SGOTM 02 - Smurkz

zyxy · Aug 5, 2006

Checking in. Lots of good thoughts going around already! Here's my two cents.

Capitol: can build workboats and a warrior I guess, after that relatively little to do, maybe a wonder, or some infra (courthouse?). Palace "jump" asap is a good idea I think.

Settling: sooner or later we will have to bite the bullet and settle our second town. I don't see much reason to wait, and there is a good reason not to: the sooner we settle, the sooner we can grow and overcome the maintenance problem. The best spot visible right now is NW IMO. It would be a good commerce town (river, coast), and I would rather get that than a good production town, because we need the money to fund further expansion. Obviously a culture expansion is needed to grab rice, fish and the hill. This we can get early by building obelisk (requires Mysticism), Stonehenge (Myst), or founding a religion (Myst + at least one more tech). Stonehenge has the advantage that we get expansions for free in all other towns (for a while), and it gives great prophet points. OTOH, obelisks are quite cheap.

Research: Mysticism seems important, and we also need something to defend ourselves - warriors will not do well, probably. Archers are quite effective, and although archery is a dead end tech, we may need it early on. BW is another good early goal, so that we can chop some forests around Osaka to aid early production. This will keep our worker(s) busy early on. Pottery is useful midrange, to get more commerce. I don't think agriculture, AH or sailing is a priority, we have plenty of food, and no need for health resources or horse based units. IW is needed midrange to locate iron and possibly start a war with swords (if not axes). Longer run, we can aim for CoL (courts) and Civil Service (Sams).

Conquest: Macemen are strong for conquest, and Samurai are even better. We should try to most of our conquering with these guys, and perhaps even an early war with axes/swords. Our traits help too: 1 free combat promo (only for melee and gunpowder units!); and organized allows us to run the fairly expensive civics Theocracy and Vassalage. Together with a rax that gives 10 XP units for three more promo's!
We can try to use diplo for a divide and conquer strat, i.e., everybody fights. Aggressive AI should be helpful for that.

Religion: It would be helpful to get one, to run Organized Religion and later Theocracy. If we research Myst first, then we can see whether Hinduism or Buddhism is feasible. OTOH, maybe we'll be first to CoL, then this is not such a high priority.

Methos · Aug 5, 2006

I like the idea Niklas had about using Kyoto for pop-rushing. That would make the city more affective. I was also thinking of using it as a GP farm, as we'll definitely have plenty of excess food. In truth we might be able to balance it between both, due to its high food.

I'm getting ready to play a few test games myself, are there any specifics we are looking at? The everyone work together might work if we can all manage it, so we should at least consider it. Is anyone unable to make that time period?

I believe at first me might want to focus on fog busters a lot. I'll attempt it in my test games to see if it works.

Do we want any other test games? Other than making it similar to the start, the only other thing I edited was removing the stone resource that was near Osaka. The main difference is we have six opponents in our test game when it should be seven.

Methos · Aug 5, 2006

Lets see, three attempts at a test game and all of them end up ending really quickly. My initial plan on each was a research path of Pottery>Mining>Bronze Working. I held of settling Osaka until I began researching Bronze Working.

First attempt I used the settler to explore and popped a hut of crazy barbs.

Second attempt the settler stayed put while the warrior explored. In no time bears showed up and the settler just couldnt make it.

Third attempt no one moved and I managed to stay alive long enough to build Osaka. I finished my research path and was beginning on Mysticism. I had built a worker in Osaka and finished a cottage on the fp when barb archers showed up. Osaka went down in flames.

One thing I did do was once Kyoto got big enough and I had a couple work boats out I started using the citizen specialist. Its only +1 hammer, but thats a 50% increase for each citizen specialist. I switched to the Slavery civic, but ended the game before getting a chance to use it.

Im thinking that waiting before settling is too much of a risk. We should probably settle either right away, or very soon. Im also thinking that building only military at first would probably be the best bet. Since that is the case either going straight towards Archery or BW would be the best, and skip Pottery until later.

One things for sure, barbs come extremely early.

Im going to try again. Hopefully Ill make it past 2000 BC, or was it 2800 BC? Lol! :lol:

Methos · Aug 5, 2006

Okay, I am currently playing a test game using the test save #2 and was curious about everyone’s opinion on it. I’ve added the turn log plus attached the save. Is this plan even something worth considering, or should it be ignored?

Spoiler Turn Log :

Summary:

Research path was Hunting>Archery>Mining>Bronze Working
Kyoto built two work boats followed by a warrior. As happiness limit was reached I began assigning citizens as citizen specialists [+1 hpt]. After the warrior I removed the citizen specialists and worked tiles to speed up commerce.
Osaka started with a barracks and then either went warrior or archer (when they were available). All units (except for the one of city defense) moved out to sit on hills as fog busters.

One thing of note (which I never realized) was that distance maintenance seems to increase as your population does.

Niklas · Aug 5, 2006

@zyxy: Good to see you here, then all are accounted for!

It's a good test case, and definitely one possible avenue for us. The most obvious think to point out is of course that you survived, which is better than any of my test games so far. :crazyeye:

But there is one obvious major drawback as well - after 54 turns you've researched Hunting, Archery and Mining for a grand total of 225 beakers. If we wait to settle, we could have that in 20 turns instead. I have more to say on this subject though, I'll be writing up my strategy thoughts now.

EDIT: On maintenance, it indeed seems that the maintenance cost is (8 + pop) gpt, except at pop 1 where it is 8. Growing the town is costly.

Methos · Aug 5, 2006

Niklas said:
But there is one obvious major drawback as well - after 54 turns you've researched Hunting, Archery and Mining for a grand total of 225 beakers. If we wait to settle, we could have that in 20 turns instead.

Very true, the problem was in all the test games I ran where I waited to settle the majority of the time I lost the settler due to barbs. When I did manage to settle the barbs overwelmed me.

The question I have is, is waiting to settle worth the risk?

BTW, looking forward to reading your strategy article.

Niklas · Aug 5, 2006

Gah, I've been writing my strategy for an hour, and then I misclick and close the browser window! :mad:

I should really write in a separate editor that asks me if I want to save before exiting. I gotta get to bed now, so I will have to rewrite it in the morning.

I should note that in the two test games I played where I didn't settle right away, I managed to settle later at better locations without a problem. It could just have been luck though, the barbies were never close. Both of the times I was overwhelmed afterwards, but that was more due to not concentrating on military before the area was secure.

Niklas · Aug 6, 2006

Alright, at long last, and written in an external editor :rolleyes:

, my thoughts on strategy. I've already rambled at length about our capitol, so this time I'll concentrate on the people of Ikegawa, the avenger.

As I see it we have two conflicting goals. We want to settle early to get many units and an early start on development, but we also want to settle late to get some early crucial techs as fast as possible. IMO the early strategy should be about optimising those two equations. I'll list a number of strategies that we could follow, each one driven to the extreme, and also discuss some more moderate variations of the theme.

Spam spam spam warrior spam
The obvious way to counter the raging barbarians is fog busters. By Methos' turn log, the real barbiarians (those that could get inside our borders) will show up some time after turn 40. If we settle NW right away and start building warriors, working the flood plain for early growth and commerce, I reckon we could build somewhere between 4 and 6 warriors in 40 turns, which is a decent number of fog busters. In Methos' test game, he notes at turn 68 that he has enough fog busters, and if I count correctly he does at that point have 2 warriors and 4 archers. If early research is set towards Archery we would have that in turn 36, too late to have any effect on the early spamming.

The upside of this scenario is that we get a head start on the barbies, hopefully enough to keep them far away from Osaka. It is even possible that we could keep them far enough that we could skip the Archery path altoghether and head straight for BW. This would have to be tested a lot though, it would be quite a risk to take.

The downside is that we're relying on warriors to do the job since we won't research fast enough to get any real help from archers. We could start building archers later though, as Methos has shown they can still make quite a difference against the barbies even if we don't start building them until around turn 40. The other major drawback is that we'll be very late to Bronze Working and Slavery.

Possible variations of this theme include Methos' early barracks, which could possibly pay off quite well. The higher win probability for each unit would have to be contrasted to the earlier fog busting and thus earlier chance at expansion.

The Archery Gambit
If we delay settling for a while, we'll research much faster in the early game. It would take us 14 turns to research Hunting + Archery (11 bpt x 14 t = 154 bp, 150 needed). Thus if we settle right after Archery comes in, we could start building archers on turn 15. Archers are more costly than warriors so it would take longer to build them, and at turn 40 we would probably have no more than three. In Methos' test game he has only two (promoted) warriors on turn 40, so this should still work quite ok, and we should build more archers faster after that, not quite as fast as in Methos game but almost, so we would still have around 6 archer when we hit turn 68 for comparison. They would not be promoted though.

The upside of this scenario is that we can use archers against the barbies instead of warriors. Also our early research will be greatly improved, and we should hit BW some 20+ turns earlier than in the previous scenario (just how many turns earlier depends on how much we let Osaka grow, higher pop = higher maintenance).
Another upside is that we could move our settler around a bit, scout out a larger area and thus possibly find a better location to settle in. One consequence of this is also that we might be able to move closer to our capitol, thereby decreasing the maintenance penalty somewhat.

The downside is that we sacrifice a lot of early production, towards turn 68 I roughly count we'd be losing some 60-80 hammers since we'll basically hit size 4 14 turns later. Also relying on archers has a flip side, we're not making use of our Aggressive trait since the free Combat I promo is only available to Melee (and GP) units. An early warrior that whacks a lion and promotes to Shock or Woodsman will have strength 2.6 under the right conditions, compared to 3.0 for the archer, so the difference is not all that large if we play our cards right with promos and unit placement (yeah, I know the way combat is played out makes that 0.4 difference much larger than it seems).
A third downside is that we need our settler to survive for 14 turns. In Methos test game he sees the first lion on turn 12, so this doesn't seem undoable at all.

Variations on this team would be to not wait the full 14 turns for Archery to come in. Any compromise would do, if we settle on turn 10 we'd delay Archery to around turn 22-23 (assuming -7 gpt maintenance) and could build a warrior first while waiting for it. BW would be sped up by 15+ turns compared to settling right away.

The Brazen Bronze Gambit
This one is not for the faint of heart! Since archers are not that very effective anyway, we skip the archery path and head straight for the all-important Bronze Working. Researching Mining + BW would cost 255 bp, a lot more than for Archery which means we wouldn't have it until turn 23 (11 bpt x 17 t + 13 bpt x 6 t = 265 bp). Settle a food-rich location and start warriors while switching to Slavery for one turn anarchy (you still grow during Anarchy right?). Osaka would grow to size 2 on turn 34 with +3 fpt, at which point we can whip out two warriors right away. Rinse and repeat.

(Q: Is it possible to queue up several warriors and switch between them in the queue? If yes, the best scenario would be to build one warrior, switch to another one turn before we grow to have one hammer in the bin, queue up yet another that gets the overflow, we would get two warriors from the whip and can switch back to the original warrior again that will still have all the hammers collected. If not, we can build something else while waiting for the whip, a barracks for instance.)

The major upside of this is of course the very early BW and Slavery, that lets us use the food as hammers. I've already shown how powerful this is in our capitol, it will not be quite as efficient in Osaka but it will still count for a lot.
Also the same benefits from moving around apply as for the previous scenario - better location, closer to home.

The downside is again a sacrifice of early production. Compared to a scenario where we settle right away and grow to size 4 fast, we would still lose some 60-80 hammers in Osaka (very rough count), same as in the Archery Gambit, but with a lot more research down. Also we'd again be relying on warriors to do the barbie hunting, for better or worse.
But the biggest problem will be to keep the settler alive and well for 26 turns. I'm going to try a few test games just to see how well I can manage that, for the sake of curiosity, but in reality it seems way too much of a gamble.

There is also one thing that I haven't discussed here at all, which is Copper. If we have copper nearby (remember this is a designed map for this SGOTM), we'd be off to a running start. A worker would be needed to mine and road the copper, but once we have it we can rush Axemen. After all the barbies are just the first step, there are 7 AI opponents to beat down after that. But really, I know this is only a very minor part of our early strategy.

Variations are again a compromise between settling early and settling later. If we settle after 10 turns we'd probably have BW around turn 34. If we settle after 15 we could have it around 30. This would probably be a lot more doable than waiting around with the settler for the full 23 turns, and we wouldn't be able to fully utilize the Slavery benefits until around this time anyway.

Concluding Remarks
I'm clearly a big fan of Slavery (well, not really, but you know what I mean

). I haven't tested any of this, but I have the distinct feeling that we'd be better off in the long run the faster we can get to Slavery, after a certain point when we can really make use of it. But we must survive the first turns, or else all is lost. I'm going to run a few test games with some of these setups, but I have only so much time. It would be nice if you guys could test some of these scenarios as well, to see if they have any chance of working in practice.

OMT is Pottery. Initially I thought it important for the cottages, but since survival became more of an issue it fell down my list of priorities. But it is on the rise again, and the reason this time is the granary. It will make Kyoto twice as good a producer, since it will grow back the whipped pop twice as fast. The only problem will be to give it something to build and whip, anything at all. Wonders come to mind... :mischief:

Methos · Aug 6, 2006

Excellent article, though I'll need to read it a couple more times for everything to sink in.

Niklas said:
But it is on the rise again, and the reason this time is the granary. It will make Kyoto twice as good a producer, since it will grow back the whipped pop twice as fast. The only problem will be to give it something to build and whip, anything at all. Wonders come to mind...

This is the problem I had with Kyoto, as in nothing to build. I ended up building a barracks in Kyoto even though it didn't need one.

I may be biased, but I'm thinking whichever way we go we'll still need to do some sort of unit spam. I'll give the brazen bronze gambit a try and see how things turn out.

Methos · Aug 6, 2006

Niklas said:
There is also one thing that I haven't discussed here at all, which is Copper. If we have copper nearby (remember this is a designed map for this SGOTM), we'd be off to a running start. A worker would be needed to mine and road the copper, but once we have it we can rush Axemen.

Copper is one of the biggest downfalls of this strategy IMO. In order to make the BBG strategy (brazen bronze gambit) work we would need copper. In my test game building a third city brought my research down to 10% and 20%. Even with both Kyoto and Osaka at max happiness the third city basically halted my research. In order for the BBG to work we'd have to wait and settle once we knew where copper was.

Niklas · Aug 6, 2006

Methos said:
Copper is one of the biggest downfalls of this strategy IMO. In order to make the BBG strategy (brazen bronze gambit) work we would need copper. In my test game building a third city brought my research down to 10% and 20%. Even with both Kyoto and Osaka at max happiness the third city basically halted my research. In order for the BBG to work we'd have to wait and settle once we knew where copper was.

I'm not sure I agree with this, but I haven't tested anything so it's just an opinion. The way I see it, the point of the BBG is not Copper, it's Slavery. If we have copper nearby, as in within 21 of Osaka, it would be a big boon. If not, we'll have to cope with that the same way we would have in any of the other strategies. In what way do you find Copper crucial for the BBG to work?

Regarding our third town, I would build two settlers in quick succession in Osaka when the time is right, and then whip the palace at first chance.

Methos · Aug 6, 2006

I only played two test games using a modified brazen bronze gambit, one for each test save. I decided to try waiting until copper was known before settling Osaka. Below is my turnlogs:

Spoiler Test Save #1 :

Spoiler Test Save #2 :

Waiting for Copper to show is way too much of a risk IMO, though I do realize that Niklas didnt technically mean this when he stated the strategy. The problem I have is if we go with the BB Gambit than waiting to settle until Copper shows is our best option. A third city will end all research.

The only possible option Im seeing with this strategy is to build Osaka in a high food area and have a settler (for third city) finish just as BW is researched. The settler than settles on the Copper tile and immediately begins building axemen. This will cripple our research, but still allow Osaka to build a few units for fog busting.

Methos · Aug 6, 2006

Niklas said:
In what way do you find Copper crucial for the BBG to work?

Missed this earlier. About this time we should start seeing barb archers running around. I hate to have just warriors to defend against them. I haven’t played long enough to see any barb axemen yet, but I’m afraid they’ll start showing up soon after. When they do we’ll need something more than warriors. IMO, and I may be wrong, we need to be able to grab the copper ASAP!

Here’s my two test games where I attempted to build Osaka around turn #10, followed by Tokyo settling on the copper tile to automatically gain its benefits. Again, one from each test save:

Spoiler Test Save #1 :

Spoiler Test Save #2 :

This actually wasn’t too bad. I should have started the settler earlier though. The biggest problem I see with this is it wastes a lot of turns. It seems we are taking way too much time in just surviving, and I fear we will be too far behind the other AI’s.

Odd that I never seem to be able to survive when playing test save #1.

zyxy · Aug 6, 2006

Unfortunately I cannot do any test runs - my comp is too stupid for Civ4. Hopefully that will change by the end of the week.

Anyway. Our two immediate problems are defense and finances. Going for BW doesn't really solve either of these: slavery and chopping add production, but we have little use for it, except perhaps to produce a load of warriors. Copper would be nice, but probably comes too late to fend off the initial barbs (and is a gamble anyway). We cannot wait with settling too long, or we may lose the settler.

For defense, archers are pretty good, and will hold out quite well even against axemen.
To solve the financial problem, pottery would be needed, as well as a worker of course. Unfortunately, if we settle NW, there is only one tile in the first nine where we can build a cottage (the FP) - for the others we first need to chop. That would bring the total to 5 techs (IIRC): Pott, Hunting + Archery, Mining + BW. This seems to take too long to get going. Some alternatives:

Safe choice

Maybe we should scout around a bit while researching hunting + archery, then settle a good spot (somewhere along that river with a lot of open grass would do), research pottery while training some archers and a worker. Disadvantage is that we might lose the settler to an early wild animal. Also, maintenance might get higher if we move away from Kyoto.

The next problem is to expand further. We now need to train a settler and probably research to BW. Ideally, we'll get 2 settlers out shortly after each other (using the whip or chop if possible), found the 3rd and 4th town and quickly move the palace. Again, 5 techs needed, but mining and BW can wait a bit.

Riskier choice

Alternatively, we could count on warriors for defense, research up to Pott and BW but skip archery for now, and train a worker for chops and cottages. Chops can go to some warriors and 2 settlers, and in this case we could settle 1 NW.
This probably gets quicker development, but on emperor level starts with standard barbs I have found that archers are a necessity. Maybe Monarch level with raging barbs is easier, I don't know. In any case, a warrior defense is risky and depends a bit on lucky rolls...

I think that all in all scouting around for a few turns while researching, say, Pott, won't hurt. Depending on what we find we can either settle NW and research to BW, or settle somewhere else.

Niklas · Aug 6, 2006

I will concur that not having archers at hand might be to risk it too much. Even if we manage to fog bust enough, warriors will not stand a chance against barbarian axemen. And I don't want to go with a strategy that absolutely requires that we have Copper, which Methos' test runs seem to indicate that the BBG does. If this was a SP game, I might chance it, but for a SGOTM it is much more important that we get to play the full game - we have only one chance!

We will want BW for Slavery, with Kyoto we have a wonder factory just waiting to happen. But I guess we could wait a while longer to realize it, the survival of Osaka is much more important.

So maybe a variation of the Archery gambit then, moving around just a little before settling down, getting Archery around turn 25, then continue on BW. Pottery will be important for our finances, but I just don't see how we could spare the time to build an early worker to make good use of it in the early game. I will try to run a test game or two later today to see if it's feasible.

Marc Aurel · Aug 6, 2006

Short comment on the type of unit. I prefer the archer gambit. That is because the barbs drove me back every time since I didn't manage to get all the land controled. That is not a problem, if we are on a small island, what I don't believe since the map is fractal and hand built. The archers however worked very well. After the initial town defender I tried to position archers on forest hills in the surrounding and the barbarian axemen had no chance to conquer them.
Concerning the third town I only can repeat that all further towns kill our economy totally, as Methos has also stated. So Niklas approach to fast build two settlers and then whip the palace seems the clear way to proceed for me. Finding bronze for Osaka however seems dangerous. The settler could have moved without danger until 3700BC in my games. Anyone saw an earlier animal? The area to be uncovered in this time frame will be enough, if we can move two tiles every time and end turn on hills. After that the warrior must be back to protect the settler. But that's not a 100% assurance. So I would like to settle somewhere in the time from short after 3700BC to archery discoverage. If we can manage to pop gold from a hut we can settle some turns earlier. That is my favourite strategy ATM.

Methos · Aug 6, 2006

Marc Aurel said:
The settler could have moved without danger until 3700BC in my games. Anyone saw an earlier animal?

Post #52 test game #2 3790 BC (turn 7)
Post #53 test game #1 3760 BC (turn 8)

So 2 out of 5 of my games (that I actually kept track of) were pre-3700 BC. The others were between turns 12 and 16. I’m counting 4000 BC as turn 0 by the way.

Notice in TG1 that I met pumas in turn 8 and lions in turn 11. In other words, I wouldn't chance going past turn 10 if possible, unless escorted.

Marc Aurel said:
So Niklas approach to fast build two settlers and then whip the palace seems the clear way to proceed for me.

I agree. Niklas’s approach appears to be the best option when concerning building beyond our second city. When we build our third city, it should be followed immediately by the fourth. Followed by a rushed palace.

@Niklas: Have you done much testing on this [pop-rushing the palace]? I’m curious what we’re looking at. Kyoto would still be high maintenance cost, but our other three cities should be reasonable. I’m not very experienced at the slavery civic.

Edit: Question: When the settler pops a hut is it similar to the results given from a scout? In other words, can the settler only pop good stuff from a hut, or good and bad? In my test games I chose not to pop any huts so as not to alter my test games too much.

Niklas · Aug 6, 2006

No, I haven't done any testing with it at all. It costs 240 shields to rush, which means that we cannot rush it right away in any case. We would need a small treasury to eat from while building up to a level where we could rush. If each of the three towns cost ~9 gpt on avg (Osaka will cost a lot more since it will have grown) and Kyoto makes 17 gpt, we're looking at -10 gpt until the palace is moved.

We would need to settle Osaka in a food-rich location to be able to pull this off somewhat efficiently. 240 hammers, with 44 hpp (hammers per pop

), we would need to rush 6 pop to pull it off, not really feasible. 5 pop would give us 220 hammers, so it would be good if we could get Osaka to pop 6 before rushing, hence the need for food. Btw, I hope there is no restriction on how many pop you can rush in a turn as there was in Civ3? Otherwise we'd need a really big treasury, and lots of production in Osaka...
One other possibility is that we have workers almost ready with a number of forest chops for the Palace. How much from each chop, 44 in the nearest area with a penalty further out?

The logical result of jumping the palace would be that the maintenance costs of our three mainland towns drop to between 0 and -2 gpt for a total gain of ~20-25 gpt, and that of Kyoto soars to between -10 and -15 gpt depending on size. So the immediate gain will be descent, but more importantly it will give us the possibility to expand even more around our new capitol.

I'll see if I can get a few test games running later tonight. I would like to test both the cut-short Archery Gambit, survival rate of the settler, and effects of pop-rushing. In particular I would like to see how long it will take to BW with this strategy.

Marc Aurel · Aug 6, 2006

Methos is right! Now I also met a lion in 3760BC.
The settler however also can pop a barb from a hut. I have had this several times.

Methos · Aug 6, 2006

Niklas said:
We would need a small treasury to eat from while building up to a level where we could rush.

Very true, when I built my third city my research dropped to 10% at one point. With a fourth city we'll definitely need to have some cash in our treasury. I don't believe we'll be able to maintain four cities for long with Kyoto as our capitol, even with 0% research.

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