GOTM 09: Pre-Game discussion

[bshumbera]

what do you mean by looking at resource bubbles? how exactly do they tell you what hemisphere you are in?

Well, first you toggle the show resources button on and you get the little bubbles with pictures above things like pigs and gold in our GOTM-9 start screen. The arrows connecting the bubble to the actual resource on the map ALWAYS point to the equator . Therefore, looking at our GOTM-9 start image, we will be starting somewhere north of the equator (northern hemisphere) on our continent. As such, we are more likely to encounter a rival civ somewhere south in GOTM-9 since there is more continent to the south of our start than north. Likely, the rival lies somewhere on our river if it's long. In Civgeek's mock file (Thanks Civgeek), the arrows point north, indicating that we are in the southern hemisphere. It made sense to move the Quecha due north to most quickly encounter a rival civ for a worker steal. Hope this all made sense. Make a game and try it yourself.

 

[Gr8scott]

I ran another nine test shots to get a feel for the timing of some key events given GOTM9 settings.

Here were the results:

Wonder Completion date
Stonehenge
Min 1660BC
Median 1390BC
Max 745BC

Oracle
Min 1540BC
Median 1210BC
Max 565BC

Great Lighthouse
Min 910BC
Median 55BC
Max 185AD

Pyramids
Min 865BC
Median 595BC
Max 190BC

Parthenon
Min 430BC
Median 250BC
Max 260AD

Collossus
Min 400BC
Median 350AD
Max 785AD+

Great Library
Min 230AD
Median 485AD
Max 995AD


Religions
First Religion Founded:
Buddhism (8 out 9 times)

First Religion Founding Dates:
Min 3610BC
Median 3490BC
Max 3310BC

Second Religion Founding Dates
Min 3220BC
Median 3010BC
Max 2530BC

Barbarians
First non-animal Barbarian Unit Sighted:
Min 2320BC
Median 1420BC
Max Never

Comments:
As far as wonders go, it still looks like you have a decent shot at an Oracle slingshot although I haven't tested how much you can get done prior to about 1400-1500BC. I am hoping for something like a metalcasting slingshot.

For religions, you have a great chance of founding hinduism if you want to. Eight out of the nine random test games the AI went for Buddhism first. If the AI choose Buddhism, it never did hindu fast enough to prevent you from doing it.

For barbarians, it was greatly dependent on the map layout. If you had close AI neighbors, you could go the entire game without seeing any barbarians. If not they showed up pretty fast. Most games seemed to have 3-5 barbarians appearing between 2000bc and 1200bc if neighbors were not close by.

I haven't figured out my opening strategy yet, but I figured I would share this data to get a discussion going!

GS

 

[bshumbera]

As far as wonders go, it still looks like you have a decent shot at an Oracle slingshot although I haven't tested how much you can get done prior to about 1400-1500BC. I am hoping for something like a metalcasting slingshot.

I was easily able to achieve an Oracle-CS slingshot today in both my test games. I think that the jungles act to limit the early AI capabilities and make it possible on this difficulty level. That, and the AI also have to deal with those pesky barbs too! In this case, fog busting Quechas allow you to work towards the Oracle without being interupted by barbs.

 

[BLubmuz]

Probably most of us are under GotM8 influence, where AI built wonders like candies having no better things to do.

With all that land to fill with settlers, and related archers and workers, probably wonders are not an AI priority, so Oracle and maybe SH are at hand.

I see more difficult Pyramids (unless we have stone) or GLightH, since our capital is not in the coast.

IMO a quechua rush, if we got a close neighbour worths the while, independently by your strategy: if we destroy a rival we have less settlers to produce, more resources and more land, and we can focus in the economy during the mid game, and decide later if continue warmonger or else.

Interesting the resource bubbles thing, never noticed.

 

[PeteJ]

I finally played a successful practice game. Barb busting is a lot more important than I originally thought. I have only seen 3 barbarians thanks to my quechas patroling the fog. I pulled off a COL slingshot in 1600 BC and I am the founder of both Hinduism and COL. Looking back, I don't think Hinduism is important if you are planning on an early COL. However if you want Metal Casting from the Oracle, then an early religion is almost mandatory. Happiness plus shrine gold is extremely helpful on emperor.

So do you guys think it is better to get COL or Metal Casting? Obviously CS would be ideal but lets be realistic...

 

[Jastrow]

So far in test, IF I can get a EARLY worker steal, then I have been hitting the CS slingshot with regularity (4 in 4 starts). HOWEVER, I have been beaten to the Oracle 3 out of 3 times when trying it without being able to nab an early worker, so proximity of the nearest neighbor might be critical.

 

[mb352525]

Biggest issue is how close rivals are. It won't be hard to capture cities before bronze is hooked up, but it will be hard to keep distant cities before courthouses.

I probably won't build anything but quechas until everyone gets bronze hooked up. Steal workers and capture new cities. Goal is to elimanate at least two rivals early.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Biggest issue is how close rivals are. It won't be hard to capture cities before bronze is hooked up, but it will be hard to keep distant cities before courthouses.

I probably won't build anything but quechas until everyone gets bronze hooked up. Steal workers and capture new cities. Goal is to elimanate at least two rivals early.

Interesting plan. Personally I wouldn't build /only/ quechas, I'd put in a couple of archers, because, even without AIs hooking up bronze, you will get some barb axemen wandering around - quechas don't stand much chance against those.

Last night I tried a practice game in which I discovered Tokugawa about 15 squares away. My quecha circled round his borders looking for an available worker and got ravaged by a lion in the process. I waited till he recovered (10 turns, by which time I had a 2nd quecha there) before I declared war... There was an axeman in Kyoto. My quechas didn't live long after that... Can't recall what year this was but my research path had been polytheism-mining-bronze working and I was still 3 turns from hitting BW, so this was still very early. Certainly pre-2000BC. Turned out Toku had copper in his city radius; presumably he'd headed straight for BW.

So I guess the advice is: If you go to war with quechas, do it early and make sure you keep enough quechas around to stop your opponent hooking up either copper or horses (I guess if you don't have the techs to see where they are yet then just pillaging all mines and all pastures should do it).

btw if you do eliminate 2 rivals early, then there has to be at least a 50/50 chance that you'll end up alone on your continent.

 

[Thrallia]

in my one test game, Elizabeth researched BW first and adopted slavery around 3300BC!

I think I'll start out by building a couple quechas for fogbusting/exploring for neighbors. If there's a neighbor really close to me I'll worker steal from him(or attempt to at least) for a couple reasons...1)It will save me a number of turns of building my own worker, 2) it will hurt my nearest neighbor, causing him to be less likely to expand enough to bottleneck me early.

once I have an early religion, worker, and a few quechas fogbusting, I'll focus on some wonders...I'm really not very good at the CS-slingshot, I rarely get it on Noble because I don't like focusing my efforts so minutely, so I'll probably try for a CoL, Alphabet, or MC slingshot instead.

 

[ungy]

Thx Gr8Scott for the data

Personally I am not a great fan of a slingshot with HC. The quechas are so overpowering early on that it seems a waste to give up an early war to build oracle. My bet is that they did not give us HC with this huge start to put us out of reach of any AI. So I think scouting important and maybe a steal--get a couple quechas out while letting city grow and go for hindu.

 

[Jon Shaw]

I am trying a randomly generated map (settings the same as GOTM) on emperor, and it is not going well. It's barb-a-rama. I've had to re-load and reinvent my tactics quite a few times to even get to the ADs, and I won't be able to do that in the GOTM.

Normally you can't play the adenturer class if you've finished in the top half of any GOTM, which I might have just squeezed into at some time. Is that ruling more flexible on this month's game?

 

[BLubmuz]

OK, GotM 6 and 7 result published (thanks Ainwood), so my thought to play adventurer is gone (probably it was just a thought).

OTOH i downloaded the best players saves, and i've seen an interesting tech path: straight for alphabet, traded cheap techs, straight to CS slingshot.

Unfortunately we are not able to see all combat events but the last ones , so we hardly can imagine how their wars was fought.

I'll try some of this in my practice game, in the meantime i'm practicing with Warlords.
BTW BlueMarble graphics (latest version) is highly suggested, the original graphics colours are astonishing (you can loose your eyesight )

One last thing about Warlords: I supposed to found a bug (sorry Alan ), but i discovered that Uranium is revealed and workable with Physics, but not usable as combustible until fission (this differs from vanilla and is not mentioned in the documentation)

 

[Jastrow]

OTOH i downloaded the best players saves, and i've seen an interesting tech path: straight for alphabet, traded cheap techs, straight to CS slingshot.

I must be missing something fundamental... How can you see their tech-path? Can you also see their espansion (when which city was founded) path?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

A real problem I'm having in test games is that - even if there is copper nearby - it's very hard to get it hooked up and get any axemen out before the barb axemen start appearing, and at that point if I don't have something more than quechas I'm sunk. Often I can get a 2nd city built near the copper and get it hooked up, but it invariably gets pillaged by an axeman before I can build my first axeman. I'm starting to think I may have to modify my tech path to get to archery early on. Either that or make it a rule that the 2nd city always gets founded on top of the copper, no matter how unfavourable that location might be in every other respect.

At the moment I'm mostly focussing on polytheism - mining - bronze working. I'm reluctant to give up doing polytheism first because getting hinduism does seem extremely reliable and I'm sure the religion will be useful. Not quite sure how to work it but I may try a couple of test games based on polytheism - mining - hunting - archery - bronze working. Then try and beeline for Oracle (that's pushing priesthood a bit late in my test games but then mostly they don't have gold in the city radius).

 

[BLubmuz]

I must be missing something fundamental... How can you see their tech-path? Can you also see their espansion (when which city was founded) path?

Yes, in the "event log" (the icon in the upper left) you can see everything but the old combat events.
Of course if you see 4 techs discovered in, say, 2 turns is obvious the player has traded (you can't see what and who).

ahhh one of the files i DL was your one .

Anyway this would be a good strategy (i mean the tech path) in the pangea map, probably won't works on archipelago or continents.

 

[Jastrow]

Thanks,

I have to admit I have never noticed that button!

To be honest, it is not so much their tech I am interested in, but more their exact expansion pattern. When I have some time, I will have to compare it to mine and see where exactly the top boys managed to outstrip me.

 

[Ribannah]

Hmm. Those Quecha's don't seem to be very good. My first one, forested-hill fortified and woodsman 1, was killed immediately by the first barb Archer.
Around 2000bc droves and droves of barb Archers and Warriors started to converge on my capital. My Quecha outposts, also forested-hill fortified, were all killed on the first blow by barb Warriors.

 

[slowrider]

What game setting is driving the large number of barbs?

 

[Ribannah]

Our second try was much better. This time I built a barracks first and the barbs were more timid. They built cities all around us but didn't get out much.
We managed the CS slingshot as late as 1120bc.

 

[Thrallia]

What game setting is driving the large number of barbs?

emperor: gives more and tougher barbarians
jungle: slows expansion and exploration of the land by both AI and human
low sea level: more land area compared to sea area which gives more land to explore and thus, more land for barbs to spawn