Random SG 01 - The Randomness Begins

[Teproc]

Even a heavy jungle start is something we can do something with if we have decent production in our capital, which, we do have two Hill Gems.

The answer to jungle problems is an easy one, and quite attainable on Immortal : the Pyramids. Liberty is pretty good with Indonesia anyway as they have incentive to go wide, and obviously Citizenship + Pyramids makes the jungle go away.

Any final word on settling on resources ? I vote yay.

 

[Polus]

The issue with settling on the gems is that it will put us further away from the W gems and the whales. This would turn into a moot point if we took tradition.

Although Indonesia benefits from going wide, there's a chance other continents won't be available to us until Optics (gotta love random). My vote would be to go Tradition and get a solid core of 3-5 cities (depending on our surrounding area) then perhaps adopting Liberty as a second policy.

I say we research pottery first and go Scout - Worker - Shrine. I think religion will be very important for us.

Having said all that, I'm clearly the list experienced player here, so feel free to disregard anything/everything

 

[Sir Bugsy]

@ Polus - On BNW, I'm also pretty inexperienced. The only thing I feel really qualified to do is a military campaign.

 

[EricTheGreat12]

I say we research pottery first and go Scout - Worker - Shrine. I think religion will be very important for us.

The problem though with Indonesia's special ability is that we only gain benefits once we get multiple religions in a city (+2 additional Faith for each Religion which has at least 1 follower in the city). I'm afraid that if we create a strong religion early on it might be too powerfull and we might be stuck with only 1 religion (our religion) in our cities. I think we should start doing religion after we have entered the classical era because we would have progressed enough to get comfortable within the game

 

[EricTheGreat12]

The only thing I feel really qualified to do is a military campaign.

To be honest with you, military is the more typical way to win in this game cause it's the easiest one to get into. The problem with all of that though is that while the game progresses, we'll need to look how we stand on the world stage. There's two ways this can go:

1-We're powerfull enough to go ahead and steamroll through the opposition

2-We're not strong enough to go ahead with any invasion, so we'll go for a culture or diplomatic victory.

2nd opition isn't as fun I'll agree with that, but in the end we can't push ourselves over the limit too much or else our money and food will collapse as well as every AI probably wanting to kill us

Btw I fully support Teproc and his idea for the Pyramids path. It gives us the workers we need+it gives us time to keep on researching technology

 

[Polus]

To be honest with you, military is the more typical way to win in this game cause it's the easiest one to get into. The problem with all of that though is that while the game progresses, we'll need to look how we stand on the world stage. There's two ways this can go:

1-We're powerfull enough to go ahead and steamroll through the opposition

2-We're not strong enough to go ahead with any invasion, so we'll go for a culture or diplomatic victory.

2nd opition isn't as fun I'll agree with that, but in the end we can't push ourselves over the limit too much or else our money and food will collapse as well as every AI probably wanting to kill us

Btw I fully support Teproc and his idea for the Pyramids path. It gives us the workers we need+it gives us time to keep on researching technology

Very valid point on the religion - let's hold off until a bit later.

I know that AIs don't prioritize Liberty or the Pyramids... Do you think it's possible to take the 1st policy in Tradition and then head over to Liberty? It could space out our first settler so we don't get it too early.

I also really like Tradition if you can't tell

 

[EricTheGreat12]

Do you think it's possible to take the 1st policy in Tradition and then head over to Liberty?

Are you suggesting we adopt the Tradition original policy but we don't take any other policies from the 1st Tier ?


Also, if we are going towards Archery, we might as well go straight towards hunting cause we have an adjacent deer resource. I agree that this resource is not utterly important but we might as well go for it while we're at it

 

[Teproc]

If we want to get a religion, shrine should be asap, aka As Soon As Pottery. Well maybe finish the monument if that's our second build.

I agree, at least theoretically (that is, until we see more by moving the warrior and deciding how we settle), with Pottery as a first tech (and Scout as a first build).

@Polus : Well, other continents definitely won't be available before Optics, that's true even on Archipelago. Optics will definitely be a priority this game, hopefully we reveal some fish near our capital.

As far as opening Tradition and then going Liberty, I'm not a fan. The strength of Liberty is speed, and we lose that by opening tradition first.

 

[EricTheGreat12]

@Tepoc: Why would you want to focus on shrine so early. Sure religion gives us bonuses and all, but we are starting at the very beginning of the game, the closest we can ever be to the dawn of man. We should first start focusing on developing and expanding our empire, and then we have gone through the fundamentals we can continue on with religion. We're going to do Pottery one way or another that's 100% sure, but we first need to focus on the devellopment 1st, and then onwards towards the lesser important stuff

Ps: Sorry if I'm going too hard on you

 

[Teproc]

The reason you want to build a shrine super early is because of the scaling of Pantheon costs. We are aiming for a specific, pretty strong pantheon here (God of Tears) and the earlier we get it, the earlier we get a religion, the earlier we get the bonuses related to that.

An early worker isn't as great as it looks, especially with jungle, especially if we settle on the Gems. Even if we don't, we need Mining for it to do anything really useful here.

PS : Don't worry about it, no reason to take anything personal when we're discussing strategy

 

[Polus]

@Polus : Well, other continents definitely won't be available before Optics, that's true even on Archipelago. Optics will definitely be a priority this game, hopefully we reveal some fish near our capital.
.

Well, we could be on Pangea, limiting the usefulness of Indonesia.

As far as opening Tradition and then going Liberty, I'm not a fan. The strength of Liberty is speed, and we lose that by opening tradition first.

The rationale here is that the opener for Tradition seems to produce an additional policy quickly from the +3 culture. I haven't done the math, but in my solo games, it seems to equate to essentially a free policy while sacrificing ~10 turns in the Liberty tree. I'm fully on board with going Liberty, I would just like to think about starting with Tradition for early culture (plus if we get lucky with ruins we might have enough culture to fill out both Tradition and Liberty).

As for techs, I think we should prioritize Mining. If we are going Liberty, we need something for our workers to do.

 

[EricTheGreat12]

Sir Bugsy any thoughts on what we should be doing in the first few turns ?

 

[Optional]

If we want to get a religion, shrine should be asap, aka As Soon As Pottery.

I agree with this, I believe this is the usual approach; you start with Pottery and switch to building a shrine as soon as that tech is in.
Only 5 religions are allowed on a standard map, there are 8 civs, there's a bit of a race against time here. The first AI's will claim a religion around turn 60 on this level. We don't need to be first, but we'll want to have 200 gathered before turn 100 or so, otherwise the chance to claim a religion of our own will be getting slim.
But focusing on a religion early does go at the cost of other things, and adopting a religion from another civ can be fine as well. If we don't focus on a religion early we'll have an earlier worker and a wonder earlier if we want it.

Techs: I think Sailing is the one we can postpone a little bit, Trapping I would research before that; we will be working that deer every single turn. The happiness from the gems we only need if we get a second town and we can't afford to work an improved gems tile early, as there's no food on that tile. Unless you settle on top, then 2 food appears - you get multiple advantages from settling on luxuries, any offset from the tile not being so good in the later game is fairly negligible.

Even a heavy jungle start is something we can do something with if we have decent production in our capital, which, we do have two Hill Gems.

I think one town in the jungle we can deal with, but if other towns end up in the jungle as well the game would become too rough. This is the previous SG I played in where there was so much jungle: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=505447. Brazil has a jungle start bias, but no units that can deal with it. I think Indonesia has the same thing. It probably adds a level to the difficulty. If we also play without exploits it'll be like Deity+. I wouldn't like to see players dropping out of this game one by one because of the difficulty.
If we see only jungle and marsh around us I would still suggest a restart. It's a bit too early to suggest it now, though.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

I think there are a lot of unknowns that we will have to deal with. First unknown is land mass type. Second unknown is how far that jungles goes. Third unknown is how close is our nearest neighbor and who is it. For example if we find out that Monty is 10 tiles away, we better start cranking out military ASAP because he will attach us. If we find out that the Brazilian guy (I can't remember what his name is) is 10 tiles away, we may want to warrior/archer rush him so we need military for that.

I think we should not count on any wonders in the ancient era. My general approach at level 7 and 8 on Vanilla was to get a defensive army up (3 archers), then focus on science, happiness, and cash flow. Once I had a handle on those three, then I would start on an offensive army and work toward whatever victory condition I was going for.

Let's hope we are not on a Pangaea. I think we should assume we are not and make optics an early goal. My choice for first three techs: mining, archery, pottery

My choice for social policy: Liberty - go for the free worker tech first, then free settler tech (there is one you have to get before that but you get the gist).

I do not know enough about religion to give an informed opinion. I do know that lack of cash and happies will kill you very quickly.

 

[Polus]

Bugs, you bring up great points about how little we actually know; therefore I agree with you that we should go a more conservative, defense minded approach until we know a little more.

However, I personally think mining + pottery prior to archery is worth the gamble. I fear that we could be far behind on our cap's growth curve and be forced to domination (not a bad outcome though) if we don't take at least a small gamble on the economy to start.

Either way I'm just excited to get this one rolling

 

[Optional]

I think there are a lot of unknowns that we will have to deal with.

Yup, we're at turn zero. It doesn't work so well to try and cook up a strategy plan with social policies, tech routes and all that at this point. That works better after a set of turns.
In the first 5 turns no major decisions need to be made apart from which tech to research first. But after 5 turns a second build needs to be decided on and there is a chance a first social policy needs to be taken incase a culture hut got popped - less chance of that with a warrior stuck in jungle, though.
If the surrounding lands seem big I can very well imagine building a second scout, and I wouldn't go for Optics soon then. But if our landmass looks small I wouldn't go for a second scout and go for Sailing sooner.

I don't know how big a turn sets should be, I'm used to 10 turns per set, but there's no need to play a whole set of turns in one go. Consulting the team if you have a decision to make is a normal thing to do. Even if only one or two team members are quick to answer, that may be better than not asking for input at all.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

So here is what I am reading:

1. Settle in place

2. Build scout.

3. Research mining then pottery.

4. Get land mass information as soon as possible.

Stop when first build is complete and then we can decide second build.

I am writing a final exam at the moment. I can play later tonight.

 

[Optional]

3. Research mining then pottery.

Probably not. With Pottery you have the options of going for a shrine or building a granary. Mining doesn't give us anything until we have a worker, but even then a mined gem tile isn't so useful. There's no advantage in having 7 happiness instead of 3, and the AI isn't likely to have the money to buy our gems so early.
Both a shrine or granary would give us more. Building a granary instead of a shrine would give us 3 extra food, and get our capital going way earlier that way, making it way more suitable to build the Pyramids if we want to go the Liberty way.
Building a shrine instead of a granary would cost us that extra food. Going for a religion is actually expensive seen in that way. With a pantheon giving 1 and 1 per gem tile it'll last long before that investment is giving an interesting return.

You don't really need to report back after 5 turns, but if you then show what's been unveiled you'll probably get responses from the team.

 

[Polus]

I agree with Optional - No need for mining just yet.

I know I seem wishy washy right now, but that's only because I'm rusty (read: noob) and haven't solidified a strategy just yet; I'm loving the discussion though!

So my vote would be Pottery > Archery just in case we get stuck next to someone rambunctious.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

OK. Pottery first. I am going to start playing. Will report soon.