News: GOTM 13 Pre-Game Discussion

[jesusin]

The combo
- budism: early spreading by early missionaries through the monastaries
- early stonehenge (+ early oracle): quick Great Prophet for a shrine
is nice for early economy boost

That's very true.

Now, early settlers and early workers (and also early axes) are nice for early economic boost, too.

I will invest my early hammers on those, not on religion. I think it is best. I could be wrong.

 

[Adonias]

In a lot of test games, I didn't manage to found either buddhism or hinduism working a tile with only 1 commerce. Only when working landtiles with 2 commerce would ensure me either buddhism or hinduism. This might mean that you'd have to work a coast tile (1f/2c) (at least until border expansion for the fish). Quite a slow start, although settling on the ivory would make up for some of this slow growth through the extra hammer for the workboat...

 

[JerichoHill]

The lake gives two food and two coin

 

[DynamicSpirit]

That's very true.

Now, early settlers and early workers (and also early axes) are nice for early economic boost, too.

I will invest my early hammers on those, not on religion. I think it is best. I could be wrong.

ISTM that both strategies are good ones, and either strategy, if used effectively, could give an extremely good game (Assuming you are going for a victory type that requires lots of science. Obviously, if you are going for early conquest/domination, then your settler/axeman strategy is likely to be best).

Going for early settlers/workers/axes is certainly less risky. There's a lot more that can go wrong when going for early religion/wonder. You can get beaten to it. You can get attacked at a point where you're unable to defend yourself adequately. You can't afford to explore and find a possibly-better city location before settling. You can lose out in the land-grab, especially if you have a very near neighbour (quite plausible given the high sea level). You are likely to be settling with less knowledge of where resources are. OTOH the rewards can be huge too: If played right, civil service in the early AD years, for a start. Or an early colossus and a boost down the road to conquistadors if you go that way.

Perhaps the perceived greater risk and challenge is one reason why I like the religion-route, I don't know. Certainly, if there is any game where early religion looks favourable, this one is it, what with starting with mysticism, having early commerce available (because you start with fishing and there's a lake), being spiritual, and having a powerful UU that requires a lot of science before you can build it.

 

[slowrider]

What do you actually see? Do you see a red "X" or similar? It might be that windows security settings have changed not to display pictures.

Try downloading it from here:
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/gotm13large.jpg

Figured out it was being blocked by my security program. Thanks ainwood!

 

[godotnut]

If you are going for a cultural victory, I can understand you go after a religion.

For all other victory conditions, what about not founding any early religion?

My experience is that founding a religion is more valuable for space race and especially fast, mostly peaceful diplo games. As I know you know already, founding religions is an optional and often not optimal strategy for cultural games.

The value of getting your buildings up at plus 25% hammers from organized religion is well worth taking into consideration, I believe, as is the ability to build missionaries without monasteries, especially for diplo games. For these reasons, I find Judaism to be the most valuable religion to found if pursuing a religious strategy, and since Hinduism is along the way, I usually try to grab that too.

Of course in some games, like the last WOTM, this approach would probably be suicide, given the delay in production resulting from later acquisition of worker techs, but in this game--with the large and uncrowded map--it shouldn't be too big of a deal.

 

[Mastiff_of_Ar]

Wow... the last test game wasn't "uncrowded" at all!

Anyone have another one handy? I love test games...

 

[slowrider]

Looks like Santa didn't bring us that great starting location we wanted. It's kind of wrapped in drab brown paper with "some assembly required" written all over it.

The last few starts have been sweet: GOTM12 – grassland pig, 2 hills/plains/gold/mining; 11 – 2 clams/fishing, 5 river grassland/agriculture, 3 grassland hills; 10 – fish, corn/agriculture, cow, 3 grassland hills/mining; 9 – 6 floodplains/agriculture, hills/plains gold; 8 – grassland pig/hunting, fish, hills/grassland/gold/mining.

I can understand all the discussion about moving and maybe even far away from the starting location. Moving in Epic isn’t as penalizing as faster speeds so it seems reasonable to send the warrior east and the settler north to see what’s out there. As I mentioned in a previous post it’s too risky for me to settle ivory on turn one as you have to hope you don’t end up with a severely poor production capital.

Settling in place isn’t that bad, it’s just not great. It provides about the same hammer production we’ve grown accustom to (three tiles with 3-4 hammers each). We’ll need mining, bronze working and hunting but these are usually teched early anyway. Commerce will be fair to middling unless there is gold in the darken hill to the NW. Food, I think is the biggest issue in that it is relatively scarce and will require a lot of techs and buildings to get up to speed such as sailing/lighthouse, wheel/pottery/granary, agriculture and possibly AH if there are pigs/sheep on the NW hill. We’ve been spoiled with grassland pigs, fish and gold with their requisite techs and then after a couple of additional techs it’s been off to the Oracle SS derby. Not this time.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Moving in Epic isn’t as penalizing as faster speeds so it seems reasonable to send the warrior east ...<snip>

I do hope he can swim

 

[slowrider]

I do hope he can swim

This is why I should just settle in place!

 

[Bart_civ]

From my last post and the last testgame from svelte, it gives me some hope to go for following scenario:
- tech : poly, hunting, mining, BW, wheel, priest, AH, writing, alphabet, Col(Oracle), Literature
- production: WB, worker, barracks/?, switch to settler (chop) on size 3, continue previous, oracle, temple, library

I get the Oracle by 1030BC with only 1 chop and my GP around 500BC (temple used to get Priest). Only drawback I see, is that the capital gets stuck at size 5 for quite some time.
Hopefully I can settle 2nd city near some copper and axe-rush the nearest civ after I traded some techs .

 

[LowtherCastle]

From my last post and the last testgame from svelte, it gives me some hope to go for following scenario:
- tech : poly, hunting, mining, BW, wheel, priest, AH, writing, alphabet, Col(Oracle), Literature
- production: WB, worker, barracks/?, switch to settler (chop) on size 3, continue previous, oracle, temple, library

I get the Oracle by 1030BC with only 1 chop and my GP around 500BC (temple used to get Priest). Only drawback I see, is that the capital gets stuck at size 5 for quite some time.
Hopefully I can settle 2nd city near some copper and axe-rush the nearest civ after I traded some techs .

Did you build the Oracle in your capital or in a second city? And did you build your own worker?

 

[DaviddesJ]

I'm going for Hinduism since I want it to spread and make AI cities visible. I also like the faster border expansion to provide better warning for barbarians, and hopefully my second city will be close enough to work tiles in my capitals cultural border. Also, I don't need to build obelisk in second city if religion spread.

Waiting for your religion to spread to your 2nd city can be a long and frustrating process.

 

[Khalid]

I have also played the test game (thanks svelte) and I managed to use the Oracle to get feudalism in 800BC. The problem was that my empire was not much developed as I had to skip more worker techs. I also had only 1 worker which was stolen, but had nothing to do.

I have researched Medit, Hunt, Min, BW, AH, Writing, Priest, Monarchy and the research took some time. I also chopped the oracle and use citizence to generate beakers.

I played also about 10 random starts with the same setting and discovered this (probably well known):

I have played the first 20 turns and then looked into worldbuilder:

1) The only civs which are able to outtech you to a religion (start with myst) are India, HC, Saladin, Monte.
2) Saladin and HC almost never techs first towards religion
3) India almost ever researches meditation (Asoka less than Gandhi)
4) Out of the 10 games 5 didn't include India or monte and I was able to reach budhism working a 2/1/1 tile.
5) Out of the 5 games which included Asoka, gandhi, Monte I was beaten to meditation working a 2/0/2 tile, but I would found hinduism in 4 of those cases. In 1 out of the 10 games both budhism and hind were FIDL. this was due to gandhi and monte both going for a different religion.

So I'm heading towards poly.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I have also played the test game (thanks svelte) and I managed to use the Oracle to get feudalism in 800BC. The problem was that my empire was not much developed as I had to skip more worker techs. I also had only 1 worker which was stolen, but had nothing to do.

It's also risky because 800BC gives you a good chance of missing the Oracle. All my experience on monarch is that you can expect the Oracle to be built by an AI any time from 1300BC onwards. Maybe earlier but that's unusual. (Not particularly tested with the same settings as GOTM13, but there's nothing unusual about those settings that I'd expect to impact much on the date).

 

[Meatbuster]

Anyone have another one handy? I love test games...

Well why play another test game when you can pick up the real game? It's already the 30th, anyway...

 

[Khalid]

It's also risky because 800BC gives you a good chance of missing the Oracle. All my experience on monarch is that you can expect the Oracle to be built by an AI any time from 1300BC onwards. Maybe earlier but that's unusual. (Not particularly tested with the same settings as GOTM13, but there's nothing unusual about those settings that I'd expect to impact much on the date).

That's true. I could build it around 1000BC if managed the production right. But it's still risky. When the Oracle was due in 1 turn I waited, how long it will take for the AI to finish it. And it happened some 5 turns later, so it was pretty close.

 

[Bart_civ]

Did you build the Oracle in your capital or in a second city? And did you build your own worker?

production done all in capital
build my own worker
production of second city is for axe-rushing

 

[Harok]

I've played a few test games and as long as we can make a decent number of contacts I am leaning towards a research path of Med > Priest > Writing > Alpha (trade for all the worker/early techs) > Monarchy > Feudalism from Oracle. This has worked in 3 of 4 test games so far the one time it didn't work someone built the Oracle around 1300BC. I mainly worked the clam, lake, and spice tiles to get to Alpha as soon as possible as it takes quite awhile to research it. I need to try again using a Scientist or 2 after Writing to see how much that speeds it up.

I am still formulating a plan for if there are only a couple of contacts by the time I finish Priesthood or Writing. I think at that point I would probably go to the worker techs and switch to taking MC with the Oracle.

 

[slowrider]

Comment: I’m glad ainwood mentioned Conquistadors get a defensive bonus. That isn’t clear in the Civilopedia or other reference works I’ve read.

Question: I’m confused why the Units section (found on the Main Page of the site) describes Conquistadors as follows:

Unique unit for Spain; Replaces Knight
2 first strikes
Immune to first strikes
+50% vs. Melee Units

I don’t see any reference to “2 first strikes” in the Civilopedia or anywhere else. Is this a typo?