SGOTM 05 - Gypsy Kings

[hellwitch]

Well I've made some calcs and we will be 250 hammers short for the Pyramids at 500 BC. That make them impossible for city #3 for sure.
And look at Qin land - his cows and horse are builded again, he has a mine, forest and his 5pop capitol is on plain hill : 3+4+3+1+2 = 13x50%= 19. And this is on the save turn while we must to settle, build workers, build mines, connect the stone and so on and at the end we will have 16 hammers.
Also he could started the the pyramids before few turns.
IMO the Pyramids are sure big pile of gold from this point.

 

[da_Vinci]

Well I've made some calcs and we will be 250 hammers short for the Pyramids at 500 BC. That make them impossible for city #3 for sure.
And look at Qin land - his cows and horse are builded again, he has a mine, forest and his 5pop capitol is on plain hill : 3+4+3+1+2 = 13x50%= 19. And this is on the save turn while we must to settle, build workers, build mines, connect the stone and so on and at the end we will have 16 hammers.
Also he could started the the pyramids before few turns.
IMO the Pyramids are sure big pile of gold from this point.

It does take us a while to get up to our full production in copper city, so you may be right. Also, take a look at my post just before yours, if barbs plop a city two tiles inland, it could close out a coastal city and really delay reaching big land mass.

So if mids is questionable, maybe going for the coast with the current settler is the best play? If the barbs harrass Qin enough, we can evaluate mid try in copper city later?

A lot to think about.

dV

 

[hellwitch]

My latest hammer calcs shows that 2nd city ca build the mids faster than the #3 because there are 3 forests outside the culture border +1 inside + faster stone hook(working the rice before stone hooking and the stone after on -1 food) but even than we will be 150 hammers short at 500BC.
I vote for not going for the mids.
After all peace is 100% WW remover

 

[Conquistador 63]

I vote for not going for the mids.
After all peace is 100% WW remover

Sounds good reasoning
A few questions then:
. where to settle, what to build instead?
. how to get peace?

 

[g_storrow]

For this turnset, here is how I see it.

We settle city #3 where the scout is sitting right now, 1W of the copper. Start building the Pyramids immediately.

Finish researching IW and then start on Writing.

I think that seems to be the consensus. Which I agree with also!

People have been talking WW being a big factor, but we are no where near our happy cap at the moment in either city. After the workers are done, which we need desperately, I think we build some Archers/Chariots for defense/counter attacks in both cities, and let the pops grow.

I am unsure regarding this I dont think AI start landing ships this early!

The workers in the south need to finish the Rice farm and then road to the Stone and Quarry that. Then road to city #3 ASAP to boost Pyramid production BEFORE chopping the forrests. I would build the Copper mine before chopping anything so we get to work a high production tile sooner.

Understood

Very sensible but should we be chopping at all I am not a big fan?
The worker from Karak Pastures the Horses, then roads to city #3 to tie all resources together.

I think gs should play about 20 turns maybe(T120), which should get us about half way to writing and maybe get the copper mine up and most of the roads in.

Then Scout214 gets the job of chopping the forrests to bring the Pyramids in!

Sounds good. I can play this evening in a few hours.

Double checknig that city #3 if the one east of teh copper with one sea tile.

I think we are undecided whether 1)to build another settler straight away again 2) more workers 3) some more defences

I am in favour of settler and worker ten maybe with 1 or 2 chariots for defense

Only jsut thought of a problem with next settler straight away mean our enemies can attack us over the culture bridge or not. If they can I dont think we should get the culture bride city too soon. I am concerned regarding this so prob will not play which way.

 

[da_Vinci]

I think we still have two huge unanswered questions:

1. Are we building 'mids or not?

2. Are we settling copper next or coast next?

The doubts about the original copper city builds mids idea have increased with today's posts.

I think if we don't get another round of comments an opinions on that, then we are not ready to go forward in the next few hours!

If we don't build 'mids, or if we go for it in the gold city, then I favor settling the coast with the current settler, making a second settler next in Karak for copper city. This may be the best of all worlds:

Build mids in Gold city, settle W coast now, build another settler in Karak

Fastest run to the pyramids, if hw is right (no reason to doubt him, as his prediction of WW onset was right on)

Best shot to get bridge city where we want it. Bridge forms earlier if we settle coast earlier ... this is a race after all!

Copper city can be pre-chopped (jungle) and pre-roaded pehaps when settler finally arrives. I suppose there is a risk that the barbs settle there before us, but proximity to Karak may limit that risk?

I'd like a chance to look at this again at home tonight before we move on ... can you wait to play tomorrow g_s?

Time zones may be making it hard to hear from everyone in the same day when a new issue arises. These settling issues are pretty fundamental, so I think worth the wait to get it right.

dV

 

[da_Vinci]

Only just thought of a problem with next settler straight away mean our enemies can attack us over the culture bridge or not. If they can I dont think we should get the culture bride city too soon. I am concerned regarding this so prob will not play which way.

Unless Saladin sends a galley, no AI can reach us yet. Culture bridge is to an uninhabited island, which is close enough to mainland to get galleys there. So the culture bridge is not going to create any attack risk to us anytime soon.

dV

 

[da_Vinci]

My first mids calculation skimmed over the time it would take to get to the 16 hpt. Here is a revision (not at game so may not be right yet either).

When we settle the city, work city plus a 2F 1H tile, as we need pop 2 ASAP.

2 hpt doubled by stone (may not happen right away) = 4 hpt.

Let's say we get copper mined in 10 turns (travel + build time)

40 hammers, then we get city 1 + copper mine 4 = 5 hpt doubles to 10 by stone.

5 more turns at 10 hpt is 50.

15 turns in, 90 hammers into mids. Pop 2 about here. If another hill is mined, now 16 hpt onwards. Working the grass hill is one food, so no third pop before mids is done.

675 to start, - 180 in chops, 495, - 90 for first 15 turns, 405, divide by 16 is 26 turns. So 41 turns minimum from founding of copper to mids done in copper, if mines can be done on this schedule. More like 400 BC to get mids in copper city.

In Besh, we get 3 hammers from gold mine? 4 from stone quarry? That is also 16 hpt after stone hookup. Let's suppose we can chop 120 hammers. That leaves 555 the hard way. 555 divide by 16 is 35. with another chop (maybe less than 60 due to distance?), migth shave off 3 more turns, and a whip could shave 3 more (or six if whip 2?). But are we starving to work these hammers? Will we need to flip on and off the rice, slowing us down?

If we have to alternate rice and stone, then stone is effectively two hammers per turn. city 1 plus gold 3 plus stone 2 doubles to 12. 555 divided by 12 is 46. Shorter if we burn off any stored food. Not too far from the 41 turns in copper city. Besh is likely better if we have additional chops (beyond the two I figured in).

If we can get mids just as fast in Besh, I say settle coast now, then copper right after.

But let's all sleep on this one before we play.

dV

 

[g_storrow]

I thnk we do mids in 3rd city and we build them.

That is my vote.

 

[da_Vinci]

g_s votes build copper city now, start mids in it.

hw votes skip mids, not clear if he favors settle copper or coast next.

dV thinks that we build mids in gold city, settle coast next, build settler in Karak for copper city ASAP.

Th liked the mids in copper city idea last post, but he has not posted since hw corrected my earlier mids timetable. I expect he will weigh in tonight, as he is US central time (I think).

Lehm is probably off having a beer , I suspect he won't see this new discussion until tomorrow.

C63 seemed on the fence between mids or no mids on his last post. Not clear what he thinks about copper or coast next.

R1 initially liked mids in copper city, but has not posted since the revised due date from hw. He is US pacific time I think, so also likely to check in tonight.

I'll poke S2 to post his thoughts

We need most folks to post their opinion (with some reasons why they think it is best) after considering the later arrival of mids in copper city, and the issue of barbs settling to block our plans. Hopefully, we can get a consensus by early tomorrow and g_s can play it out.

dV

 

[Conquistador 63]

I still like mids. As I haven't done any math I'll take yours/hw's as truth, so mids in gold city is fine by me - and this path also makes settling by copper less urgent, so I'm also fine with settling bridge coast city.
What I tried in my last post was to offer the teammates who don't want to go mids an opportunity to present an alternate plan.

 

[Ronnie1]

I think we make a play for Mids somewhere. Qin looks like he has his hands full with all the barbs up there, and with no outside contact, I believe he will be more inclined to try and fill up his island before he starts building wonders. He has no stone, so our stone is 50% better than his trait bonus.

With that being said, I could go either way on where to build Mids. I do think we need to try and grow our pops to work more tiles. I know we have been in worker/settler mode, but at some point we need to grow so can use the whip more effectively. The reason I like city #3 is that it allows it to grow out of the gate and all the forrests are max potential being in the FC. I don't remember if the copper is on grass or plains. If it is grass, then we work that tile from the outset and get a worker to mine it ASAP. Chop the hill forest first and then mine the hill so pop 2 is working max hammers before chopping forest 3 & 4.

If we can show that city #2 completes it faster, I am fine with building there.

On the question of settling culture bridge city first, I could be persuaded here as well. I don't really want to lose either of those locations to the barbs. But the bridge city is probably more critical to our long term plans, especially if we decide to go for Mids in Beshbalik.

I was hoping to get the game up on my daytime machine today, but if forgot vanilla disc #2 @ home. By tomorrow I should be back at full strength.

 

[da_Vinci]

@ Thrallia: no, it's not the dishes

You are our budding computer guru, right? Go into CvGameCoreDLL and open CvGame.cpp.

Do a search for "Barb" About 80% of the way into the code, you will find a line "void CvGame::CreateBarbarianCities()"

1. Where is starts to loop pLoopPlot, is that saying don't found barb city on water, and don't found it where a CivTeam can see it? I assume we are not a CivTeam being paired with the Barbs.

2. Where the loop finishes with iBestValue=iValue and pBestPlot = pLoopPlot, is this a search to pick the best city location to found a Barb city?

If so, can we figure whether barbs would be more likely to found at copper or at coast?

Looking at Polynesian, with five resources in the fat cross, seems like it does pick best city site.

1S of the west dye is a three resource city, blocks our coast city, and would take three border expansions to make the culture bridge.

Several locations adjacent to the copper also net three resources, so not clear which the barbs would settle first. There are several three resource site elsewhere too.

Does founding w of copper, with the Bananas in our fat cross, make the coast just a two resource city, and less attractive to the barbs? If so, maybe founding W of copper first is best? Who knows?

dV

 

[Ronnie1]

I'm looking at Beshbalik and the current worker down there. It will take 15 turns to finish farming the rice and road through the stone. The second worker will be done in 10 turns(after we start working the rice farm), the quarry will take only 4 turns with 2 workers. If we start counting now (T97=T0) the quarry will be up and roaded to Beshbalik on T16 with 1 worker able to move into the jungle that same turn.

We have 5 squares of jungle/forest/hill plus the copper square to road to city #3 if we place it west of the copper as planned. That is 23 turns for 1 worker to build that road, so about 1/2 that with 2 workers, except that both workers lose a turn moving onto the next tile. So I figure 16 turns to be roaded to city #3. 16 + 16 from the previous paragraph is 32 turns before we get stone hooked in city #3.

I think Besbalik will be our best shot at completing the Mids. We get the stone hooked in 16 turns. The rice farm will allow us to get to pop 3, work the gold mine/stone quarry and be +1 food for slow growth. That gets us 16 hammers per turn. We will have 6 turns after the worker is done at 5H/t for 30H leaving 645. If we come off of the gold after the quarry is done, we will be able to grow to pop 3, 5 turns faster than working the gold and pick up an extra H, we lose the gold for those five turns of course, but I think that will be OK. So we have (6T @ 5H/t = 30H) + (10T @ 12H/t = 120H) then pop 3 for (16H/t). That is 48 turns with NO chops to complete Mids. Chopping the FC forest gives us 60H, cutting 4 turns. Chopping the 2 other forests will net us about 60H given the distance, cutting 4 more turns, so now we are down to 40T total. We can whip at least 1 pop and maybe 2 when we get close, cutting us down to 36T. Turn 97 now + 36 puts us at turn 133. With this set up, I think that is a reasonable time table for completion. I would almost be more worried about Cyrus getting his stone back than Qin and his bonus trait.

I still like settling city #3 by the copper, and then moving the scout out to the west coast to wait for the next settler. There is still a lot of black map, I don't believe we are in immediate danger of the barbs settling on our island.

Those are my 3 cents worth.

 

[da_Vinci]

The mids story gets worse the more I look at it ...

We are 12 turns from a worker in Besh now, cuts to 11 after worker finishes rice farm. We are 14 turns from hooking up the stone (two roads at 3 each, quarry for 8 IIRC), the extra worker is done at the same time.

So if we start on mids in 14 turns in Besh, we net 14 hammers per turn (have to rotate two turns on gold with one on farm to even out food stability).

675, I expect only 120 from chops, 555/14 is 40 turns. So we are 54 turns from mids in Besh if we finish the worker. If we go right to mids now, 14 turns are at 5 hammers per, for 70 hammers saving 5 turns to mids (49 turns).

Next, how fast in copper ...

OK, R1 finds we can't hook the stone there for 32 turns ... then 675 -270 is 405/16 = 26 ... 58 turns minus what few we can cut before the stone hookup. R1's three pop method in Besh looks fastest to mids, and worth the shot I think.

Where to settle now? We can settle west coast in 8 turns, 18 to next settler, + 3 to move and settle, is both settled in 21 turns. If we settle copper now,, then it takes 18 + 8 to settle the coast, or 26 turns to sweat out the barbs.

If barbs settle near copper, we have a shot at founding to steal back the copper by founding as close to it as we can, or maybe we have iron somewhere we can use. If they block the coast, we have to wait for their culture to expand, with no other options.

So I like R1 plan for mids in Besh (lay out the blow by blow of that so we are all clear on the details), but I prefer settling coast now ... plus we can see where iron is before we commit to the coast ... in fact, might we want g_s to do a mid turnset upload when iron is visible and before we settle coast in case that changes our plans on exact location? Might we settle 1 inland if it gets iron?

dV

 

[Scout214]

Getting the city on the west coast looms strategically important to gain access to the next island out that way. If our allies, the Barbarians, plunk down a city that would interfere with us getting that site, we would be at a serious disadvantage vis a vis the other teams.

To me, we need to answer the question as to whether placing our mobile units in the vicinity would suppress our allies from placing a Barbarian city in the area. If we can, the placement of that city can wait and we should do the 'copper' location first. If not, we had better get that port in place so that once the culture expands its reach we will be able to leapfrog over to the next island with galleys. Otherwise, we might have to wait a loooooooooong time to get off of our little homeland. Surely that would be a disaster.

For other current points of discussion I have no strong feeling and will do with my set of turns what the consensus thinks that we ought to do. Except that I like the idea of getting Pyramids if it is feasible.

 

[da_Vinci]

To me, we need to answer the question as to whether placing our mobile units in the vicinity would suppress our allies from placing a Barbarian city in the area. If we can, the placement of that city can wait and we should do the 'copper' location first. If not, we had better get that port in place so that once the culture expands its reach we will be able to leapfrog over to the next island with galleys. Otherwise, we might have to wait a loooooooooong time to get off of our little homeland. Surely that would be a disaster.

From my uneducated look at code, I think we cannot count on our units preventing barbs from settling in a particular location. Maybe Thrallia can confirm?

Which would mean that S2 likes coast before copper.

dV

 

[hellwitch]

Sounds good reasoning
A few questions then:
. where to settle, what to build instead?
. how to get peace?

I vote for 1W of the copper as it allow us to start building the axe force now.
We will get the culture bridge from #4 city - there is no worry for that(our island is tin and we will get it in 30-40 turn anyway)
About the peace: after the first capured town(some on the second) all AI tend to want peace. And in over 10 test games the barbs start to capture cities as the get sword which is near to our current position.
I want to make peace with alex now because we will gain +1 for long peace with him. I have a lot of game where i made Alex a good trading partner the point is to keep him week, otherwise he became a moron and attack unpredicted enemy. The other point is that when war/peace is made the AI mess their production queues - they even stop building a wonder in one town and start to build it in other or start a settlers if they are low in towns and so on.
And you know my opinion for the mids - they are dream from now. If they were the first build in the second city(a lot of turns before 1090BC) we could succeed on them but now i don't think so.
One more think Alex is with only one city (if you look the trade sceen with him) i.e. not building settler, havent seen boats (he starts with fishing) so he is busy with something hudge - gues what.
So for the mids we have two competitors for them - a long time building Alex + not pillaged Qin who can beat us even if he start the mids few turn after us.

 

[hellwitch]

I've look at the graphs. Here are my analysis results - the Geezers builded the mids in 850BC(the culture grow(+6) is lower than ours), the fifth element have builded the Oracle at around 770BC(same as our first culture jump +8). the little culture changes in their graphs talks for obeliscks builded. Also the big jump in the points and power in the Geezers graph says again they get the mids while the no changed graphs of the fifth element i think means that they get the oracle.
One possible tactic(don't know if it is allowed) is to wait till most of the teams goes after 500BC and we can see where are the last builded mids. This can prove that the mids are or not accessible from this point(i'm sure that they are not)
One conclusion - in all ways the mids are hudge risks while building some axes for diffence or for helping the barbs sooner is sure thing.

The WW will be hude with and without the police state(I even found that +25% millitary is bigger adv.) so we will need peace anyway but just sooner. Which is not so bad as better AI development will make the game speed faster+our conquest will be faster.

 

[Thrallia]

Not as bad as I first thought, it occured to me later that we can use barb culture bridge. But I think we want to get right on the coast, as Lehm says, so I think settler ASAP in Karak to beat the barbs to the coast. And move the scout there, in case that makes any difference.

Of course, if they settle inland two tiles, it prevents us from settling within 2 tiles of their city ... that could really delay our attack! If we settle the coast now, then copper ASAP, then we can have the jungles pre-chopped for copper, and hopefully work copper and two hills. Might still be able to get to mids. How fast can we make the second settler if the worker heads north to pasture the horse ASAP?

Maybe we need to think more about the risk that the barbs pose to the coastal city!

Some teams will get copper, then coast without barb interference. If we go coast, then copper, can we compete with them? If no, then we have to try the copper - coast gambit. A risk we have to take. If we think that we are competitive coast first, then copper, no mids, then that might be the safest play. In fact, coast first gives us an earlier land bridge, if nothing else we can send workers to develop the barb cities, if not troops.

We need to run the math on how fast we can get a second settler, if pasture horses helps, etc. Then decide if we want coast before copper.

Regarding peace, I think that since we have never seen a barb on Alex's Island, maybe there is no room for one? Might as well make peace with him, as I don't see any benefit to us for the war. I'd see if we can maintain the other wars until WW gets to onerous.

Workboats don't have anywhere to go exploring, do they? Not until we get the culture bridge up can they get away from our island. I think that after enough workers and settlers, it will be time to make libraries which will allow pop growth, or barracks, or even garrison warriors. So not sure the WB make sense right now.

dV

If the overall better plan(ignoring risk) is the settle the copper city first and coastal city second, then in order to compete for gold, we need to do that, regardless of risk.

Taking a calculated risk for a big gain is something that the best teams do, and succeed at.

However, I agree that in this case, the chances of us getting the Pyramids is the same whether we build them in the copper city or in Beshbalik(and the risk is far less as well), so I vote we build them in Beshbalik, and found our culture bridge next. I wonder whether we should switch to the Pyramids there immediately, whip out the worker for some overflow, or just wait till the worker is finished there...dV, you should be able to figure out which of those is better, you seem good at calculating how long it will take to build something.

@ Thrallia: no, it's not the dishes

You are our budding computer guru, right? Go into CvGameCoreDLL and open CvGame.cpp.

Do a search for "Barb" About 80% of the way into the code, you will find a line "void CvGame::CreateBarbarianCities()"

1. Where is starts to loop pLoopPlot, is that saying don't found barb city on water, and don't found it where a CivTeam can see it? I assume we are not a CivTeam being paired with the Barbs.

2. Where the loop finishes with iBestValue=iValue and pBestPlot = pLoopPlot, is this a search to pick the best city location to found a Barb city?

If so, can we figure whether barbs would be more likely to found at copper or at coast?

Looking at Polynesian, with five resources in the fat cross, seems like it does pick best city site.

1S of the west dye is a three resource city, blocks our coast city, and would take three border expansions to make the culture bridge.

Several locations adjacent to the copper also net three resources, so not clear which the barbs would settle first. There are several three resource site elsewhere too.

Does founding w of copper, with the Bananas in our fat cross, make the coast just a two resource city, and less attractive to the barbs? If so, maybe founding W of copper first is best? Who knows?

dV

Unfortunately, I'm crappy with C++...my best programming abilities are in Java, followed by PHP. But from what I can make of it, essentially a barb city will be founded only where no civ can see it, and only in a spot designated by those blue circles(they both use the same best spot algorithm) So the best way to figure out where the barbs would settle, is to look for the blue circles.

Unfortunately, the only way to tell for us, would be to create a test save using worldbuilder, give ourselves a settler in it, and see where it shows blue circles at...those are the only places the barbs will settle.

I think it highly likely the barbs will settle elsewhere in the world, because there's likely plenty of blue circle areas available there, while jungle tiles make it less likely the barbs will settle on our island before we chop the jungles down.

I vote for 1W of the copper as it allow us to start building the axe force now.
We will get the culture bridge from #4 city - there is no worry for that(our island is tin and we will get it in 30-40 turn anyway)
About the peace: after the first capured town(some on the second) all AI tend to want peace. And in over 10 test games the barbs start to capture cities as the get sword which is near to our current position.
I want to make peace with alex now because we will gain +1 for long peace with him. I have a lot of game where i made Alex a good trading partner the point is to keep him week, otherwise he became a moron and attack unpredicted enemy. The other point is that when war/peace is made the AI mess their production queues - they even stop building a wonder in one town and start to build it in other or start a settlers if they are low in towns and so on.
And you know my opinion for the mids - they are dream from now. If they were the first build in the second city(a lot of turns before 1090BC) we could succeed on them but now i don't think so.
One more think Alex is with only one city (if you look the trade sceen with him) i.e. not building settler, havent seen boats (he starts with fishing) so he is busy with something hudge - gues what.
So for the mids we have two competitors for them - a long time building Alex + not pillaged Qin who can beat us even if he start the mids few turn after us.

I disagree about your analysis of Alex...we have no knowledge of his lands because the barbs haven't spawned there. The only things we know for sure about Alex are that he started with fishing and only has 1 city. My analysis of that, considering our lack of barbs there, is that there's room for a second city, but his culture is already covering it, so no barbs, or that his island is too small for two cities, in which case he has a huge lack of hammers, and it doesn't matter how long he's been building it, he won't finish it.

Lastly, we can see very little of his coastal area, I think it likely he is/has built a work boat and set it up on the far side of his island.