SGOTM 03 - The Real Ms. Beyond

[LKendter]

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.

OK - I will agree for our summary post to put NO Great Lighthouse in Moscow. Now the debate is it worth trying for in Novgorod?

 

[Compromise]

I lean toward "no" on trying to build the Great Lighthouse. I'm starting to feel defenseless.

If we really want to be aggressive, I could grab Alex's worker before it finishes the iron mine: switch Moscow production to finish the galley next turn. Move the St Pete MP down to Moscow (will arrive late). Next turn, Moscow's MP boards the galley which heads SE-S. Next turn: Galley into position; if worker is still uncovered, warrior grabs it in an amphibious ambush. Same turn, worker boards the galley. Interturn: Warrior probably dies, but some chance of success.

Alex only has archers, Athens and Sparta. And "our" (Spartan) iron. And a bad reputation.

 

[Kodii]

That doesn't sound like a bad idea except that...

Alex only has archers. We don't even have archers

If our copper was connected already, I'd feel more safe in that plan.

 

[grangerm]

how can you not recognize that color?!

Shows how much civ I've been playing recently.

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

Didn't realize that. But I'd still much rather see our precious worker turns spent mining all the gems than farming the rice.

We should invade someone.

I agree and think we should get a barracks done in Moscow, then whip a granary and start producing axes to attack Alex.

If we really want to be aggressive, I could grab Alex's worker

Hmm, that's an interesting idea. It would delay him from hooking up iron, especially if that's his only worker. A free worker would help us out now but since we are still 15 turns from copper, I think it's too risky. Anyway, since Alex only has 2 cities, so even if his worker runs to the far reaches of his empire it's not too far away.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

We want at least axes to go after Alex. Anything less will surely be a disaster.

One needs to assume that the iron will be hooked up and we will be facing swords. Probably a decent number of swords on a counter attack. We need to go in force, and expect a brawl. Alex will not roll over for us.

 

[Iainuki]

Bah, swords. The only thing swords are good for are killing archers when the AI isn't smart enough to garrison with something better. Axes are the universal ancient age counter. Besides, I suspect that Alex will build his useless UU instead of swords.

 

[Kodii]

If Mao has SIX cities and is only the fourth-largest, I'm really underestimating the sizes of these islands.

 

[Compromise]

That doesn't sound like a bad idea except that...

Alex only has archers. We don't even have archers

Hmm, that's an interesting idea. It would delay him from hooking up iron, especially if that's his only worker. A free worker would help us out now but since we are still 15 turns from copper, I think it's too risky.

We want at least axes to go after Alex. Anything less will surely be a disaster.

Babies.

Actually, me too. If we were 10 turns closer to copper or had 3 galleys already, I'd do it.

I plan to play tomorrow. My plan is to prepare Moscow for military--finish galley, start barracks--and research pottery. I was also going to found green dot, timing its founding with the ability of the workboat to go through it to the clams.

Prioritizing gems in St Pete and copper connection in Novgorod.

I think we'll want granaries before lighthouses in our cities, because they're cheaper. Depending on how things look, I'll probably delay the actual whipping until the following turnset.

For green dot: should I continue roading or should I plan to clear the jungle around a gem mine? Will that city work gems or seafood first? My initial thought is seafood since we want to get a granary asap and growing to size 2 then whipping will be fastest. Open to discussion though.

 

[Iainuki]

I plan to play tomorrow. My plan is to prepare Moscow for military--finish galley, start barracks--and research pottery. I was also going to found green dot, timing its founding with the ability of the workboat to go through it to the clams.

I don't see any reason to delay it. It will produce four commerce (1 trade route, 1 city center, 2 clams) immediately, which should cover its maintenance unless we're sitting on some particular break point.

I think we'll want granaries before lighthouses in our cities, because they're cheaper. Depending on how things look, I'll probably delay the actual whipping until the following turnset.

I agree, but why delay the whipping?

For green dot: should I continue roading or should I plan to clear the jungle around a gem mine? Will that city work gems or seafood first? My initial thought is seafood since we want to get a granary asap and growing to size 2 then whipping will be fastest. Open to discussion though.

I'd road over to the hills gem mine and then start chop/mining it. (We should use chop/mines on the jungle so there's no risk of it growing back.) It should work food first, because it will need to whip a granary and an obelisk before going onto anything else.

 

[Compromise]

745: Move settler toward green dot. Doing so brings us over the "units outside" limit, so I move the SW warrior toward Novgorod. Also, anticipating a galley, I move the N warrior toward St Pete. Switch research to pottery. Rearrange tiles in Moscow to work max F+H. Check diplo and notice that our SE neighbors are sharing ivory. Mao has 5(!) non-capital cities, Gandhi has 2, Alex just 1. Turn research to 0% to store up for 100% run. This should take 2 turns.

Our income is 18C. Our expenses are 4C (2C distance + 2C #Cities). Let's see how that changes when we found green dot.

I mark a note on the map where we want Iron City.

Mao's fishing boat is heading south past Sparta.

730: Our first galley completes. I send it east a bit. I am nervous about our defense, so I start another galley. Two workers start chopmining gems near St Pete.

715: Galley temporarily occupies blockade position. Sees one of Mao's archers running around. Research to pottery back to 100%, due in 8T.

700: Alex hooks iron up for himself. Found Rostov (green dot). Costs us 4gpt. City maintenance is now 7C (3C distance + 4C #cities). Begin chopmining gems at Rostov. Paganism now costs us 1gpt.

The AI power graph around 700BC. Can be used (maybe) to track AI troop development.


685: I change my mind and start the road at Rostov. Move galley to explore south of Sparta. Research to 90% to get pottery in 6T. Begin watching Alex's power graph to see when he gets new metal units.

670: Merit Ptah biafl. Scouting south of Sparta reveals Chinese borders.



655: Finish scouting south of Sparta. Can't see any cities, just Chinese borders. Gandhi founds Bangalore on his island 2SW of scout. Looks like a bad fishing village on a hill. Gems mine completes near St. Pete, and since I can shave a turn off pottery, I work it instead of the cows. Moscow grows to size 6. With pottery looming and a galley in 2T regardless, I work the FP instead of the plains hill mine.



640: Worker completes in Novgorod. Still 2T to pottery, so I choose a lighthouse next. For fun, I rename our workers: Alan, Bob, Carl, Dale. I think you see the trend. Still no movement on Alex's power curve. Switch to 100% research and work cows instead of mine at St Pete. Trying to balance pottery arrival with St Pete growth.

625: Pottery due next turn. Micromanage to minimize overflow. Second galley completes in Moscow. I renamed it, but you'll have to see for yourself how I'm naming the galleys. Moved toward Sparta. Workboat completes in St Pete, headed to Rostov's clams.

610: Great Lighthouse biadl! Pottery in; start writing. Start cottage on Moscow's floodplain. All cities switched to granaries. Switch research to 0%. We'll get a bonus if Alex or Gandhi develop writing before we can go full-bore toward writing. Right now, it looks like we'll need 63 in the bank to go 100% toward writing. We're about 10T away at full speed.

595: Carl puts a turn into a pasture near Novgorod

580: 2 workers in position on the copper site, 1T into road there. And I stopped my turnset almost immediately after this:

Our exploring galley (sent to explore Rome and Gandhi's coast) found an awesome Iron site!!! The island (NE of Rome, SE of Ghandi, SW of us) has iron, hills and 2 seafoods (one of which was available to our starting site, the other is S of the island.)



More thoughts in a bit, but I think we need to prioritize getting that site ASAP. (I'm assuming it's on an island because otherwise it's too great of a site even before the iron is revealed for Gandhi and/or Caesar to pass on it.)

I haven't whipped any granaries because it's best to do that the turn before the cities grow.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm3/The_Real_Ms_Beyond_SG003_BC0580_01.Civ4SavedGame

EDIT: Added screenshots

 

[LKendter]

Turn research to 0% to store up for 100% run. This should take 2 turns.

Since we have NO science boosting buildings, what did this accomplish?

 

[Compromise]

Since we have NO science boosting buildings, what did this accomplish?

In this case, not much. My thinking at the time was that if we got sneak-attacked before pottery completed, we'd be wanting cash in hand to upgrade a warrior to an axeman on the turn we connected copper. In reality, the value is very little, maybe zero.

But there's no downside to it.

With writing, however, since only Mao has it, the benefit is more clear. One more turn of 0% research and we should be able to get it going at 100%. (As long as we don't rush granaries until the turn before our pop increases. St. Pete in particular needs to rush that granary at the last moment so it can work both the gems and the cows as much as possible.)

 

[Compromise]

An alternative to settling the iron island is to park two axemen there and wait for an AI to settle it. With no city razing, the city will stay at size one. Of course, we'll have to be careful about where we put our troops so that they're outside the new city borders when it's formed. That would leave the defender with at most a turn or two of fortification.

 

[Iainuki]

Things seem to be proceeding according to plan, though our lack of military is still worrying me.

Some other status notes:

1) The Great Lighthouse wasn't built by anyone we know, so it's probably about half a world away from us.

2) Alex claims to have swordsmen, and Mao claims to have axemen. Their real military build-ups have probably begun. Gandhi is still threatening us with archers.

3) Our power is significantly lower than Mao's, so I'm still expecting a war declaration from him sooner or later.

Some thoughts on further directions:

1) We still only 4 workers. This is just not adequate with the amount of jungle we have to chop. We've been border-expansion and happy-cap limited for awhile, but that's no longer true. I think our next tech, after Writing, should be Agriculture, so we can farm the rice and start St. Pete/Rostov growing, for more whipping and to get those gems mines worked all the time. I think I'd like about two workers per core city, with maybe only one for Moscow. I think we should look into building some more workers at St. Pete/Rostov once they've whipped their granaries and hit size 2, since they don't have more workable tiles anyways right now; unless we need to commission axes from the cities.

2) I think we should settle the iron island ourselves if at all possible. If the AI puts the city in a dumb spot, for instance missing one of the seafoods, we can't move it. Also, it's likely to be settled by one of the AIs we don't want to go to war with, Gandhi or Caesar. (For different reasons, of course. If we're picking allies, we're unlikely to find a better one than Gandhi, presuming he survives being on the same island with Caesar. Fighting praetorians is just a losing proposition; now, it's possible Caesar doesn't have any way to get iron, but that's not something I want to gamble on, it's something I want to know before the war declaration.)

Moscow will finish its granary in 3 turns--I hardly see the need to whip it. Is making Moscow's next whip a settler for the iron island too ambitious? We could ship a worker from Novgorod after the copper mine is finished to chop an obelisk and mine the iron, and not long after the city should become a production powerhouse. There are only two things that make me hesitate about this plan. First, will settling the island weaken our defenses against an AI attack too much? (I'm really wishing for 1-pop Police State bugged axe whipping right about now.) Second, will the maintenance costs hurt our tech too much? I don't really know the answer to the first question; I suspect the answer to the second is no. Once we have Writing and Agriculture, we won't get any more immediate productivity benefits from our tech path for awhile, and we're not going to be getting to Alphabet/Literature until after most of those gems mines are up, at which point the maintenance cost of another city will be peanuts.

I think we have a couple of issues to talk about before the next player goes.

 

[greggo]

I'm in no rush to play - late Tuesday evening will probably be best for me. I'd prefer to settle the iron island right away, rather than waiting for the AI.

I'm off to my last exam now, so I'll catch up more this evening.

 

[LKendter]

Things seem to be proceeding according to plan, though our lack of military is still worrying me.

I agree that I can't wait to actually see some axes and spears. I haven't looked at the latest turn, but I least I know we are heading toward fixing that.

1) We still only 4 workers. This is just not adequate with the amount of jungle we have to chop.

I agree 100%. We need more workers. Can St. Pete supply them?

2) I think we should settle the iron island ourselves if at all possible. If the AI puts the city in a dumb spot, for instance missing one of the seafoods, we can't move it.

With being stuck with no city razing I agree with you.

Is making Moscow's next whip a settler for the iron island too ambitious?

It might be. Without being able to look at the game, I can't tell if we have any spare units to ship with it. Settler another island with a naked city is begging for trouble. I am not worried about the maintenance costs at this time.

 

[Kodii]

I like the iron "island". It isn't too far from Moscow. I'm worried about our defences. Hopefully we can get some axemen pumped out soon. If that iron "island" is actually attached to the Indian/Roman island, then we may want to get there to deny Rome of iron. I'll add some more thoughts later if I have more time.

 

[Compromise]

For the record, I'm in favor of settling the island/peninsula ourselves too just to get the location optimized. I'm not terribly concerned even about keeping it since if it's an island, it will take the AI quite some time to improve it. And if that's Rome's only iron, we can take the city with axemen and continue the denial. (Of course, we'll either have to assume Rome has no iron, capture Sparta, or develop the iron site on our island.)

On military: we're definitely walking a thin line where we are gambling for long term gain by running a thin defense right now. I've got two workers on the copper site which whose borders will pop next turn. There's one turn of road into the square and the horses are roaded, so it just takes 2 workers making the mine and one more turn to get it connected. Then, if need be, we can whip axemen.

Also, we have 2 galleys, so depending on what the AI sends at us, we might be able to deflect them. I've noted on the map two stretches of straight coastline where we could park galleys. I don't think the AI will attack our galley with its landing force transports, so while we might lose a ship to a pillager-galley, at least we'll have the better odds. I think galleys were the best defensive units we could muster during the last couple turnsets. I didn't even send the first one to do any exploring away from Alex/Mao island until I had another to help patrol the coasts.

There are several micromanagement tactics that will improve our lot here, but I'll have to save those comments for a later post.

 

[Compromise]

Okay, here's one micro technique I think we should employ here: The granaries don't do us any good until we grow. In fact, I don't think they kick in until we grow once after they're built. So, the best time to build them is right before growing to size 3. That way, we are able to work two tiles (say cows and gems in St Pete except for the one turn before we grow.

If I'd whipped them as soon as we grew to size 2 (like I planned to do, but then realized that this would be a mistake), then we would only work one tile while we grew back to size 2. This is the best way to whip things which we don't need in a hurry.

We didn't do this with previous whips because those items had more value the earlier we got them.

Note that with this technique, you can whip again immediately if you need to.

 

[Compromise]

The other micro technique that I think may be useful from here on out is binary science rate. It takes a bit to explain it, so I'll just pose the question: Does everyone know what this is and how to use it? If not, I'll try to explain it or point to a link that does so.

It hasn't mattered so far because for the most part, the AIs have already had the techs we need and we have no science multiplier buildings.

Now that we're starting to research techs that the AI might get during our tech time, it matters a little. Also, this maximizes the gold we'll have on hand if we need an emergency warrior->axeman upgrade.