GOTM 08 Pre-Game Discussion

[pigswill]

On the basis of current information move 1W. Build warrior while researching fishing; build workboat while researching bronze. No real value in getting too far ahead until we know what kind and size of island we're on, neighbours etc.

 

[Mad Professor]

well, there ARE barbs right?? [sorry, i have nothing against aussies, but this was just an easy cheap-shot]...now back to your regularly scheduled civ...

Just remember that barbs can bring down civilisations!

The comment about dye is fair too. I hadn't thought of that

 

[malekithe]

Why does anyone care about the dyes? The whole conversation should be a non-starter. They will have zero impact for the most important third of the game. Even once they do have some small impact, their positioning is such as to be considered irrelevent. If they influence, in any way, your decision where to settle the starting city, I would recommend rethinking your approach to the game. Only two classes of resources that are initially visible typically weigh into my decision where to settle: food (most important) and pre-calendar luxuries (less important). The rest may as well be invisible until some time later.

 

[Stormreaver]

I'm thinking Go Fish might be the best opening move, getting the Fish tile worked before starting to produce a worker (to start using that gold). In a larger perspective, I'm heading for a CS slingshot.

Maximizing the output would probably mean growing our capital to size 3 while getting the workboat out. This means we need to gather (22+24) 46 food and (15+30) 45 hammers. With some micromanagement and the start given we can accomplish that in the first 20 turns of production. The tiles I'm going to use:
A=1F2P1C (Spices)
B=2F1P (Grassland+Forest)
C=3F (Pigs)

Assuming settling 1W on "turn 0", remember you get 1P from capital.

Turn 1-5: Tile B (10F,10P)
Turn 5: Borders expand
Turn 6-9: Tile C (22F,14P)
Turn 6: Discover Fishing
Turn 9: Berlin grows to size 2
Turn 10-11: Tile B+C (28F,18P)
Turn 10: Warrior/Scout finished, start Workboat
Turn 12-20: Tile A+C (46F,45P,9C)
Turn 20: Berlin grows to size 3
Turn 20: Workboat finished, start Worker...

What to start researching after Fishing depends. I'll definately want AH (Pigs), Myst->Med/Poly->Priesth. (Oracle), BW (Copper, chop/whip Oracle), Writing, CoL (CS slingshot) in the first batch of techs. Possibly also Pottery (Cottages), Sailing (Galleys).

Worker will be out in turn 28, need 2 turns travel and 4 turns of labor to finish the Gold mine. By turn 35 I need AH to give him something new to do.

Likely research order (approx time and reasoning):
1. Fishing (6 turns, need to build workboat)
2. Mysticism (8 turns)
3. Polytheism (11 turns - if there's no religious nuts I could get Hinduism. In my test game though from my generated save there were and Buddhism was founded in turn 9, hinduism in approx. turn 20 - 5 turns too early)
4. Animal Husbandry (10 turns - will be well timed, just now I'll have the gold mined)

Likely build order:
1. Warrior (10 turns - to defend settlers from animals/barbs and then token defense for happiness in capital, a 2nd scout might not be that useful considering the probably limited landmass to explore and the strong possibility huts are edited out.)
2. Workboat (10 turns - to get the fish tile up to speed, 5F2C is a killer tile, especially combined with the gold...)
3. Worker (8 turns - Gold and Pigs!)
4. Settler (13 turns)

After this I'd say there's too much we do not know about the game to decide exactly how to proceed. Anyone who knows when to expect the Oracle to be built on Monarch/Archipelago?? Considering Priesthood is needed for Oracle, can we from religious foundings decide if there are religious nuts present and Oracle might then be built earlier/later which might affect the decisions from here on?

I'll probably go something like Priesthood, Writing, Code of Laws, BW. BW and some other tech (Sailing/Wheel/Pottery depending on need) might get thrown in earlier if I find out that building the Oracle would be slower than researching CoL (not sure how much the Gold affects this - will do some math at about turn 35 when playing the GOTM).

Edit: last paragraph edited

 

[Stormreaver]

Hmm, in a rather egocentrical way I reply to my own post above, suggesting what could be an even stronger start.

Build order:
1. Worker
2. Workboat (however, this is mixed in with 1 to get the Fish tile ASAP)
3. Warrior/Scout
4. Settler

Tech order:
1. Fishing
2. Animal Husbandry
3. BW
4. Writing
I give up on the religion possibility here, one could possibly fit in Monotheism to get Judaism later, just after getting Poly on one's way to Priesthood (also grants Organized Religion, which I like). However, with the fast CoL coming getting one of the early three religions isn't very important.

Tile denotation:
A=1F2P1C (Spices)
B=2F1P (Grassland+Forest)
C=3F (Pigs w/o Pasture)
D=3P (Plains Hill+Forest)
F=5F2C (Fish w/ Fishing boats)
G=1F2P7C (Gold w/ Mine)
P=6F (Pigs w/ Pasture)

Micromanagement orders:
Turn 1-6: Tile A (24P, 6C - remember F=>P when building worker)
Turn 0: Begin build worker
Turn 0: Research Fishing
Turn 5: Borders expand
Turn 6: Fishing finished, research AH
Turn 6: Add Workboat to the front of build queue
Turn 7-14: Tile D (30+26P, 6C - the 30P is workboat, now removed from totals)
Turn 14: Workboat finished, resume Worker
Turn 15: Tile A (30P, 7C)
Turn 15: Build Fishing Boats
Turn 16-20: Tile F (60P, 17C - removing Worker P from totalts)
Turn 17: AH finished, research BW
Turn 20: Worker finished, begin Warrior. Send Worker to Gold tile for mining
Turn 21-25: Tile F (25F, 5P, 27C)
Turn 25: Worker done with gold mine, send to Pigs tile
Turn 25: Berlin grows to size 2
Turn 26-29: Tile F+G (41F, 15+2P, 63C - two overflow hammers)
Turn 29: Warrior finished, begin something non-Worker/Settler
Turn 30: Tile F+C (47F, 3P, 65C - not using Gold mine but grows one turn earlier)
Turn 28?: BW finished, begin Writing
Turn 30: Berlin grows to size 3
Turn 30: Worker done with Pasture at Pigs tile
Turn 30: Nevermind the 3P accumulated, begin Settler

So, at turn 30 we have:

• Grown to size 3 (as above, and with an extra bonus food)
• Accumulated a lot more commerce
• Produced a Worker, Workboat and Warrior (as above)
• More tiles worked (both Pigs and Gold tile are worked already at turn 30)
• Not accumulated as much production to the first Settler, but will finish it earlier than above because of the worked tiles.

After the first Settler is finished (I assume we want at least one more city early on) another Settler or a Library with Writing is likely (there's lots and lots of food: fast growth and 2 scientists for fast CoL and seriously early Academy). BW is researched and the forests (especially the hill forests I'd say) can be chopped for Oracle. Slavery is another option with the plentiful food.

 

[Nares]

Most problematic list of civs should be as follows:

Asoka
Hatshepsut
Isabella
Huayna Capac
Qin Shi Huang
Louis XIV

Part of that is based off of my own plan of going for Hinduism, though the likely grabbers of Hinduism also tend towards other religious techs, making them more likely to research Priesthood earlier rather than later.

Asoka would be the worst possible civ to have here, as he favors both religious techs and wonder building. Louis is the most wonder driven, with Hatshepsut being as similarly inclined to build wonders as Asoka, though less of a threat to me because she does not start with Mysticism.

EDIT: CoL/CS@1360BC. Should be early enough.

 

[Mastiff_of_Ar]

Hmmm... Maybe sailing shouldn't be an afterthought. Just looking at the practice game, the first out with galleys might have an advantage.

 

[KingdomBrunel]

Playing as Germany? - could this be a World Cup themed GOTM?

Predicted opponents are (6) from:

• English
• French
• Spanish
• Romans (Italy)
• Americans
• Aztecs (Mexico)
• Persians (Iran)
• Japanese
• Arabians (Saudi - altho' geographically dubious....)

I just thank God that there aren't Swiss & Ukrainian civs then . That was a dull game.

 

[VerbalKint]

Haha, just had something extremly funny happen to me during a testgame...
Warning: slight spoilers to Stormreavers testgame
http://verbkint.free.fr/Pics/Civ4lol.JPG

Anyway, I'm really not sure what to do with this game. I know I want to win by culture since I've never done so before, but what to research and when really baffles me... I want it all, early religions, worker techs, fishing, pottery for the cheap granaries, and I also want the CS slingshot
Normally I'd just get alphabet to get all of the above, but I reckon that won't work on archepelago since few civs will meet eachother.

Regarding the start, I agree with scouting first to see if plains hill is justified(I'm almost hoping to see something good, then I can take fishing/workboat of my list of things to do), else 1W.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Haha, just had something extremly funny happen to me during a testgame...
Warning: slight spoilers to Stormreavers testgame
http://verbkint.free.fr/Pics/Civ4lol.JPG

LOL! That'd be unbelievably frustrating if it happened in the real game.

Anyway, I'm really not sure what to do with this game.

If it was me and this was a practice for the real GOTM then - since it was obvious you were putting a lot of effort into CS slingshot, I'd abandon this game, and have a think about my early strategy and what I might have done differently to speed up researching COL and building the oracle, then have another go using whatever strategy revisions I'd decided on, to see how they work. (Would you have done better by not founding Hamburg - which probably slowed your research - but starting the Oracle earlier and building it more slowly somewhere else? I don't know for certain but it seems a possibility, though I can well understand why you wanted to put Hamburg there...)

OTOH you mentioned wanting a cultural victory. I've done cultural a few times but have never found a single winning strategy for it (and I'm not sure there is one, beyond that you need lots of artists and enough religions to build different cathedrals). However, on monarch if I was going for cultural, I might think twice about CS slingshot. Why? Because to pull off CS slingshot on monarch you have to throw a lot of resources at that one aim, and for cultural I'd quite like to get the parthenon for the culture and artists. Trying to do both would be *very* hard to pull off. My inclination would be to try and get the parthenon, and also try to use the oracle to get theology (easier than CS because you don't need to have researched COL) in order to (a) found Christianity, and (b) build the sistine chapel. However, that's just one strategy that has worked for me before, I wouldn't be surprised if other people have alternative, or better strategies for cultural victories.

 

[Stormreaver]

Another GOTM8 look-a-like, this time with the HOF mod.

 

[AlanH]

I've moved the posts relating to the possible use of the HoF Mod to a new thread so that the discussion can continue after everyone leaves this one to play the game. The new thread is here

 

[Jove]

I can't see the starting screenshot.

 

[AlanH]

That's because the uploads server, along with the gotm and hof server, is down at the moment. It's been rebooted and we await its return to full vigour

 

[cas]

any word whether huts will be in this game or not ? It would make a difference on my tech/build path going for sailing early and load up two scouts on a galleon to explore.

I personally like huts in the game and think it's a shame to see them removed completely. But if that's the decision, I just want to know so I can adjust my strategy appropriately.

Thanks.
cas

 

[AlanH]

Huts were not removed completely in any game to my knowledge. Ainwood usually removes huts close to the start to reduce the impact of early game luck, but they are not removed wholesale. If you have reached a point where you can read the two GOTM 7 spoiler threads then you can find his post responding to this question in one of them.

 

[Caesar of Rome]

I frequently try to build Stonehenge as infill project when waiting for some tech to complete. (No point in building warriors if Archers are due etc.) The disadvantage of this is that I put off research on calendar. Not this time. But given that we can only enjoy spices/dyes after calendar, there is no reason for them to be in the capital city cross.

 

[Stormreaver]

A third mockup attached, also with HOF mod and with the 6 "nightmare" (from a CS slingshot perspective) opponents mentioned above.

I've played one test game using this save where, if I wouldn't build them, Stonehenge was built 1320BC, Oracle in 850BC.

 

[godotnut]

I tried Stormreavers's practice game, and I was astonished at how easy it is to out-tech the opposition with that gold-plains hill square. I think many people who might not normally play at Monarch will find that this is a great one to get used to the level on. A space race victory should be especially easy.

This is a very powerful starting position.

 

[regoarrarr]

So the fastest I've gotten the Oracle / CS slingshot using the original practice saved game is 1560 BC - anybody do better than that?