GOTM 08 Pre-Game Discussion

BSmith1068 said:
Looking at the starting image, it looks like there is coast along the top portion of the island...

All look like coast to me. Something to consider when thinking about city placement, although I'll probably still go 1W.

could be, (i've enlarged in my 19" monitor), but still not sure, probably the island (or this portion, at least) goes E-W (or W-E, difficult to say :lol: ).
To settle 1W is mandatory, IMO
 
I've tested the starts on the test map. I think I'm going to slingshot to get Civil Service and then run TWO Scientist specialists until I pop one and get an academy. There is a small chance of landing a priest, but this does not worry me much. Then the second GP will be a priest and found the holy city wonder in city 2.

Then, if possible, run don't walk to the great lighthouse and collossus. I do worry that GL is more powerful than the CS slingshot long term and prevents somewhat of a dillemma for us.
 
culdeus said:
I've tested the starts on the test map. I think I'm going to slingshot to get Civil Service and then run TWO Scientist specialists until I pop one and get an academy. There is a small chance of landing a priest, but this does not worry me much. Then the second GP will be a priest and found the holy city wonder in city 2.

Why not run those scientists while working toward the slingshot? Then you get a longer benefit from the academy and you have a 100% chance of getting a Great Scientist. In addition, by running the scientists, you'll probably get to Civil Service faster. There aren't any high commerce tiles (no rivers) aside from the gold mine. There's plenty of food. I see no reason not to run a couple scientists early.
 
BLubmuz said:
I can't see why research AH before Fishing. Fishing IMO is an absolute priority. Same i can't see why research BW ... you can easily trade it after Alpha and if you don't know other civs it's not a priority.
I prefer Myst instead of Medi 'cause Medi is easiest to have by trade, since there are no Wonders tied, and -again- I can't see why research both.

You raised questions about three tech choices. I'd be happy to explain why those are good choices for a fast CS slingshot.

Animal Husbandry - It helps to grow the population as quickly as possible, and allows you to get Writing and the library very quickly. Plus, I got it first because it allowed my city to work on a worker first, and employ that worker toward a food source, without having to worry about a fishing boat. You could get the fishing boat afterwards, and I recommend you do. But, getting a worker out and improving the terrain early is very important. You want the gold mine up and manned as quickly as possible.

Bronze Working - This allows you to quickly chop a library and the oracle. Instead of spending time working hammer tiles, you can spend all your time working commerce tiles or scientists and gain almost all the neccessary hammers from chopping. When you need a lot of commerce, working hill tiles is non-productive.

Mysticism - As others have mentioned, you have no choice. If I could leave it out, I would.

It *might* be faster to go for a strict beeline of Mysticism > Meditation > Priesthood > Writing > CoL > CS. You might include a quick stop for fishing in there too. But, any turns it would save you are offset by a) no Great Scientist, b) fewer developed tiles (the pigs, one of the single best resources in the game), and c) absolutely no knowledge of nearby stategic resources.
 
malekithe,
mysticism is a mistake, i would write Poly, and, of course, is inevitable for CoL
anyway build a worker stops your growt, so warrior while researchig fishing and workboat > worker while res. AH, then Wheel (pigs are on a grassland tile) seems better to me.
then straight to the path you describe (probably changing Medi with Poly for the reason I mentioned - not so clearly, due to the above mistake -).
I agree, you can loose something not res. BW, but the path for CoL is long enough in a Monarch game, you can loose the run for Oracle, and in this case bye CS and bye pyramids and other early wonders.
about Pyramids, you need mansonry, but - again - could we afford this one, breaking the path to Col? we can build the Oracle in our second city, because it's cheap, while building Pyramids in the capital, but it's a matter of time ... only if I'll see stone nearby i'll break the CoL straight path.
 
malekithe said:
Why not run those scientists while working toward the slingshot? Then you get a longer benefit from the academy and you have a 100% chance of getting a Great Scientist. In addition, by running the scientists, you'll probably get to Civil Service faster. There aren't any high commerce tiles (no rivers) aside from the gold mine. There's plenty of food. I see no reason not to run a couple scientists early.

There is a river. We start next to it. If you're chopping those forests, there's something to be said for building cottages, and growing them, in order to further increase your research rate later on.
 
DaviddesJ said:
There is a river. We start next to it. If you're chopping those forests, there's something to be said for building cottages, and growing them, in order to further increase your research rate later on.

Are you sure we're looking at the same starting screenshot? I don't see a single tile that's getting extra commerce from a river.

I'll not disagree with your second point, though. It's all about balancing long and short term benefits.
 
malekithe said:
Are you sure we're looking at the same starting screenshot? I don't see a single tile that's getting extra commerce from a river.

I can't see the screenshot right now (system problems), but I'm pretty sure that we start on a forest tile, next to a river. That tile will get river commerce when we chop the forest. Same for the tile 1S.
 
DaviddesJ said:
There is a river.

Where? I can't see rivers, probably, as posted before, we got sea at north and the gold you see is from unworked spices, probably the first tile Berlin will work (less growth / more science / sooner workboat).

Fish is in an ocean tile, so only 1 gold ... damn, see this right now

Fog gazing, the tiles west of the grassland could be jungle

all this discussion is - of course - based on what we can see from the screenshot, but when the scout will go NE what can reveal? this could change everything, as in GotM7 happen for the wheat, remember?
another thing about the blue circles (jumped on my mind right now, probably a moment of illumination before i'll go to sleep): if we got copper or another resource we can't see 1W? otherwise why there isn't a blue circle in there, despite fish?
if i'm not wrong we'll get anyway this resource once we'll get the right tech, but we can loose the benefits in terms of hammers or food, or both ... nice dilemma, opinions welcome
 
I figured 1000 BC was a pretty safe date for the Oracle, but in my last test game, the computer built it in 1080 BC. Beat me by 2 turns.... Pretty frustrating since I was off to a pretty good start otherwise. Anyway, that is the earliest I have ever seen the computer build the Oracle. Has anybody seen earlier?
 
Pretty sure there is no river. Unless Blue Marble changes the appearance of rivers too. See the attachment. There is no river mouth.

P. S., the attachment is the original screeny posted by GOTM staff for GOTM8.
 

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PeteJ said:
Anyway, that is the earliest I have ever seen the computer build the Oracle. Has anybody seen earlier?

1160BC by a Industrious leader (Qin Shi Huang) who started on a small isolated island (two cities).

And there is no river.

Btw, the hydra is for punks.

I'm considering running the two Scientist specialists long enough to grab Philosophy with the second (or first; Bureaucracy early on, and all that is needed is Mathematics). I'm already planning on deviating from the 1560BC slingshot completion for a 1360BC completion that includes a very high chance of founding both Hinduism and Confuscianism, so I decided to run a test for grabbing Taoism.

Needless to say, I got hooked, and OCCd it until a AI city finally revolted to my side (which I then gifted back), but I managed to found five religions in Berlin (HinConTaoChrIslamism). I imagine I was highly competative in the run for Christianity, despite grabbing it as an afterthought, and neglecting to switch both switch to Bureacracy and build an Academy as each became available. The civic switch was a genuine mistake, and I think I'd be fairly competitive for Christianity against a religion freak if I made the switch ASAP. Holding the GS until a second popped was a bit neurotic of me, though some 25 turns for a second one seemed a bit long.

Still, that runs an extreme risk of not having access to the Industrial/Modern era resources as they become available. I don't see any real potential for substantial warfare prior to the Industrial era, however, so it may be a risk worth taking.
 
I just tried a practice game with these same settings. Keep in mind, I've never played Monarch before.

Monty was my neighbor. By the time I had my 3rd city up he was on my doorstep with a stack of chariots. I managed to beat him back with pop-rush Axemen/Archers/Swordsmen. I got over to his cities to find a large stack of Jaguars. :eek:
 
In one of my test games, an AI built Stonehenge in 2280BC, and later the Oracle was built around 1120BC.

Looking into the WorldBuilder, Napolean built the Oracle, and Qin Shi Huang built Stonehenge, in his second city, to boot!
 
I do worry that GL is more powerful than the CS slingshot long term and prevents somewhat of a dillemma for us.

I think that the Lighthouse is more powerful long term for sure. Pretty much every city in this game is going to be a coastal city. With the Lighthouse, you can expand like mad and not worry about your economy one bit.

I'm going for the Lighthouse and the Colossus. These are the "money" wonders for this game. ;) With all that extra gold, I'm confident that the tech advantage will swamp the one Oracle tech in no time at all. It would be possible to get all three, but I think that would cripple early production too much.

Personally, I think this one is going to be all about the early land grab. I'm going to focus my attention on spawing massive amounts of settlers ASAP. The gold hill and the the money wonders will take care of me.
 
godotnut said:
I think that the Lighthouse is more powerful long term for sure. Pretty much every city in this game is going to be a coastal city. With the Lighthouse, you can expand like mad and not worry about your economy one bit.

I'm going for the Lighthouse and the Colossus. These are the "money" wonder for this game. ;) With all that extra gold, I'm confident that the tech advantage will swamp the one Oracle tech in no time at all. It would be possible to get all three, but I think that would cripple early production too much.

Personally, I think this one is going to be all about the early land grab. I'm going to focus my attention on spawing massive amounts of settlers ASAP. The gold hill and the the money wonders will take care of me.

I totally agree GL & Colossus are better than the CS slingshot. But, can you have your cake and eat it too?

Here's what I'm thinking I will be doing... I tried this with the same starting set-up the was posted earlier in the thread, and managed to get two settlers produced along with a workboat to circumnavigate the globe.

Build the Oracle and grab Metalcasting with it. Build a cheap forge while researching the Great Lighthouse techs, and build that. Then, build the Colossus. I was able to accomplish all of this at completely safe dates (I think I had Oracle in 1600 BC, GL around 1000 BC, Colossus 600 BC, give or take a few centuries.) That was with no copper.

Building the Oracle for Metalcasting does two important things: a) it lets you get an early forge that speeds up everything in your capital and gives +1 happy, and b) it denies any other AI the ability to grab Metalcasting with it and beat you to the Oracle. I've never seen the Colossus built in the BC's by the AI except when an industrious civ takes Metalcasting from the Oracle.

The problem with this is that the great prophet you'll more than likely get from the Oracle isn't so hot... especially since you need to take Masonry and can't burn him on CS. However, if it's possible to build the Oracle in your second city you could manage your GP's to ensure your first person is a Great Merchant, who will discover CS in that tech path if you research Monarchy & Code of Laws & don't research Math. I've yet to try that, though, as you can't really predict what the second city terrain is going to look like.

All of this assumes your two other cities can handle the military & expansion needs until your capital is done building wonders... still, it seems very powerful.

My tech path in the sample game was something along the lines of (off the top of my head, I hadn't planned it out):

Fishing -> Animal Husbandry -> Wheel -> Bronzeworking -> Mysticism -> Meditation -> Priesthood -> Pottery -> (free Metalcasting somewhere around here) -> Sailing -> Masonry -> Writing -> Code of Laws

If you can get a Great Merchant, then Monarchy will give you a CS Slingshot in the BC's.

There really aren't that many techs in there you wouldn't find in a normal CS slingshot (Sailing, Masonry, and maybe Pottery, and then Monarchy), and you don't need CoL before building the Oracle. I'm just not sure how well you can build the Oracle in a second city to ensure you get a GM.

Build order was something along the lines of Worker -> Workboat -> Workboat -> Warrior -> Warrior -> Settler -> Oracle -> Settler -> Forge -> Great Lighthouse -> Colossus. I can't remember the ordering of the Settlers & Oracle, I was switching them around so city could grow to max while building Oracle & maybe Forge. I think I could have slipped in 2-3 settlers after GL or a Library and still gotten the Colossus safely, which would give a pretty decent empire by 1AD.

Of course, it all depends on the starting island, as well. If there's a need for an early axe war, or galleys to transport settlers/defend, some of this might go out the window.

I think I'm going to play around with some variations on this. :) What do you all think?
 
malekithe said:
Fastest I've been able to pull it off on the same map was 1600BC. It does take some pretty extreme sacrifices, though. The fastest way I could find to it was AH > Fishing > Writing > Bronze > Mysticism > Meditation > Priesthood > CoL > CS (from oracle).

I played around with this and the earliest I could do was 1800bc. I certainly wouldn't recommend it, but here is what I did:

Techs:
Fishing-->myst-->meditation-->Priesthood-->writing-->CoL

Build:
Worker
Fishing boat
oracle (there may be 1 garbage turn of production before priesthood enables oracle)

Tile management:
-When the worker is built, work the pigs while mining the gold. It delays the fishing boat a bit, but it means you never have to leave your gold to try and grow.
-Switch to the gold as soon as it is online. Worker now bum sits until oracle done (which seems inefficient lol)
-Work the spices with the third population
-Work a coastline square with the fourth population

You will have to micromanage between spices and a second coastline square to sync up CoL and oracle, but it should complete in 1800bc

If you put fishing third, it delays you to 1720bc(delays the workboat), but you do win the race to meditation. If I was really doing this strategy I would go ahead and convert here for the happiness and to have a cheap turn of anarchy (gold is not online at this point).

GS
 
Gr8scott said:
I played around with this and the earliest I could do was 1800bc. I certainly wouldn't recommend it, but here is what I did:

Techs:
Fishing-->myst-->meditation-->Priesthood-->writing-->CoL

Yep, I just got done playing around with that. Definitely a fast route to Civil Service, though you don't have much else to speak of when you're done... Personally, I'm more a fan of a 1300-1200 oracle. You can often push it out to even 1100-1000, but that's starting to get risky.
 
Beelining techs for oracle/col/CS slingshot presupposes a fairly peaceful start. Could be largely academic if it's a big island with an aggressive ai at either end.
 
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