SGOTM 02 - The Real Ms. Beyond

[Compromise]

Holy crap! I just noticed that Team Peanut has most of their winning members from SGOTM1 and also got malekithe added to them! I'm pretty sure the rest of us are playing for the Silver laurels.

Do I have anything useful to say? No. Sorry. Just another post to delay Snaproll's catch-up reading.

 

[regoarrarr]

I think that a running shadow game would be useful, if you have the time to do that. As for Team Peanut, BRING. IT. ON!

 

[regoarrarr]

So I'm thinking our general tech path should be Hunting, Archery, Animal Husbandry, Pottery, Writing. It looks like Masonry is no longer required for building the palace, but you do need 4 cities.

If compromise's shadow game is correct, and we are 37 tiles away from the island where the settler stands, and it's shorter that way than wrapping around the minimap (I'd still like to investigate that), then moving the settler any further east would only increase the maintenance.

It's hard to know whether or not it's worth it to settle earlier, to give the 2nd city the time to grow, or to wait awhile. If we're waiting, what are we waiting for? It's hard to justify waiting to settle a 2nd city till we have courts or markets!

 

[Compromise]

So I'm thinking our general tech path should be Hunting, Archery, Animal Husbandry, Pottery, Writing. It looks like Masonry is no longer required for building the palace, but you do need 4 cities.

If compromise's shadow game is correct, and we are 37 tiles away from the island where the settler stands, and it's shorter that way than wrapping around the minimap (I'd still like to investigate that), then moving the settler any further east would only increase the maintenance.

It's hard to know whether or not it's worth it to settle earlier, to give the 2nd city the time to grow, or to wait awhile. If we're waiting, what are we waiting for? It's hard to justify waiting to settle a 2nd city till we have courts or markets!

In general, I like the proposed tech path, but why Animal Husbandry? We'll probably want to use axemen to take down the enemy.

Definitely we'll want to check on the distance calculations I made. I hope I can get a shadow game together some time today. I do remember thinking that the minimap in the shadow game I whipped up earlier (all I did was count 5 up and 37 over and put an island there with the appropriate fish and crabs) looked remarkably similar to the minimap in the original screenshots.

I think there are several reasons for delaying the settling of our second city:

1) We want to find a great spot. Ideally a plains hill near some good food and hill resources. (Okay really ideally Copper, but we won't wait that long.)

2) We don't want to delay our ability to produce archers

3) We want the city to be productive from the moment its founded. Without Pottery or a gold mine, it will take a while for it to pay for itself. With our starting techs, the only useful build we could make early on is a workboat, but even that is only good if there is a seafood resource within the first ring of workable tiles. We probably won't have a way of expanding our borders until we whip a library into that city, so it will have to be positioned well.

4) The settler will make a good scout for about 10 turns as long as a) it doesn't pop any barbs from huts and b) the map wasn't edited to add barbs from the start.

I don't think we need to delay more than 10-15 turns before founding the city.

 

[regoarrarr]

@Compromise - that makes sense about waiting 10-15 turns to settle.

As for AH - I think that was going off of there being sheep in the opening pic of the settler. Obviously we don't have to settle there, but if there's sheep (or cows or pigs) in the radius of wherever we settle, AH can make sense.

I was also thinking of that being a pre-req to Writing, but obviously so is Pottery. Though also having AH would make Writing (slightly) cheaper

 

[Zalson]

Egads! Egads! So many posts.

Ok, so I was wrong about Toku... But I would say that unless we want to two-step tango with the Barbs (e.g. run around in circles and be condemned to an island), that we probably shouldn't wait for TOO long... I'd say that 15 is the upper limit because that should give us enough time to build an archer and meet the barbs. Too bad the abandon city option is toast.

 

[ruff_hi]

sheep in the first picture ... oh, you mean those sheep that swim. Sort of like, tuna being the chicken of the sea ... so fish are the sheep of the sea?

IF (and I mean if) we send our settler walk-a-bout, we must put a sign on the starting location. (I expect that) this location is the map generated one and should be 'good' and equa-distance from the other civs.

 

[Compromise]

sheep in the first picture ... oh, you mean those sheep that swim. Sort of like, tuna being the chicken of the sea ... so fish are the sheep of the sea?

IF (and I mean if) we send our settler walk-a-bout, we must put a sign on the starting location. (I expect that) this location is the map generated one and should be 'good' and equa-distance from the other civs.

Hey, no making fun of the captain and his sheep-seeing ways! Maybe he has one of those special compasses....

I think ruff_hi is right about this being a mapscript-generated starting location. It certainly looks like one, being one away from the coast and all.

As for the scouting of the Settler. I think we should shoot for about 5 turns of scouting with the warrior and the settler before deciding on a city location. That will give us time to move the Settler to the best spot, even if it's a spot uncovered by the warrior traveling in a different direction. The barb animals should spawn after 15 turns, and they won't enter the city borders. (I think you can even found your city when you are right next to a barb animal and it will pop away from your city, but I haven't confirmed that.

 

[Compromise]

I'm trying to think about what we want our second city to accomplish. It seems like we'll want a good hybrid spot: we want it to be able to pay for itself, but we also want it pumping out troops at a good clip. Our next city should probably be focused on production so that we can generate troops. The latter will most likely need to be near some Copper.

Also, Any thoughts about how/whether to expand our non-capital cultural borders? Do we want to try building Stonehenge in Kyoto even? It would require some sacrifice of research since we'd need Mysticism (made cheaper if we meet other civs that know it already) and some poprushing in the capital.

I did a quick test and it seems like one population point only gives you something like 20 hammers on epic toward a wonder. Does anyone know for sure?

I'm mostly just trying to make sure we think about the opening in enough detail that we don't miss something that, in retrospect, should have been obvious to us.

 

[regoarrarr]

sheep in the first picture ... oh, you mean those sheep that swim. Sort of like, tuna being the chicken of the sea ... so fish are the sheep of the sea?

Sheep, rice, whatever....

PS Bite me.

 

[BeefontheBone]

So I'll be inheriting a founded city? Suits me, I'd only mess it up somewhere otherwise

 

[regoarrarr]

I think the plan now, unless anybody has any objections, is for me to play about 5-10 turns, do some scouting, then save and post some pics. Then once we decide where we want to settle, do so and play a few more turns.

Do we really think we'll have archery by turn 15? In Epic it seems like the initial techs each usually take 10-15 turns, and we have to research Hunting too. Do we want to delay settling till we get Archery?

 

[Compromise]

Okay, I messed around with Worldbuilder for a while. There's really no way I'm going to be able to keep an ongoing map of the world updated; I just don't know how to handle the diplomacy and changing the civs that randomly got rolled up.

Here's the start, though, to the best of my ability (not much).

A starting pic of our settler/warrior pair:



Note the similarity of the minimap!

And the save is attached to this post.

 

[Compromise]

@regoarrarr: I think your plan to play a few turns, stop for input, and then continue is great. Seems like the warrior one move E and the settler 2 SW is the way I'd start. After that: best judgment!

On a logistics note, I will be totally away from computers and all internet access from Fri Aug 11 through Sun Aug 14. If my turn comes up then (as seems likely from the initial order), we could either skip me or push me down the order.

 

[regoarrarr]

SUMMARY POST:

Roster:
Regoarrarr (up) - will play 5-15 turns to scout with the settler, then post some pics, wait for team input on where to settle, and play a few more)
BeefOnTheBone (on deck)
EL_OSO
Kodii
Compromise - dropped 2 spots - skip from 8/11 to 8/14
ruff_hi
Snaproll
Zalson

Diplomacy:
Rivals to meet: Unknown - we need to check this ASAP via the victory page once we get the save. Remember everyone is a potential enemy since we have to win by conquest. Of course we can befriend them for the short-term.

Technology:
Seems most folks are for an opening tech move of Hunting -> Archery. After that, probably Pottery->Writing (since we start with Fishing and The Wheel). Let us not forget Animal Husbandry for the swimming pigs! No need for Masonry for a palace move, but we probably want to head to the mining/BW path before TOO long, even if only to see where the copper is.

Medium term - Optics->Astronomy.

Settling:
Plan is to hold off 10-15 turns on settling the 2nd city to scout out the best place. Ideally we'd see some gold or gems to settle next to. 3rd city probably needs to go near copper and the rest of the cities will be acquired by

Builds:
Kyoto builds workboat/warrior/workboat. If we can explore with that 2nd workboat good but probably not.

Religion:
I think we want one. If we found one, it will go in the 2nd city if we have one. We should probably try for Confucianism or Taoism since the odds of us getting one of the first 3 on Monarch w/o Mysticism are slim.

Great People:
Plan is to run 2 scientists in Kyoto once we get to Writing. Need to research what techs a Great Scientist will give us, and which ones we want to aim for. With as long as we're goign to be running scientists, we'll probably get a few GS's

 

[Compromise]

Cool. Also, I noticed that six of the SGOTM2 team threads--including ours--have posted attachments. I've never tried to simulate a start before; it's kind of a pain. But in glancing at the GOTM threads, it seems to be what people do.

 

[regoarrarr]

List of techs a G scientist will research

Writing
Mathematics
Scientific Method
Physics
Education
Printing Press
Fiber Optics
Computers
The Wheel
Philosophy
Chemistry
Fission
Fusion
Optics
Paper
Astronomy
Biology
Electricity
Flight
Genetics
Compass
Satellites
Sailing
Alphabet
Calendar
Medicine
Ecology
Iron Working
Metal Casting
Engineering
Steam Power
Liberalism
Agriculture
Masonry
Bronze Working
Machinery
Gunpowder
Refrigeration
Rocketry
Fishing
Combustion
Plastics
Composites
Mining
Radio
Meditation
Drama
Theology
Music
Civil Service
Democracy
Corporation
Communism
Economics
Hunting
Archery
Animal Husbandry
Construction
Robotics
Monotheism
Mass Media
Horseback Riding
Replaceable Parts
Rifling
Artillery
Future Tech

So if we want one to research (part of) Astronomy, we need to either not research or get in some other way techs like Paper and Philosophy.

A powerful strat I've seen lately is to tech up to Drama and use the first GS to get Philosophy. With its trading power lots of times you can catch yourself up, tech-wise. If we want to save it for Astronomy, we can choose not to research Meditation to keep Philosophy off the table.

I'm assuming we'll want to use a library to pop borders in our 2nd city, though the thought of whipping Stonehenge seems like a decent idea too.

 

[EL_OSO]

Oso checking in here. I've been working 12 hour shifts for the past 3 weeks and it looks like I got one more to do. You might want to move me towards the end of the turn order as I'll only be able to participate on the weekends until it slows down where I work.

 

[regoarrarr]

A couple of notes from my experiments on the shadow game, in no particular order.

* Hunting is only 8 turns right away, with Archery another 9 turns.
* Settling on Turn 1 gives you 7 gpt distance maintenance, dropping research to 50%.
* You can pop hostile barbs right away (I did in one game with my settler)
* I settled 11 turns west of the start spot, and it dropped the distance maintenance to 6 gpt. Doesn't really seem worth it. Though one option would be to settle close to one of our neighbors and storm his city.
* I saw a barb animal at 3610 BC (turn 13). After that, it becomes very difficult to avoid them with the settler (given that they have 2 moves). Probably need to decide a place to settle by turn 10 or so.
* Health cap is 3, so Kyoto is unhealthy at size 4.

Need to do some more investigation, but I think it's better to:
* go workboat, workboat in Kyoto
* Go mining / BW and skip Archery. I think we'll have time to get axes before we need to stop barb archers.

 

[Compromise]

A couple of notes from my experiments on the shadow game, in no particular order.

* Hunting is only 8 turns right away, with Archery another 9 turns.
* Settling on Turn 1 gives you 7 gpt distance maintenance, dropping research to 50%.
* You can pop hostile barbs right away (I did in one game with my settler)
* I settled 11 turns west of the start spot, and it dropped the distance maintenance to 6 gpt. Doesn't really seem worth it. Though one option would be to settle close to one of our neighbors and storm his city.
* I saw a barb animal at 3610 BC (turn 13). After that, it becomes very difficult to avoid them with the settler (given that they have 2 moves). Probably need to decide a place to settle by turn 10 or so.
* Health cap is 3, so Kyoto is unhealthy at size 4.

Need to do some more investigation, but I think it's better to:
* go workboat, workboat in Kyoto
* Go mining / BW and skip Archery. I think we'll have time to get axes before we need to stop barb archers.

(Welcome EL_OSO, we look forward to your work schedule letting up a bit.)

I agree with your first paragraph.

Try the workboat, workboat in Kyoto. I think you grow to size 5 (and unhappy) the following turn.

The trouble with going for Bronze is that I don't think we can count on having Copper in the 8 squares around our second city. So, we need to found the city, find a suitable Copper site, train a Settler (for the new city) and a Worker (to hook up the copper). All of this with 50% science after we found the city!

Isn't it 30 turns or so before discovering Bronze even if we don't settle the starting Settler? Then how many more before we can get the Settler to the Copper, a Worker trained, and the Copper mined and roaded, and an axeman out the door to protect the Copper?

If we settle right away, won't it be something like 50+ turns before we discover Bronze? All the while, we have one warrior to protect our "mainland" holdings....

And what if there is no copper , either because the AI settles it or because the evil scenario designer removed it! Then, we will be as we try to earn the Wooden Spoons.

In addition, I actually think Archery will be useful in this game. We have to garrison our soon-to-be-many cities with some kind of troop, and archers are cheaper than Axes.