SGOTM 02 - Team CFR

[Cat Behemoth]

I'll just pray for Polytheism to be opened in nearest time. It will be much better then it happens after 20 turns of researching it.

Btw, animals already exists. Spanish scout is slightly damaged.

 

[Ptitsa Consul]

For nothing not because its useless but because I dont believe in reality of it. I think Stonehenge could be much better than avanturistic attempt to Polytheism.

I think same. We have one enemy with Mysticism. But who can say, that only Spane has it... And nobody can say what researches Isabella now. May be Poly...

PS
If Spanish are living in our isle - religion can spread to us. And as for me now we must go to Archery or Bronse, but we need Worker now. When our commercial resources starts work we'll get compensation for remote capital.

 

[akots]

The roster actually was correct. IMHO, Dynamic can continue for 10 more turns if he wants and then CB can play 10 or 20 and then Obormot can play. Please, let's discuss some more since it is not clear what to do or to research, at least not for me.

Roster:

Dynamic - just played part or all, hard to tell
CB - ready or UP
Obormot - preparing
Psitsa
akots
Balbes
Lexad
IL2T

As for me, I need to take a look at the save to think about it and then can decide what is the best. I don't like gambling but this is general notion. Also, similar to CB, I'm more used to survival tactics against other humans and not against AI, so to me, archery seems a way to go. But it might be I'm wrong.

 

[akots]

... Remember, teams who play it safe don't win - they finish in the top half. The winner is somebody who took a risk and it paid off. (Of course the bottom half are those who gambled and lost.) ...

Top half sounds OK to me. I don't think that any gamble is worth a risk of losing the game. As I said previously, I try always to play the starting moves risk-free and not rely on chance and luck here. Let's try to discuss this on a rational basis and tomorrow when the heads are more clear and fog of opportunity can be replaced with a clear picture of the future and desire to gamble does calm down a little bit.

 

[Balbes]

Stonehenge without stone only becomes profitable with the 5th city, and we're a long, long, long way from that.

 

[Balbes]

Let's try to discuss this on a rational basis...

But this is on a completely rational basis I'm not preaching along the lines of "better lucky than good". What I mean to say one must be good and lucky in order to be gunning for the 1st place, which I believe we're trying to do. Suppose there's 20 teams and 10 of them chose to pass up the opportnity. Of the other 10 who gambled, 2 won and 8 lost. Now you have 2 teams doing great, 10 doing so-so, and 8 probably out of the race. You need to be one of the 2 successful teams. Personally, I hate taking this kind of risks, but there's no way around that, or the other guy who didn't hesitate is going to pull ahead. To sum it up, you must be willing to jump at opportunities, you must be lucky enough to have it pay off every time, and you must play skillfully in between.

 

[akots]

OK, here we disagree. This is a non-reload game and we cannot know whether we succeed or not. Also, I don't think you have to be lucky to win this competition. I do belive that to win, we have to play like a team and discuss every move and try to convince the other team members that what is planned is a good thing to do and not just someting that we have to do in order to win. Believe me, I have played a lot of SGOTMs, sometimes won, sometimes lost but never gambled on something which cannot be properly controlled.

In this case, what I think is that Poly is a useful tech in any case. We need it for CS gambit if we wish to pursue this one and we need it in the future for other wonders and for Literature. So, I'm not against researching Poly. I also think that researching archery might be worth the effort as well. I'm somewhat hesitant about bronze working here because this would mean facing barbarian axemen and it does not seem like we can get copper nearby since the surroundings are already very rich in resources. We also need a worker as soon as reasonably possible and we need to mine gems and gold to keep up with the research rate of the AI. So, I would still prefer to go for archery also because there is lots and lots of empty lands here and I don't see much of the forest hills to create complete circle around the city. Even if we do, still sometimes barbarians can go through the senties to the inside if they can spot a cheesy improvement. Also, on Monarch they do come in numbers. Not like in a Deity game (RBCiv Epic 4) and even not like in an Emperor level game but it can be very unpleasant.

So, to summarize, it might be worth going for Poly or for Archery and certainly not for Bronze Working as the next research choice. For now, I'm tending to prefer Archery over Poly. And the Obelisk, we can just build it. Do we really need border expansion that soon? IMO, it would be a waste of effort here if we go for Poly now and fail. However, I'm still undecided. As I said, let's wait and discuss this with clear head again and weight all arguments for and against it.

 

[akots]

...
I would like to play now, because I am going on vacation next week and I won't have civ access for two weeks (but I'll be able to read the forum and comment occasionally).

Well, if you can play the day after tomorrow? Please, I think that this roster now is rather important as the start is very important here. Since you are going only next week, you would be probably able to play before the weekend.

 

[Balbes]

How about we do some more testing.

Experiment One, Do We Have A Shot At Hinduism?

Generate a random tropical/low sea game, set Isabella as one of the AIs. Start the game, give yourself an oasis (or any other 2-coins tile) in Worldbuilder and swap the warrior for a mech inf. Research Mysticism for 10 turns, select Polytheism next and adjust your science rate down to 7 beakers/turn. Don't explore, don't do anything. Were you able to get Hinduism?

Experiment Two, Do We Need Archers ASAP?

Generate a standard/fractals map. Settle in place, do nothing. Each turn, have a look at the land in Worldbuilder, and count and write down the number of animals, warriors, archers, axemen on our continent. I think 50 to 60 turns should be enough. Please also note the turn they begin attacking.

Could everyone please run 10 test games and post the results? These statistics can be helpful.

 

[akots]

Well, you suggested these tests, so do run them yourself. j/k And let us know the results.

But the tests do seem to be reasonable imho. At least some more info.

 

[Balbes]

I performed Experiment One which was pretty much 30 minutes of pressing Shift-Enter.
Actually my setting is incorrect, I forgot the capital would grow giving us additional commerce. As certain obvious little calculations ((c)Landau&Lifshitz) demonstrate, we're going to get Polytheism on turn 31.

Test# - Turn Buddhism founded - Turn Hunduism founded - Turns left in research

01# 12, 32, -2
02# 11, 26, -8
03# 11, 15, -19
04# 11, 34, myself
05# 12, 34, myself
06# 17, 34, myself
07# 11, 34, myself
08# 12, 30, -4
09# 12, 30, -4
10# 11, 33, -1

So in this batch, we'd be able to found Hinduism 6 times out of 10. This is in line with the 2 out of 3 (66%) of Obormot's. If everybody tries this experiment, that's 80 test games which is a respectable pool I think.

 

[akots]

That is a reasonable chance imo. The problem with these test setups is that we don't know actually would it work well in our game or not. And what about the other test which might be actually more important. Especially considering the time when barbarians actually start going into cultural borders and attacking the cities.

 

[Dynamic]

I read all post and decided to play more turns. Of course, it's not absolute correct but I made force decision... and went for Poly.

 

[Dynamic]

And got it!
I founded Osaka immediately and start Worker who then start the mine on Gems.
Capital produced Work Boat, start Warrior, because in other case we reach limit too early.
Warrior on the big continent explored North and find Spain on the edge. On the back way he was attacked by Panter but survived.
After Worker Osaka start Warrior.
Final turn is 3040BC - we founded Hinduism in Osaka!
Buddism was founded 1 turn before.
Next turn we will complete Mine and after 4 turns - Kyoto will grow to 4. At this point we will have around 16 beakers - good enough.
Warrior also find Stone on the East from Osaka.
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm2/CFR_SG002_BC3040_01.Civ4SavedGame

 

[Balbes]

Congratulations Dynamic!
Now we must defend our hard-earned gains. I've carried out Experiment 2. There was extremely little variation of the results, so I'll just report the summary of the observations rather than spell out my lengthy notes.

Animals

Animals actually first appear T6. We were treading on thin ice with that settler! Between T10 and T50, an average 6 animals per civilization are on the map at all times. They stop spawning around T50 and are mostly killed off by T60.

Barbarians

Always spawn first on T49, and begin attacking immediately. This depends on the map - they need to find you first. If you're in a remote corner, you might get visitors as late as T56 or even T71, but we had better be prepared by T49. Between T50 and T90, our veteran mechanized infantry plowed through 9 warriors and 9 archers on average (no axemen) so we should expect 1 combat every 2 turns. An average of 2-3 warriors and 2-3 archers per civ observed at all times. Around T90 barbs begin building cities and stop attacking vs. overwhelming odds.

edit: This assumes no fogbusting other than by the exploring AI units

 

[akots]

OK, cool! We got the religion and this would certainly help a lot. Also it is important that it were founded in Osaka!

Now, what to do next? Go for archery like it is set up here in the screenshot?

Cross-posted with Balbes. That is rather tough. Hopefully, we can get archery rather soon after the gems are mined. The problem would be actually building these archers without being able to pop-rush.

 

[Dynamic]

It's very interesting to look up on the Culture graph... It looks like some teams have different one...

 

[Dynamic]

I'm not sure about future tech race, let's discuss.
I only notify that if we want to force defence and science in Osaka we must switch citizen to Gems next turn (mine will be ready). And, after that, may be Worker on the next Gems... because borders will expand after 2 turns. This way we can diminish effect of high corruption...for science.

About animals: Uff... In my tests it was turn 10... so I was lucky...

 

[Balbes]

Aha! So Izzy couldn't resist the 5F1H1C from the deer in the forest, and went for Hunting. She did get her own super-productive tile all right. With that kind of food output she's going to be pumpung out settlers like mad. In fact there's one out already. She may begin encroaching on our territory. I'm not sure whether it's good or bad.

 

[Balbes]

By the way we may want to delay posting our next save until more teams make progress in their games. Our culture graph would give them a very clear confirmation that early religion is possible.