SGOTM 03 - The Real Ms. Beyond

[Compromise]

I'll post a summary of my city investigations here for anyone interested. (Feel free to ignore this post if you like.)

I started a custom archipelago/archipelago game with 17 AI opponents plus me as Peter. I used worldbuilder to isolate myself so that I wouldn't have any wandering AI units finding me and messing up the tech path (in case they start with fishing or research BW right away and give us a "civ knows the tech" bonus).

I also edited it so that I started on one of 2 floodplains, had a grass forest across the river, had a spicy forest in the second city ring, and had 2 clam resources (the nearest would be one distant from the initial site, 2 distant from the across-the-river site). I figured that would be enough to simulate the first 30 turns.

As a sidenote before everyone loses interest, I also tried this start by going Mysticism->Polytheism and I *was* able to get Hinduism. (Though I still think it will be best to get a religion from a neighbor.)

I ran the following cases (I tried to have roughly the same worked-tile assignments, but there is some room for variation in these results):

1) Settle start spot, start with fishing, start a warrior, pause warrior & switch to workboat (3760BC), grow asap to size 2 (3250BC). When the boat finishes, the warrior is at 2/22H. Get to size 3 in 3190BC. Get BW in 3160BC. Revolt to slavery.

On turn 30 (3100BC), this case finds us in slavery, with netted clams, at size 3 (10/39F), warrior at 10/22 and 22B into next tech (I chose The Wheel in all cases; it has no prereq.).

2) Same as (1) exceptafter growing, I worked the spicy forest instead of maximizing growth. This had us at size 2 in 3400BC, a workboat in 3340BC (w/warrior down to 5/22H). Grew to size 3 and got BW in same turn: 3160BC.

On turn 30 (3100BC), we are in slavery, have netted clams, are at size 3 (6/39F), have warrior at 13/22) and have 19B toward The Wheel

3) Again with Fishing->BW, start warrior, interrupt for boat, except this time, move across the river to settle on the grass forest (one-turn capital founding delay). Grow to size 2 in 3460 (and then work both floodplains). Boat in 3310, warrior lost 3H and is at 5/22H. BW and size 3 both in 3130BC. Warrior to 11/22

On turn 30 (3100BC), we're in slavery, have netted clams, are at size 3 (0/39F), have 11/22H into warrior and have 5B into The Wheel

4) Settle across the river, bronzeworking first: Size 2 in 3640BC, BW & size 3 in 3370BC. Finish warrior 3340BC. Fishing comes in in 3130 when 2nd warrior is at 14/22H. Revolt in 3100 (turn 30!) to slavery (could have done it 1 turn earlier, but we need a turn into the boat before whipping it). 3070 whip boat.

On turn 30 (3100BC) , we're 3 turns from whipped boat, have 1 warrior complete, have 2nd warrior at 14/22H and are at size 3 (32/39F) (but we need to whip a pop to get the boat).


5) Settle across the river, BW first, worker first: BW in 3340, worker in 3280, forest couple be chopped in 3130 (then halted for fishing to finish). But the chop in 3100BC yields only 30H.

On turn 30: At size 1 (18/33F), Boat still 5 turns away, first warrior at 8/22, have worker (he's either bored or chopping).

Bottom line: Settling across the river is, as expected, about a 1 turn delay in city productivity. (This was before Iainuki's post about preferring to plantation rather than cottage the spices.) Starting with a worker and bronzeworking would be nice, except that other than chopping, there's nothing for this worker to do.

So, my conclusion was: start with fishing, then bronzeworking. Get the boat out quickly while concentrating on growing the city, and feel free to cross the river if we think that's a better spot to settle.

 

[Compromise]

Also, I tried to clarify the gamechanges that the HoF patch introduces by posting what I think they are in the maintenance thread. But I guess I've offended at least one player who thinks that such a question belongs to the HoF forum.

I'm not going to spam a thread with large viewership by trying to defend myself. Instead, I'll do it here! I thought it was a reasonable question considering that two of us asked the question here and none of us was sure we knew the answer. It seemed to me like it would be a question of interest to everyone playing the vanilla version of the game. Oh well. [/whine]

EDIT: Okay, I lied. I decided I could whine in that thread by hiding my justification inside a spoiler tag in the original post. Sorry to subject any/all of you to this here.

 

[Atlas]

So, my conclusion was: start with fishing, then bronzeworking. Get the boat out quickly while concentrating on growing the city, and feel free to cross the river if we think that's a better spot to settle.

Yes! Fishing->BW with an intial warrior build would be my play.

As for wonders (pyramids, colossus, and g. lighthouse) this should merely determine who the first victims are. With a special focus on the colossus and gl. The pyramids (and specialist economy) are strong, but on an archi map there just won't be any shortage of commerce, however a specialist economy is esspecially viable on a Archi map b/c of the abundance of food. So in short the Ancient->Medieval startegy would (IMHO) most benefit by building settlers, galleys, workboats/workers/ and soldeirs and just take the wonders we would like. Then turn on the financial civs since they have such a huge advantage on Archi maps.

The team should deciede as a team about chopping those forests-production is so limited that forests should be saved.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

My suspicion is that it's only the very first turnset (if any) that calls for any of this extreme micro-tactic analysis. After that, we get to have more interesting discussions involving strategy.

My suggestion about the roster order is to leave it the same or adjust based on individual situations. If anyone feels like they don't know what's going on or what they should do, he (do we have any "she"'s here?) can either solicit opinions from the group, ask for a skip, or just play a few turns before stopping. The best way to learn and to have fun is to participate.

What I don't want to see is this become a game where anyone is afraid to play because they're afraid to make a "bad" move.

Everybody who's played an SG (or any game for that matter) has "botched" moves. Among other things, I feel responsible for pressing to build the Forbidden Palace instead of moving the palace in SGOTM2. I now think that was serious and probably moved us from the top third to the bottom quarter of finish dates (assuming we eventually finish). But oh well. Now I get to learn something about late-game warfare.

Here in SGOTM3, we'll soon have something real to discuss and maybe Compromise will stop making these overly long posts.

This sounds reasonable. If you guys can distill the strategy discussions down to some directions for us new guys I think we'll be in good shape.

 

[Kodii]

If I'm not mistaken, the save comes in just over half an hour.

EDIT: Don't forget to download the HOF mod

 

[Kodii]

START SAVE

I'm getting tired, so I'm ready to go to bed. I'll wait a bit to see if Compromise can quickly move the scout so we can further discuss the settling position.

 

[Compromise]

Well, it looks like we need to have some discussion. I've only moved the scout 1E (so it can still make another move) and haven't touched the settler:

[URL=http://imageshack.us][/URL]

And a zoom near the scout:

[URL=http://imageshack.us][/URL]

Any thoughts? I won't make any more moves for about 11 hours to allow for comments and maybe discussion (though I'm off to bed soon).

 

[Kodii]

11*: A conditional choice: Requires east coast seafood to be considered.
Advantages: (Presumed) great food, decent forests, two hills. 11 cottageable squares plus a plains hill, 2 floodplains
Disadvantages: One turn settling delay. Loses known seafood. Burns a forest.

12**: A conditional choice: May require fogged seafood to be considered.
Advantages: Okay (plus fog) food, decent forests, two hills. 12 cottageable squares plus a plains hill.
Disadvantages: One turn settling delay. Wastes one floodplain and known seafood. Might be settling on a resource. (But then, the blue circle wouldn't recommend it, would it?)

To revise this, 11* now loses two clams, and gains one fish. 12** gets the fish and clams. We also lose the spices and a floodplain, but we gain those important hills. I would say, move the scout NW as planned, and the settler E, to reveal more fog, and get a general outline of our island (to see whether we can fit another city).

I forgot to add that at the moment, I'm favoring 12**. At least one of the clams that we lose from moving can be used on the other island. Spice tiles aren't very powerful (towns are better). We are now also sure that 12** has 14 land tiles (looking into the fog). The three tiles we can't see are a grassland hill, grassland and a plains. I'm not sure whether they have forests. That also means we have six tiles of water, in comparison to 8 water tiles at 11* and 11 water tiles at 9.

EDIT: Can there be resources on hills that have forests? If not, I don't think we have a metal nearby, unless it is one on the plains tile W of 12**

 

[Compromise]

Like Kodii, I'm leaning toward putting the capital on the spot the scout now stands. It has just as much food as the starting spot and 13 cottageable squares. (But I'm guessing we'll want to put mines instead of cottages on the two grassland hills.) At least one of the far north squares looks to be on a river too: bonus commerce!

That spot also permits a GP farm on the southern spice if we want it. Even with nothing else revealed in the south fog, that site could have a surplus of +7F (+3Clams, +2FarmedFP, +2CityCenter) and we could up that by farming another floodplain and/or grassland or two, though those tiles would be taken from our capital's fat cross. (Of course, we can always convert the farms to cottages after the first few great people when the capital is getting large.)

I also think Kodii's right about the completion of this first move: Settler E (then NE from there to reveal the two water tiles east of the grass spice). And NW with the scout's last move. I don't think there's forest north of either hill, so the scout should be able to make another two-move next turn (before the actual founding of the capital even).

Barring objections, I'll make those moves when I wake up and post. After that, enough of this micro-discussion and on with the game!

 

[greggo]

My initial thoughts (for what they're worth):

As far as I've seen, no resources pop on forested hills; however, mining creates a chance for a resource to appear, although not very often (and most of the time, in my games, it's gold or silver and only rarely copper or iron.)

Also, IIRC, fish provide one more food when hooked up than clams, so despite the one turn delay, if we settle on 12** (where the scout currently stands) we may have a slightly faster growing city than otherwise. I couldn't exactly figure out from Compromise's post what dates the clams were hooked up , but it seems like shortly after getting to size 2. If this is correct, then by 3100 it seems that we'd be about equal in size/food production, and by the time we grew to size 4 (perhaps a turn earlier than settling in place?) we'd quickly make up the one turn delay in founding.

Of course, if our island is too small to support a second city up north of 12**, we may want to save some land up there. Hopefully, this will be easy to tell by the scout's next move.

For tech, fishing -->BW seems to be the general consensus, but I'll add my vote to it anyways.

Going to try a test run of moving to 12** and founding to compare to Compromise's initial results, given our new knowledge, and post shortly. If I get too tired/ with the set up, then I'll wait till the morning.

Edit:
Played a couple test games. Hopefully my newbness didn't completely corrupt the results.

One thing I didn't initially realize was that moving to 12** means we can't work the flood plain until border pop. This slowed down growing to size 2 and research (lost the point of commerce as well) more than just the 1 turn from moving.

Once border popped, changed to working the flood plain and, like Compromise, switched to WB as soon as fishing came in.

From there, I tried two scenarios:
The first, I worked a 2F/1H tile as the second tile. At 3100, it looked like this:
Size 3 10/39 food
38/45 production towards a workboat.
263/268 BW

In the second, working the 3H forested plains hill. At 3100:
Fish Netted
Size 3 2/39 food
19/22 production towards a warrior
267/268 BW.

Once the fish were netted, it becomes a 5/0/1 tile. Combined with the 3/0/1 FP, at size 3, this gives us a base +4 surplus, even without working any other food.

Conclusions:
Moving to 12** slows down research more than anything else. Note that we are still a turn away from slavery, but growing quickly, and with slightly more production towards the warrior. Another option would be to work the clams as soon as fishing comes on (since it's a coast, there's an extra point of commerce, so it would speed up bronze working) and whip the WB with slavery. Gut instinct is that this will be slower than just working the 3H and getting that WB out asap! The +3 food from fish seems to outweigh growing slightly slower and getting bronze a turn later. Also, reconsidering, don't take my numbers above too seriously. They are about right, but I may have done some silly things that could be avoided in a real game.

Greater minds than mine should prevail however. Thanks for reading.

 

[Iainuki]

Ok, it's late, so I'm going to make this short. ::sounds of cheers from the audience::

1) Send the scout NW as agreed, I think. I'm curious to know what's off that delta. N will get land but no more water, NE will get only more water on the same side of the continent.

2) We should move the capital.

3) Forested hills can't have resources AFAIK.

4) I suspect there's forest north of those hills, but I could be wrong.

5) City site evaluations using Compromise's convenient labeling:

9: 2 coastal clams, 1 floodplain, grassland spices, plains spices, fresh water
11: 1 coastal clam, plains spice, 2 floodplains
11*: 1 ocean fish, 2 floodplains, grassland spices
12**: 1 ocean fish, 1 coastal clams, 1 floodplain

Net bonus food w/ cottaged floodplains: (first, w/o Calendar, then w/ Calendar)

9: 7, 8
11: 5
11*: 6,7
12**: 8

Net commerce w/ floodplain villages (but not Printing Press):

9: 6, 12
11: 10, 13
11*: 9, 12
12**: 7

I think 11* and 12** are clearly the best options given what we know so far. 12** get more food, 11* more commerce early on. My major objections to 12** is that it would waste a floodplain and the grasslands spice unless we found on the latter; but once we do, the city will steal the other floodplains and whatever's on the hidden tile from the capital. That would incline me to 11*. However, 12** will be stronger in the early going because it requires less tech and gets more food. I'm not sure which is better.

I'm probably leaning to 12* and just wasting the floodplains and spice, but I don't know.

 

[Compromise]

I've completed the move at 4000BC:

[URL=http://imageshack.us][/URL]

I'm going to grab a little more shut-eye and leave this open for comment (after making a few comments of my own, of course!)

1) Plan is to move the scout N, then NE. Unless anyone has a strong desire to go atop the NE hill.

2) I did a similar calculation to greggo's on paper and I think I was able to grow to size 3 and get BW on turn 31 while having already finished the warrior. I did this by working the plains hill as soon as we got the boat. I'll probably run a couple simulations before actually trying in the game, just because we've spent so much time on the details already.

3) I strongly favor "12**" (N of the settler's present location). Such a capital can steal back one of the floodplains from a southern-spice city.

4) Looks like plenty of room to found a post-Ironworking city up north!

(Also, I've meant to say that I agreed with Atlas's post up there.)

 

[LKendter]

1) Plan is to move the scout N, then NE. Unless anyone has a strong desire to go atop the NE hill.

Is that hill by the NE clams a plains hill? I can't tell from the picture. The original capitol spot will be nice post calendar, and I am debating if we don't want to choke that area to much.

Is that Jungle the gems are on? The terrian looks odd...

 

[grangerm]

An epic chop gives 45 hammers post-Mathematics. We won't have that tech, so it will only give 30.

Duh.

I'm curious: what city spot did you find?

Oh, just a plains hill city with 2 gems, gold, sheep, 2 flood plains and eventually iron. Nothing special.

What about founding the capital on the plains hill NE of 12**? We'll still get the 2 seafood and would be able to put a city back in our original start spot to get its 2 seafood and all 3 spices. The downside would be that we'd probably be trading 3 land tiles for 1 hammer in the city and 3 water tiles. Maybe that's not worth it.

I agree with fishing/warrior first and moving the scout N, NE.

 

[Atlas]

3) I strongly favor "12**" (N of the settler's present location). Such a capital can steal back one of the floodplains from a southern-spice city.

Yes, settle on that plains tile one north of where the settler now stands. A quick count of food there tells us that we can cottage every tile in the radius (even the other plains tile) and work all the hills (as mines). This capital will be a much stronger capital than settling on the starting spot. We can recoup all the tiles to the south with a nice fishing village.

@LK- yep that gems tile is covered in jungle and that is a forested plains hill. I agree with you the area will be bit crowded. Ideally there would have been one more tile of distance between the starting tile and the tile we plan to settle b/c as you say the starting tile will be a very strong site post-calendar.

However with the new capital location when can still claim all those tiles we will just have to settle ontop of the southern most spice and then settle on that off island to claim that last clams. I got a feeling we are going to want to settle to the North. Here is a quick rundown of a proposed tech order: fishing->BW->Wheel->Pottery->Iron Working->Sailing and this is why Fishing (this is a no brainer)-BW (knowing where copper is is important but slavery is more important- we want to start whipping everything in this food rich environment)->Wheel (pottery prequiste)->Pottery (granaries for better whipping and cottages really help when researching the expensive tech IW)->Iron Working (b/c we want those gems online soon to help our GNP and raise the happiness cap)->Sailing (by the time we get here we want to be settling a metal resource and whipping lighthouses in our cities).

If we are alone on this island I say to just spam settlers at size 2 from the capital (raging barbs won't mean anything on a archi map on monarch, our scout and a single warrior will probably be enough to fog bust). If we are not alone I would advocate a detour to archery and start choking our neighbor with archers in forests.

 

[Atlas]

What about founding the capital on the plains hill NE of 12**? We'll still get the 2 seafood and would be able to put a city back in our original start spot to get its 2 seafood and all 3 spices. The downside would be that we'd probably be trading 3 land tiles for 1 hammer in the city and 3 water tiles. Maybe that's not worth it..

this is tempting, but I don't think there is any imperitive to grab all those southern tiles with 2 cities, we can do it with 3 with only the a bit of a time delay (in fact we can reclaim all the tiles except the 1 clam and the plains spice) with a second city

I agree with fishing/warrior first and moving the scout N, NE.[/QUOTE]

 

[LKendter]

What about founding the capital on the plains hill NE of 12**? We'll still get the 2 seafood and would be able to put a city back in our original start spot to get its 2 seafood and all 3 spices. The downside would be that we'd probably be trading 3 land tiles for 1 hammer in the city and 3 water tiles. Maybe that's not worth it.

This is my preferred spot. The capitol had better immeidate production. We can still build a good commerce city in the original spot, and probably a city in the north.

 

[Compromise]

@Atlas: "It's like you're reading my mind, man" (As a Simpsons fan, I suspect you'll recognize this very early Bart quote.)

I'll wait a few more hours for anyone else to respond. Unless I hear contrary (with good argument), I plan to explore the island with the scout, found the capital north of where the settler now stands (at 12**--who on earth came up with that label?! ), and implement the workboat asap project. I'll stop when we grab Bronzeworking so we can assess our copper situation.

My initial analysis of the 12** site is essentially identical to greggo's, but I show the warrior finishing on turn 29 or so. I don't trust my late-night attention enough, though, so we'll see how it comes out in the game.

2nd EDIT: I read through greggo's post again and it looks like he actually ran a test game whereas I used paper, so his numbers are better than mine. Note that with an extra 3F from the fish, 1F from the floodplain and 2F from the city center, our has a +6F at size 2. That's just fantastic for growing to full size (and beyond if we want/need to for whipping) quickly.

After workboat and warrior, the next build will probably depend on how big our island is. The three most likely choices are another warrior, another boat, or a settler. I think the choice will largely depend on how much more land the scout discovers. If anyone has insight on how to make that choice, please post.

Otherwise, I'll use my best judgment. In any case, it won't be too many (if any) hammers invested before the end of turnset #1.

EDIT: Crossposted with LK. It looks like we should discuss whether to put the capital on the plains hill (NE of 12**) or on 12**

 

[Kodii]

I'm hesitant to found on a forested plains hill. There will be 10 water tiles, 10 land tiles. I think before deciding between 12** or the plains hill (it needs a name!), we should move that scout N, NE, to see what is north of the hill.

EDIT: We should call it LK

 

[Compromise]

Let's use this post as a place to list the relative merits of founding either at 12** or on the plains hill NE of that location. I'll update the post with comments from later posts.

Found at 12**:
Advantages: 2 more feedable, cottageable land tiles; can mine the plains hill for production on low-production map; more land tiles worked by Capital Bureaucrats (with Civil Service); can still found a city on southern spice which can support 3 specialists (city center, clams, 1 flood plain w/town not used by capital) + 3 towns (flood plain, newly discovered spice, town on island off to SE); completely eliminates barb fog on start peninsula with first border pop (the other site needs another to elimate all fog); can work plains hill to get workboat out asap.

Found on plains hill ("LK Hill"): extra turn of delay in settling; extra hammer of production in city center; can found a city at the starting location (though that burns a floodplain); uses three as-yet-unknown tiles; founds capital slightly further into our starting island.

Right now, I still judge 12** to be superior to the plains hill. Let me know if there is something I'm not considering.

Note: Founding a city on spice adds 2 commerce to the city. So, founding on the southern spice should be a 2F1H3C city center! (From post #5 in this thread.) I haven't verified this for v1.61 but don't see why it shouldn't be true.

EDIT: Updated info based on scout's second move.

EDIT2: Current voting (asterisk indicates no comment since latest screenshot)
12**: Compromise, greggo, Iainuki*, (Atlas)*
Hill: LK*
Neutral: Kodii
?: Bugsy, grangerm