SGOTM 04 - Trash Team

[Ankh-f-n-Khonsu]

Just wanted to say howdy... I don't get to play, as I'm on a Mac, which is probably fine as I've never played an SG... So for various reasons I've picked your team to observe throughout, that I might learn something about SG and the game itself. This will likely be my only intrusion into your thread...

Good luck!

 

[MrMahk]

Good catch there Cam_H, although I am not totally convinced that wording was meant to be taken 100% literally...

I will give that test game a shot nonetheless.


Edit: welcome aboard Ankh- you and I are in the same boat with SG experience so I hope to learn a lot too!

 

[Cam_H]

Welcome abord Ankh! I hope you enjoy the bickering!

Mark - why not literally?

One thing about the start ... lots of food! We need to get at least one of Agriculture or Animal Hubandry pretty promptly, and we can be 'generous' with the whip once we get Bronze Working if we want to. It's a great spot for running a couple of Specialist Scientists once we get our Library up also.

 

[MrMahk]

Mark - why not literally?

I'm just saying that "neighbors" isn't really that specific- it could refer to being next to each other on the same island, we could be on adjacent islands, etc...however I think it does narrow it down away from the whole 'Gandhi is on a small island surrounded by agressive AIs and we are far away' theory.

 

[pigswill]

Whizzed through Cam_H's test map up to 2410bc:

Spoiler :

Unusual start for me. I saw the clams and lake and thought high commerce start, maybe early religion and holy city for Gandhi to capture later. So I grew the city non-stop, researched mysticism, polytheism (got hinduism), archery and mining. Now 6 turns from bronze. Buildwise I went WB, archer, archer (scout got attacked by 2 panthers at once and didn't survive ). Currently building worker to start chopping/mining.

Save: http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/90414/Trash_Tester_BC-2410.CivWarlordsSave

 

[Cam_H]

[Edit] Demo game removed, images removed. [/Edit]

OK ... I did one turn later (2380BC). I'll stick it in 'spoilers' also, so other team members can try their own strategies. I actually had two attempts at this - I hope that's OK ... we're not being competitive here are we?

Spoiler :

I did a do-over ... the first attempt was to get a Worker out quickly to chop out Warriors, a Settler, and a Work Boat. All up, it wasn't such a great idea, and instead opted for a high-commerce - high-food approach. So the rest of this blurb is attempt #2.

True to my first attempt, I repeated the opening move and sent the Settler two tiles to the north, and was rewarded with lots of Coast and a Desert.

I went after Bronze Working from the outset ... with all of that food, Slavery could become very handy, and there are plenty of forests too. I'm not usually keen on whipping the Capital too much, but I think we need to get a few basics done quickly ... we can look at running some Specialists down the track.

The citizens worked on the 2 3 tiles of the lake and the Clams. Having eventually got to Bronze Working, I whipped out a Work Boat. I also went after Warriors to get population growth, and on the last turn whipped out a Settler.

Goodie Hut-wise, picked up The Wheel as a free technology, a second Scout, and then 47 and 89 ... so we're the wealthiest tribe.

I researched Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, so when I get to Workers, they'll have plenty to do! Currently on Writing.

I spotted a 'reasonable' second city site with nine resources on a river! That's where the Settler's going!

Good news - Delhi's got some high- resources, so Gandhi's technology rate should move along pretty well.

Despite the Corn and Pigs, I'm thinking that it might be best not to stagnate growth by going after a Worker too early. It seems counter-intuitive, but the 'grow population and whip' approach seemed to work a bit better. I look forward to reading everyone else's findings.

 

[cabert]

War Weariness:

Do not actually attack Gandhi if at all possible, and try to lose as few troops as possible. War weariness is a condition of losing troops in combat and razing cities, so we need to turtle up as best we can as far as our conflict with India's concerned.

I'd say we just need to avoid entering into indian borders.
fights in our borders won't hurt us.
Of course they will hurt gandhi

Tech' rate:

We have to play like Cabert. Make any trade which isn't wasteful. We have to keep pushing the AI's technology rate along, so that means trading with tribes that don't despise Gandhi.

OK, for our members that don't know the trash series, cam is usually a cautious trader, while I'm a "total" trader.
Here, I'm not quite bought.
I'd say we need to focus on "non culture building" techs, like MC, currency and such, to be able to build good cities to hand to Gandhi.
And trading them to gandhi's friends may or may not be efficient. But speeding the general tech rate is a good move for a faster finish.

Conceding border cities:

I agree that this seems to be a good move provided that we vacate the city of troops beforehand and as per below, don't 'shoot ourselves in the foot'.

We need to cut off both our feet, if that helps gandhi launch earlier.

Remaining competitive:

It's no use if we end up conceding so much to Gandhi that we can't influence the later game.

100% agreed.
We need to be able to build military buildings and units that makes us his big bad brother.

 

[pigswill]

I reckon it would be well worth our while establishing a religion and building a shrine for Gandhi to capture (maybe Oracle/CoL slingshot) because we can keep spreading the religion throughout the game getting Gandhi richer and shrines never obselete.

 

[cabert]

I play tested for a while, and here is the first thing I learned :
- we can settle right next to gandhi, he won't attack us too fast if there is enough garison (I had 2 chariots). This doesn't stop him from expanding.

 

[MrMahk]

Played to 2380BC on Cam_H's new test map:

Spoiler :

Wound up settling in place, started workboat while working the corn for growth. Meanwhile, my scout popped agriculture . Having something for my eventual worker to do (since I like making workers pretty early), I switched to BW. I found that extreme-resource site, then Gandhi soon after. My scout got killed by a lion, so I switched to a warrior- he came in and is now fogbusting for the site to the south, WB is on the clams, and my worker is farming the corn. I will grow to size 5 soon and start a settler. Here's a picture of my situation (as you can see, Gandhi founded buddhism):

My overall research done: mining, (agriculture), BW, archery, and AH will be done in 5

 

[stuge]

I don't think it's worthwhile to found a religion ourselves. Gandhi is prone to snag a couple on his own. And if we want a "gifted" religion to really help Gandhi, we'd have to build a shrine. And chasing a great prophet distracts us from expansion and military.

Do we have enough views to decide on the initial build order? I still advocate my suggestion: Worker ->work boat -> soldiers -> settler, while going for BW. What are your ideas?

 

[MrMahk]

Stuge makes some good points about religion, so I agree about not worrying about founding one ourselves. We would also have to go through the trouble of spreading it too, which as he said would take away from other aspects of our strategy. However, if Gandhi's religion winds up spreading to us we should definetley try to spread it more.

Do we have enough views to decide on the initial build order? I still advocate my suggestion: Worker ->work boat -> soldiers -> settler, while going for BW. What are your ideas?

IMO, building a worker while going for BW is counterproductive because he would have nothing to do until it comes in and I'm not really big on chopping anyway. I would prefer work boat, a soldier or two, worker, soldier if necessary, then settler. Much of this game is about seeing what Gandhi wants to do and then adapting to it, and a large part of that has to do with cities and their placement. In the above build order, going for BW would be fine.

 

[Cam_H]

I tend to agree with the Work Boat first on the basis of my two quick shots at it. Starting with a Worker is going to keep the city at size 1 for ages - especially if you work one of the high- tiles. The Work Boat seemed to me to be the better option given that we have two '2 3' tiles that can keep our tech' rate moving along nicely until the Clams get harvested. I might try the Worker-first approach again for comparison's sake.

I am surprised about the religion gamble that's being proposed in that I would rather spread one of Gandhi's religions once it creeps into our borders. To me it's an interesting idea worth discussing, but I'm personally not in favour of it unless we're thinking of bee-lining to The Oracle.

Too many damned competing tech paths with merit!

 

[pigswill]

Argument in favour of religion/shrine.

AI's are good at founding religions and its likely that Gandhi will snag at least one. However AIs suck at using GPs wisely. Most games I've played shrines aren't built until mid game; I've seen priest specialists in captured cities and no shrines built; AIs routinely burn GPs on Golden Ages. Thus its unlikely that Gandhi will establish a shrine early on.

The aim of the game is to survive and prosper enough to help Gandhi into space. We can't help Gandhi directly which I suspect is the main purpose of always war. Therefore we have to help Gandhi indirectly. Various ways of acheiving this: tech trade widely hoping that Gandhi wil benefit indirectly, building cities for Gandhi to capture, building wonders for Gandhi to capture, capturing cities for Gandhi to capture from us. All of these are a direct cost to us.

In terms or relative cost I think a shrine and a widespread religion are good value; it benefits Gandhi, we can choose when we build missionaries, if we stick to shrine religion as state religion we get the benefit of religious civics.
Say for instance we went for Oracle and CoL; we get the free great priest within 75 turns without doing a thing, it does delay our first GS butthat's the only cost. Oracle costs 150 hammers for a 500 beaker tech thats useful in its own right. Comparing this to building a city and building eg parthenon inthe city its very good value.

 

[cabert]

I played the test game a bit myself.
No need for spoilers IMHO, it's for testing sake.

2 things strike me :
- in my game, gandhi is dead last in score, although I 'offered' him a city (a good one, with horses, stone, mines, farms to feed the miners...)
- he was the only buddhist leader.
So my conclusions were:
* religions may play a major role
* settling cities too near to India will result in 0 worker activity in India = bad crippling.

A few other points (mostly about techs) :
- we don't need BW early. We need agri and AH immediately. High output tiles will produce workers as fast as slavery (almost)
- the GotMs maps don't have huts. So we don't need that many scouts
- trading widely all my techs was indeed making the global tech pace fast. But not Gandhi's. He was dead last in techs! We may need to trade carefully.
- colossus is better for us financial guys than for Gandhi.

 

[remconius]

I'll play the test game later today to find the optimal start.

Personally I feel that the start is less crucial in this game vs other games. What I an doing is a few random games with Ragnar and Ghandi at war in quick mode. To see if I can get him to build the space ship. I am not even bothering to change the start map. Just playing it through to get a feel for the settings throughout the game.

It'd be nice if a few others also tried this to see what they find.

 

[pigswill]

Remconius; could you post your quick save. Congrats on finishing sgotm3, I don't know if you'd had a chance to look through trashteam thread yet. I've been tied up playing a shadow of ALC13 but haven't forgotten about this one.

 

[remconius]

This is just a random quick game with similar settings.

Test game save

Try to get Gandhi into space, asap.

 

[cabert]

OK guys.
I vote for Pigswill as captain. He was a brilliant captain in SGotM3.

About the rest, I'm tired of test games.

Can we try and get a general direction for the start?
I think we have 2 big options:
- fast growth for us, in order to be a big brother to gandhi
- religious way, to prevent Gandhi from being the lonesome cowboy out there (it happened in my test game, and really he didn't trade techs with anyone ).

I vote for fast growth, and let gandhi research his buddhism on his own.
If another religion gets founded out there, we may just go capturing it .
In fact, I'd recommend this as a general direction : try to make gandhi the most loved AI, for better trades to him.
To achieve this, we need to
- avoid him being the only buddhist (or whatever)
- give him "mutual struggle bonus" at times, by declaring on his neighbours. We can do this even without troops, or without actually knowing where the neighbour is!
Of course, we need to build up our military forces.
I'd also say that we need to avoid crippling Gandhi.
For this we must not settle cities too near to his borders.

 

[remconius]

In my test game I had Alexander from the north declare on Gandhi to my east. I closed borders to slow Alex. I did give a few cities to Gandhi which helped him leave the last place.

I need to play further in my test game to see if Gandhi will launch. We can complete our test games in parallel to playing the first number of turns.

As for start, settle 2N, build Workboat. Then build worker only if have anything to improve. If we go for religions we might be better off building another scout.

If we find Gandhi we should settle in his direction our second city. Then found a religion, then let him capture the city.

I'll support Pigswill as captain. No problem.