SGOTM 06 - Trash Team

[chopster]

Thoughts for the coming turns:

Work the gold mine as soon as it come on line. See how many turns this reduces AH to.

When should we revolt to slavery?
Immediately? or some later time?
Are we likely to want to whip the first settler, or build it by hand? If we're going to self build it, should we wait until after it's built to revolt, so as to get it out one turn earlier?

I've got 2 thoughts on what to do with the worker once it finishes the gold mine:
1 - N, NW, chop, NW, pasture cows, S, S, S, mine copper
2 - SW, W, mine copper, N, N, N, pasture cows.

The second wastes more worker turns moving, but gets the copper online sooner, while the first gets the cows on sooner (more growth) and wastes fewer turns. This one is a little dependent on the exact timing of AH though, but I think it's about right. How long to chop on epic? There might still be a turn with nothing to do before AH finishes up.

 

[chopster]

Here were some thoughts I had on city placement.
As I said I'm no expert on this, so all input and criticism is appreciated.

Red city: Now, this is different to the spot proposed by patagonia. This site will take longer to be useful, but is coastal, has access to fresh water, and works out ok medium-long term if it works the cows, the rice, the gold, 1 plains hill mine and two grass hill mines. This makes 16hpt at size 6. The down side is of course that it needs culture. After AH, we could detour to mysticism (required anyway) before writing and begin building a monument straight away while working the forst grass hill, and possibly with a chop.

Yellow City: This city site gets the fish and the cows allowing it to work 5 grass hills in its radius while still growing. This city of course also needs culture, and it needs Iron working to deal with the jungle in its radius.

Cyan City: Gets the fish and island cows, also secures spices. Not a lot useful here, other than building a library, and assigning two scientists for research and GPPs towards lightbulbing Astronomy techs. Also needs culture.

Pink City: Just a location that seemed to fit with the others, gets rice and has quite a few river grass tiles for cottaging if we so desired, or farming to run specialists. Needs culture.

Well, there was some talk of building Stonehenge earlier, along with the Oracle in our capital, and this would seem to fit well with the culture requirements of the city sites I drafted. Interested to hear thoughts of all players on these ideas. I usually don't like as much overlap as I've got with these cities either, but it appears we are constrained a little in order to make use of what's there.

 

[cabert]

I disagree with red city.
1 W is better short term, and not worse long term

It's too early to discuss (and more so to found) pink city.

some food for thoughts :
- cottage economy is hard to run in AW.
- there is stone nearby.
Who thinks we have a shot at the pyramids?

 

[remconius]

Good stuff Chopster
Some basics:
->Camera flying - ctrl-Alt-F, but you need to enable it in the civilization.ini file in your my games/warlords folder.
->Autolog - In the options you can turn on all the mod features including the autolog. The autolog is then stored in the my games/warlords/autolog folder.


We definitely have a shot at the pyramids, dont forget we are playing prince. Pretty much anything we attempt on time should work.

Regarding religion. We should get one at some point. We do not need to worry about negative penalties in relations and especially theocracy will give us a nice boost.

 

[chopster]

As I said, purely draft thoughts. Always happy to hear differing opinions - it means we're thinking about things!

->Autolog - In the options you can turn on all the mod features including the autolog. The autolog is then stored in the my games/warlords/autolog folder.

Already turned it all on - every option ticked except "silent" and "default log filename". I did change the location of the file though, maybe this has something to do with it.

EDIT: Fixed now, wonderful.

As this is my first SG, I'm being super cautious - I might play until the gold mine is finished, then post back and we can talk furhter about the next course.

EDIT: Of course, only one turn left as the mine finishes at the end of the next turn.
Here's the state of affairs after that turn:

Interestingly, I didn't realise those two rivers "meet" allowing us access to the gold without roads.

 

[chopster]

I see the points now about the red city - the originally suggested position really only loses fresh water and one plains hill, which we weren't able to work anyway.

I've had a thought about the next few turns too.
I'm thinking of improving the copper, then the cows, and building: Archer (in progress), Archer (2nd city garrison), worker, settler (built/ chopped by 2 workers). I think this will get the settler out only a few turns after it would be if built before the second worker, and allow the improving of the rice and gold to make the city usefull more quickly. What are people's thoughts on this one?

I was thinking of working the following tiles
Size 2: Farmed bananas/ Gold mine
Size 3: as above plus unimproved cows until copper mine finished, then work copper mine until cows are improved, then switch bananas to cows
Size 4: bananas, cows, gold, copper.

Anyone else see a better way for this part?
I know I ask a lot of questions, but I'm really new at trying to optimise my every move, and this is one of the skills I'm really trying to focus on.

 

[remconius]

Excellent to see we have access to the gold. Let's get cows online when we have AH and then the copper followed by a farmed river grassland and we'll be rocking soon.

I agree with the dotmap and cabert's comment. Let's focus on short term with the next couple of cities.
For the Cyan city we might need to place a city on the cows island. Could be a Gyathaar trick that means the difference between needing Astronomy or not

In my dotmap the A's are archers that we should get online asap to secure our perimeter. It's like our private Maginot line and will keep our lands and improvements safe. We can even extend it further to the north.

Great wall is also an excellent wonder in this game.

 

[remconius]

I've had a thought about the next few turns too.
I'm thinking of improving the copper, then the cows, and building: Archer (in progress), Archer (2nd city garrison), worker, settler (built/ chopped by 2 workers). I think this will get the settler out only a few turns after it would be if built before the second worker, and allow the improving of the rice and gold to make the city usefull more quickly. What are people's thoughts on this one?

I was thinking of working the following tiles
Size 2: Farmed bananas/ Gold mine
Size 3: as above plus unimproved cows until copper mine finished, then work copper mine until cows are improved, then switch bananas to cows
Size 4: bananas, cows, gold, copper.

Anyone else see a better way for this part?
I know I ask a lot of questions, but I'm really new at trying to optimise my every move, and this is one of the skills I'm really trying to focus on.

One archer is to defend the new city.
I like the 2 worker approach, before the settler. We'll need more archers after that.
We should also farm the river grassland. 3F 1C is better than just 3F.

Our 3rd city should include the stone if we want to go for the pyramids. (I think we should)

I do like the idea of a specialist economy as the GSs will support a rush for Astronomy. I'll look up the strategy for this one.

One more remark on overall strategy, I noticed in my test game that there is no WW in AW games. Also I was able to kill off my entire continent (napoleon, washington and hannibal) with just axes and a few cats. At prince level you just pile axes and do fine. Of course each AI will need a seperate strategy given their unique unit. MM is best attacked with swords, Alex with Axes and Hanny with some spears (unless we deal with him first)

My economy was completely messed up (losing money at 0% science ) which I did recover from, but very slowly. I should have razed more cities and only kept 6-7 in total. Once the continent is cleansed we can expand at a controlled pace to head over to the next continent. Some well placed GP farm and tech plan should support this.

 

[remconius]

I dug up the Astronomy beeline strategy and Great Scientist prefs.


Astronomy Beeline:
Fishing
The Wheel
Mining
Sailing
Pottery
Bronze Working
Writing
Metal Casting
Iron Working
Mathematics
Compass
Calendar
Machinery
Optics
Astronomy

Great Scientist preferences:
(underlined we need, bold we need to avoid)

Writing (own Research)
Mathematics (own Research or GS)
Scientific Method (later)
Physics (later)
Education (later)
Printing Press (later)
Fiber Optics (later)
Computers (later)
The Wheel (own Research)
Philosophy (avoid by avoiding Meditation)
Chemistry (later)
Fission (later)
Fusion (later)
Optics (GS?)
Paper (avoid by avoiding CS and Theology)
Astronomy (2 x GS?)
Biology (later)
Electricity (later)
Flight (later)
Genetics (later)
Compass (GS?)
Satellites (later)
Sailing (own Research)

What it means is we need to avoid Meditation, CS and Theology. We can use Great Scientists for Mathematics, Compass, Optics and/or Astronomy (2x).

 

[patagonia]

That's a whole lot of scientists, but we don't need to worry about that just yet as none of the avoid techs are on our immediate path (if we take the poly route to priesthood).

My main reservations with building the pyramids for a boosted SE are twofold:

1. In the safe zone behind our proposed Maginot Line, we'll have to sacrifice production in most cities to gain the food surplus we need to run specialists.
2. Even with stone, the pyramids would equate to a whole lot of axes/longbows, which will do us more good in the short term.

I can see the payoff being there once we've secured our island, especially as the AI capitals would doubtless make great scientist farms. However, if we're talking about bulbing most of our way there, representation isn't essential.

I think the main boost the pyramids would give us is in allowing us to run caste system merchants under representation to keep both economy and tech afloat while we overexpand through war. Based on the current map, the best location appears to be the forested plains(?) hill 2N1W of the stone as clear-cutting that area will get us most of the hammers we need once the multipliers are thrown in.

 

[cabert]

So I'm up, next task being :
- build archer, worker, settler
- improve copper, cow, then chop
- settle "red city"
?

Or does chopster have another 10 turns to run?
may I suggest that red city builds a workboat asap?

 

[chopster]

I've still only played 5 turns!
I'm happy to play less than the 30 originally outlined though.

It seems the red city is what we're heading for next, so I'll continue along that path, and post here again with the progress in around 24 hours from now, stopping if I think there's a point that needs further clarification.

There's still a number of hours to change the plan for the next few turns:

Build: Archer, Archer, Worker, Settler, Archer, ....
Tech: AH, Writing?, Myst?, Poly?, Priest?
Settle: City 1 NW of cows

 

[remconius]

Hold your horses, cabert , I think chopster still has a few turns to go.

He posted a few intermediate reports to discuss steps along the way. In his the last screenshot of london he is only at turn 45.... 25 yet to go. I reckon your job is settling the red city, but let's see what the world looks lke 25 turns from now.

@patagoinia - I like the stone city location, we do need some culture asap. chop a monument, I say, so we need to throw in Mysticism at some time.

We dont need all 5 GS, in practice you usually research compass and mathematics yourself, maybe even optics or half of Astronomy.

I do agree to the idea of building 10 Longbows/axemen instead of the pyramids. Who knows maybe we can capture it instead.

 

[remconius]

I've still only played 5 turns!
I'm happy to play less than the 30 originally outlined though.

It seems the red city is what we're heading for next, so I'll continue along that path, and post here again with the progress in around 24 hours from now, stopping if I think there's a point that needs further clarification.

There's still a number of hours to change the plan for the next few turns:

Build: Archer, Archer, Worker, Settler, Archer, ....
Tech: AH, Writing?, Myst?, Poly?, Priest?
Settle: City 1 NW of cows

Go ahead and play the next 25, once the plan is clear. It'll probably include both archers and the worker. Techwise after AH, Writing is pretty safe, before we need to make tactical decisions:

Do we go for the fuedalism slingshot?
Then we need to get to priesthood.

Do we want to try the pyramids?
We need Masonry, a third city, mysticism, the wheel and a monument.

Do we want to rush MM or someone else?
We'd need the cow/fish city as 3rd (or stick with 2 cities) and pump out a dozen axes.

Personally I like the idea of Feudalism slingshot, without the Mids and then clean out the continent with longbows. There is not much the AI can bring to the party to handle longbows and they make great defenders once we capture cities.

 

[cabert]

IMHO we can do the feud slingshot AND get the mids, but this being AW, a raid is in order.

 

[patagonia]

IMHO we can do the feud slingshot AND get the mids, but this being AW, a raid is in order.

This being prince, I think cabert may be right. It's a gamble, but one that could set us up nicely for the remainder of the game.

If one forest goes to chop a monument, that leaves us 5 for the mids, which will get us 40% of the way there if we fell them when the stone's hooked up. Since we'll need to build the rest the slow way, we probably only need to send 1/2 workers there to get the chops done in time, and Nottingham will act as a good buffer for our early "core" of London and York.

If we go down that route, we should forget about stonehenge. London will need a rax and to pump archers, a 3rd worker and another settler in addition to the oracle; York should probably be an archer/axe pump and nothing but.

The main thing we'd need to be careful of if adopting that approach is slowing down our feudalism sling too much with the maintenance our archers and 3rd city will be costing us. With both gold mines operational, we should be OK at this level though.

 

[stuge]

Let's just focus on getting longbows ASAP and then cracking some heads. I don't like the idea of founding a city to grab the stone. It'd put an unwelcome strain on our research and be hard to defend. Especially keeping the stone online would be hard.

Chopster, heed cabert's suggestion of building a workboat first in red dot city. Some naval intelligence will come in handy.

 

[remconius]

I am with Stuge on this one. Let's focus on getting Longbows asap and overwhelm the AI with hordes and hordes of Longbow.

 

[cabert]

the problem we face here is lack of knowledge of the map.
If we can get domination without astro we certainly don't need the mids. For this what we need is :
- a military tech
- production
- CoL (for caste system)
and to build settlers to get the required land, then assign artists to get the culture.
If we need astro, we certainly would benefit from mids.

 

[pigswill]

We could go for conquest which tends to be cheaper in maintenance than domination. If we're going for that it would be worth considering Great Wall so we can raze cities freely without having to worry about barb infestations.

We probably need to get a clearer picture of the continent to see where we stand in terms of land area for domination. I would be (pleasantly) surprised if we could reach domination without needing astronomy.