SGOTM 03 - The Real Ms. Beyond

[Compromise]

Perhaps this is a fool's errand, but I'm going to try to make some comments on some old posts.

1) What order do we put our subsequent techs in? I'm leaning to Iron Working, Agriculture (we can start chopping those rice fields, and save beakers on Pottery), Pottery, Writing, Alphabet, Polytheism, Literature.

2) Are we attacking someone? If so, who and when?

3) How many workers do we need?

1) Pottery increases our production (via granaries) everywhere we have a good food surplus (i.e. everywhere). Agriculture will save us a few beakers on one tech and only lets us improve one tile (which can be cleared of jungle anyway). I vote Pottery after Ironworking.

2) Amass forces expecting an attack. If we need to attack someone, the general rule of thumb is to attack the most powerful civ. Since all the AIs use similar logic, the leaders tend to be those with the best geography. If it's good for them, it's better for us.

3) I think 4 workers should be good. That's just because our cities can probably grow to use more tiles at a rate that one (or maybe 2) workers per city can improve.

 

[Compromise]

Thoughts for the next round:

1) While I would really like the Great Lighthouse, I don't think we have a chance at it. However, I would like to build a lighthouse after the current galley. That is two more food when need to grow, and the two chops from the mines would pretty much cover the build. The lighthouse will time well with the 60 shields coming up from forests. I don't want to waste the shields from chopping.

2) I would like another worker from St. Pete after the settler. Two workers, and four cities don't cut it. Especially when you consider we have a jungle overload. The city isn't worth growing until we can start to clear jungle.

I don't think there's very much in that galley yet and Moscow is size 4. Why don't we put a turn into a worker and whip it before getting the galley out?

3) I would like a worker next at Novgorod. The fish is available for a worker by the time we are ready to start the worker. I want that copper connected. I don't want to depend on galleys for defense. IMHO galleys bite, as you can't even get 50% odds on offense.

Yes.

4) I agree with iron working then agriculture. One of the big reasons for iron working to chop jungles, and that rice is included.

Hmmm, I guess I prefer pottery because every city can use a granary.

Even with the two additional workers I feel we will be really short. Clearing the jungle is very time consuming, and I would like at least 6 total. That might even be light.

True. Fortunately, we can have good food everywhere from the start, so the cities can stay small and whip infrastructure.

At this time I don't see us getting offensive in the near future. The option isn't even viable until we have copper connected, a larger navy, and barracks. Plus I want some units inside our cities. I refuse to depend on galleys for defense.

And roads to shovel our forces from city to city. And we need to clear all forests and jungles around our cities to eliminate defensive bonuses.

 

[Compromise]

Note: A link to Iainuki's uberpost should be in our summary page!

The limiting factor in the victory this game is going to be tech. ...

Thus, we must get to Mass Media as fast as possible, and we need to start thinking about how to do that soon after the Pyramids are finished.... I still think that grabbing Mao's and Alex's capitals might be worth considering in the opening, but even that may be ambitious....

I think this may be right: we will be waiting for Mass Media and the UN. I have one major concern: AI-AI tech trading. Because there are so many leaders in the game, including the likes of Mansa, I think the AIs could tech somewhat faster than in normal crowded-map games.

One way to counteract this is to get a tech lead early and use it to foster strife amongst the AIs by bribing them into wars with each other. This indicates that exploration *before alphabet* would be very advantageous to us.

(I don't feel like I can make any more general statements about how to conquer to increase one's tech rate--anyone have anything else to add? Good rules of thumb for deciding when we should declare war, etc.? I know that conquest in general can help your tech rate if done right, but I also know it can slow it down.)

To conquer fast on a no city-razing map, you have two must-have techs. Currency is useful because your core cities can fund your expansion by combining marketplaces in cottage spammed areas. Our situation is perfect for this, especially with a couple extra happy faces in each core city from representation.

The other no-brainer is Code of Laws. Courthouses are essential and basically fund expansion.

One other note on conquest: I think we should try to pick and choose the cities we keep from the AIs. Once we grab an AI's capital, we can think about declaring peace as soon as possible. On a crowded archipelago, they will never again catch up and we can go back and mop up once we get closer to our population goals. By then, our tech should be far enough ahead that we can consider their population our population.

[Note: the thoughts about Currency and Code of Laws are based on experience. the thought about picking and choosing is theoretical.]

A different issue is the tech path we use to hit Mass Media. I'd like to point out that the number of techs you need to beeline there is . . . surprisingly small, and avoids some techs that practically everyone gets normally. Let me diagram:...

Great synopsis!

Quick thoughts: If we can't get a good wonder with our GE (e.g. G. Lighthouse and Parthenon fall while we're waiting to be able to build great library, then we lose great library too), we could consider rushing machinery. Macemen will be nice. Early macemen will be unstoppable.

Tech Path Proposals:

Now that I've analyzed what we need and how to get there, it's time to put it together into some concrete suggestions for our tech choices. Before we develop anything else, I think we want these techs, not necessarily in this order: Iron Working, Pottery, Sailing, Writing. After that, I think to get the Great Library on time (i.e., right after our engineer appears), we want to research Alphabet, Polytheism, and Literature. Then things get interesting, because I can see three plausible targets for our beeline after Literature.

Education through Theology:
Philosophy lightbulb:
Economic Development with Naval Lightbulbs:

I still need to think about these. In fact, I need to stop quoting this post now because I must sleep. But these are great thoughts, Iainuki!

 

[Iainuki]

Quick thoughts: If we can't get a good wonder with our GE (e.g. G. Lighthouse and Parthenon fall while we're waiting to be able to build great library, then we lose great library too), we could consider rushing machinery. Macemen will be nice. Early macemen will be unstoppable.

I don't think it's possible for us to lose the Great Library if we're careful about it. The AIs don't prioritize Alphabet enough and we're Philosophical with the only wonder that generates GE points: the only other way to get a GE so early is to use the Oracle to slingshot Metal Casting, then rush a forge and hire an engineer. I don't think an AI is capable of that level of planning, fortunately .

 

[Compromise]

Very good: I expect us to have the great library!

Another thought: Although it might be a terrible waste of production, we could whip the galley and whip a worker from Moscow asap, and send the worker over to hook up bronze. That might be the fastest way to get horses and bronze hooked up. (Switch to representation after they're on their way so the galley/worker spend the anarchy in transit.) As always, just a thought.

 

[Iainuki]

After looking over our empire, I assign the governor with maximize food/production/growth to all our cities. This causes Moscow to switch to the floodplains, shaving two turns off Iron Working! That's how bad our tech rate is right now. The gems mines should help, so getting those up ASAP is essential now.

985 BC

Thucydides tells us Mao is fourth-largest. We don't even appear on the chart. Our workboat can afford one more move south, so I move and discover that the island due south of our starting position and Gandhi's island are separate land.

955 BC

Moscow's whipped worker completes and goes to build roads to green dot. (All but two of these roads are necessary to hook up resources, and it seemed to me that hastening movement on our island was well worth the other two.)

925 BC

A jungle grows on the north river grasslands near Moscow. Sigh. Luckily, the extra roads from Moscow worker will ensure that our worker timetables stay on schedule.

895 BC

St. Pete expands its border and I workboat the fish; Novgorod starts working them.

880 BC

Gandhi adopts Slavery.

865 BC

Mao offers to trade our fish for clams. I make the deal, figuring there's no real downside (his cities shouldn't be health-limited this early), and maybe it will pay off in diplomatic boni later if we don't end up fighting.

850 BC

Mines chopped into lighthouse.

820 BC

Novgorod grows and whips an obelisk. St. Pete's also grows, but I miscalculated so is a little short of whipping its settler.

805 BC

Novgorod starts a worker.

790 BC

Mine roads finished, send workers to road St. Pete's resources. Moscow is about to grow into unhappiness, so I make a decision: I haven't heard much support in favor of Police State, so I'm going to pull the trigger in favor of Representation. Feel free to direct rotten vegetables at me later if this is dumb.

775 BC

Mao shows up offering Open Borders. My turn set is almost finished, so I decline so we can talk about it.

760 BC

Moses is BIAFAL. I whip St. Pete's settler. I see a workboat from Mao outside Sparta.

745 BC

Moses builds the Kashi Vishwanath in a faraway land. (This means Hinduism is likely to become a dominant religious bloc in this game.)

Meanwhile, we discover Iron Working. We discover iron in one of the white-dot positions on our island, and meanwhile, Alexander starts mining a plains he'd just cottaged near Sparta. (If it has food, or even if it doesn't, Sparta looks more and more like a perfect Heroic Epic spot.)

Endnotes:

It's a distinct possibility Mao and Alex didn't have copper. Alex has Iron Working now though, obviously, and Mao has Writing.

Moscow is close to finishing a galley. With the increased happiness cap and the mines finished, I decided to spare it the whip. After finishing the galley, we definitely may want to think about another worker. (It's going to take ages to clear all this jungle, and the faster we get those gems up, the faster our science rate takes off.)

Novgorod will finish its worker in 7 turns. I think the obvious order for it is to move straight to the copper hill, road it, road the horses, then pasture them while waiting for the border pop so it can mine the copper.

St. Pete is working on a workboat for green dot's clams. There's also a settler there waiting to head to green dot, unless we want to do something with the iron.

Workers have just finished the roads on St. Pete's gems and rice. I think they should start chop/mining the gems next turn. The worker north of St. Pete is building a road: I think it should finish, then move west and mine/chop the gems hill for green dot.

Research is set to Agriculture but no beakers are invested, so the next person can choose where to go next.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm3/The_Real_Ms_Beyond_SG003_BC0745_01.Civ4SavedGame

 

[Iainuki]

Another thought: Although it might be a terrible waste of production, we could whip the galley and whip a worker from Moscow asap, and send the worker over to hook up bronze. That might be the fastest way to get horses and bronze hooked up. (Switch to representation after they're on their way so the galley/worker spend the anarchy in transit.) As always, just a thought.

The copper is limited by the speed with which Novgorod's border pops, unfortunately, so it's as fast it gets already, unless we want to ship a worker with our soon-to-be-finished galley. We didn't need to whip the galley, in any case.

 

[LKendter]

Thoughts for the next round:

1) We have a really ugly decision. The city will be garbage, but there is no question the AI will settler to steal the iron. Therefore, I feel we want another settler soon to claim the iron. My vote is a city on the hill to the south. This fishing village has NO bonus food, so the only good source of infrastructure is from the iron tile. That gives us two squares for cottages, and the shields from the iron tile.
I feel this is the number one critical issue for us to decide before another turn is played.

2) Based on #1, my minimum worker count goes from 6 to 8.

3) It is finally time to have the right to build cottages. Therefore I want pottery after agriculture. I also feel it is time to start building some granaries with the higher happiness count.

4) After that I want writing as we want libraries at some point.

5) Have we written off the Great Lighthouse? IMHO if we don't start immediately, it is a lost cause. It looks like size 6 with working the fish will give us 16 shields a turn. That is just 19 turns, and we could chop that plains tile to shave some time at the end. Or we could do another whip near the end. Do we want the Great Lighthouse? This would be a huge difference in tech pace for a while.

6) Novgorod looks really good. The worker timing is almost perfect. If I count correct we could road the horses and copper just in time for the border pop to let us mine the copper. The military situation will improve.

7) Do we still need the warrior on the hill by Novgorod? I would think the city solves fog busting in that area. We may as well start getting our military inside our cities where it belongs.

8) It is lower on the priority list, but I do want to think about an exploring ship soon.

9) Can someone with good map reading skills look at the southern island. I can't tell if I am seeing dark borders or not. I think we have a neighbor on the southern island.

 

[Compromise]

Nice work, Iainuki. This has been a great first round of turnsets.

1) We have a really ugly decision. The city we garbage, but there is no question the AI will settler to steal the iron. Therefore, I feel we want another settler soon to claim the iron. My vote is a city on the hill to the south. This fishing village has NO bonus food, so the only good source of infrastructure is from the iron tile. That gives us two squares for cottages, and the shields from the iron tile.
I fell number one is a critical issue for us to decide before another turn is played.

I think this is the key decision. At the moment, I'm leaning toward letting the AI settle that spot and taking the city from them. No one's getting there without open borders until astronomy.

I think we should get our iron from Sparta!

Mao has at least copper and maybe iron. He's probably building up forces to attack us now, and even if he isn't right now, he's a notorious backstabber. So, we need military anyway. Why not get some experience on a limited war with Alex to get Sparta? It's his only non-capital city! Mao has hemmed him in and thus marginalized him. We might want to take Athens too, but I want to be prepared to abandon that and fight Mao. (Sparta will also be a good draw for Mao's armies: They might attack there rather than Moscow.)

A corollary to this plan is that Moscow's next build is a barracks; then chopped and poprushed axes.

2) Based on #1, my minimum worker count goes from 6 to 8.

3) It is finally time to have the right to build cottages. Therefore I want pottery after agriculture. I also feel it is time to start building some granaries with the higher happiness count.

Pre-CS, agriculture is worth a few beakers (saved on pottery that follows) and one food on one square. Pottery makes food worth 1.5x in all our cities.

4) After that I want writing as we want libraries at some point.

Yes.

5) Have we written off the Great Lighthouse? IMHO if we don't start immediately, it is a lost cause. It looks like size 6 with working the fish will give us 16 shields a turn. That is just 19 turns, and we could chop that plains tile to shave some time at the end. Or we could do another whip near the end. Do we want the Great Lighthouse? This would be a huge difference in tech pace for a while.

I lean toward hoping we can capture the G. Lighthouse.

6) Novgorod looks really good. The worker timing is almost perfect. If I count correct we could road the horses and copper just in time for the border pop to let us mine the copper. The military situation will improve.

7) Do we still need the warrior on the hill by Novgorod? I would think the city solves fog busting in that area. We may as well start getting our military inside our cities where it belongs.

As soon as the culture covers that hill, I'll pull the warrior into Novgorod.

8) It is lower on the priority list, but I do want to think about an exploring ship soon.

Yes. Alphabet and lots of tech partners will help us greatly.

9) Can someone with good map reading skills look at the southern island. I can't tell if I am seeing dark borders or not. I think we have a neighbor on the southern island.

Pull back and use the reveal culture button (near the strategy layer button). If you can see at least one corner of a tile, this reveals the culture of the tile. (Learned that in SGOTM2.)

I'm curious to hear opinions on a plan for mounting war soon.

 

[grangerm]

Come on guys, no posts for 8 hours? I think this thread is dead...

Just a quick note on lightbulbing:
Scientists will give us ( ( ( 1000 + 2 * civ_pop) * 1.5 ) * 1.5 ) beakers on epic. All other will give us ( 1000 + 2 * civ_pop ) * 1.5 beakers. So by late game, even our artists should be giving us well over 2000 beakers for MM and Radio.

Sorry for being dense, but why do we want agriculture instead of pottery next?

If you zoom out to globe view, you can become an expert on "map reading". Just turn on cultural borders and pretend you saw it with your naked eye. There is another set of borders south of Ghandi. It's dark purple, I don't remember who that is.

I agree that we want to settle on or near the iron ASAP. On the other hand, if an enemy does, as long as we have a couple axes to take his city immediately, it's like getting a free settler. EDIT: I take back the ASAP. As Comprimise pointed out, no one can settler there w/o OB or being at war.

Good call on representation, I think. It's not like we're in any position to start producing military. And not like we want +25% on more warriors.

Now that Alex is 4 turns away from hooking up his iron, we can expect him to start attacking once he can build some troops. Luckily, he only has 2 cities. Loser.

We can use the 2 workers around St. Pete to chop the jungle and build a mine on the gems, while we move our new galley around from Moscow to near Novograd. Once they are done, we can transport one of them over to Novograd to help road and mine the copper. That'll hook up copper maybe 3 turns quicker. Don't know if it's worth it.

If I don't post again today, I will be away for work Monday through Wednesday. I can't imagine my turn will come up before then, but if so, just skip or swap me.

 

[LKendter]

Sorry for being dense, but why do we want agriculture instead of pottery next?

The rice by St. Pete and green dot. If you aren't in a rush for the rice, then we could to pottery next. However, do we have ANY city that close to building a granary?

 

[grangerm]

Another thought I had was to use our 1st GE on the Lighthouse if it's still around and use our 2nd on the GL.

There are multiple ways this could go wrong though. The Lighthouse might not last 21 more turns. Either way, we'd not want it in Moscow or St. Pete, so we'd probably put it in Novograd. That bumps the time to 25 turns. Next, it would surely generate us a merchant who'd best things to do would be lightbulb currency, MC or CoL.

We wouldn't get our 2nd GE until 96 turns from now. Would the GL still be there? At our current tech pace it'll take us over 100 turns to get there without any detours for agri or pottery. But that'll change drastically when we start bringing cottages and (especially) gem mines online.

 

[grangerm]

The rice by St. Pete and green dot. If you aren't in a rush for the rice, then we could to pottery next. However, do we have ANY city that close to building a granary?

EDIT: counted gem mines at St. Pete wrong. There's only 1.

We don't even have a settler for green dot yet and the farmed rice is a weak tile compared to the gem that St. Pete should be working along with the cows. I think a granary in St. Pete would give us the same short term benefit that the farmed rice would: quicker growth. In addition, it would allow us to work the gem mine and still grow relatively quickly. Long term, when we are running specialists there, we will want to work the farmed rice. But I don't think the +2 food is worth it right now.

I'd also like a granary in Moscow soon. It can whip while growing up to its max pop and still be productive. Also, Moscow is working a FP that would look great with a cottage on it.

EDIT: The rice at green dot is the 4th best tile also, behind the clams and the 2 gem mines.

 

[Compromise]

Note that since we're expansive, granaries are 1-pop whips

 

[grangerm]

For a 1-pop whip, I'd think we'd want them everywhere

 

[Iainuki]

Thoughts for the next round:

1) We have a really ugly decision. The city will be garbage, but there is no question the AI will settler to steal the iron. Therefore, I feel we want another settler soon to claim the iron. My vote is a city on the hill to the south. This fishing village has NO bonus food, so the only good source of infrastructure is from the iron tile. That gives us two squares for cottages, and the shields from the iron tile.
I feel this is the number one critical issue for us to decide before another turn is played.

I think now we can do what we couldn't before: as far as I can tell (someone should double-check), we can found green dot to block off coastal routes to any of the locations between green dot and Moscow, barring borders appearing from across the ocean to the north. This should mean that the iron is safe until we sign open borders.

As far as the iron fishing village is concerned, when we want to build it, we should put it on the hill south of the iron and farm the inland grasslands (with Civil Service for irrigation spreading). It will be a more powerful fishing village with food than it will with extra commerce.

3) It is finally time to have the right to build cottages. Therefore I want pottery after agriculture. I also feel it is time to start building some granaries with the higher happiness count.

We need Pottery soon, no question. I think the immediate question about our tech order is whether we get Pottery before Agriculture.

4) After that I want writing as we want libraries at some point.

Again, yes. I think there's a good chance we want to arrange to whip libraries in as many cities as possible as soon as Writing comes in: all of our cities will have gems mines, and St. Pete wants to run two scientists ASAP.

5) Have we written off the Great Lighthouse? IMHO if we don't start immediately, it is a lost cause. It looks like size 6 with working the fish will give us 16 shields a turn. That is just 19 turns, and we could chop that plains tile to shave some time at the end. Or we could do another whip near the end. Do we want the Great Lighthouse? This would be a huge difference in tech pace for a while.

I thought about starting the Great Lighthouse in Moscow, but two things stopped me. First, it would be really unfortunate if instead of getting an engineer for our first or second GP, we got two merchants instead. The odds are strongly against it, but I don't think the risk is worth taking. (Even if we could hand-build the GL, getting it up ASAP gives us that big tech boost and the extra great scientists that much sooner.) Second, our military is still paper-thin, and there's still the possibility of an AI attack in the offing, and I still think our best chance to defend it on the cheap is blockading galleys.

I see three ways to try for it now. The first is to have Novgorod start a lighthouse after its worker, and then try to hand-build it: that city will soon have a lot of production and has forests to chop, so there's an outside chance we can get it that way if the AIs build it late. (GL completion times varied a lot in the testing Compromise and I did.) The second is to hope someone near us (Gandhi would be ideal) builds it, and then go capture it. Finally, if it's still around when our GE pops, we can consider using him on it.

7) Do we still need the warrior on the hill by Novgorod? I would think the city solves fog busting in that area. We may as well start getting our military inside our cities where it belongs.

I was keeping the warrior where it was until the border pop so we'd still have vision onto the water.

 

[Kodii]

I haven't read through everything, but I must say:

I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT! I should have mentioned it. My intuition told me that iron was on that white dot, but I never said anything about it ...

Ok, enough of my tirade, I'll continue reading the posts

 

[Kodii]

The dark borders are a dark purple color. My guess is Julius Caesar down there.

 

[Iainuki]

Just a quick note on lightbulbing:
Scientists will give us ( ( ( 1000 + 2 * civ_pop) * 1.5 ) * 1.5 ) beakers on epic. All other will give us ( 1000 + 2 * civ_pop ) * 1.5 beakers. So by late game, even our artists should be giving us well over 2000 beakers for MM and Radio.

Good to know.

If you zoom out to globe view, you can become an expert on "map reading". Just turn on cultural borders and pretend you saw it with your naked eye. There is another set of borders south of Ghandi. It's dark purple, I don't remember who that is.

Sharp eyes, LKendter and grangerm--but how can you not recognize that color?! Ugh, it's Rome. If there's one neighbor I don't want to have on aggressive AIs in the ancient age, Rome is it. I propose the following strategy for dealing with Caesar: do not under any conditions put ourselves in the situation where we have to fight a land war against him.

We don't even have a settler for green dot yet . . .

Yes, we do. St. Pete just finished it.

 

[Iainuki]

Ok, here's my list of goals for the next thousand years.

Explore!:

This isn't tiny islands, so it will be hard to circumnavigate in the BC era (too much backtracking required without Writing for OB), but early ADs is a must. The AI doesn't try for circumnavigation before Optics, as far as I know, but under no circumstances should we let that fall to an AI. I think we want to commission two workboats and send one east and one west. The other reason we want to explore is that with 17 enemy civs, the tech discount for knowing our enemies can get huge. (Up to +28%, I think.)

Tech!:

Our science sucks. It's 745 BC and we're producing 15 beakers/turn. Our first gem mine will increase our science rate by 1.33 (then subsequent mines by 1.25, 1.2, and so forth), so we need to get those up ASAP.

Our great engineer will get here a long time before Literature, and there's really nothing we can do about that. If there are other wonders still available, we might consider using him on that, but we should be very careful to make sure we can still rush the Great Library.

The trend I've heard is that we're leaning to Pottery next, for earlier granaries and cottages at Moscow.

Kill!:

We should invade someone. At the moment, our home island can support four good cities, three marginal cities (the spices/seafood colony south of Moscow, the iron colony, and the northern gems/plains hill colony), and one junk fishing village. For Oxford and the Forbidden Palace, we need six courthouses and universities, and it would better and faster to build them in good cities than in marginal ones; so I think we should go out and acquire some better cities. AI capitals are likely to be particularly good.

Alex and Mao are both untrustworthy backstabbers; I don't really see any reason not to cripple them sooner rather than later. Gandhi is easy to get to Friendly, which may be useful later in the game if we hit the WFYABTA limit, and as a pacifist, makes a great neighbor: the only reason I think we should attack him is if he builds the Great Lighthouse (or some other wonder we really want, though I'm not sure what it would be). Caesar we should avoid fighting at all costs until we have medieval or better units.

We can't go after Mao without killing Alex, honestly, and given that Mao has already done a pretty good job on crippling Alex, I don't see any reason not to finish the job. Sparta also looks like it could be key in strategic positioning, since it will attract the AIs to hit there rather than sending forces to our main island; give us a port on their island; cuts Alex off from iron; and is adjacent to Moscow, so won't add much to our upkeep burden. After we've scouted out Athens, we can decide if we want to finish Alex early or let him build up Athens for us.

I'm not sure we have the resources to add Mao's five cities to our civilization right now, especially so far from our capital. We might want to look into a limited war against Mao to cripple him, aiming for his best cities (the ones most capable of paying their own maintenance plus the increased costs they'll cause everywhere else), particularly Beijing; if we can get Alphabet by then, there's also the potential for pointy-stick research.