SGOTM 02 - VQ Red

[dot]

Maquis (Leader) -- North America
GreyFox -- Asia
Scowler (Scribe) -- Europe
Codeman -- North America
armstrong (Yet to Report) -- North America
Krockel -- Europe

(...)

I would suggest a swap between Scowler and Codeman to interleave players according to continent.

Well, if you leave the roster like it is you might be able to easily play 3 sets on the same evening! From Maquis to Scowler or from GreyFox to Codeman! You might even easily play 4 sets within 24 hrs during the week ! That would be truly VQ!

And as for moving the settler westwards ... I'm all for that.

Minor fault: It seems like the settler and Kyoto are 31 tiles away from each other ... But maybe I got sth wrong there ... I didn't double-check.

 

[dot]

Armstrong posted sth about maybe being oop here.

If he truly doesn't show up I'd like to step in as a player. But I will probably slow you down since the new job is eating up quite some of my time during the week. I have the OK from AlanH for stepping in. So the single remaining question would be if you're willing to have me as a team member!?

Anyhow I'd prefer armstrong to be able to take his place and me to stay here as a lurker.

Regards, dot

 

[AlanH]

As we have some evidence that armstrong is OOP, and we have a first reserve, I'll assume VQ Red will be OK, one way or another.

 

[Codeman]

in regards to changing the roster (and adding one more post) i can swap if we want. doesn't matter to me. monday through friday i will not be able to play before around 7pm my time. on saturday and sunday's i should be okay. it's currently 9:36am here.

 

[Maquis]

Ok, things are a little too quiet... especially since the save is going to be available tomorrow...

If I am going to be going first, I'd like to make sure I have a good idea what the plan is for the initial turns.

I am thinking: Do not settle immediatly. Move around a bit (west) so that we can attempt to find a nicer spot for second city.

Research: Hunting, Mysticism, Archery. Get Hunting forst for scouts, and then go for Mysticism. We will hopefully settle city #2 around this time, and start work on a scout. Once Mysticism is in, build oblesk and reseach Archery for defense.

I think I will play some of the turnset, and update when I find what I think is a suitable city site.

I feel like the settling of the second city is going to be critical in the game.

Any other thoughts? I am planning on playing (at least part) my turnset tomorrow morning...

 

[dot]

Any other thoughts?

1. I assume that all of you agree on building a workboat in Kyoto?
2. Do not pop huts with a settler ... as if there would be any. Leave them to a warrior or whatever.
3. I want to re-state Krockel's idea about building and whipping the henge in Kyoto. That would save quite some turns from building these stupid (I'm sorry) obelisks in the beginning. *
4. How many turns are you going to play on your first sets ????????? Remember that you're playing on epic speed.
5. After how many turns would it be good to have a first stop anyway? For further discussion maybe?
6. As for research: If you'd agree on Krockel's suggestion you'd need to get mining and BW asap ... Otherwise there'd be no whipping. But I doubt that this will have any effect on your first set of turns, Maquis. So hunting, mysticism, archery shall be fine with me.

The * from #3: It might also be an idea to try on a religion. But the henge would be more easily effective!​

I did leave no comment on moving the settler westwards since it seems obvious to me that I would definitely agree with this. ​

And finally - What about AH? If you have horses in your city you might be able to scout the continent with chariots. Especially with an all aggressive AI in mind ...​

Regards, .​

Edit:
It's half past eleven round here right now (GMT+2) and I have to get up at 6 AM tomorrow. But I think that I have a good idea. At least I think that it's worth discussing it. So I ask you, Maquis, to wait with settling until August 8th, 8 PM (GMT+2). I will see to post the idea until then in this thread. If you want to go ahead ... feel free. I'm just asking.

 

[Scowler]

Edit:
It's half past eleven round here right now (GMT+2) and I have to get up at 6 AM tomorrow. But I think that I have a good idea. At least I think that it's worth discussing it. So I ask you, Maquis, to wait with settling until August 8th, 8 PM (GMT+2). I will see to post the idea until then in this thread. If you want to go ahead ... feel free. I'm just asking.

Quoted to make sure the thread is bumped for subscriptions.

 

[Krockel]

I played around a bit with Maquis test save and made some attempts to get Stonehenge. For every attempt I tried different research orders and different builds for Kyoto. And guess what we got Stonehenge built on every attempt!
The best I could come up with was....



Two different attempts gave 1210 BC.

Regarding which research path to take the funny thing is that for Stonehenge whipping it's no big difference. Kyoto will be occupied with building a WB for 23 turns either way. After that I tried with warrior for happiness duty or workboat for clams and health bonus. These two alternatives are close to equal, but my gut feeling is that warrior is an better option. Kyoto will grow quite fast anyway. But as mentioned no big difference, BW will also come in and warrior/second workboat will get whipped.

Some other things noted:
- Kyoto has health cap at size 2. With fish and clam connected it goes up to 4.
- Happiness limit is 5.
- At size 5 will 5 water tiles bring in 10 commerce + 8 from palace + 1 from city tile = 19 gold.
- Kyoto can grow to size 8, after that unhealth will give a growth time of 54 turns. Granary and/or lighthouse will have effect though.
- There is absolutely no hurry to BW, cause for research it's better to have citizens to work sea squares then overwork the good old

One thought did occur to me. If henge is possible to whip, then oracle are only 45 shields more! And that is a much more potent wonder to get!

Regarding Osaka, which are the second Japanese city, (Tokyo seams to be third or something ), the test didn't bring anything significant. Raging Barbs were off and I am not used to play with them on so I don't really know when they usually appears.

My gut feeling is that hunting->archery is a good option to start with. That will take about 16 turns and then we can found Osaka and start by building an archer right away.

I wonder what our own lurker has in mind.

 

[Maquis]

To answer Dot's questions:

Yes, I plan on building a workboat in the beginning. There is no point in building any military in Kyoto, since it is not reachable by military troops in the sailing age.

I would use the warrior for popping any huts.

Yes, Stonehedge in Kyoto is a possibility, but I don't think it will be in the build order in my turnset...

I am guessing I will play around 10 turns, and then give an update... could be less depending on what I find in the first few turns of scouting.

 

[armstrong]

Okay, I'm here. Basically, I was at my parents' new home (housesitting while they're on vacation) and... they didn't have any internet access yet. I thought they would, but no, so I couldn't reach the boards for a few days.

Some thoughts in a moment...

 

[armstrong]

Okay, some thoughts -

1. While BW isn't a huge hurry, it will be very helpful for Kyoto. Even growing into unhealthiness and unhappiness, I figure it can grow up to exactly size 10 (with current happiness cap of 5.) That's some serious production power - we can whip it from that state to size 5 for 150 hammers, or 225 with a forge. That means we can pretty much instantly build any infrastructure in the city we want.

1a. We can use the spillover from whips to build stuff. Here's an example:

We have Hereditary Rule & a forge. We start an axeman in Kyoto with no spillover, and put two hammers into it. Next turn, we whip it. It costs 1 population to whip, and gives us 1 unhappy that's counteracted by the axer. We get 60 hammers, of which 31 go to the axer and 29 spillover. We set production for the spillover to a wonder, collected the 29 hammers and 2 from the city, along with 7 from the forge. Start a fresh axe, rinse and repeat. We're accumulating massive unhappiness only countered by the axe (which we have to pay upkeep for) but we're getting 38 hammers every 2 turns. If we have the 100% bonus material for the wonder, we get 69 hammers every two turns. That very good early game production - we could use it to quickly build the GLib and Globe in Kyoto, after which we could disband all the axers.

Once we have Globe in Kyoto, we can disband the axers immediately.

1b. I mentioned build Globe + GLib in Kyoto. Kyoto makes an odd GP farm. It's fine on the food, but the problem is that we can't use the resulting GP for anything that requires them to hit the mainland until we get Optics. So no academies/retired folks outside of Kyoto itself. However, we can use them to research techs, which is a damn fine use in my book. There's no good reason not to whip a quick library in Kyoto and pop a GS for Philosophy (ideally through the Drama route, since Bureacracy is not very useful pre-Palace move.)

Phew, thought #2 coming up! (might as well spread 'em out!)

 

[armstrong]

2. Okay, on the "palace" issue and settling right away. If we settle right away, we'll get 8C (palace) + 2C (city centers) + 2C (fish) + 1 C (flood plain) = 13 commerce. With a -7 distance cost, that'd give us 6C/turn. 50% less than if you don't have a +1C commerce tile to work right away, but still passable. However, Tokugawa is one of the "cottage class" - leaders who can research pottery right off the bat. We could research Pottery before our worker finishes and quickly cottage the flood plain. That will give us another commerce and a even a single early cottage can be huge.

2a. However, we absolutely MUST move the Palace asap! We can not afford an second -7 distance hit. We need that Palace moved before we build our second settler. Because of this, I think getting early production in our first city is critical - and - given the lack of border expansions, that means we need hills within our "thin cross." We can also chop forests to speed it along. Once our palace is moved, we basically have a single liability - Kyoto - which can pay for itself. I think spending a couple of turns to speed up the Palace move is critical.

2b. However, we have Raging Barbarians. That means we're going to need some defense while building the palace. Archery is the way to go here, I think, unless we're lucky and have Bronze in our "thin cross." I doubt we will, though, so to be safe we want that as one of our early techs...

2c. This leaves me really confused about the proper tech path. I'd like to get Oracle for Metal Casting to ensure we get Colossus, but on Monarch/Raging Barbs/need to move Palace I don't see it happening. Rather, I think Pottery (to recover our tech rate) -> Mining -> Hunting -> Archery is the way to go.

2d. Because of the palace move, I don't think delaying settling our settler that much is a wise idea. We want to drop it early and start building Palace (and some archers) - however, we should scout a couple of turns to find the best site to do that in.

And thought #3 coming up, after a smoke break

 

[Codeman]

... Raging Barbs were off and I am not used to play with them on so I don't really know when they usually appears.

in my exp they start showing after 3000bc. my concern animals show earlier, and they do not attack cities, but they do attack units. let's not get the settler to far from the warroir while exploring. just be careful. seems game could be loaded for this...

 

[armstrong]

3. Now, finally to respond to some of the starting discussion! First off, 'henge. I don't know about this. There's not really much else to build in Kyoto other than workboats, so it seems like a decent idea. However, I think it will be okay to build a couple of workboats first... back to my previous tech path, Pottery -> Mining -> Hunting -> Archery could then follow up with Mysticism, then BW. As long as we can get a strong size 3-4 city in the thin cross, I don't see border expansions as being that big of a deal.

Btw, I'll try to use Epic speed numbers - but I tend to forget.

As Krockel noted, the Oracle isn't much more expensive than the 'henge. I figure most folks here aren't familiar with using whips to spillover onto other production (I know I'm not), but, if we stacked whips, could we get the Oracle instead of 'henge? The Oracle costs 225 hammers. We can whip a warrior for 44 hammers (of which 11 go to the warrior) for 33 hammers spillover on to a wonder. We can do that every 10 turns without incurring a happiness penalty (and disband the warrior immediately so no upkeep), or bum rush it with 4 whips in 8 turns for 132 hammers (crippling Kyoto for the next 30 turns or so.) Hmm. Such a complicated start! Props to SGOTM team We could also do this on the 'henge, too... Clamhenge.

Wow, I'm think I'm more confused than ever about this start... it should be fun

 

[armstrong]

in my exp they start showing after 3000bc. my concern animals show earlier, and they do not attack cities, but they do attack units. let's not get the settler to far from the warroir while exploring. just be careful. seems game could be loaded for this...

Absolutely. We shouldn't keep our settler away from the warrior for more than 3-4 turns. But, I'll argue we should settle the city by that point anyway so we can get a start on the new Palace.

Also, even the barb warrior & archers won't enter cultural boundaries for a while. The date is pretty late - 1600 BC or so, I think - so they're a threat out in the wild, but won't pillage/attack for a good amount of time. I don't think we'll have too much problems with them if we go for the "palace first" strategy, as we won't need to protect a settler outside of our borders (though maybe a worker chopping forests?)

 

[GreyFox]

Nice ideas armstrong! Its good to have you back to give us totally different perspective, and one so senstive to details. That is, apart from the "palace" thing which I am going to all over you ...

2a. However, we absolutely MUST move the Palace asap! We can not afford an second -7 distance hit. We need that Palace moved before we build our second settler. Because of this, I think getting early production in our first city is critical - and - given the lack of border expansions, that means we need hills within our "thin cross." We can also chop forests to speed it along. Once our palace is moved, we basically have a single liability - Kyoto - which can pay for itself. I think spending a couple of turns to speed up the Palace move is critical.

You are contradicting yourself ... if we must move the palace ASAP yet cannot afford a 2nd -7gpt hit ... how can we move the palace? AFAIK, you need 4~5 cities to move palace.

2d. Because of the palace move, I don't think delaying settling our settler that much is a wise idea. We want to drop it early and start building Palace (and some archers) - however, we should scout a couple of turns to find the best site to do that in.

See above.

And thought #3 coming up, after a smoke break

Hopefully that will cause you to less here ....

 

[GreyFox]

Also, even the barb warrior & archers won't enter cultural boundaries for a while. The date is pretty late - 1600 BC or so, I think - so they're a threat out in the wild, but won't pillage/attack for a good amount of time. I don't think we'll have too much problems with them if we go for the "palace first" strategy, as we won't need to protect a settler outside of our borders (though maybe a worker chopping forests?)

Er ... this "palace" mistake is going to cost you dearly, armstrong, I 'll haunt u on it for quite some time

But, i am not going to talk abt palace. I am going to talk abt barbs. didn't you play in VQ08 as well?

Look at this post in VQ08: Barbs will appear exactly at 2800BC (that is the 40th turn in Epic), and they don't care about culture borders. However, since they only spawn in fog, so it takes them some turns to travel into a culture border.

--

 

[armstrong]

You are contradicting yourself ... if we must move the palace ASAP yet cannot afford a 2nd -7gpt hit ... how can we move the palace? AFAIK, you need 4~5 cities to move palace

If that's true about needing more cities (and it sounds right) we're screwed. We'll have to absorb -28 gold just to move the damn thing... we'll need 3 river cottages in every city just to keep research at 10%... Everyone has to deal with this, though... how will we? An army of axes + workers to chop a palace and take the cities, and let our army disband?

I just checked the Civ-O-Pedia. You're right. You need 4 cities to move the palace. If we settle 3 on the mainland, that's -21 gold. I don't know how we can handle that... even if Kyoto worked 5 fish tiles, and 4C from city centers, we'd go broke without a massive cottage spam... any ideas? I can't think of how to pull out of this mess (and I'm worried the SGOTM folks might have gotten too clever...)

As for the barbs, remember that I killed 20 barbs in as many turns in VQ08. But, that was on Emperor, not Monarch. I think there's a significant difference - just like between Prince & Monarch - especially with raging barbs in place. I just played a non-raging Monarch game, there were plenty of barb archers stalking the boundaries (and killing my scouts ) but none crossed to pillage until after I had hooked up my bronze in my second city.

ps. Made of plastic? It's fantastic...

pps. The More You Know. Did you know the Great Lighthouse doesn't just give trade routes to coastal cities, but also cities on lakes?

 

[GreyFox]

Based on the palace requirements, I think our best option is still to move westwards to reduce the maintenance cost as much as possible. I don't think we can move 30 tiles west though, so we got to make do with something like 4 ~5 gpt maintenance. Does anyone recall the mapping from distance to maintenance cost? I was hopping we can move 10 tiles west. Fortunately, based on the screenshot, both in Kyoto and in the settler, the resources are pointing up, suggesting both are south of the equator. So, that means its unlikely for the land to curve southwards even more towards the West such that we are equidistance from Kyoto no matter how much west we move. (THAT will be REALLY evil).

You lost me on the "Made of Plastic" postscript

 

[Scowler]

Regarding Krockel's Stonehenge gambit, 1210BC may not be good enough - depending on who our opponents are. I ran a test game and the Henge was built in 1510BC by Qin.

I then replayed the same game, but using different tactics, and it is possible to build Stonehenge in Kyoto by 1690BC without needing whipping.


(Don't worry about the nearby continent: the map was set up to replicate the most important elements of the actual SG, and for these purposes it is accurate. Kyoto is approx. 30 tiles from Osaka)

​

I don't think it is possible to do it any quicker than this because two workboats need to be built first (please feel free to prove me wrong!).

Research path was Hunting -> Mysticism -> Archery [-> Pottery -> AH -> Mining....] *I agree with armstrong about the importance of Pottery.

NB: I did not found Osaka (2nd city) until 3490BC - the turn after Mysticism was completed. I actually located the settling spot within 8 turns (and I didn't look very hard as the main purpose of this test was to build Stonehenge), but decided to wait to keep research at max. The warrior was positioned to give advance warning of animals: if any had threatened the settler I would have founded immediately.

[I would also like to reiterate: huts are probably too risky to pop at first - in my opinion, it is better to simply locate them and pop them later when defenses are in place. As an example of why, in one of my test games using this map - which uses the same settings listed for the SG - my warrior popped five barb warriors. This may be very unlucky and unlikely, but a result like this could easily ruin our day...]

In my opinion, getting the free obelisk more than made up for the turns in which the city remained unfounded, producing nothing. Similarly, the lack of maintenence made up for commerce; Osaka had a -6 penalty on founding, rising to -8 when reaching size 2.

By this stage, the barbs were in full flow, but Osaka was defended by 2 warriors and 2 archers (one defending a cow waiting to be pasturized).

* Waits impatiently for dot's plan to be revealed *