SGOTM 03 - The Real Ms. Beyond

[Iainuki]

Is the second workboat for the clams, or to explore? I found the payback from a second food sources isn't as powerfull. You tend to grow faster then whip anger can handle.

It's for the clams. If we don't have the second food source, I don't think we'll have enough pop for whipping, e.g., the second worker after the fifteen turns have elapsed. Also, remember that we start with mining, so we can always grow up to size 4 and then switch to mines to pump out hammers.

Just to point out another reason to get fogbusters out ASAP: If a barb city spawns in a crappy location, we can't raze it.

That's a really good point. Does anyone know how soon barbarian cities start to appear on Monarch? I still don't think we should delay whipping the first workboat or the first worker for it, but I think that may be a good argument to send the first one or two chops into warriors for fog-busting. Alternatively, it may be an argument to get the first settler out the door faster (with two chops, after the worker), because, as Compromise observed, cities are the best fog-busting units.

 

[greggo]

I have no problems with not playing tonite:

I like Iainuki's suggested build order. Let me recap, and let me know if I have it correct:

Whip workboat immidiately --> Warrior -->Whip worker once anger has cooled.

Worker will chop forests towards a settler, while in between the city will work on either another warrior or another workboat.

If the first workboat goes for the clams, I'd really like to get another one out exploring.

 

[Kodii]

I think we're still considering whether or not to whip warriors. Also, how many forests do we want to chop for settlers? We will want to save some for the Pyramids. I think I'm gonna need some help to solidify a build order.

BTW, I've updated Summary Post #1.5. See my first post (on page 1) for the link.

 

[LKendter]

I will try for a dot map tomorrow morning. I falled to consider the food situation for copper, so my first idea is trash.

 

[Kodii]

Thanks for hanging in there, Lee. Rest assured, you are a valuable member of our team

Everyone, check over the summary post. I think before greggo plays his 15 turns, we must confirm what we want to do with the build order. I have tried to summarize everybody's thoughts, but I am not sure if I did it right

 

[Gyathaar]

However I think the HOF mod contains a similar mod to your turncounter mod, not sure which one it is but I have seen screenshots that display the turn number

This is the setting to make the turns show up in the clock window btw

 

[Iainuki]

Sorry to post again, but something else occurred to me: I've seen before on archipelagos that sometimes the AI will settle a city a huge distance from its capital for resources. On a crowded map like this one, all those places on our island with lots of resources will look very tempting to the AI's city placement algorithms. An unrazeable foreign city on our island would be very bad, so I think we need to focus everything we can on getting settlers to those four city sites. That means neglecting exploration for now. I'm loathe to do it, but the potential downside here is so big that I don't think we can avoid it.

Whip workboat immidiately --> Warrior -->Whip worker once anger has cooled.

Worker will chop forests towards a settler, while in between the city will work on either another warrior or another workboat.

If the first workboat goes for the clams, I'd really like to get another one out exploring.

Yes, that's right. There's really no good way to represent this, but let me try.

Workboat (whip immediately) -> Warrior (finish before growing) -> X -> Worker (whip after anger has cooled) -> Settler (use chops, don't build with hammers) -> X -> Settler (whip after anger has cooled)

The only immediate question is if we can afford to make X an exploring workboat, or if we need to make it a fog-busting warrior. Opinions?

Thinking about the danger of the AIs trying to drop a city on our island has made me think we need to rush settlers out the door. My intuition says that after whipping the first settler, we can grow back and hand-build a worker before it's time for another whipping. Should we whip another settler then (which would require two more chops) or delay by whipping another worker? I don't want to have to walk around the island to blue dot, so I think we want to fit a galley before blue dot, but I don't know if that will work if we go for a settler so soon. I know I'm getting far ahead here, but I want to look at what's possible, and what we need to do when.

Normally, I like to have three cities and then start a wonder, but will we need four here? I'd like to try for the Lighthouse too with blue dot, but I don't know how realistic that is. Once Moscow has a granary and mines up, it can generate a lot of hammers from slavery and no-growth mine-working. Hopefully, that will help some with our start-up problems.

Kodii, I agree with most everything in the summary post. Thanks for writing it. I have one major disagreement, with the build order.

Build Order: This isn't raging barbs, we can afford to be slower about fog-busting. I definitely think we should whip the workboat to speed up our growth curve instead.

Some brief notes:

Diplomacy: Mao and Alex are both KoS with Aggressive AIs, IMO; I remember them as untrustworthy backstabbers. I don't think we should rush with axes.

Tech: Calendar is a ways off, since it needs Math as a prereq. I'm leaning towards Sailing after Pottery so we can put a galley in the water for blue dot, but I don't feel like calculating closely enough that far in the future to know for sure; after that, I think we'll need Masonry for the stone.

Dotmap: I'd push the eastern fishing village up one so it doesn't steal the stone from Moscow.

Great People: I'd make red dot our GP farm, barring capturing an AI capital with more food.

 

[Kodii]

I'm going to bed now, but I'll read everything in detail in the morning, changing the summary post accordingly.

I think we should go for the workboat, not only for exploration, but to get the circumnavigation bonus. We don't want the AIs to get that. I'm just worried that it'd be difficult to get around without open borders.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

You guys are amazing.

 

[Atlas]

I don't think "conquer the wonders" works. More likely than not, some civ halfway around the world will build the wonders in question. Meanwhile, the defender has a big advantage in warfare on archipelagos because of the necessity of building boats: when one of every three units has to be a fifty-hammer galley, you're talking about building three-halves more units for the same effect. Moving and exploring also takes longer on archipelagos. I think our starting situation argues that we should build up our own island first, then go conquering. We don't have an early UU to exploit here, and our only visible military resource is going to take awhile to hook up: I counsel patience, early focus on economy to get a tech lead, and going after the AIs with catapults and, probably, swords.

Building a wonder is a gambit, it can work and yeild a big reward it can fail and put you at a disadvantage. If Louis or Gandhi is alone on a small island they will beat us to both the pyramids and great lighthouse (and all the other ancient wonders). The advantage of not building the wonders is that all our shields go for bread and butter stuff; like workers, work boats, settlers, libraries, granaries and galleys- this path is not a gambit- we need all those things. A highly focused move towards one wonder (pyramids or the other GL) will work in most games, but this map has been tinkered with (and not necessarily to balance things out like Sirian does), so who knows? However landing the pyramids would be a guaranteed Great Library and the uber-specialist economy. Probably the team that pulls this off will win this tournament, so is it worth it. Probably we have to try, since it is the one right path . But a strong counter move could be an Oracle->Metal Casting slingshot that nets an early Colossus in the iron city. Both won't work, but after Literature a beeline to Metal Casting will probably still net the somewhat less valuable Colossus (this really wonder decreseaes in value over time) (if Mansa gets the colossus- watch out!). However I would favor a move towards the Hanging Gardens for more engineer points.

 

[Compromise]

Thank you for pointing out that this isn't raging barbs! I've been playing too many of those maps recently.

With that knowledge, I prefer the workboat first. Then build warriors until we can whip a worker.

I think the most valuable service the worker can provide is roads. Both to new city sites and on forests.

I think the forests should be saved to chop the pyramids after stone is hooked up. With all our seafood, we can produce workers and settlers pretty darn well at size 2 or 3 while waiting for whip penalties to abate.

We want to whip a granary as soon as we can. That basically doubles our already considerable food production.

I suggest moving Iainuki's red dot (the cow city) one tile west. It's a net loss of one grassland and an ocean for a coast, but it brings the fish in range, sharing it with the copper city. This is good for two reasons:

First, it lets our GP farm support 2 more specialists.

Second, we can probably whip a library (or maybe an obelisk) there much more readily than in the copper city. This means we don't need a cultural border pop to have food in copper city.

Copper city only needs food to grow and for production.

I'm thinking of a capital production list that's something like: workboat (whip), warrior (to grow), worker (whip), warrior, granary (whip), warrior, worker (whip), settler(whip), settler(whip), pyramids

EDIT: Real life is hindering me from adding more right now. But I wanted to add that we could put settlers in place and, if an AI settler party lands, we could found the city. The cities will be bad until they can be improved. For that, we need workers and some techs.

 

[Compromise]

Whip workboat immidiately --> Warrior -->Whip worker once anger has cooled.

I think we want to whip the worker as soon as we get to size 4 and not worry about the whip anger.

Worker will chop forests towards a settler, while in between the city will work on either another warrior or another workboat.

My preference would be to save the forests for the pyramids after we have stone hooked up (open to debate, though). Roads to the forests would be great though. Pre-chopping is okay, but I usually end up forgetting and chop the forest on something I don't want chopped.

When we're at our happy cap and about to grow to the next city size, we can dissipate whip anger by working on workers or settlers.

Super early settlers won't help terribly much before we have mysticism. I think getting two workers out first and having animal husbandry will be best before settling a city.

 

[Compromise]

@Kodii: The index of summary threads is great. I'd suggest reversing the order so that the latest is always at the top. Maybe we'll eventually have enough that such ordering will make a difference.

 

[Compromise]

For our second city (red dot) to be productive, we need animal husbandry. We could save a little in research cost for pottery by researching agriculture before pottery. So, the tech path could be: Wheel, Agriculture, Pottery, Animal Husbandry, Mysticism, (Writing/IronWorking). While granaries rock, we could probably spend the 10 or so turns getting Agriculture first.

I'd rather have the cows in play than chop jungles at the first site. That way, it could work on a worker/settler or obelisk while the workers chopped jungle.

(Maybe there are even horses on one of the plains near our capital! This is a modified map, after all. It's kind of amazing how few spots there are where hidden resources could possibly be.)

 

[Tatran]

Lurker's comment :

A midgame wonder we should look at that combines with the Pyramids is Angkor Wat: +2 hammer +1 gold +3 research priests can make a big difference in production-starved seafood cities.

I'm wary of trying for the Oracle:...and it will generate lots of great prophets, which I find of questionable usefulness when I don't see it to our advantage to play the religion game much.

You're contradicting yourself.
Btw, Bureaucracy works also for the hammers of a merged priest, IIRC.

 

[Tatran]

The amount of analysis going on is beyond my ability to handle. We need to greatly simplify the details.

Welcome to nerds section of this forum.
One of the reasons the Rat Pack Team isn't joining this SGOTM (maybe
never any SGOTM again). Remember rule 11.

I am starting to wonder if I am not the right person for this team. With this overload of detail, and to many paths at once I don't even know how to help.

Look at the the CFR Team SGOTM2 thread. If you want to have a chance
to win any laurel you'll have to analyse.

Lurker's reminder : page 3

 

[Kodii]

I've updated the summary post with Compromise's information. I added it because it was quick and to the point. If you have anything you want to change, tell us, and then greggo can play.

I'll update the dotmap now.

EDIT: Dotmap updated

 

[Kodii]

Regarding Compromise's tech order...

Will we get all those techs done before we start the Pyramids? If not, we should stick Masonry in there. Also, will we get all those techs done before we settle the blue dot? If not, we should stick Sailing in there too.

Remember, timing is of the essence.

 

[LKendter]

I've updated the summary post with Compromise's information. I added it because it was quick and to the point. If you have anything you want to change, tell us, and then greggo can play.

I'll update the dotmap now.

EDIT: Dotmap updated

EGADS, I lose a night because of the HOF Mod, and I am almost to late for the dicucssions?


I am going to suggest you either move the summary post forward, or post a link when updated. It took me forever to find the summary.

 

[LKendter]

This is the setting to make the turns show up in the clock window btw

What I am talking about shows turn 5/600 that works great for my SGs outside of this one.