Hammer-Heavy Econ. (Immortal Test)

[Snaaty]

@ Team:

Auron just confirmed that he´s in. Attached you find the questions he brought up:

Quote Auron from PM:

"Okay, guys book me in.

I guess you/we should first discuss which wonders/tactics are not allowed. It isn`t evident for me.

For example: although not going for the glh, there are alternatives for generating commerce and science via wonders(collosus, sankore, minaret). The last two in addition with the apostolic palace are very strong and easy to get on immortal.

It is allowed to max out trade routes? ..."

...

@ Obs:
Do you now want to close the roster with 5 players (we wanted 4-6 if I´m right) or do you plan to leave the 6th slot open during the first round of play?

 

[PaulisKhan]

This rule variant favours heavy hammer production in the capital, I'm not sure that any of the coastal sites provide that early on (other than 1SE which doesn't use any tiles revealed by moving the quecha onto the wheat.

I'm increasingly in favour of settling on one of the elephants.

 

[obsolete]

Feel free to start the first round with moving the quech and posting a new screen + save.

Hmm, so then that means we are not letting the whole roster have a go then a vote for best start-setup.

*gulp, so if I don't get it perfect my turnset, then that's double-trouble. And the next guy in line will have a lot of responsibility too...

Before we start let's clarify one thing... I don't think we should have any rules against stuff like TGLH. Quite frankly, this is fractal not arch, so TGHL is not that big of a deal. And to be honest, we are already nerfed with no specs/cots except for one city (non-capital). I really don't think we need to go over-board and also start banning wonders too.

BTW, this single-city specialist rule isn't going to be possible to enforce, unless you ban civics like mercantilism, wonders like SoL, Great Library, and buildings like those machine-plant-thinger-merbobbers.... and then make sure to not take advantage of events that give you free specialists. Grrrrrrr. That's a pretty tall order.

So... we can have a GP farm in the capital, as long as we don't run a specialist there right???

Technically...

 

[Snaaty]

Well... ...first thing would only be to move the quech, then to post a new sceeny and safe... ...so dont worry obs, we believe in you, you can do that

...

Moving the quech on the corn are just my 2cents, to check for more seafood because then we can decide if we squeeze in a second city there or not, but I´m open for any discussion here off course and will follow the mayority, so either feel free to set up a deadline for votes or simply decide by yourself, I dont really care that much where you move, as long as it reveals anything new

...

Wonders, more discussion and stuff I would rather delay untill we have decided where we settle, because there is no sense in discussing the GLH for exemple, if we decide NOT settling costal I guess

 

[obsolete]

Hmm! So just 1 turn and not 10...

I think I'll make it even simpler. Either today, or tomorrow I'll post the initial, and EVERYONE does the first 10 turns, 10 turns only. Then we post saves/screen with an explanation of what is who's plan, and vote, (no one votes for themselves). Then we'll follow the roster order from there:

1. Snaaty
2. Obsolete
3. Dirk
4. Auron
5. Sleepless

We'll make the due-date a week. Any longer and we skip who ever is AWOL. Of course, if everyone gets the saves and voting done in a day, then that's also no problem too.

 

[PaulisKhan]

Is it ok if I sign up officially now? I'm planning om joining the next SGOTM and I need to get used to having my play heavily criticised

I think I'd be hard pressed to find a tougher bunch of critics.

To answer the initial questions, I'm comfortable on Deity (although I do fail plenty of games still, mostly due to taking silly risks-something which will be heavily moderated in a SG) and have played an entire game through on normal speed without building a single cottage and only running one GP farm (which is why I'm quite optimistic about our chances in this game). It was a space colony victory so I'm firmly convinced that we can make it through the entire game without major problems.

-edit- I'm fine with everyone playing the first X-turns and then deciding on the best start, there's no probably no better chance for me to pick up on any early flaws in my play.

 

[pi-r8]

Wait is this a "wonder-based economy"/SSE or is this a real hammer economy where you build research?

 

[Dirk1302]

Probably both.

 

[Snaaty]

I´d prefere to stick to a more purist production approach, so no too many wonders if you ask me... ...we have seen enough proove from Obs, that a wonder eco (SSW) works and I thought the plan here would be to try something new. So my idea for the first 100 turns would be to spamm settlers and workers, find the GP farm and the cottage heaven and get about 2-4 more production cities up, gearing already up for first war... ...we might consider the Oracle as wonder, to get MC, so we can build workshops and use the the GI we can then generate via a forge in our GP farm to bulb Mach for watermills...

...

@ Team:
What do you think about it? Can we reach some consensus here?

 

[[HI]Auron]

I agree with Snaaty and would prefer not building too many wonders and not playing a SSE.

Instead (or in addation) of building oracle we could build The Great Wall and use the spy to get MC and the early other stuff we need.

But there might be a problem when trying this oracle and/or GW based strategy later on deity.

 

[obsolete]

Alright, roster list updated:

1. Snaaty
2. Obsolete
3. Dirk
4. Auron
5. Sleepless
6. PaulisKhan

The Oracle-Metalcasting shot looks decent, but the big problem, is it's really foolish to do this, and the not go for the free GE right away. Actually, it's insane not to. But since we have such harsh penalties like not running a specialist in cities, I'm starting to really question this whole line of play.

 

[Dirk1302]

The most fun way to play for me would be going for rex, use our heavy production to build units to augment the empire through war. Get guilds/chemistry and even communism asap (trading or self researching). See if we can win a spacerace from there with production converted to research/wealth, that would really be a hammer economy. But domination in the end would be fine too.

 

[Sleepless]

I was thinking along the same lines as Dirk. Doesn't seem much point having lots of production and not using it to expand our economy. I wouldn't mind restricting/limiting or not building any world wonders either. Perhaps build them for cash. Taking them is allowed though.

I would like to try for a space win though and see how the late game research building wealth/research is. I assume building the parts wouldn't be a problem.

Lets just hope we aren't isolated.

 

[Snaaty]

Another vote for Dirk

My idea for early game would be along this line:

Besides rexing, we need to find
a) site for cottage city early (and cottage it to avoid running broke)
b) site for spezi city early (and run merchants ASAP via caste)

So I can basically live without any wonders.

Tech would be to beeline CoL, so we can run merchants. Then bulb MC with the merchant and start to spamm workshops under the caste bonus. With a little luck, we have a reli by then and can additionally go Mono for the 25% building bonus and get forges und courthouses, to further fuel production.

Goal would be to have about 5-6 cities around 800 BC and CoL + MC. This should leave us in a position a strong position to go for war or build decent research early... ...and might be exported to deity if it works well here

...

We might rethink our leader if going along these lines... ...imp/org/cha as prime traits jump immediately into mind, also for warring

 

[PaulisKhan]

I'm happy with HC as our leader, even if it means we only get to use the discount bonus on city improvements aspect of his Industrious trait. Although I think Org/Spi is the best trait combo hands down for this kind of game (Who is that-Asoka?) as we'd want to be using castes for the hammer bonus on workshops while running optimised rounds of slavery ever 5-10 turns to whip off excess food in coastal towns so we dont accidentaly run specialists. With no wonders to fuel GProph settling to support our expansion we'll need to grab monarchy before too long so we can run enough merchants as well. Our economy is definitely going to crash and burn (but digging ourselves out of a hole can be quit fun). Currency will be another crucial tech. Building cash in our hammer rich capital would be one of the best ways to utilise the Bureau civic under these conditions.

As far as warring, a first war at construction seems reasonable, if we can afford the support cost that is. Ele's and Catas will last us a long time. Start building troops in cities once they have a forge/courthouse/granary in place (and making sure we have enough workers)?

If we're looking long term at a space race we'll have to make a decision whether to head for Edu asap and hope to trade for Eng+Guilds, or go down that line ourselves for the military units they unlock. It's a bit early to decide now but it's something to keep in mind when it starts rolling around to my turnset.

Just one last point, we don't want too much food in our capital and we don't want to have to wait for guilds to start getting decent production in it from workshops.

I'm voting again to settle 1E if the quecha reveals no seafood, or 1 NE if the quecha unveils a seafood that might be reached by a corn city.

Alternatively we can restart with a Spi/Org or Imp/Org civ ;P

 

[obsolete]

To go after heavy production, but then to prohibit the use of building wonders seems really silly to me, just silly. So does that mean we can't even build Moai S, or IronWorks either?

Also, are we forced to raze the SoL city if we capture, because it will give us specialists in every city?

 

[PaulisKhan]

Obselete: This heavy production ruleset still works if we use it to show the power of building wealth/research. In this scenario we would avoid spending those hammers on WW's (although exploiting the Ind trait by partially completing wonders for cash would be another excellent demonstration of the strategy this game could provide-definitely more efficient than building wealth directly).

I think that there is some merit to the idea that you have already proved beyond doubt that a wonderspam strategy can win the game at any difficulty. Playing this game by that method could be considered slightly redundant.

SoL could be a problem with the ruleset. Maybe it ends up on a continent where it won't affect the outcome of our game and we can ignore its minor influence if we capture it. Maybe it's in a city we can raze. If we came across it in a city with half a dozen other wonders though I'd definitely be willing to make allowances.

National wonders are ok [y]/[n]
I vote for them being ok.

 

[Dirk1302]

I don't think we need to ban wonders from this game. But i wouldn't like to spam them either in capital as we'd bypass the imposed restrictions and win in obsolete style. Just discuss if a wonder is useful for us in a given situation, then decide.

 

[PaulisKhan]

Fair enough.

-edit- maybe settled GP's should follow the same rules as running specialists, we can only put them in our specialist city

 

[Snaaty]

I agree again with Dirk here, banning wonders completely doesnt seem right either, also in regard of the following short test I did...

...

@ Team:
I did a short testgame with the american ind/org leader on deity. Was more like clicking through to see how many settlers + workers we can get around what time and when we have researched some key techs.

I didnt even bother settling cities, just fortiefied the settler in capital

So... ...IF we plan to beelinge CoL right from the start, NOT building the Oracle is simply stupid. I had priest around 2200 BC and the Oracle got build around 1500 BC. With the production optimized capital I could have build 3 of them during this time, even without whipping.

Settlers and workers for 4-5 cities around 1000 BC is doable. I had 4 settlers and 5 workers fortiefied in capital at 1000 BC... ...with the Oracle its maybe a settler and a worker less...

CoL comes around 600 BC, quite late, because without cottages and spezies, our research is simply stinky² (without any early lux.res.). No chance in getting the reli either. So getting MC via cast merchant spezies would be around 300 BC. Again very late to do us any good (no workshops up to 200 BC might mean that some cities simply dont have enough production)

The Oracle would be a solution, getting us CoL earlier (around 1800 - 1600 BC), ensuring a reli (we might run our own private reli in this game I guess, since we plan to be warring anyways), getting MC via merchants around 1200 BC and being able to get workshops already for our first helper cities. Trading for alpha is crucial btw. so we can build research, so the sooner we have CoL as traiding bait, the better...

...

Once we have alpha, things get better, because with a forge an average helper city at pop 4-6 should be able to provide 15-20 hammers + 25% = 25+ research, but the first 3500 years are sort of a problem research wise...

...

EDITH:
I agree with pkhan btw:
settled GP's should follow the same rules as running specialists, we can only put them in our specialist city