SGOTM 05 - Murky Waters

[Gnejs]

Stoppit - stoppit! I can't breath, laughing too much!! Heimlich someone, heimlich!

You just lost your turn set waster!

Stop acting like an idiot. Do something useful instead. Like finding that nice attack plan picture you told me that you have made. I would like to put it in my Grand Plan post...

 

[jesusin]

Yes gold. Overflow more than the cost of the unit is translated to at a 1:1 ratio.

Example: pop-rush warrior show 50 + 3 from production => 53 - 22 - 22 = 1 warrior + 22 + 9

Never heard of that. Must be a Warlords feature. Vanilla doesn't work that way.

 

[Erkon]

Stop acting like an idiot. Do something useful instead. Like finding that nice attack plan picture you told me that you have made. I would like to put it in my Grand Plan post...

Page 34 waster

 

[Gnejs]

Never heard of that. Must be a Warlords feature. Vanilla doesn't work that way.

Check this strategy article


Edit: Errr, that was warlords.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Gift EK to Toku T0 (after pillaging copper).

T11 retake EK and gift immediately to Asoka.

T22 retake EK and hopefully free peace with Toku.

T25 EK out of anarchy, but probably lacking granary.

T28 free peace with Asoka.

Very important questions related to WW:

1. Why 11 turns betwee DoP and recapture? (EDIT: and Re-DoP w/Toku?)
2. Can we capture EK from Toku and gift to Asoka on the same turn?
3. In other words, can we lower our WW by DoP w/Asoka the same turn we raise it with DoW w/Toku?

ALERT: to Gnejs My calculations for fastest Keshik to the main continent did NOT factor in WW, so I'm revisiting it. This will probably cause a few delays, we'll see. Plus, keep in mind, I'm making assumptions about WW that may not hold true. We may go above klarius' feared 133%. I'm assuming we won't...

 

[Erkon]

Never heard of that. Must be a Warlords feature. Vanilla doesn't work that way.

You are indeed correct, it's a Warlords feature. What were the odds me being right twice the same day

 

[LowtherCastle]

Stop acting like an idiot. Do something useful instead. Like finding that nice attack plan picture you told me that you have made. I would like to put it in my Grand Plan post...

Not sure if these strategic maps might be helpful too:

 

[Gnejs]

Not sure if these strategic maps might be helpful too:

Great! You two have obviously been doing some good stuff. Pity it gets overlooked among all the useless ramblings that you are so fond of...

 

[Erkon]

Can someone check the save to see how many turns till HBR, starting now and working the gold in Drojf?

I've tried to emulate what happens if we gift EK and whip MW and not work the horse, and the HBR takes 34 turns to complete. I think 30 turns is a bit optimistic...

 

[LowtherCastle]

Okay, guys, I've got a bit of bad but true news. My kalle and Orgar charts and the Gnejs/klarius ones today were not fully accurate because of what happens after we re-DoW Asoka (WW>=100% for 7 turns). The ideal solution, of course, is to pop-rush MW from pop4>pop2 on the same turn as the re-DoW, minimizing the effect. I don't have time to re-work the charts today, but this looks doable with the Kalle Plan, probably the Orgar-QG plan and the Orgar-EK is already good to go.

Worse news for Gnejs. The Gnejs/klarius fastest Keshik Plan looks tragic. The timing of the re-DoW could hardly be worse. As a consolation, I offer an alternative solution that seems to work just fine:

We poprush 2 unpromoted axes in EK and gift to Toku on T6, Asoka on T16/17. The rest stays pretty much the same with the 2 chariots, 2 galleys, etc., except that the QG settler comes out a bit earlier, T28, and the Keshik later, T35.​

Now if Erkon is right about HBR, then this solution is better anyway, because the 2 axes are ready to cross the ocean on T34 at BBW border expansion.

 

[Erkon]

Vote postponed. From the responses since yesterday, I get the impression that we're not ready for a decision. The proposal to gift EK twice is obviously interesting enough to pay further attention to.

For the sake of clarity, can we dedicate a post to each candidate that we keep updated? This may lead to plans spread out over several pages, but I will update post 4 to point to these posts for easy access. Yes?

EDIT: post 4 has been updated with more links to posts, see spoiler section. Please tell me if you miss anything.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I seem to remember someone saying that "we fear for our safety" only kicks in at a certain population. How does that work?

 

[jesusin]

I seem to remember someone saying that "we fear for our safety" only kicks in at a certain population. How does that work?

In normal games, you see 1 unhappy face at pop3, 2 at pop6. I think that it is 33% per pop and it gets added to WW. But I am not a SDK reader anyway.


I would have liked to play tomorrow this time. Erkon says we are not ready for a decision yet (I agree, "one more day", as usual ). I will be on the road from saturday to 27th, no computer, no reading posts (please be good, restrain yourself to a million posts a day). So if play doesn't start today/tomorrow, I would like to have my turn swapped with someone's else.

Now I will concentrate on the problem. I'll be back with a brilliant solution soon, only to see it rebutted easily by your wise appreciations.

 

[LowtherCastle]

A few comments on your strategy, Gnejs

An excellent strategy, I think. Here are some thoughts you triggered in my mind that might fit in to your strategy somehow:​

Distances

1. Note that Asoka is about as close as Isabella.
2. Settling BBW on rice adds a turn to all sea travel.

Leveraging the barbs

1. Obviously, we should time our cease fire>DoW when barbs are lurking. A great way to kill off Asoka.
2. Helps limit our unit costs.
3. Razing cities increases barb spawning tiles.

DoP

1. only provides temporary WW relief
2. doesn't decrease the WW points significantly
3. is counter-productive to our goal of barb harrassment

WW:

1. Leveraging barbs also creates never-ending WW points.
2. Picking off cities creates a lot of WW points.
3. Pillaging resources does not create WW points.
4. For purposes of fast conquest, exterminating an AI is the only useful way to lower WW points.
5. Badly crippling an AI, then DoP can be a reasonable, Phase-1 alternative to extermination.

Financing the War

1. Kept cities will be a huge drag on our economy.
2. Unit costs will be high.
3. Our few cottages will gradually improve our situation.

Feudalism

Sal and ALex got the early religions. They may be our biggest concerns for Feudalsim. My guess is that Gyathaar has a surprise in AlexLand, knowing that we wouldn't be able to spy on him early on.​

Conclusions:

We need to balance initial military actions with our limited finances and our desperate need to reduce WW. I think we might want to consider two small forces: 1) a pillaging unit that will focus on our last targets and attempt to force peace treaties with unwilling AIs and 2) a conquest unit that will go after the most easily destroyed AIs, following a logical path. For example, Asoka>Cyrus>Toku>Alex, with a secondary force going Isa>Toku. In fact, the very first units might be more useful just pillaging and not capturing cities at all. We might even want to dedicate a galley to going around to Alex and transporting pillagers there to slow him down.​

Random observations:

• Isa has copper in her hill capital!!! We may need to cripple her econony and leave her capital until we have amassed a huge attack force.
• A single road through the heartland will speed travel to Isa, Asoka, and Toku. An early worker to build that road might pay off in the end.
• 2 galleys and a road on the Island W of BBW can reduce mvmt costs.
• Another goal for early city capture is to pick off some free workers, like from Isa.

 

[jesusin]

Settling BBW on rice adds a turn to all sea travel.

2 galleys and a road on the Island W of BBW can reduce mvmt costs.

Well seen!
With your solution there's no delay. Without it, it is not a whole turn but 1 tile (by travelling S).


By the way, our Scouts are sitting in the cities. Should they...
a) stay like that
b) be disbanded
c) lurk in the jungle fugbusting so that no ore barbs pop up in our island.
d) try to pass to Saladin land on a barb galley (would workers run away and stop working or that doesn't happen with Scouts?).



Thoughts about our decision:
1.- In Klarius solution roads don't help Settlers at all and EK chop won't happen, so the worker is free to... pasture the pigs! If we are eager for an Axe we could gift EK on T1 instead of T0, I don't think we should, though.
2.- Since stone is for Drojf, we will never build KK.
3.- It is cheaper to gift EK once than to build a junk city that we don't really want. In addition, the settler almost built in MW can then be used to get BBW sooner. No junk city then.
4.- Due to the previous two points, we will build only 2 settlers from now on, for the two bridges.
5.- In the 3 excel options there are a bunch of warriors built. BBW won't need police, it will always be small and it is not afraid of the barbs. So 4 warriors for MP is all we need in the long term. If we build them now, we would save hammers (later on copper will be reconnected) but we might start paying unit maintenace sooner. How many should we built?
And now the great idea you have to frown upon:
6.- Would Toku accept Drojf for peace? I can't test it at the moment since that would be playing forward. Murky, do you know?
Ok, the idea is to gift Drojf, saving EK granary and it's great production. We would be losing gold though. An important side benefit is that we free MW from building the second settler, so it can concentrate on Galleys.

 

[LowtherCastle]

A combination of studying all your ideas, game mechanics from klarius, doing hours of excel charts, and not being able to fall asleep tonight has led me to the following rationale which I think gives us a way out of this dilemma.

Our Threats
1. Feudalism, because of our settler-level-AI-on-valium tech rate. No way to conquer fast enough (WW, maint. costs, lousy production sites, etc.)==> We must pillage the AI's economies==>We need access to all AIs asap + keshiks are the best in terms of cost, speed, and power
2. War Weariness. We must maintain WW at < 50%, because that and only that enables us to poprush pop4>pop2 in all our cities (5 cap). Now, Asoka may be 50% of our WW, but for how long? ==> DoP Toku and Asoka.
3. Maintenance Costs. We need to have 2-3 cottages growing. (Maybe eventually grab California Gold Rush near Toku.) I'm not convinced captured cities and pillaging will provide enough money.==> We need to pasture the pigs. The lost hammers are minor by comparison and once we get EK back, it won't want to share the bananas with MW.

Key Factors

• Access all AIs asap=> 1)BBW, 2)QG
• Pillage AIs asap => Keshiks => tech to HBR
• WW<50%=> Gift EK to Toku, then to Asoka
• Finances => pasture pigs

I don't like it, but I find it to be the unavoidable reality.

 

[klarius]

There is only one unhappiness percentage in a city (in fact it's calculated in 1/1000s). All sources of unhappiness are summed up first, then multiplied by population and then divided by 1000.
So there not really whole numbers of unhappies if there are several sources of unhappiness.
There is a fixed 334/1000 unhappiness for safety. So lacking other sources this gives the 3, 6 ... breakpoints for another unhappy.
WW is 5/1000 per WW point.
We will have to deal with another source of unhappiness when gifting and retaking cities. That's the foreign plot culture part (motherland). That's 400/1000 times the fraction of foreign culture.
That's no big problem for EK as MW will help the plot culture. Other gifted cities will have 50% foreign population (plot culture) after retaking meaning another 200/1000 unhappiness. After building an obelisk this will go down quickly (the 50% means we have 1 plot culture each).
All these minor 1/1000s don't show up in the game interface at small population.
So 2 WW red faces shown @ pop 2, can mean e.g. 1.005 really from WW, .668 from undefended and the rest from foreign culture.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Well seen!
With your solution there's no delay. Without it, it is not a whole turn but 1 tile (by travelling S). Yeah, I know it's only 1 tile, but the end result is a whole turn, especially at the beginning, because each unit arrives on the main continent in 6 turns instead of 5 or it takes 6 galleys to chain instead of 5...

Thoughts about our decision:
1.- In Klarius solution roads don't help Settlers at all and EK chop won't happen, so the worker is free to... pasture the pigs! I agree about the pigs. We also need roads to BBW for keshiks and units, don't we? If we are eager for an Axe we could gift EK on T1 instead of T0, I don't think we should, though. Good idea. Wouldn't it be T2 before the axe is done?
4.- Due to the previous two points, we will build only 2 settlers from now on, for the two bridges. I agree.
And now the great idea you have to frown upon:
6.- Would Toku accept Drojf for peace? ]

I think so. Problem is, we need the from the gold, badly. The is important too, especially since BBW will lose money. Furthermore, the city hasn't grown to pop2 yet, so we'd have to wait forever to tkae it back.

 

[LowtherCastle]

DOes it take the floor of the unhappiness percentage?

 

[Gnejs]

A combination of studying all your ideas, game mechanics from klarius, doing hours of excel charts, and not being able to fall asleep tonight has led me to the following rationale which I think gives us a way out of this dilemma.

Our Threats
1. Feudalism, because of our settler-level-AI-on-valium tech rate. No way to conquer fast enough (WW, maint. costs, lousy production sites, etc.)==> We must pillage the AI's economies==>We need access to all AIs asap + keshiks are the best in terms of cost, speed, and power
2. War Weariness. We must maintain WW at < 50%, because that and only that enables us to poprush pop4>pop2 in all our cities (5 cap). Now, Asoka may be 50% of our WW, but for how long? ==> DoP Toku and Asoka.
3. Maintenance Costs. We need to have 2-3 cottages growing. (Maybe eventually grab California Gold Rush near Toku.) I'm not convinced captured cities and pillaging will provide enough money.==> We need to pasture the pigs. The lost hammers are minor by comparison and once we get EK back, it won't want to share the bananas with MW.

Key Factors

• Access all AIs asap=> 1)BBW, 2)QG
• Pillage AIs asap => Keshiks => tech to HBR
• WW<50%=> Gift EK to Toku, then to Asoka
• Finances => pasture pigs

I don't like it, but I find it to be the unavoidable reality.

Sums it up nicely. Regarding maintenance. I outlined an idea about keeping one or two production cities per continent to help build more units locally. This is going to get very expensive and once we have broken the AI(s) we should prepare to gift that city to some other, unsuspecting AI. We could keep some units nearby to recapture it near the end, or let the barbarians grab it.