SGOTM 06 - Xteam

[Cactus Pete]

I see we have two GOTM25 medalists among us. I see you're both in the top 6 in the latest global rankings too with JT's rise to such heights (CP is used to it!). Well done CP and JT!

Thanks for noticing, MP. JT's fastest Conquest with highest Conquest score is no mean feat.

 

[leif erikson]

Congratulations Gentlemen. Nice to rub elbows with such stars!

 

[Frederiksberg]

Well done JT and CP .

I tried the Library build in Timbuktu and it doesn't work - at least not in the test game. The issue is that CoL is only 12 turns away and there is no time to chop the Library. Whipping reduces pop by 2 and before it has regrown and 2 scientists can be hired we are only 4 turns from CoL and caste system but with 2 pop less than we could have had. So I think it's better not to build a Library at all - it's simply a waste of hammers. The only thing that seems important now is growing pop and preparing for war!

Since the GS strategy seems to be the bottleneck I will try a modified approach where our GS farms Timbuktu, Carthage and Athens are allowed to grow and workers and settlers are built in York, London and (later) Ivoryville and Ironsite.

The new city sites I will focus on is the Gold city north of Tim, Horse city - possibly on top of bananas working the cow tile that Ironsite will not be working anyway at size 3 where its better off working fish and two gold mines. I will probably have time for 1-2 more cities depending on how the game evolves.

The fact that we have enough research capacity also means that I will build no Libraries and also no Courthouses. I haven't figured out if Carthage should have a Lighthouse but in any case that would be the only lighthouse built. So cities build granaries and barracks and military units. Let's see how that works out...

 

[Frederiksberg]

I tested the approach mentioned above. I didn't play through to Astronomy but stopped at turn 158 (130 BC) because I have a reasonable prediction of the time to Astronomy for the test. As far as I can see it will be around turn 183 and GS's are now well timed with self research.

Research path was Priest-CoL-Mono-Hunting-Calendar-Philo

GS timing: Tim (155), Carth (170), Tim (176), Athens (183)

Obviously, the numbers after turn 158 are predicted.

One problem I saw was that we need to eliminate Greece in order to use Athens as a GP farm - otherwise we have too many angry faces. Barbs was also a problem - Particularly in Tim and Athens. I settled the Gold City and was close to settling the Horse City by turn 158. I captured and kept Sparta which may have been a mistake due to maintenance in a city with very little commerce. I could see that with a final gold chop in Horse city there would be gold enough to finish research at 100%.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Continued test until Astronomy to verify predictions. Got it in turn 181 (215 AD).

Continued tech path Construction-MC-Compass-Machinery

Result of chop in Horse City:

Spoiler :

Cities test 215 AD:

Spoiler :

State of economy test 215 AD:

Spoiler :

Military test 215 AD:

Spoiler :

 

[leif erikson]

Nice work Fred!!

This sounds interesting. I see 11 cities on the list and need to ask, given the problems with happiness in Athens, if you think we should ditch Sparta as soon as we dispatch the Carthaginians? It sounds like it adds more headaches than help?

It sounds to me like once we have Astronomy, Civil Service and Construction, it is a game of annihilation using Maces, Cats and Galleons!

 

[Cactus Pete]

Appreciate the considerable effort, Fred. Questions:

You got Philosophy without Meditation?

With CS available and macemen available (about the time we get galleons built?), how many WE's do we need? Given the distances we're likely to have to transport troops, we're going to have to emphasize quality rather than quantity (and presumably chop and whip some from captured citiies). I can certainly see WE's and cats in our first galleon(s), but not sure how many WE's after that.

Don't we need Sparta to produce galleons if other civs are to the east?

Saw that you researched Mono (a change of mind?). Did you convert to Conf. and switch to Organized Religion to build missionaries and convert citiies?

You're not using a Great Merchant for CS?

I see we have no caravels (I know, you're testing other things), but we need to think about getting at least one built to circumnavigate and find the other civs (perhaps loaded with the Taoism missionary to pop huts) and know on which side of our continent we want to build our navy before Astronomy. Thus, don't we need to work Sailing in sooner, and, if so, . . . What did you decide about a Lighthouse in Carthage?

Is our gold situation likely to be good enough to upgrade swords to maces and galleys to galleons?

I'm leaving for four days tomorrow morning, so I'll just mention that we shouldn't become so immersed in this strategy that we fail to notice should enough tiles be revealed to allow Domination without Astronomy.

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

I see we have two GOTM25 medalists among us. I see you're both in the top 6 in the latest global rankings too with JT's rise to such heights (CP is used to it!). Well done CP and JT!

Thanks guys

Congratulations Gentlemen. Nice to rub elbows with such stars! Hah, don't know about that!:D

Good testing Fred, I'll have to get my butt into gear and try the 3GP approach soon.

Once we decide how many GP's we are going for, it is only the date that the final one pops that is important.

For example:

We decide which cities will pop each GS. They are grown simulatneously at the rate of the slowest city. Once that city has popped a GS the other two cities already have 150gpps invested and need only another 150 and can possibly hire more scientists. Once the second cities pops the GS the third city is at 300gpp and can reach the final GS by running as many scientists as it can.


eg.

(2 or 3 scientist) (3 or 4 scientist) (4 or 5 scientist)

Timbu --------->--------------------->------------------------->
Athen---------->--------------------->
Carth ---------->

A nice theory, like I said earlier I badly need to run a test game with this.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Once we decide how many GP's we are going for, it is only the date that the final one pops that is important.

For example:

We decide which cities will pop each GS. They are grown simulatneously at the rate of the slowest city. Once that city has popped a GS the other two cities already have 150gpps invested and need only another 150 and can possibly hire more scientists. Once the second cities pops the GS the third city is at 300gpp and can reach the final GS by running as many scientists as it can.


eg.

(2 or 3 scientist) (3 or 4 scientist) (4 or 5 scientist)

Timbu --------->--------------------->------------------------->
Athen---------->--------------------->
Carth ---------->

A nice theory, like I said earlier I badly need to run a test game with this.

Your approach is quite similar to what I actually did except that I got my first GS in Tim (T155) before any of the other GP farms were ready. I used him to bulb Philo and switch to Pacifism. After that they more or less followed each other wrt GP points. Athens got a slow start but took revenge later running 6 scientists for a massive 36 GP points per turn. I think the timing was as follows Carth (T169), Tim (T176), Athens (T181).

ShannonCT's test save starts at T128 in a situation he has probably reconstructed from your turn log and then played a little further to completion of Stonehenge. If we don't get the Henge or if our workers are not well placed to chop gold in Ivoryville some of these numbers will be a little off. Anyway we should get an idea of the big picture from these simulations. Looking forward to comparing notes with you and ShannonCT...

 

[Frederiksberg]

You got Philosophy without Meditation?

No, I just forgot to write it. It was only one turn of research anyway.

With CS available and macemen available (about the time we get galleons built?), how many WE's do we need? Given the distances we're likely to have to transport troops, we're going to have to emphasize quality rather than quantity (and presumably chop and whip some from captured citiies). I can certainly see WE's and cats in our first galleon(s), but not sure how many WE's after that.

I didn't really consider this during play since my goal was just to illustrate that we could start building our army as soon as Construction was researched. Some of the WE's could be changed to cats. I think 3 cats for 2 WE or something like that. In the test game I was missing a little gold (around 230) to complete CS in 9 turns but with a little more care I could have got them out of Sparta by chopping 3 forests into gold

This sounds interesting. I see 11 cities on the list and need to ask, given the problems with happiness in Athens, if you think we should ditch Sparta as soon as we dispatch the Carthaginians? It sounds like it adds more headaches than help?

Don't we need Sparta to produce galleons if other civs are to the east?

Maintenance is high at 215 AD: 70 gpt out of a total income of 152 gpt. Still, we are making 36 gpt which should be enough to support an increasing army. We also know from previous games that when we start capturing enemy cities we can finance the cities with the stolen gold. So I think we can keep Sparta. It has reasonable production capacity with cow and horses.

Saw that you researched Mono (a change of mind?). Did you convert to Conf. and switch to Organized Religion to build missionaries and convert citiies?

When it became clear that the GS timing and not the self research was the critical path it seemed clear that there was no time to wait for Athens to build both a Monastery and a Missionary and it was better to spend 4 turns researching Monotheism. By the way, I was lucky and Carthage became the Conf. Holy City meaning that I only had to build one missionary for Timbuktu.

You're not using a Great Merchant for CS?

It would require that we self researched Currency. And we can't get the GM earlier than 21 turns after 215 AD which seems a bit late when we can self research CS in 9 turns.

I see we have no caravels (I know, you're testing other things), but we need to think about getting at least one built to circumnavigate and find the other civs (perhaps loaded with the Taoism missionary to pop huts) and know on which side of our continent we want to build our navy before Astronomy. Thus, don't we need to work Sailing in sooner, and, if so, . . . What did you decide about a Lighthouse in Carthage?

I never built a lighthouse. I think granary is much better to boost production when we go back to slavery. I could have started a lighthouse instead of barracks but it would only be started (10 hammers) anyway by 215 AD. Lighthouse would not influence the Astronomy date because it's mainly determined by the development of Athens where we get the last GS.

I researched Sailing after CoL I think. Forgot to write it down. We could have built a caravel a little sooner than the Astro date if Construction had been postponed but that would mean no WE's and cat's. We could also have postponed Calendar but that would also have delayed Astro since Athens would have had one less happy face (from spices). I think we must get circumnavigation using galleons from either side of our continent.

Is our gold situation likely to be good enough to upgrade swords to maces and galleys to galleons?

It would require that we settled a new city for gold chopping. We could probably find a spot that was worth about 1000 gold. It would increase maintenance.

 

[ShannonCT]

Continued test until Astronomy to verify predictions. Got it in turn 181 (215 AD).

I got the exact same date for Astronomy.

I also found that it was best to not whip a library in Timbuktu and go for maximum population growth leading up to CoL.

With CS available and macemen available (about the time we get galleons built?), how many WE's do we need? Given the distances we're likely to have to transport troops, we're going to have to emphasize quality rather than quantity (and presumably chop and whip some from captured citiies). I can certainly see WE's and cats in our first galleon(s), but not sure how many WE's after that.

In my tests, I was able to build a sizable army along with half a dozen galleys on the west coast. After we get Astronomy, we could consider turning research to 0% for long enough to upgrade galleys to galleons so we could get an assault force of swords, cats, and elephants out more quickly. Then, we could research Monarchy and Currency while growing a Great Merchant in Athens for Civil Service. Finally, shut down research again for upgrading to macemen and for supporting a large army.

Don't we need Sparta to produce galleons if other civs are to the east?

We can get several galleys from Carthage before Astronomy with all of the extra forests outside of its fat cross and because of the fact that Carthage can start working its copper and horses about 8 turns before we get Astronomy. I think Sparta is more of a liability.

It would require that we self researched Currency. And we can't get the GM earlier than 21 turns after 215 AD which seems a bit late when we can self research CS in 9 turns.

It might work out better to use the gold that we would have spent on CS to upgrade galleys and accept the delay in CS. We can still put together a nice second wave of macemen by building swordsmen and saving up gold (or chopping it) to upgrade.

We could have built a caravel a little sooner than the Astro date if Construction had been postponed but that would mean no WE's and cat's. We could also have postponed Calendar but that would also have delayed Astro since Athens would have had one less happy face (from spices). I think we must get circumnavigation using galleons from either side of our continent.

Triremes upgrade to Caravels right? If we build one trireme on each coast we can get our exploration and circumnavigation started a bit earlier.

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

Well I finally tested out the 3GP approach. I got Astronomy on 365AD, turn 191. Ten turns slower than Fred and ShannonCT with their 4 GP-Pacifism approach.

The two approaches may actually be very similar since I was stalled in my game waiting until Carthage went from 5 archers down to 2 so I could capture it easily. This meant I didn't take Carthage until 325BC, turn 145. This was the bottleneck and Astronomy was done 46 turns after capturing Carthage.

I had all the same techs researched as in Fred's example minus Meditation, Philosophy and Monotheism. I did however have time to research Monarchy and was half way to CS. This isn't surprising since my Astronomy date was 10 turns later.

One major thing I noticed in my test, (disclaimer: I wasn't concentrating too hard on troop movements etc) was how threatened our cities became from barb archers. We definitely need to have a robust plan for either fogbusting or having axes to defend. I needed to enter worldbuilder quite a few times and give myself an extra defending axe.

Secondly, we will need to take extreme care with workers and timing the forest chops to max out our cash from building walls. All too often I forgot to cancel all worker actions and had to reload the autosave since the wall chop got mucked up (select any worker who is busy in action and shift-click on the last red "cancel" icon). Also, I had a problem with not paying attention and building the walls with the normal city production before the chops were done. . Really hate for us to make either of those mistakes in our real game. We need to be careful .

I only settled 2 more cities for forest chopping and these let me research at 100% the whole time [there may have been a couple of turns in the middle of 50% research just before the next chop came in]. The cities I chose were one on ivory north of Ivoryville with 6-7 forests and the one by the original northern horses with 12 or so forests. The gold city would probably have been a good addition.

One good trick is going into anarchy if you have more prechopped forests than workers. With roads on the prechopped forests each worker can chop two forests into the wall. I used this when switching to heriditary rule.

If we can't whip in Carthage once we capture it I wonder if our single eastern workboat will be enough to swiftly scout the remaining islands?

I agree that growing pop leading up to CoL is the way to go. Also, Athens is the best GP farm with 3 seafood (and lighthouse) plus sheep. Fred already showed this since he used Athens to pop the final GS in his test.

 

[leif erikson]

One major thing I noticed in my test, (disclaimer: I wasn't concentrating too hard on troop movements etc) was how threatened our cities became from barb archers. We definitely need to have a robust plan for either fogbusting or having axes to defend. I needed to enter worldbuilder quite a few times and give myself an extra defending axe.

This could work to our advantage as well. If we have the Gold to upgrade Swords to Maces, we can use the Barbs to promote our Swords to CR3 before sending them on campaign.

Secondly, we will need to take extreme care with workers and timing the forest chops to max out our cash from building walls. All too often I forgot to cancel all worker actions and had to reload the autosave since the wall chop got mucked up (select any worker who is busy in action and shift-click on the last red "cancel" icon). Also, I had a problem with not paying attention and building the walls with the normal city production before the chops were done. . Really hate for us to make either of those mistakes in our real game. We need to be careful

I played around with this last night to get a feel for it and was tired. I messed up several times on chops and it does require one to be alert. It is hard to recover from mistakes.

This may be a dumb question, but I tried using other structures to gather the Gold overflow and they don't seem to work like Walls do? Are there any other builds that work?

If we can't whip in Carthage once we capture it I wonder if our single eastern workboat will be enough to swiftly scout the remaining islands?

I think there are enough Forests around Carthage that we could use one to rush a Workboat? We need another at Athens too sometime.

I agree that growing pop leading up to CoL is the way to go. Also, Athens is the best GP farm with 3 seafood (and lighthouse) plus sheep. Fred already showed this since he used Athens to pop the final GS in his test.

Yes, but I did have trouble with the population wanting to rejoin their nation. I think we should make a decision on keeping or ditching Sparta. It could mean the difference in getting that Great Merchant to rush CS?

 

[rrau]

I was the late one in all these tests. Didn't get it until turn 245, but I had trouble with barbs and by the time the city would expand to the fat cross (missionary) for the chops, I'd have tun several turns at 0 research. Did you guys wait until the expansion of the city or just chop with the initial 9 tiles? Also, I had trouble remembering on the prechops, too and finally had to order a worker to chop, then find that worker again and order it to stop before hitting enter and, while tedious, it worked.

 

[leif erikson]

The graphs on the results page have taken an interesting turn. CRC is off and running in all three graphs, score, culture and power. Looks like they got The Oracle?

 

[ShannonCT]

The two approaches may actually be very similar since I was stalled in my game waiting until Carthage went from 5 archers down to 2 so I could capture it easily. This meant I didn't take Carthage until 325BC, turn 145. This was the bottleneck and Astronomy was done 46 turns after capturing Carthage.

It shouldn't be too surprising that the 3 GS approach gives a similar date, since the 4 GS approach means losing three turns for revolting to Organized Religion, Pacifism, and Confucianism. If we decided to research Theology sometime after Astronomy, having several Confucian cities would be useful.

One major thing I noticed in my test, (disclaimer: I wasn't concentrating too hard on troop movements etc) was how threatened our cities became from barb archers. We definitely need to have a robust plan for either fogbusting or having axes to defend. I needed to enter worldbuilder quite a few times and give myself an extra defending axe.

I spread around the survivors from the battle of Carthage to help with barbs but still found that I needed to build 2-3 more axes. Building a couple more warriors before we research Hunting might be a good idea too.

Secondly, we will need to take extreme care with workers and timing the forest chops to max out our cash from building walls. All too often I forgot to cancel all worker actions and had to reload the autosave since the wall chop got mucked up (select any worker who is busy in action and shift-click on the last red "cancel" icon). Also, I had a problem with not paying attention and building the walls with the normal city production before the chops were done. . Really hate for us to make either of those mistakes in our real game. We need to be careful .

I think the best way to avoid mistakes is to check all of your workers at the end of every single turn and cancel any that show 2 turns until forest chop (which really means that the forest wil be chopped next turn). I screwed this up several times too, but I was playing a lot faster than I play the real thing.

If we can't whip in Carthage once we capture it I wonder if our single eastern workboat will be enough to swiftly scout the remaining islands?

If not, chop chop!

This could work to our advantage as well. If we have the Gold to upgrade Swords to Maces, we can use the Barbs to promote our Swords to CR3 before sending them on campaign.

I think this is a better idea than overbuilding axes. Barbs are good training for swords and elephants.

This may be a dumb question, but I tried using other structures to gather the Gold overflow and they don't seem to work like Walls do? Are there any other builds that work?

Overflow works the same with all buildings, but walls are the only one that get us a bonus. We get a 100% bonus being Protective and another 100% for having stone. So 1 hammer = 3 gold for walls, and 1 hammer = 1 gold for any other building.

I think there are enough Forests around Carthage that we could use one to rush a Workboat? We need another at Athens too sometime.

You're right, we could use some of the hammers in Carthage's initial square for things like a workboat, granary, lighthouse, etc, and then chop a few forests outside its fat cross when we're chopping for gold.

Yes, but I did have trouble with the population wanting to rejoin their nation. I think we should make a decision on keeping or ditching Sparta. It could mean the difference in getting that Great Merchant to rush CS?

My test game is a little screwed up in that I've killed off all of the other civs and they can't be resurected, so you have to keep Greece in the game to keep playing. But then you get several extra unhappy faces in Athens that we wont really have after we deal with Sparta. I corrected for this in my test by giving Athens some happiness buildings that cancel out the unhappiness from "We want to rejoin the Motherland".

Sparta has to be dealt with fairly soon after Carthage so that Athens will be all that it can be. But Sparta will be easy for our CR3 swords. The only question will be keep or raze.

The graphs on the results page have taken an interesting turn. CRC is off and running in all three graphs, score, culture and power. Looks like they got The Oracle?

But they are going to have a harder time capturing cities with their power surge coming much later than ours. Skirmishers on hills....

If our plans play out more or less like in our test games, our score and power graphs will be at least as high as theirs.

 

[Frederiksberg]

I also found that it was best to not whip a library in Timbuktu and go for maximum population growth leading up to CoL.

I think this also means that we shouldn't finalize the library at all. It will come too late and is just a waste of hammers. Better start building a sword.

In my tests, I was able to build a sizable army along with half a dozen galleys on the west coast. After we get Astronomy, we could consider turning research to 0% for long enough to upgrade galleys to galleons so we could get an assault force of swords, cats, and elephants out more quickly.

Did you chop some of these units? And how many workers did you build - I was constantly short of workers because there was a crew of 7 workers that did little else than chop gold.

By the way I chopped in this order: Ivoryville, Athens, Carthage, Horse City, Gold City. By chopping gold in Sparta as well there would have been gold enough to research CS.

Then, we could research Monarchy and Currency while growing a Great Merchant in Athens for Civil Service. Finally, shut down research again for upgrading to macemen and for supporting a large army.

Monarchy is nice to have but not strictly necessary and Currency has limited value in an AW game since there is no trade abroad. If we grow a GM in Athens we can't use the whip there and that will significantly reduce the production there for quite some time.

We can get several galleys from Carthage before Astronomy with all of the extra forests outside of its fat cross and because of the fact that Carthage can start working its copper and horses about 8 turns before we get Astronomy. I think Sparta is more of a liability.

We could even consider hiring a few artists and get 2nd border expansion in Carthage before we chop. Still unsure about Sparta. Maybe it's better to found another city on the east coast north of Carthage. There is a spot with lots of forests...

It might work out better to use the gold that we would have spent on CS to upgrade galleys and accept the delay in CS. We can still put together a nice second wave of macemen by building swordsmen and saving up gold (or chopping it) to upgrade.

I think you are right that we should aim to upgrade a few galleys immediately and launch the first wave of attackers. If we can reach the remaining AI around 300 AD there is a good chance that they don't have any longbows.

Triremes upgrade to Caravels right? If we build one trireme on each coast we can get our exploration and circumnavigation started a bit earlier.

In my game Optics and Astronomy came in the same turn since they were bulbed when Machinery was done. So in such a situation we might want to get circumnavigation with the first galleons we send out. Remember that galleons travel faster than caravels and we might want to save gold/hammers required for caravels since they are of little use except maybe getting circumnavigation a few turns earlier.

The two approaches may actually be very similar since I was stalled in my game waiting until Carthage went from 5 archers down to 2 so I could capture it easily. This meant I didn't take Carthage until 325BC, turn 145. This was the bottleneck and Astronomy was done 46 turns after capturing Carthage.

I think the difference in the two strategies is less than 10 turns and I'm also quite sure that the Pacifism path is a little faster. You could rerun you simulation focusing only on GP's to speed up things (i.e. ignore gold chops and tech speed). I'm surprised that you are facing 5 archers in Carthage. Did you build a road down there? I got 8 units facing 4 archers which was good enough to capture the city.

One major thing I noticed in my test, (disclaimer: I wasn't concentrating too hard on troop movements etc) was how threatened our cities became from barb archers. We definitely need to have a robust plan for either fogbusting or having axes to defend. I needed to enter worldbuilder quite a few times and give myself an extra defending axe.

I saw the same. Our fogbusting warrior NE of York can't handle attacking archers and I think we should build an axe for defense in York ASAP. Athens and Tim were also under considerable attack and we need to address this problem. During play I simply entered the world builder and removed barb archers that came at an inconvenient time (think I did this 2 times to prevent food getting pillaged in Athens and Tim).

Secondly, we will need to take extreme care with workers and timing the forest chops to max out our cash from building walls. All too often I forgot to cancel all worker actions and had to reload the autosave since the wall chop got mucked up (select any worker who is busy in action and shift-click on the last red "cancel" icon). Also, I had a problem with not paying attention and building the walls with the normal city production before the chops were done. . Really hate for us to make either of those mistakes in our real game. We need to be careful .

Yes, play does get extremely tedious when you have to plan for all workers to finalize their chops at the same time. I found that at the end of each turn I had to check for workers that had 2 turns left because they can finish the chop anytime during the next turn!! When walls are 1 turn from being done they can be removed from the production queue and then put back when the chop is in.

If we can't whip in Carthage once we capture it I wonder if our single eastern workboat will be enough to swiftly scout the remaining islands?

I think we need to chop at least one wb in Carthage because we need it for Athens to improve the clam tile. In my test I used the exploring wb, because I didn't care for exploration anyway, but that's different in the real game. We should use forests outside the fat cross for this purpose in order to save the other forests for the gold chop.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Did you guys wait until the expansion of the city or just chop with the initial 9 tiles?

I waited for expansion except for the first chop in Ivoryville that was done immediately. Chops were in this order: Ivoryville, Athens, Carthage, Horse City, Gold City. It required some planning to avoid being late.

Sparta has to be dealt with fairly soon after Carthage so that Athens will be all that it can be. But Sparta will be easy for our CR3 swords. The only question will be keep or raze.

After capturing Carthage I sent my surviving swords and axes directly to Sparta after healing for a couple of turns. I think this is necessary.

The graphs on the results page have taken an interesting turn. CRC is off and running in all three graphs, score, culture and power. Looks like they got The Oracle?

I checked the score in my test against the CRC score and they were about the same, so we are still in the race despite our RNG trouble when attacking Carthage (and missing the Oracle by 2 turns).

 

[Frederiksberg]

Just remembered one important reason not to go for the merchant and the CS bulb. We will want to revert to slavery as soon as Astronomy is discovered in order to take advantage of the whip in Carthage, Athens and Timbuktu.

 

[ShannonCT]

Did you chop some of these units? And how many workers did you build - I was constantly short of workers because there was a crew of 7 workers that did little else than chop gold.

In that test, I had only founded one additional city much before Astronomy (NW of Ivoryville) so my workers were free to chop some additional forests around Athens, Carthage, and Ivoryville into units. I didn't build any new workers. I founded a second city west of Timbuktu a few turns before getting Astronomy and was chopping there, and I had another settler ready to found another city. So I still had quite a bit of gold chopping to do, and I didn't have the reserve cash that you had at Turn 181. There seem to be several things that we need to time correctly to optimize our strategy: 1) chopping gold to keep research at 100%, 2) getting the last GS as soon as possible, 3) having a good number of swords, cats, elephants, and galleys when we finish Astronomy, and 4) having enough gold to upgrade galleys when we finish Astronomy.

Monarchy is nice to have but not strictly necessary and Currency has limited value in an AW game since there is no trade abroad. If we grow a GM in Athens we can't use the whip there and that will significantly reduce the production there for quite some time.

Monarchy will become more useful as we start fighting on multiple fronts and accumulating war weariness, so it can wait for a while. Currency is only useful for allowing a GM to bulb CS. But I think your right. We can't afford to stay in Caste System for 21 more turns. All that food in Timbuktu, Carthage, and Athens needs to be converted to hammers. So we should self-research CS right after Astronomy, whatever the timeframe.

We could even consider hiring a few artists and get 2nd border expansion in Carthage before we chop. Still unsure about Sparta. Maybe it's better to found another city on the east coast north of Carthage. There is a spot with lots of forests...

Just make sure we don't hire any artists in our GP farms before they get their GS. We have to check our cities every turn, because dumb city governors will hire artists.

A city north of Carthage would be a good place to chop an eastern galleon fleet sometime after we get Astronomy. No barracks necessary.

I think you are right that we should aim to upgrade a few galleys immediately and launch the first wave of attackers. If we can reach the remaining AI around 300 AD there is a good chance that they don't have any longbows.

Exactly. Just like with conquering Timbuktu, speed makes a big difference. Cats, swords, and elephants will roll over archers.

In my game Optics and Astronomy came in the same turn since they were bulbed when Machinery was done. So in such a situation we might want to get circumnavigation with the first galleons we send out. Remember that galleons travel faster than caravels and we might want to save gold/hammers required for caravels since they are of little use except maybe getting circumnavigation a few turns earlier.

It would still be useful to have a caravel (upgraded from a trireme) on each coast to find the other AI and direct our galleons. We could probably spare one galleon to speed up circumnavigation but we also need to find all of the AI cities if we're going for conquest.

I think the difference in the two strategies is less than 10 turns and I'm also quite sure that the Pacifism path is a little faster. You could rerun you simulation focusing only on GP's to speed up things (i.e. ignore gold chops and tech speed). I'm surprised that you are facing 5 archers in Carthage. Did you build a road down there? I got 8 units facing 4 archers which was good enough to capture the city.

I saw the same thing, and I attacked as soon as the last of the 8 units arrived. Carthage will be a bottleneck on Astronomy if we don't take it quickly, so I don't think we can wait for archers to leave. In that case, we should probably park units on Carthage's high-hammer tiles to reduce its production, and forget about drawing out archers.