , I was about to post:" ofc he can"... but now he did so
(I guess I will play more turns in my next set then, after me completing AH in the first save )

 

[Duckweed]

I actually did some math right after Rusten have already played it. The difference is about 5F + 32 beakers vs ?H?C (depend on which tile you choose to work for the 2nd citizen). We don't have commerce tile in BFC, so I'd consider commerce is equally important to hammer in early stage (since you either put the hammers on warrior or barrack, which is not that important as producing worker or settler). So I think Agri->AH wins a little bit.

 

[Rusten]

Disclaimer: I'd rather put effort into discussing our game plan than what has already happened, so take that into account.

RE: AH vs agriculture.

Other things to put into the equation.

- huts are on and we start with a scout so there's a chance we'll pop the other tech by the time we need it (or BW).
- AH could reveal horses in our BFC. Our UU is based on horses and rumour has it you usually get the resource you need (and my experience has similar results).

If you did math, remember that hunting also gives +20% -- you don't need two for the boost. There's also the discount from other civs knowing the tech, so agriculture doesn't give 20% off on AH.

I can agree that it's pretty even.

 

[Shurdus]

Arrived a little late, but will be lurking this thread. Good luck guys!

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

The eastern city has desert in its BFC so that means the western city is Tenochtitlan (capital).

I fear Monty will expand toward us then...
next priority should be to build an archer to explore the south west... then what path do we choose? Rusten and I discussed yesterday of going for writing asap (perhaps even before BW) to build a lib, start increasing the diplo with Monty with OB, and grow a scientist. Going for BW could nail us the library faster with chops/whips, but I am not sure as it's one more tech to research. What do you think guys? archery -> writing/archery -> BW -> writing/some other(better) path?

Roster:

Raskolnikov
Rusten -> just played!
Duckweed -> up!
Dirk -> on deck!
PaulusIII
Shyuhe
Mystyfly

Cheers,
Ras

PS: what is done well, is done... so I too think we should focus on improving our future, even if it was instructive

 

[Dirk1302]

Writing first is an interesting thought. I think it'll delay us too much in other respects though, we'll have to build several settlers/workers/archers in the capital, i don't see us running any scientists there soon. It would only increase our diplo significantly if his religion spread to us early. The OB would help since we can see what's happening on the other side but imo not important enough to switch techs now.

So i think archery->bw->writing should be our techpath. I also think we need to build some cities towards Monty, by that time writing will be in and we'll know how much defense we need there.
Not much hills there unfortunately.

About the earlier discussion, i didn't mean to criticize Rusten. Based on the situation i also thought AH first was better and i still think pro's and cons are about even on this one (possible early horse was absolutely a factor for instance in the equation). It's certainly instructive though and i think these sort of discussion's have a place here.

 

[obsolete]

Archery would be putting you back by quite a bit. If you find out you are going to need it, then chances are you've already lost.

You have at least one horse patch near the capital, and possibly more. With the increased strength of warriors in BtS I'd go warriors for now, and go after bronze-w

 

[Rusten]

No offense taken Dirk, and I don't mind analysing things in hindsight. However, all the discussion was on this and nobody said anything about what to do with Montezuma. No problem thinking backwards, but have to think about the future as well.

Montezuma has meditation (Buddhism) which means he can get missionaries after a monastery. If we get the diplo modifiers for shared borders and religion we can befriend him quickly. I'm not sure whether "super-early" writing is worth it though -- he might not have a monastery yet.

IIRC you get +relations after 50 turns of open borders.
His personality favours religion, does that increase likelyhood of a monastery? Or does it count as science only? Maybe both?

Relying on warriors vs this open area seems incredibly risky to me--there should be a lot of barbarian activity. I don't see the connection between needing archery and the game being lost -- care to elaborate?

archery-> bw -> writing is that I'd usually do. Probably best here as well, but not sure yet.

 

[shyuhe]

Sorry team, my computer broke last night so I can't play until further notice.

 

[obsolete]

I'm not sure whether "super-early" writing is worth it though -- he might not have a monastery yet.

Well, you SHOULD be able to get a a random auto-spread, even if he never makes a single missionary.

If you get a few warriors they will fogbust for you, and you just park em in tree's to upgrade to medics and other bonuses, and you'll be ok. Deity AI will expand so fast that there won't much barb problems, unless you really have a lot of terrain behind you and they have no choice but to funnel toward you. Just make sure you go after bronze first for your backup-backup. Actually you need Bronzeworking anyway so quit stalling it.

 

[Rusten]

Look at the map, there will be no deity AI expanding to our north-west. Seeing as we haven't met any AI from the west there is even more ground down there. We can't rely on the AI fogbusting for us. ATM only Aztec troops can enter there. We'll be swarmed with barbarian archers and warriors usually can't handle that, even in forests. Team decision of course, but I see it as too risky.

 

[Duckweed]

Disclaimer: I'd rather put effort into discussing our game plan than what has already happened, so take that into account.

I think discussion on any divergence is the real interesting part of SG game and that's where players can learn. I did learn something about how the capital is set from your post.

RE: AH vs agriculture.

Other things to put into the equation.

- huts are on and we start with a scout so there's a chance we'll pop the other tech by the time we need it (or BW).
- AH could reveal horses in our BFC. Our UU is based on horses and rumour has it you usually get the resource you need (and my experience has similar results).

If you did math, remember that hunting also gives +20% -- you don't need two for the boost. There's also the discount from other civs knowing the tech, so agriculture doesn't give 20% off on AH.

I can agree that it's pretty even.

I'd never take the hut thing into count since there's very low chance to get one specific tech like Agri (<10% from 4 huts).
Again 1/7 possibility of horse should not be considered and relied on when you think about your strategy.

That's ~20 commerce Agri 1st will contribute if you can run the test yourself.

 

[Rusten]

1/7? The point was that you usually get horse with civs like Spain/Byzantine/Egypt/Persia. I don't have any evidence for this though, but after I started thinking about it I found myself getting horse >50% of the time with these civs.

 

[Duckweed]

There's nothing to debate on what's tech next, even there's copper in BFC, it will require BW and Wheel to connect it and need more 30 turns. Moreover, warriors have no chance to protect the improvements.

So Plan for next:

Tech:
Archery->BW
Edit: Whether there's copper in capital's culture border, Wheel should be next to connect cities for trade route.

Our western land is food poor. So I am inclined to seal the eastern border and grab a couple of good sites as soon as possible. So settler in size3, and the 2 warriors should be OK to defend the new city.The Cow/FP/Fur site is my 1st choice. However, the downside of doing this is that we are going to have earlier border contact with Monty and result in a higher odd of being chosen as the target.

So vote for the aggressive settlement is needed.

 

[Duckweed]

1/7? The point was that you usually get horse with civs like Spain/Byzantine/Egypt/Persia. I don't have any evidence for this though, but after I started thinking about it I found myself getting horse >50% of the time with these civs.

Actually when I play Persia and Egypt, Most of time I don't have horse in BFC.

 

[Rusten]

I almost always get iron with Japan for instance (and almost never copper).

Haven't used Persia or Egypt much, but I have been taking notes with Russia/Byzantine. But of course it could be a fluke.

I might give this theory an extended test later to see if there's anything to it.