SGOTM 02 - The Real Ms. Beyond

[Compromise]

Its not a bad plan, but I'm not the biggest fan of the cottage being pillaged right away. There is also still the maintenance problem right at the get go. Once again, it will have to come down to chance. Will we find a better settling spot by exploring? Or should we not take that chance and settle right away?

EDIT - Post #100

I hope the high post count means that regoarrarr is getting the thought and discussion he'd hoped for, even if the humor is painful.

I agree with Kodii and still think that exploring a bit with the settler is a good idea. I kind of expected the barb archer to leave the cottage alone and attack, but it pillaged even though another barb archer had weakened my defenses (albeit not much) on the same turn.

In fact, I now think there were 3 take-home lessons from this little experiment:

1) Founding on a plains hill for the extra shield would be very nice.

2) It's painful, but I think we're going to be limited to the first ring of our big fat cross for quite a while. It was weird to be limited to one cottage because of forests in the way!

3) Depending on where we find to settle, we'll have to decide between Mining/Bronze and Pottery after Archery. If we have high food--and we probably do--we'll probably want Slavery, but if we want to expand any more, we'll want Pottery.

This is going to be fun, gang!

 

[BeefontheBone]

I'd be in favour of delaying and hunting for a better site - even if it turns out not to be optimal, we'll be able to say we tried something more interesting to start off with, and what more can you want?

Then again, if it turns out awful in your shadow run then it might not be the best idea...

 

[regoarrarr]

I'll play in about 2-3 more hours - do we want to consider settling in place?

Also, did we ever get a consensus about whether or not workboat or warrior 2nd was best?

 

[Compromise]

I'll play in about 2-3 more hours - do we want to consider settling in place?

Also, did we ever get a consensus about whether or not workboat or warrior 2nd was best?

Go ahead and look around for a bit before you settle, though you'll probably want to be settled around turn 10.

In Kyoto, workboat first, warrior second, then more workboats. On turn 8 or so, Kyoto's borders will pop and the team will want to see if any more coast is revealed!

Good luck regoarrarr, and keep us updated!

 

[Kodii]

Continuing on with regoarrarr's summary posts, we should add a category on Civics?

 

[regoarrarr]

Yes I think a cat on civics sounds good. If anybody has a spare minute or two - feel free to post a summary post to recap

 

[Kodii]

SUMMARY POST:

regoarrarr (up)
BeefontheBone (on deck)
EL_OSO
Kodii
Compromise
Ruff_Hi
Snaproll
Zalson

Diplomacy:
Unknown

Technology:
Hunting --> Archery

Depending on the situation, we will then go for Mining + Bronze Working, or Pottery

Settling:
Explore with the settler and warrior. Hopefully we can find a more ideal place to settle.

Builds:
Kyoto builds workboat, then warrior, then workboats

Religion:
Going for Confucianism (CoL) or Taoism (Philosophy)

Great People:
Run 2 scientists in Kyoto once we build a Library.

Civics:
Depending on our situation, we might want to go for BW and Slavery to start some whipping!

 

[regoarrarr]

Okay I moved the warrior to the hill, and the settler SW-SW. Here's where we are after turn 1.

While I Don't expect to make turn-ly posts, at least that would bump our post count

I think it will be difficult to beat that spot with rice, SHEEP, and grassland gems. My initial leanings would be to move the settler 2E and the warrior to the pigs. If we find a better spot E of where the settler is, we could go for that, but other than that, make all haste to the aforementioned gems spot

I'll play some more in an hour or so after the kiddoes are in bed

 

[Zalson]

Yowza! I recommend that we move to immediately settle the city, one north of the sheep. Having 3(!) valuable resource tiles=Very powerful. In addition, the gems should be able to support our economy, at least for a little bit. Maybe we should ammend the earlier order of research?

I'd recommend we go Mining (build a worker), the pottery, and then grabbing hunting and archery, building a few warriors to tide over until we can get archers. What do y'all think?

 

[regoarrarr]

Yeah I think we definitely need to decide if we want to keep on Hunting / Archery or go directly to Mining. One question to consider though as well is whether or not we will be able to defend the Gems mine from barbs?

Going to Mining also leaves us open to just research BW next.

FYI, here are the times to research various techs -
Mysticism - 10 turns
Agriculture - 12
Pottery - 13
Sailing - 16
Hunting - 8
Mining - 10

The other thing to consider is whether or not it's worth it to take a more roundabout way to the sheep site. Moving 2E, ENE, NE-N, N-NW, settle will take 5 turns, but explore more of the map (in case there's an even BETTER spot), vs. 4 turns to settle if we go 2NE, NE, NE-N, settle

 

[Compromise]

I'm salivating over that plains hill site. That extra hammer can make a big difference in early build times. And gems often occur in patches.

I'd probably move the warrior SE on the hill to see if it's a great site or not, then base the Settler's moves on that. (If you want to go 2E, don't move 2E, move SE-NE instead!)

If we want that plains hill site, I recommend switching immediately to Mysticism so we can get going on an obelisk ASAP. The obelisk (and maybe a Worker start) can build while we research Archery. Then mining for the Gems. Then probably get to Animal Husbandry since that will enable chariots too.

Okay, gotta run, but I'll try to check back here periodically tonight.

 

[Compromise]

Oh...and I don't think we have to commit to any research until after the first turn!

I really do like that plains hill site. It's probably worth the cheap tech and the minimal hammers it would take to get an obelisk.

 

[ruff_hi]

I love (luuuuuv) plain hill cities, especially early in games. I like the idea of scouting with the Settler while moving back to that sheep, rice, gem site - feel free to take a slightly longer route to reveal more of the map. I would move the warrior N to reveal what is on the other side of the sheep, rice, gems. Coastal cities will be important for us to enable trade with our 'capital'.

 

[regoarrarr]

You mean the plains hill site 2S of the sheep? I got caught up playing Epic 6 tonight, and now I have to go to bed, so I didn't play any more past that. Which is fine - we've talked about a lot of ideas here on what to move - this will give us another day or so to figure out what it is that we want to do

 

[ruff_hi]

You mean the plains hill site 2S of the sheep?

yup - that is the one.

 

[Compromise]

Yes, Epic 6 rocks! (More would be spoilerish, so I'll leave it at that.)

I like ruff_hi's idea of moving the warrior northish, I'd probably say NE to try to reveal as many black squares as possible. That will still reveal some coast.

And, I'd probably take the Settler SE-SE on the next move, then make my way back to that plains hill site (yes 2S of the sheep). That's my favorite spot so far; it even has a floodplains!

Good work stopping for discussion, regoarrarr. This is exactly the kind of thing that I didn't think other teams did in SGOTM1, and I think it hurt them. (As I recall, the two I read who did the best both moved to a plains hill to start.)

 

[Kodii]

That all sounds great to me. Slowly make our way back to the plains hill with the settler to see if we can reveal any other things. Settling on that plains hill reminds me of Sirian's opening start to Epic 4. As for Epic 6, I'd better continue playing before I run out of time

 

[Kodii]

From that one turn, here is an updated list of techs we're going to want to get, but not in an order:

Mysticism - Obelisk - If we found on the plains hill
Mining - For gems and for BW
AH - For swimming sheep
Agriculture - For rice
Hunting + Archery - Archers

Of course, we'll need Mysticism before the worker skills. Since Osaka will need the time to build an obelisk and worker (and units in between), we won't need those worker skills for a while. I'd suggest we go for Mysticism, then for Hunting and Archery before moving on to grab Mining, then BW or other worker techs. Getting Mysticism now also brings us one step closer to getting CoL, which we'll want for a religion.

Also, founding Osaka on a plains hill does wonders against the early barbs. I recall defending three barb warriors on a single turn with just a defending warrior in Epic 4. We may be able to survive with just a single warrior, or two in the early stages until we get Archery.

 

[Zalson]

Good work stopping for discussion, regoarrarr. This is exactly the kind of thing that I didn't think other teams did in SGOTM1, and I think it hurt them. (As I recall, the two I read who did the best both moved to a plains hill to start.)

Err... have we compromised our integrity here?

 

[Compromise]

Err... have we compromised our integrity here?

Hey! I'm trying to learn from the mistakes of others! (Of course, the fact that they did so well means that they didn't make too many mistakes! Maybe they weren't even mistakes, but I merely perceived them as such. Could be my mistake. It usually is. )

Oh, and "compromised" should be capitalized!

The whole word should be capitalized if I'd looked at the SGOTM2 threads!

As for the game...It seems to me that we need 3 types of troops in the very early game (before we go on the offensive). 1) City garrison: until axemen show up, I think a single archer promoted along the city garrison line will be fine. 2) Fog busters: Warriors are fine. But we'll have to see what the layout is here to see if it's better to actually do this or to use more 3) strike force: archers are okay, and we'll want to talk about the promotion route. Chariots are better: good mobility and strong against archers. In RB19, however, my experience was that I killed them far too frequently using them on offense. So, I think we'll want copper.

Those Gems are a god(Gyathaar?)send. They'll make it possible to get another city out as soon as we know where to put it. I think we'll be more limited by what we can protect rather than what we can improve. It's rough that we need three different techs to improve the rice, the sheep, and the gems.

With the Gems and the lower food, I suspect we can delay Pottery for a bit, but I'm certainly willing to be convinced that I'm wrong about that.

Note that both of the food resources we've found so far are only +2 food when improved, so it's not like we'll be rolling in food for the whip. But who knows what lies beneath the fog? Only the Shadow knows! (Uh, not the shadow game though.) And 2 times +2F is +4F, it's just that those are two cottages not getting worked.