SGOTM 01 - Peanut

[MailMan]

You didn't switch the citizen in Alexandria to work the silver mine! We should do this asap.

By the way, I think the workers near Alexandria are wasting their time. We can chop down those forests, but why? The city will never do much, even with granary and lighthouse (and how long would it take to build all that?). Better to send them somewhere else where we need them more.

the silver tile do not produce any food, therefore I think it is better to work the sea tiles. I think the chops should finish the lighthouse, after that the city will only work the sea tiles and produce some commerce. once in a while it can rush a building. I think this is a very bad city location that generally heart us, but it need the lighthouse in order to be somewhat productive.

> Cyrus offered only myst for IW. it means that he is very close to researching it himself.
Are you sure? Maybe he just doesn't like us much (we declined to give him Alphabet, etc.).

I believe this is the case. even if it was not the case, I still think I managed to get the best out of IW.

it looks like Huayna Capac was given a huge head start

I am not sure that the land he got is bigger, it must be better due to his research speed, but his score is lower than Gandhi's

future plans:
I think we should wait for catapults to show up before taking down Cyrus, he is creative and therefore will have high city defense value. we need to improve our land. we will not be able to hold his cities due to high city maintenance
I originally thought of the galley to go to the next island and settle it.

 

[DaviddesJ]

the silver tile do not produce any food, therefore I think it is better to work the sea tiles. I think the chops should finish the lighthouse, after that the city will only work the sea tiles and produce some commerce. once in a while it can rush a building. I think this is a very bad city location that generally heart us, but it need the lighthouse in order to be somewhat productive.

There's no reason for the city to be productive. The purpose of Alexandria is that it gives +1 happiness to all of our other cities, which is worth a lot (i.e., it's a 10% boost or so, across the board). If it works the silver, then it generates 8 commerce every turn (1 from city center, 5 from silver mine, 2 from trade route), which (more than) offsets its cost to our empire.

Working coastal tiles instead of the silver mine does make the city hurt us, because now it's not producing enough commerce to pay for itself. Eventually, with a lighthouse, Alexandria will generate more commerce by working 3 coast tiles than it would by working 1 silver mine, but that's a long time off, and the value of 1 commerce now is much more than the value of 1 commerce 50 turns from now. Plus we've lost the other work that those workers could have done.

At 1 hammer/turn, we're 22 turns away from finishing a lighthouse, even with both forests chopped. And then it's another 90 turns (!) to get a granary. The other advantage of working the silver mine is that we get the buildings much faster, and then we can grow more efficiently.

I think we should wait for catapults to show up before taking down Cyrus, he is creative and therefore will have high city defense value.

It's not that hard to take cities. We did it with just WCs. A WC and a sworsdman will easily take out an archer, at the cost of the WC, even in a 60% defence city (and his capital is the only one of those he's likely to have). We can spare a bunch of WCs. He's likely to have 4 or 5 archers defending his capital, and maybe a spearman or axeman---nothing we can't overcome with a big stack. Our production is 2x Cyrus's already, and that difference is likely to increase.

Capturing faraway cities does cost us some additional maintenance; however, it's not that hard to get them to pay for themselves relatively quickly. And we do get a reward in gold for capturing each one. And the cities give us access to more resources (e.g., we might get access to marble), and make it easier to expand further later on. The tradeoff is that war slows our research somewhat in the short term, but accelerates our growth and productivity in the long term.

If the consensus is to wait for catapults before we attack, that's certainly ok too. As long as we don't wait long enough for him to get crossbowmen or longbowmen. (And, hopefully, he doesn't have ivory.) In that case, we should be still building up an attack force, so that, when we do get construction, we can quickly pump out a handful of catapults, and ship them off, and attack. The danger is that he's got better units because we delay, which is much more of a problem than the +60% defense (and that's only his capital, the rest should have 40% at best). The +60% defense only boosts his archers from 4.5 to 6.3. Stronger defenders are worth more than that.

The other downside of delay is that it slows the process of building up the productivity of the captured cities.

 

[MailMan]

If we do not want to wait for cats, we should plan how to leave Cyrus without copper and iron.
we should scout the land and see if it is easy or not first. I do not want to face spears and axes without cats.

 

[DaviddesJ]

I certainly agree on scouting; my plan would never include declaring war on Cyrus unless we can actually see what's in the target cities and we know we can take them easily with what we have right there.

The foreign advisor tells us that Cyrus doesn't have copper hooked up yet, but we've seen it in his borders, so he certainly will connect it. It would be good to know how many other sources he has: the coastal city with copper would be one of our first targets, and we should certainly arrange to cut off any other sources.

In my experience, the AI doesn't build many axemen for defense, and spearmen are no worse than archers (if we don't attack them with WCs).

 

[ainwood]

I don't think we should wait for cats - in fact, I'd advocate ignoring that half of the tech tree and going for civil service and machinery so that we can get maces & courthouses. Maybe grab (say) currency - but ideally if we can research to macemen & let gandhi fill-in some gaps, then that would work.

 

[MailMan]

IIRC - India is missing copper as well. we will soon have extra copper near Novgorod. we can sell/gift it to them.
This will make them stronger and will boost our relations (you supplied us with resources bonus).

Edit: we may also use the copper as payment to trigger war

 

[DaviddesJ]

India probably has copper somewhere but just hasn't hooked it up yet. The idea of just giving it to him is an interesting one. If we give him copper for free, can we later cancel the deal, or do we pay a relationship penalty for that? Helping him build better units which will make him more effective against Cyrus is probably a plus. Is there a potential downside in that if he builds more units then Cyrus may feel threatened and build more units which will make him harder for us to attack?

Another alternative is to give India our extra fish. We know he has access to fish and will hook it up eventually, so it probably doesn't have any long-term trade value, so maybe that's a reason to give it now.

One danger of giving copper to India is that, if he hooks up his own copper, he might then trade copper to Cyrus. It still seems like an interesting idea, though.

 

[DaviddesJ]

We should also start formulating a Great People strategy soon. Realistically, our only source of GPP in the short term is libraries (maybe Great Lighthouse in the medium term), so we're going to have Great Scientists, who will just give us Compass. That isn't very useful by itself, but we can always put an academy in Thebes. Or maybe we can trade Compass for something more useful, like Calendar or Code of Laws.

 

[Phabuk]

By the way, my plan to attack Cyrus from the sea works better if we maintain Open Borders with him

I am not sure it is very important because you must cancel any open borders deals before declaring war, and then your galleys are repelled outside your ennemy borders.

The invasion will not take place before 3 or 4 turnsets so we have time to found a city on the west coast (more convenient to built invasion galleys), i will build another settler.

I think it is not useful to wait for cats for the war. I agree on scouting with WCs...

 

[MailMan]

If we give him copper for free, can we later cancel the deal, or do we pay a relationship penalty for that?

we can cancel it freely after 10 turns. I think that the relationship bonus takes longer to accumulate.

Another alternative is to give India our extra fish. We know he has access to fish and will hook it up eventually, so it probably doesn't have any long-term trade value, so maybe that's a reason to give it now.

we are already +4 on trades (the maximum) due to the trade on the first contact. I do not think that giving him fish will change anything.

 

[DaviddesJ]

I am not sure it is very important because you must cancel any open borders deals before declaring war, and then your galleys are repelled outside your ennemy borders.

But we can move the galleys to near his capital, unload the troops, and then the troops will relocate to a nearby land space outside his borders. Or we can move the galleys near his capital, leave the troops onboard, and then the galleys will be moved away from his capital, but only by a few spaces.

If we don't have open borders, we won't be able to get our galleys anywhere near his capital, because we can't sail through the coast around his other cities (until we declare war).

 

[DaviddesJ]

The invasion will not take place before 3 or 4 turnsets so we have time to found a city on the west coast (more convenient to built invasion galleys), i will build another settler.

Perhaps we should have gone with MailMan's suggestion of razing St Petersburg and rebuilding it at the "neck" of the continent. That sure would be more convenient now. On the other hand, our exploration would have been significantly delayed. Water under the bridge at this point.

Building a city on the west coast makes sense. Another good plan would be to found a city on the other continent, on top of the incense, if we can bring our galley around and ferry a settler there before Gandhi or Cyrus expands that far. This will be a decent city because it can work cows and clams. We can then also use it as a base for our military excursions (always good to have a territory within our own cultural borders).

But it seems not easy to build more settlers right now. Most of our cities (e.g., Moscow) would like to grow some, first. Memphis could finish the barracks and then start a settler.

It would be really nice to get the Great Lighthouse since we are going to have a whole lot of coastal cities and that would really help with the costs.

By the way, another reason to attack Persepolis is that it's the holy city for Hinduism and Buddhism. If we're really lucky, we can arrange the timing so that Cyrus builds a shrine for us, and then we capture it.

 

[DaviddesJ]

we can cancel it freely after 10 turns. I think that the relationship bonus takes longer to accumulate.

If canceling the gift of copper doesn't leave us any worse off than before, I'm in favor of giving copper to Gandhi once we connect our second source.

 

[DaviddesJ]

I think this is a very bad city location that generally heart us, but it need the lighthouse in order to be somewhat productive.

By the way, I thought about putting Alexandria one space further south, so that it could work the horses and get some more production. But that still woudn't give it much growth (since the 2f from the horse tile only feeds the citizen on that tile) so I thought it was not worth anything, that the horses are much more valuable to Memphis, and the best thing for Alexandria is to just let it be size 1 forever (or at least for a long time---if it can build lighthouse and granary with the organic production from the silver mine, then that might be a good time to shift to growth).

(I'm not sure if you're saying that you think we shouldn't have connected the silver at all, or if you think a city farther south that could take the horse tile away from Memphis would have been better. If I could have reached a cow tile, or any other tile with more than 2 food, I would have done that---but it wasn't an option.)

 

[Phabuk]

the save:
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm1/Peanut_SG001_BC0400_01.Civ4SavedGame
***
550 BC:
galley finished --> galley
galley moves to west coast
worker chop in alexandria the other go south to help
chop finished near novgorod
Wc in novgorod wait for the galley
give fish to gandhi

535 BC:
barb near iron
worker finished farm in moscow, goes to help on jewels
WC from moscow toward galley (in order to scout)
switch library to granary in novgorod
poprush barracks in memphis --> settler
poprush galley in st peter --> galley
wc in st peter promote to combat 2, heal
wc in thebae promote to combat 1, send to barb
wc in memphis send to sw

520 BC:
novgorod borders extend
poprush settler in thebae --> axeman

505 BC:
moscow borders extend
kill the barb warrior
send the settler to found a city near iron
WC from novgorod in galley
mine finished on jewels, go to the next one
mine finished near memphis

490 BC:
WC up to combat 2 and stay to protect new city
our trade relations with gandhi were +2 and are now +3, perhaps i will exchange some jewels

475 BC :
moscow finish axeman --> worker
axeman to combat 1
elephantine finish library --> lighthouse
christianism is founded somewhere!

460 BC:
galley in st peter --> galley
chop finished in alexandria, go for mining
Pi-Ramses founded near iron --> axeman
poprush lighthouse in elephantine --> Great Lighthouse (35 turns)
we have now 3 jewels, give one to gandhi, our trade relation are up to +4
research to 100% (-55GPT/metallurgy in 9 turns)

445 BC:
hindouism is spreading in our empire (Memphis)... I didn't convert to.
send on worker from st peter to road copper in nov
chop finished in nov --> road on copper
send another one to iron
the last one chop the jungle on the hill

430 BC:
cyrus seems to have found a city on incense
nothing much

415 BC:
axeman in thebae --> worker
settler in memphis -->axeman
send the settler toward SW to found near rice and horses
axeman combat 1

400 BC:
St peter border extend
research back to 0%
we have road the second copper
WCs unload near arbela (only one archer in!)
we cannot exchange copper with gandhi, he 's got one probably (?)

 

[DaviddesJ]

Hmm, things are going pretty well, but I have several comments, as usual. I really dislike the location of Pi-Rameses; putting it where we could work the rice, and grow faster, would be much better. I also don't agree with building an (unpromoted) axeman. It really needs a granary, so it can grow to a useful size quickly. The road 2N of Pi-Rameses is nearly useless; we don't need to connect it by road because it's already connected by sea.

At Elephantine, a mine should be a very high priority, if we're trying to get Great Lighthouse. Meanwhile, we're working a plains hill that just gives 2 hammers. Certainly moving that citizen to the plains forest (1 food, 2 hammers) would be better!

Something went wrong with the timing in Thebes because we now have an unhappy citizen draining 2 food/turn. The cost of this is greater than the benefit we got from poprushing. (Note: you could have used the "Avoid Growth" button to prevent this unhappy citizen from being produced---or just move a citizen off a food producing tile.)

We should make a priority to chop the jungles on sugar tiles near Pi-Rameses and Novgorod; these are good tiles to work, even without plantations. (If we have extra workers, we can even put cottages on them, and then replace those later when we get Calendar.)

 

[DaviddesJ]

430 BC:
cyrus seems to have found a city on incense

Unfortunately (typical AI) he put the city in a poor location near the incense. When we attack Cyrus, we should probably raze this one, and rebuild on top of the incense (gaining access to cows and clams).

 

[DaviddesJ]

It's going to take a while, but I think we should have our workboat reverse course and go back and check the places we skipped where there might be a coastal connection from the Gandhi/Cyrus continent, to another continent. I see 3 of these (i.e., places where a coast tile is adjacent to a black/undiscovered tile).

We can send one of our galleys north along our own coast to check out the possible connections in the area north of St Petersburg (2 of those).

Since the map is hand-constructed, I'm more suspicious than I would be otherwise, so we should check carefully. Finding a connection to more players to trade with would be a big advantage.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Another comment---there are two WCs west of Moscow that are costing us 1 gold/turn just because they are sitting outside our borders. Moving them back inside our cultural borders would save 1 gold/turn, with nothing lost as far as I can see.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Civ_steve is next, right? With Keith out, should we try to repeat the order from the last cycle? I.e.,

civ_steve
ainwood
PaulK
DaviddesJ
MailMan
Phabuk