SGOTM 01 - Peanut

[civ_steve]

I'm back in town, and will get caught up on the game tomorrow (It's a bit after midnight right now, in Southern California).

I had a couple PM's to take care of when I got in. Phabuk was on vacation when the teams were set up and play started, which is the reason for Phabuk's delayed response. I'd prefer not to exclude anybody from participating who signed up and wants to play, so I've asked AlanH to add Phabuk back to the roster, assuming Phabuk is still interested, which I'm inferring is true. If so, we haven't quite completed a round for everyone, so I'd place him after DaviddesJ.

 

[DaviddesJ]

I'd prefer not to exclude anybody from participating who signed up and wants to play, so I've asked AlanH to add Phabuk back to the roster, assuming Phabuk is still interested, which I'm inferring is true.

Or he can fill in on another team, if there's someone with fewer players than us? I don't have a strong stake either way; there's such a thing as too many people, though.

 

[Phabuk]

Hi!
Glad to be back in the team!

I've read the thread to be informed of what have been done and it seems also clear for me that we must rush over the russian with our war charriots.

It is also a good idea to farm the flood plains in order to grow and have a better production.

Perhaps it could be interesting to found a city in a short future just at the north of St petersbourg where there is a barb. It could be a good support for the invasion...


A technical question:
I will play just after david, if i well understood ?

 

[ainwood]

Hi!
A technical question:
I will play just after david, if i well understood ?

Sounds like it! Good to have you here.

 

[Keith Larson]

Just wanted to let everyone know that I am leaving for a conference this afternoon and will not be back home until late Thursday PM.

 

[DaviddesJ]

I played a few turns and finished the cow pasture and I'm wondering what the worker should do next. I see three reasonable choices:

1. Cottage on floodplains.
2. Mine on stone hill.
3. Mine on grassland hill.

A cottage is worth most in the long run, but it doesn't help us build war chariots faster. The mine on the stone hill gives us the best production in the short run, but it's "wasted" work in that we'll eventually have to replace it with a quarry in order to get access to the stone resource (even though the mine and the quarry give us the same production from the tile). The mine on the grassland hill takes the longest to move to (3 turns from current location) but it will be useful in the long run, plus, who knows, we might discover bronze (or another resource!) on the tile.

I think my choice is the mine on the stone hill, but, I'll wait until tomorrow morning to see if anyone has any other thoughts.

 

[MailMan]

Since we do not need stone for a very long time, I think that mine on the stone is a good choise for now.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Since we do not need stone for a very long time, I think that mine on the stone is a good choise for now.

Assuming we aren't going to try for Pyramids, we'll probably want Stone for the Great Lighthouse and/or Hanging Gardens, which aren't too far off, potentially. I don't have enough experience to know when these are likely to be built by the AIs, on Monarch. Anyone?

It's also not inconceivable that we could try for the Pyramids still, although pumping out enough WCs may make that too slow. Even if we don't expect to win the race for the Pyramids, it may be a very good idea to start building it (with stone hooked up) so that we convert our partial progress to gold which will speed our research quite a bit.

Getting 1f 3h from the grassland hill isn't much worse than 5h from the stone hill.

I'm just putting forth the arguments on both sides. As you can see, I often have a hard time making up my mind.

 

[MailMan]

I do not really see the pyramids as such important wonder. I think that the greatest benefit from it is the early 2gpp that goes into engineering.
If we want to consider WC rush there is no point in trying to get a wonder!
If we eliminate Russia - that a different story

The hanging gardens are usually built quite late by the AI (mainly due to the aqueduct pre-req) and we may get it later on.

I usually prefer food over hammers, but I think that in the current configuration 5h is better than 1f3h due to all the FP around.

 

[ainwood]

I think the payback on the hammers by mining the stone will be worth it. We'll delay a cottage by a few turns (and the snowballing benefits of that), but we'll get catherine's land faster.

 

[civ_steve]

Since we're going for a WC rush of Catherine, I would do the actions that hasten that the most; sounds like more Hammers, so I would suggest mining the Stone Hill

How many WC's before we start the attack?

 

[DaviddesJ]

OK, I'm at 1930 BC, two more questions before I finish up:

1. Memphis just grew to size 3. Do we want worker (7 turns) or settler (11 turns) next? If we build a worker it will probably be for chopping, we have to decide how we feel about chopping now vs. waiting for Mathematics. But chopping would help accelerate our WC buildup, so that seems consistent with our overall strategy. Settler would also be useful and could go to the fish/clams spot, but that doesn't help us attack faster.

2. Bronze Working is complete. No copper in our area; two sources in the south, but Catherine doesn't have either hooked up yet. The northern source will be easy for us to pillage in our initial attack. What to research next? The original idea was Alphabet, trade techs with Catherine before we attack. Another reasonable idea is Mathematics, for better chopping, which may help us get out an extra couple of WCs, and also help develop Catherine's cities post-war. At some point we may want to divert for Fishing, but that's so quick we can just switch to it a few turns before we need it, or Masonry, but no point in that until we need it, since I'm already mining the stone hill.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Actually, I thought about this some more, and I propose building at least a couple of WCs in Memphis, before we do anything else. They won't have XP from barracks, but this is the fastest way to rush Catherine before she gets spearmen. We can also use Slavery efficiently in Memphis, although, we're going to run into happiness problems soon. When happiness becomes an insuperable problem, we can revert to building worker or settler. Ideally, what we would like to do is fill up our food basket and then rush a worker or settler. Thoughts?

 

[ainwood]

I can't look at the game - but how does happiness compre to health (for the slavery strategy?)

One of the biggest "problems" I have in my play-style is that I try to achieve too much at once, rather than going for a single goal. I see this happening if we try to grab another settler now rather than later - the settler will also stunt growth for 11 turns - are we at our pop limit? If we are going for a settler, we could pop-rush it, but overall, I'm more in-favour of going for war chariots.

How long would it take to get barracks? If we go for a couple of war chariots now, what is the plan? Declare on her with only a couple and ensure that she doesn't hook-up copper? That is dangerous, as it will mean she will focus on archers - in a city on a hill with 40% defence! Maybe we could sit them on the edge of the territory, and attack the worker if (when) she goes to hook it up?

As for research - if we have the tech we need for our initial strategy, perhaps the next techs should be towards the long-term strategy - which will probably be getting off this continent! That said - mathematics has uses for both - and gets us closer to construction if we need catapults.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Currently our cities are limited by happiness at least as much as by health, and we can improve health (by connecting rice) more easily than happiness. So Slavery is going to be of limited (but significant) value, as we'll eventually limit ourselves by reducing happiness more than we gain by converting food to shields.

I think we can attack with 8 or so WCs in the not too distant future, especially if we start building them in both cities. We're generating nearly 20 hammers/turn, plus some hammers from Slavery, plus some potential hammers from chopping.

If we're looking to get 3-4 WCs out of Memphis, at 37 each, it makes way more sense to just start building them than to try to build a barracks at this point. It's got to be better to have 4+ inexperienced WCs, than 1-2 experienced ones.

I'm pretty much decided on building a WC in Memphis, my question still is Mathematics or Alphabet. Honestly, I think we're probably going to want to attack Catherine before we get either (attack about 20 turns from now, vs. 25 turns to Mathematics or 30 turns to Alphabet). We may consider letting Catherine live with one city for a while in exchange for some techs, which would be an argument for Alphabet. On the other hand, we may want to start chopping to improve all of our new cities, which would be an argument for Mathematics.

 

[DaviddesJ]

OK, I couldn't decide between Alphabet and Mathematics, so I decided to punt and research Fishing first. This will be useful when we go for the clams and fish, and we can defer the Alphabet/Mathematics decision for a few turns.

2170 BC: not much

2140 BC: not much

2110 BC: Cow pasture finished, spot barb warrior in far south (evaded)

2080 BC: Thebes grows to size 4

2050 BC: Catherine has 2 archers in capital, 1 more nearby

2020 BC: start mining stone hill

1990 BC: not much

1960 BC: complete 1st War Chariot (promote to Combat 1)

1930 BC: discover Bronze Working, adopt Slavery, someone founds Judaism, Huayna Capac adopts Slavery, Memphis builds granary, Memphis grows to size 3, pop rush 2nd War Chariot in Thebes, start researching Fishing

1900 BC: build 2nd War Chariot (promote to Combat 1), 1st War Chariot kills barb warrior (level up), warrior in south spies new continent!!

Here's the save: http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm1/Peanut_SG001_BC1900_01.Civ4SavedGame

Screenshot:

 

[DaviddesJ]

Here's my ideas of what to do next. Thebes should keep building WCs, in 14 turns when the unhappiness goes away it can pop rush again. Memphis should keep building WCs, when it grows to size 4 it can pop rush. The northern warrior needs to return to garrison Memphis (I sent it north just to see if there was anything I could spot from the silver tile). The southern warrior will finish exploring in the south (there's a black spot where I didn't want to fight the barb warrior so I ran away---leave this for a WC when it gets down there) and then spy on Catherine so we know how fast she's building up, and/or hang out on the tip of the peninsula hoping to spot another civ's unit on the other continent. The WCs will scout and go barb hunting for promotions---we should try to save the barbs for our WCs that are at 4XP. The worker will finish the mine, and then probably should chop one forest near Thebes (which doesn't cost us any health), then start cottaging.

My reckoning is that we should be ready to attack in 20-25 turns.

Spotting the new land is ideal for our attack-Catherine strategy; we can, hopefully, grab this whole continent for ourselves, and still have someone to trade with before Astronomy.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Interesting tidbit: we seem to have jumped to the highest Firaxis score and highest Power rating of any team, as of 1900 BC. I guess no one is building WCs as aggressively as we are. I like being different.

 

[MailMan]

I am unable to look at the save until late tonight, can someone post some pictures to show the current situation?

Re: Alpha vs. Math - I think that we will try to eliminate Russia instead of giving her peace for techs, however I am not too keen on chopping, we will want some health bonuses with all those FP. another point toward alpha is that the AI prioritize Math and is usually late for alpha.

 

[DaviddesJ]

I added a screenshot to #116.

If we're going to have people to trade with (as seems likely), then I'm for Alphabet.

I do like chopping for Granaries, which can then be used for efficient pop rushing.

I don't think health is going to be much of an issue: we have plenty of health resources (including fish and clams) and few luxuries, so happiness is much more likely to constrain us, for quite some time. Probably we can win the game before health ever becomes a real constraint. Of course, there may be certain cities that are most impacted by deserts, that we won't want to chop too much around, but that still leaves many alternatives.