SGOTM 03 - Peanut

It's ocean, but I certainly don't think it detracts appreciably from the value of the spot.
 
The fish are on ocean. (Fish usually appear on ocean tiles, and that tile isn't near any land---why are you surprised that it's ocean?)
 
Means we can't put our workboat on it, doesn't it?

No. It means we can't move our workboat there until our cultural borders expand to cover the tile. But that won't take long (and there wouldn't be much point in moving there until it's in our cultural borders, anyway).

Workboats (and all ships) can enter ocean tiles when they are in your cultural borders (or an ally's). Otherwise, how would you ever develop a fish tile?
 
Moscow has been founded. See the attached screenshots to get a look at the lay of the land. That mystery tile 2E from the start did end up having a resource, but it was simply another spice. I figured that wouldn't alter our plans in any way. The NW coast was bare of any extra resources, so I continued with our plan of founding on the plains hill.

We can't work a 2F tile at all until we either expand our borders or learn fishing (8 and 9 turns away respectively). With that in mind, I really don't think it's efficient to attempt to grow the population before bringing the fish online. I propose we work on a worker until fishing is done, switch over to a workboat, and then complete the worker once the workboat is out. After getting the worker out, we can concentrate on growth by working the fish. With the 15 turn grace period before units in the queue start decaying, we should be fine holding off on the worker while building the workboat (12 turns).

The research after fishing is up in the air in my mind. I lean ever so slightly in favor of masonry right now, but that could change easily. As I see it, the early techs we research should be fishing, masonry, BW, wheel, pottery, writing, and alphabet. The order is up in the air, of course, but I think there exist fairly clear reasons for all of those.

I'm iffy on the Great Wall grab. With the GE points being reduced to 1, I'm just not sure we can have a GE out of it in enough time to be competitive. In addition to the ~15 turns it would take to build, we'd have to wait an additional 75 before it produced a single GE. All that time we'd have to be sure and leave the local GP pool sufficiently undiluted. I think it makes more sense for us to go on a Scientist push, possibly grabbing the pyramids along the way through straight building and chopping. Great Scientists mesh very well with a beeline toward mass media (which we'll want to pursue if we go for a diplomatic victory, the quicker choice). Yes, we'll eventually want a GE, but we've got plenty of opportunities to device a plan to get one.
 

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I forgot about the reduced GPP for Great Wall (I haven't actually played a game with the 2.08 patch). I would agree, that probably makes it more attractive to just build the Pyramids, if we want them.

Did you want to leave Pottery off the list of early techs? It would be nice to build our cheap granaries. And the spice/clams city in the south will want some cottages.

I also forgot that we can't work the clams yet. I'm pretty sure that unit decay starts in 10 turns, even at Epic speed. But 2 hammers of decay isn't a big deal.

If we build (worker)-workboat-worker-warrior, we get the workboat in 21 turns, and the worker in 25 turns, which is about the same time we can have Masonry. If we build warrior-(worker)-workboat-worker, we get the worker in 30 turns, which is just as good if we're going for Bronze Working.

So, I think we should build worker now, if we're going to research Masonry immediately after Fishing. If we want to research BW next, then we can consider a warrior (but worker may still be just as good).
 
P.S. Finding the extra spice in the south means there's a decent chance that Moscow will have copper nearby (there's not really room for the copper to be in the south, and the odds favor having one on the island). So that's one argument for researching BW asap.
 
I do not like to go for masonry so early. it can only improve the stone, I rather go for BW in order to chop and mine the 2 hills first.

I think that the second scenario (warrior-(worker)-workboat-worker) is better, we should study fishing, BW and than masonry(?)

I would like to consider another scenario that emphasize getting or settler early:
warrior-workboat-workboat-settler at size 3
In the mean time we will study all the necessary worker techs to allow our future worker to be productive from the start.

I see our second city go in the original city location, the next city would probably go 2N of the gems (after we get IW to remove all the jungle from that location) to grab the fish.
 
I would build a warrior for 5 turns, then go worker for 3 turns, switch back to warrior to get overflow into the first work boat (so it can complete in 10 turns).
Then I would grow to size 2 before completing the worker.

Science fishing - BW , which then should be complete just around the time the worker comes out.

The worker should chop and mine the two hills and the chops going into a settler by switching between it and a second work boat, while still growing fast.

Wheel next will allow the worker to be busy after he improved the hills (a tactical road network is never wrong maybe already to the site for the second city).
 
I like klarius' proposal. Key issue should be getting a Workboat out ASAP; building a Worker first would have it sit around while we finish BW. We'll want a 2nd Workboat fairly soon after; not sure of the timing with respect to Settler. (OK, I see we switch between Settler and Workboat - Settler getting the chops)
 
Alright I've been persuaded in favor of BW over masonry as the second tech. I also like using a bit of overflow from a warrior to speed the workboat ever so slightly (doesn't it reduce it to 11 turns - 43 remaining hammers at 4 HPT?).

Just ran the numbers and am in favor of a build order that looks like this:

5 turns @ (warrior)
3 turns @ (worker)
1 turns @ warrior
11 turns @ workboat
4 turns @ (workboat)
7 turns @ worker

As other have said, the worker should pop right around the same time BW comes in (+/-1 turn, I think).

Building a settler after the worker seems reasonable. We'll need to keep in mind that the in-turn queue juggling possible in Vanilla Civ 4 isn't possible in warlords. We'll actually have to spend a full turn working on a settler in order for a forest chop to count towards its production. I'm gettting a bit ahead of myself here, though. I plan to play this evening up until the first workboat is done or something else interesting happens. I won't get started for another 8-9 hours or so, giving everyone plenty of time to come other with other ideas.

I'm not a fan of waiting to build our first worker till after we've got a settler out. The worker can very quickly make up his cost through chopping and mining.
 
No. It means we can't move our workboat there until our cultural borders expand to cover the tile. But that won't take long (and there wouldn't be much point in moving there until it's in our cultural borders, anyway).
Thanks for the clarification. I guess I need to pay more attention....


FWIW, the discussions on early build order are good. I too, would like to get pottery early - soon after fishing & bronze working.

Now for some random thoughts:
Do we want to try for the oracle (and CS slingshot?) Its a bit harder now.... Is there another tech that we'd like to pursue through the oracle? With 18 civs, we may lose the oracle to some other civ (eg. industrious with marble!) Looking at our immediate needs, I think the need to get bronze & iron working early may delay us a bit; conversely, the need for the mysticism / priesthood etc may hurt our growth. The other issue is that the best city for this would be moscow - it will have the highest production. This could stuff-up any GPP plans we have, and also delay production of (eg) workboats for the second city, settlers, workers etc.

Past that, we will need some happiness resources hooked-up reasonably early - with cheap granaries & some good food resources, we'll hit the happiness cap long before we get to monarchy / hereditary rule. The gems will need iron working and a third city - and I don't really see a particularly nice location for a city to nab these (second border expansion from Moscow will probably be the best bet for these). So I'd advocate getting iron working early, too, as it allows us to chop jungle to make space for a third or fourth city. However, a better route might be to alphabet / mathematics / calendar, to grab spices. If we're making our second city a science / GPP one, then this will help with commerce, and we obviously want to get exploring and trading techs asap.

BTW - I would not be at all surprised to have no horses, copper or iron on this home island - this is a gyathaar map, remember!
 
I would build a warrior for 5 turns, then go worker for 3 turns, switch back to warrior to get overflow into the first work boat (so it can complete in 10 turns).
Then I would grow to size 2 before completing the worker.

I guess you mean "so the workboat can complete in 11 turns". 2 carryover plus 4*11 production.

5 turns (1/2/0) => +5 food (5), +20 hammers in warrior (20)
3 turns (1/2/0) => +21 hammers in worker (21)
1 turn (1/2/0) => +1 food (6), +4 hammers in warrior (22+2)
10 turns (1/2/0) => +10 food (16), +40 hammers in workboat (42)
1 turn (2/1/0) => +2 food (18), +3 hammers in workboat (45)
1 turn (1/2/0) => +7 hammers in worker [-2 decay] (26)
3 turns (5/0/1) => +15 food (33), +6 hammers in workboat #2 (6)
7 turns (5/0/1, 1/2/0) => +70 hammers in worker [-3 decay] (90+3)

So that's 31 turns for the worker in this scheme, which is just about right for BW.

The worker should chop and mine the two hills and the chops going into a settler by switching between it and a second work boat, while still growing fast.

If we're going to build a second workboat before the settler, I don't believe we want to save our 1st chop for a later settler, rather than just putting it into the workboat to get it sooner, thus allowing us to work a better tile and grow faster. (We aren't growing very fast, with just the one fish.) When the chop goes into the workboat, we still get significant carryover to a settler.

Wheel next will allow the worker to be busy after he improved the hills (a tactical road network is never wrong maybe already to the site for the second city).

I think I would prefer Masonry before BW, but I'm not aggressive about it. I definitely think we should get Masonry after BW, though. I can't believe we would rather have our worker building roads than getting us +2 hpt from the quarry.
 
I'm not excited about the Oracle and I really doubt we could get CS from it. Especially if you want Iron Working too! And Calendar also! I think you're getting rather carried away.

If we do go for a wonder, I'd choose Pyramids, at this point.

All I would say about Gyathaar is that the two previous SGOTM maps have been quite friendly.
 
I'm not excited about the Oracle and I really doubt we could get CS from it. Especially if you want Iron Working too! And Calendar also! I think you're getting rather carried away.
Yeah - I was very concise or structured - I tend to ramble quite often.... What I meant to discuss was some short-mid term goals that are mutually exclusive.

A better summary:
Do we want to go for the oracle?
  1. CS slingshot is harder in Warlords 2.08.
  2. Therefore, to get it we need to be a lot more dedicated/focused about going for it.
  3. This dedication/focus means we would probably have to forgo things like iron-working, as well as 'growth' production (workboats, settlers, workers) from Moscow.

I see this as a risky approach, and I would prefer to go for assured growth instead, and I see happiness as a reasonably early cap to this. Based on current visible resources, iron working for gems and jungle clearing; and calendar for spices + commerce look like good things to prioritise. With three sources of spices, we also have trade opportunities.
 
I can see the argument for Masonry before BW; not sure if the Worker will run out of things to do though (which isn't the end of the world).

It seems we have two direct paths to go down after Fishing and BW/Masonry - IronWorking to clear Jungle, get Gems and develop a 3rd city site in the jungly north, and Wheel, Pottery, Writing, Alphabet, Math, Calendar. Oracle is probably out unless we want to commit to it and exclude pursuing either other path.

I'm inclined to go after the Wheel, Pottery path next. There may be other available resources nearby that we can utilize for happiness, the cheap Granaries will be wanted sooner than later, faster research for IW later, and we might be able to trade for it or other Techs once we make contacts, so our first 2 cities might focus on WB's and exploration before we commit to developing Gems and the North.
 
I think we should generally work towards alphabet soon. Iron working is usually something you can trade then pretty soon.
And we might think of slotting in sailing early to get a lighthouse and the Great Lighthouse (pretty cheap with stone).
We could think of getting a merchant from that for civil service. That means don't research or trade priesthood (or trade for priesthood and monarchy) and go to CoL via currency (hopefully with some trade help from the AI).

Still pyramids is a big advantage, so we might want to go that route soon instead (or try both).

Later GP should come from a dedicated GP factory, not the capital IMO. The initial starting position should work pretty good for that. This city should not have any wonders (besides national epic), but just use caste system for max scientists. If some artists come from the epic, these can still be later used towards radio or mass media (or we might want a GA).

Oracle slingshot to CS isn't very likely with the need to get math first and a lot industrious nuts in the game. So if we would build Oracle we could just get something like metal casting or CoL. I think these techs are not really worth the effort, especially because we probably have no good use for the prophet points.
 
Since we have a good 2nd city site without IW (and the gems site doesn't look so good, unless we discover additional resources nearby), I'm definitely inclined to prefer Wheel-Pottery-Writing-Alphabet, before IW. By then, hopefully we will have some contacts, and can trade techs (or even make some gifts to start making friends).

The fact that we might find copper in our fat cross is enough for me to support BW before Masonry, if that's the majority choice (as it seems to be).

We do have to worry a bit about barbarian defense, since our island is looking larger than we expected, and with all of that jungle it will be hard to bust all the fog.
 
And we might think of slotting in sailing early to get a lighthouse and the Great Lighthouse (pretty cheap with stone).

Stone doesn't help build the Great Lighthouse. I do like the GL, on archipelago maps, but, I think I would build the Pyramids instead (and avoid having to research Sailing early), in our current position.

Don't forget that we'll also need a 3rd workboat, for the clams, and a 4th one for exploration. And some military. We have decent production, but a lot to build.
 
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