SGOTM 02 - Team CFR

[akots]

We need to bring Osaka to size 5 before continuing on the settler and as rapidly as possible. We then can switch between some warrior builds to settler when the time for the chop comes. We cannot abandon gold or gems but we need more troops to make sure our settlers actually arrive to their destinations.

Since the first settler is supposed to be idle just sitting there and doing nothing for a few turn before we discover iron working, there is not a big hurry building the first one. Only the time when both of them are finished will count. IMO, we cannot afford just a city without immediately starting to build a Palace there. This will ruin the research. Research is not that important after we discover Iron Working and also probably Pottery. But Pottery can wait and it might be not the top priority in current situation. We need it only for Granary in Kyoto and we are not going to build many cottages now and probably only few in the near future since the land is rich and there are lots of bonus tiles to work. We would also need to make at least two more workers or steal one from Spain and build one of our own. All these cities have to be connected and resources have to be harvested and I'm not counting massive forest chop for the Palace.

... We can sign Open Borders with Isabella and maybe send one of our guys to take a peek at the lands beoynd the isthmus.

Well, it might be worth a try but our religions are different and she will close the borders pretty soon. Still, I would prefer to declare war as soon as possible and kill Spain.

 

[Balbes]

If we just wanted a 4-food tile, we should have farmed one of the flood plains instead for the extra coin. But this isn't my point.

A size-4 Osaka builds a settler in 15 turns; a size-5 Osaka shortens that time to 13 turns. But it takes as much as 6 additional turns to grow to size 5 in full turbo growth mode (everything to max food), and 21 turns if we don't abandon the mines.

So we had better think about it twice if 2 settlers is what we're going to build in the near future. Our worker can be doing something more productive. Even 2 is one too many for my liking. Capturing cities from the enemy is far more cost-effective than building them. We already have every technology we need to take Spain out. That's why we chopped that first forest, according to Obormot's plan of "let's just settle ASAP".

 

[akots]

Well, we will need at least 2 settlers and at least 2 workers from Osaka, so that would be almost the same as producing it from size 4. Two settlers for 2 turns each and 2 workers also for 2 turns each or 3 turns for both for a gain of 7-8 turns which makes up for the growth. Indeed, we could have farmed the river tile for an extra coin but having rice hooked up is also OK, we will need it sooner of later and we can try to build a cottage later on a river tile for an extra coin.

IMO, if we go to war with Spain now, we would not be able to handle it. We need first to build Palace. Even one extra (third) city will basically kill research while after two cities it will take a very long time to recover. As I've said previously, production of units does not seem to be a problem on this map but keeping the tech pace running might prove a real challenge. Besides, we would need a decent army to eliminate Spain. Bet they have rather many archers there and we don't want to stop in the middle of military campaign and sue for peace while Spain is still alive.

Of course, this can be rather flexible plan since many things will depend on where the iron is and we might be able to start Spanish campaign slightly earlier if we can build a few swordsmen and may be chariots. Let's see how it goes, this is epic speed, no need to rush things too much. Also, we still have not decided on any wonders yet. May be we can try to pop-rush Oracle in Kyoto by using that glitch of Niklas which AlanH describes in the maintenance thread. CoL or Metal Casting, whatever it is, it is just a free tech and we have trouble researching while there is no anticipated trouble for expansion.

We need to firmly decide how many cities we can afford and don't build more than that and for this, we need to evaluate roughly the production capacity of these cities and whether this would be enough for our goals. But in any case, priority is Palace and for this we need 4 cities rapidly and at least 2 more workers of may be more since on Epic speed they work awfully slow. The more workers we have, the faster we can connect the resources, the more rapidly the cities will grow, the fater we chop for the Palace and win the game.

Building axemen now might be not the best plan especially we don't have copper connected and that may be a not so easy task if we go for a southern spot. Even northern spot is not guaranteed. May be Spain will settler there earlier. Also, these barbarians are still coming and coming and they will soon start founding cities which will have 3 warriors or 3 archers for garrison which might be not so easy to capture as well with only warriors.

 

[Balbes]

Two settlers and two workers will require something like 45 turns between them to build. By that time we can have Spain nearly wiped out. Or we can let her fortify her cities all the while we're building peaceful stuff. One thing AIs can't handle at all is an early axeman rush. They just don't build an army early on. But later, they do.

Indeed we'll have to endure a precarious period of negative income. But gold from the captured cities should see us through, and enslaved workers will be already hurrying to Osaka to chop the many forests in its extensive cultural bounds for the palace.

This may require some careful planning to succeed, but imagine what kind of boost we'd get with Madrid + 2 small former Spanish cities + our copper city + Osaka with palace, when "careful" teams only have Osaka and two other Japanese cities.

 

[Dynamic]

Yes, catching Crabs was better because of Crabs gives us +1 Heals so it's equal to Fish. It's my mistake... I knew that but forgot to write, I thought Ptitsa will use Crabs any way..
About war: I think Axemans aren't enough for success war because they aren't effective against Archers in the city. We need Swords for that.
Farming Rice we need for potencially fast growth to 5 (of course we miss Gold this way) and delay before discovering Iron - we don't know where it will be.
And, I also don't like to chop many forests before Palace.

 

[Balbes]

OK how about this. We've got 3 turns left in the partially built warrior, whom we should complete now to replace the recent loss, and 10 turns left in the settler. Iron Working is due in precisely 13 turns. When we learn the locations of any iron deposits, and the possibility to get swordsmen, we'll get back to this discussion.

In the meanwhile we should scout Isabella's land and see how many workers she has, where they are, what kind of defences she has, where are her metals and horses.

Our worker will really do better to abandon that rice and begin, for example, prechopping forests near Osaka if there's nothing better to do.

 

[akots]

Agree with Dynamic here.

There is not much scouting to be done in Spain, it is just a Monarch level AI. Whether they have copper or not is not that important because we will be fighting mostly archers and based on Spanish size and rate of expansion and on the date when we start the offensive, we can roughly estimate the number of units we need to succeed. We might be facing a few axemen if we allow Spain to seize control over copper deposit in the north. Otherwise, I'd say, we are pretty much safe here with about a dozen swordsmen, may be more or may be less, hard to tell now. if they have horses, we might need one or more spearmen in case Spain might have horse archers.

I think the worker is doing just fine, rice is still rice, it has to be hooked up sooner or later. There is no rush now, but I think I'm repeating this for 5th or 6th time. We have to balance growth and war with research and production. Up to a certain point, we have to invest really hard in cities and infrastructure so that we don't fall too much behind in science race towards Astronomy. It is pretty easy to overexpand with maintenance cost for each city at about 15 gpt.

... One thing AIs can't handle at all is an early axeman rush. ...

Well, AIs cannot handle anything substantial be it earlier or later, it just has to be well prepared and more or less fail-safe.

 

[Ptitsa Consul]

Two settlers and two workers will require something like 45 turns between them to build. By that time we can have Spain nearly wiped out

Captiring spainish cities m.b. good thing. We, I hope, in nearest future shell have access to copper, and, I pyay for, to iron. And what about for barrack construction after Settler in Osaka to producing more advansed troops?
// EDIT:
And may be want IW before new city placing - iron more useful for us then copper IMHO.

Little offtopic:
What about crabs - when I have so "heavy responsibility" I become little dummy... Later, guyes describe so small features about your thoughts (as about crabs) please - I calculate something not well, an some game features not known for me for use (I'm not practical man but theoretical)

 

[Obormot]

I don't think that delaying pottery is a good idea. Not even for the cottages, but for the granaries. We have slavery and can pop-rush granaries, the cities will then regrow rapidly and unhappiness will wear off by the time they grow to maximum size. I think that we should start with a granary as the first build in each of our newly founded cities. Cottages may not be that urgent, but we'll need quite a few to research machinery. And pottery is cheaper then IW. So I think that it will be much better to research pottery first.

I know that founding cities before building the palace will stop our research for a while. But I don't think it is such a big deal. We need the hammers much more! We have to build the palace (240 hammers), the Oracle (225 hammers IIRC) and an army of axes/swords to wipe out Spain (~800 hammers). And we need those hammers soon! Increasing our hammer output should be the to priority now, not research. I don't really care about suspending science for 10 turns longer, we have all the techs we really need.

I think that growing to size5 is not a very good idea. Maybe if we had pottery then growing to work FP cottages would have been worth it, but a farmed rice square without irrigation is definitely not good enough. Maybe it is worth to delay it by a turn to complete that warrior depending on the situation with the barbs, but that's all. So the worker should stop farming rice immidiately and resume chopping. Once the settler is ready settler & worker should go together to the new site.

The eastern copper site will soon be overrun by spanish culture because of jewish holy city. So we should go to the southern copper. I haven't seen that site, but if it really has 3 resources in its first radius, settling it should be top priority anyway, agree with Balbes here.

I think that by slowing down our expansion we'll be doing the same mistake that we did in previous game: we'll let Spain survive untill samurais and greatly slow doen our developement. And this time we won't have the CS slingshot (actually we are likely to miss even the MC slingshot if we don't settle any high-production spots soon) to compensate for this, so we won't even be competing for laurels of any kind.

 

[akots]

It is quite possible to get all the hammers you are talking about by chopping and probably more including those required for granaries and for a library or two. IMO, settling near big forested areas now can give us these hammers as rapidly as reasonably possible. Production spots are nice but they would need a lot of worker turns to complete just to connect them. And we have only a single worker now.

Also, barbarians are still there and there is little we can do but defend with really many units and we have barely enough of these warriors.

 

[Balbes]

For any meaningful chopping we want more than one worker as well. Production areas are good because they only need to be improved once and continue to produce hammers automatically. But you have to specifically chop each forest. Having forests AND good production is better still.

We could have already started building the road to the future city site. It's a much better activity than farming non-irrigated rice, or prechopping trees for that matter - if only we could agree on where and how many cities to settle.

I'm fairly certain we can defend two cities and the road with the 8 warriors we have (including the one in queue in Osaka).

 

[IL2T]

Оur expansion...
High-production spots...

IMHO In this case
a) Oracle should be constructed not in Osaka (where it is a lot of wood - horse SW)
b) Osaka key function is building workers and settlers
c) City near copper we must have too - barbs axemen will deliver to us many efforts (~1000 BC)
d) IW first - If we shall have iron in 3 or 4 city is there will be a big advantage

 

[IL2T]

Akots
When you are going to play?

 

[Lexad]

Library in Kyoto in 6 turns.

With new Holy City pushing the borders of hypothetical eastern city we might want to revise its location. As akots proposed, it might be a good idea to postpone the decision of third city location, because it is like cutting off 1 commerce mine. Isabella doesn't have copper now, but she might get it or Iron soon, and we need to get it first.
However, if we destroy Izzy soon enough, cultural pressure is no cause for worry, and the city will still have access to copper and fish.

I'm opposed currently to both south and horse city - the reasons for first I've described (and fish with no boat is no good), and the second doesn't meet our primary main objective - get metal - but just wastes 8 gpt. Until we're ready to move palace, we should restrain from building low-commerce or strategically useless cities. So again - either city near eastern copper, or wait for IW.

Preaching fast conquest here, our tech path should be short and production line too. Thus I'm opposed to any huge projects with little short-term effect, whether Alphabet + GL + NE or Pyramids. HRule will do just as good in pacifying population, and we do not need much science. However, if we get several boni for Pyramids like stone, Math, strat going for several cities with library+2 scientists (the one I described in the beginning at CFR) and city with plenty of wood, it might work out. We just need to consider the alternatives more thoroughly.
Using same logic, I'm absolutely for the Oracle as hammer-cheap project with great boost to our weak-by-construction research. Just make sure we do not build it in the city with Library and scientists, spoiling the genetics. Osaka is ideal, as it has too many good land to put specialists.

 

[IL2T]

Osaka is ideal, as it has too many good land to put specialists.

What should be then production queue in Osaka?
Whether we can guarantee the Oracle, quickly build a palace and provide fast expansion???

 

[Ptitsa Consul]

One thing about Pyramids. Izzy has Masonry and stone. May be she must to build this Wonder!

 

[Balbes]

strat going for several cities with library+2 scientists (the one I described in the beginning at CFR)

There haven't been any comments on this idea, but only because everybody seems to agree on it. In fact Obormot restated it almost word-by-word in his post about the number of GP required for Astronomy.

Oracle as hammer-cheap project with great boost to our weak-by-construction research. Just make sure we do not build it in the city with Library and scientists, spoiling the genetics.

Even if the RNG gives us a prophet, he can be used towards Code of Laws/Civil Service - no loss there. And we get to use the otherwise wasted +2 gpp of the Oracle.

About the southern city: what exactly do you mean by "fish no good with no boat"? The very first build will be the workboat (chopped too), that's the whole point.

 

[Balbes]

One thing about Pyramids. Izzy has Masonry and stone. May be she must to build this Wonder!

It would be great if she did.

By the way we don't know whether she hasn't any copper. We only know she isn't in Slavery.

 

[Lexad]

Concerning the issue of founding cities for palace and building settlers vs capturing them from Spain and buildins axes/swords:
Advantages of founding - we can build in useful locations (completely agree with akots here - AI cities suck) and minimize losses from upkeep by minimizing dleay between founding cities and moving palace (for the aggressive scenario the timing is dictated by war)
Advantages of capturing -don't need settlers, kill enemy early. However, only Madrid so far appears decent, Barca - half-useful if we workboat the clams and pop-rush library. Holy Jewish city is crap and I would raze it even with Judaism in it.

The most realistic scenario is founding a good production city (with metals) and capturing 1.
Side note - we should not underestimate pottery, both for money and unlocking Metal Casting tech. However, when we move palace, we can easily employ "dispersed research" strat with several small cities harvesting 1-2 food resources and moving science with pop- and chop-rushed libraries with 2 scientists. These cities will also give us GScientists for Compass, Optics, and Astro.

 

[IL2T]

Somebody can offer city-placement in seen areas? (we do not have information only about a presence / arrangement of iron)

IMHO 90-95% We are on small continent! because till now we have no other contacts except Izzy!