SGOTM 06 - Xteam

[ShannonCT]

Possibility of the third city 1 tile east of B to get stone.

City 3 at site B still gets stone after 1 border pop but it would be nice not to have to waste a forest, especially if we want to chop the Oracle and also especially since the mega-forest-chop-into-walls-overflowing-into-mucho-gold gambit will be very lucrative with stone availing itself.

Better to grow city to size three and get gold mined than to go all out to get second city founded ASAP, but once to size three, second city takes precedence over fighting (but perhaps not harassment) unless there is high probabilty of significant success (probably --certainly, if no iron -- will need cats to win without great losses and with multiple promotions, hopefully of swords, and we need second gold mine to speed to Construction). I know I may be at odds with JT and probably others here, so we need to hash this out.

I worked it out in my test game so that two more axes were produced while growing to Pop3, farming bananas, and mining gold. London can be MMed so that second axe, Pop3, and gold mine all come on the same turn, and then the settler can be built with those awesome tiles and two forest chops.

Not only do units cost hammers, but we need to use some restraint in the number of units we have to supply for harassment, so that our research is not greatly slowed.

We should figure out how many free units we will get given our population and stay at this limit until we're ready to start taking cities. I have noticed that AI's will not even attempt to attack a fortified axeman with archers, no matter how many they have. They'll just send their settler-archer-archer parties out to found a second city. Notice it's not a settler-archer-archer-worker party. The workers stay in the capital and the second city just builds more archers. So 1 axe is enough to keep their cities undeveloped and their strategic resources unhooked. If you want to actually kill a settler party, you need a second axe.

 

[Cactus Pete]

City 3 at site B still gets stone after 1 border pop but it would be nice not to have to waste a forest, especially if we want to chop the Oracle and also especially since the mega-forest-chop-into-walls-overflowing-into-mucho-gold gambit will be very lucrative with stone availing itself.
Love to try this.

I worked it out in my test game so that two more axes were produced while growing to Pop3, farming bananas, and mining gold. London can be MMed so that second axe, Pop3, and gold mine all come on the same turn, and then the settler can be built with those awesome tiles and two forest chops.
Certainly sounds like the way to go.

We should figure out how many free units we will get given our population and stay at this limit until we're ready to start taking cities. I have noticed that AI's will not even attempt to attack a fortified axeman with archers, no matter how many they have. They'll just send their settler-archer-archer parties out to found a second city. Notice it's not a settler-archer-archer-worker party. The workers stay in the capital and the second city just builds more archers. So 1 axe is enough to keep their cities undeveloped and their strategic resources unhooked. If you want to actually kill a settler party, you need a second axe.

That would seem sufficient reason to invest hammers in sending an axe to each AI capital.

 

[leif erikson]

On unit support -
Currently, the Financial Advisor screen says that we have free unit support for 10 units (including workers, settlers and missionaries). We have free military units support for 2 units. However, we have four military units and the is no cost in the advisor?

Unit supply away costs include free unit support for 4 units.

The War Academy has this article concerning unit support costs. It is pretty short and worth reading.
A couple of excerpts:

However, the free support in the unit cost section is dependent on the total size of your population (the sum of all of your city sizes) and the difficulty level. If we name the size of your population N and the difficulty level bonus D then the free support for units is [0.24 * N] + D. This difficulty level bonus is 5 at Deity, 6 at Immortal, 7 at Emperor, 8 at Monarch, 10 at Prince, 12 at Noble, 16 at Warlord, 22 at Chieftain and finally 28 at Settler level.
The vassalage civic provides you with an additional free unit support which is again dependent on your population size: [0.1 * N] + 5.

The free support in the military unit section is also dependent on the size of your population: [0.12 * N] + 2.

Early exploration/attack with many units is very expensive.

The free support cost for unit supply is only 4. This means that if 6 or more units are not within your cultural borders (including workers, settlers and missionaries), then you will start to pay unit supply costs for those units. As money is scarce in the beginning of the game, this upkeep can be too much.

 

[ShannonCT]

On unit support -
Currently, the Financial Advisor screen says that we have free unit support for 10 units (including workers, settlers and missionaries). We have free military units support for 2 units. However, we have four military units and the is no cost in the advisor?

Unit supply away costs include free unit support for 4 units.

Good reads. So we can actually have 5 units in the field without paying supply costs, since the 5th unit costs 0.5 rounded down to 0. Then, having 6 or 7 in the field costs 1 in unit supply. Right now we want to have at least 3 axes in the field and 1 exploratory warrior. A 5th unit could stake a claim on a city site for free. But having harrassing axes AND several fogbusters would start to get expensive. Having city 3 next to horses would be nice for building a chariot or two to slay barbs, instead of relying on fogbusters.

And for total units, we have 5 now. We're building 1 more worker now and if we build 2 more axes and 1 more warrior we'll be up to 9 units. We get 2 more for free. (First unit above 10 costs .5*1 rounded down to 0)

Free unit support based on our total population is as follows:

Population Free units
1-4............11
5-8............12
9-12...........13
13-16.........14
and so on....

Next up on the Finance Channel: city maintenance costs for capturing Mali's capital.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Nice turn set!

Option1: the Leap Frog
Focus all our attention on one civ and destroy them ASAP and then move onto the next.

Option2: the Boa Constrictor
Work hard to shut down all civs simultaneously and and then destroy them one by one at a later time.

Option3: the Egg Balance
Concentrate primarily on one civ and destroy them fairly soon, while paying some attention to slowing down the other civs that we can reach.

I like option 2 - it's a bit similar to chess: First you neutralize your oponents counterplay and then you go for an attack. Putting a warrior or an axe in a forest 2 tiles from the capital will stop all workers. The AI will, however, keep sending out settlers accompanied by two archers and later in the game it will start sending stacks of archers towards our cities. So in order to fully neutralize the AI counterplay we need to be able to hunt down and attack these settling parties. My first thought was that we need Horse Archers for this purpose but maybe chariots can do the job? There are some benefits of using Horse Archers rather than swords - primarily the ability to respond fast to changing threats. They will also perform better in a war, where we are targetting archers and settlers in the open capturing and razing small newly founded cities. I could imagine a strategy where we use axes to lock down the AI capitals and HA's to deal with the archers and settlers in the open thus preventing the AI from ever expanding beyond 1-2 cities. Swords and cats will first be needed when we go in for the kill. Except if one or more of the AI have settled on top of copper or iron, that is.

I like the Oracle for CoL plan. Caste system is key if we need to bulb our way to Astronomy. So is the National Epic. The way to go would be to hire a large number of scientists in the Nat. Epic GP farm. If we postpone CS and avoid Meditation the GS's can bulb Optics and Astronomy.

In leif's dotmap I like position A for the 2nd city and the spot 1E of position B for the 3rd city as suggested by CP. Looks to me that fog gazing will reveal even more forests east of that city.

WB for scouting as suggested by CP is also something we need to prioritize in order to determine if Astronomy is required to win.

Not only do units cost hammers, but we need to use some restraint in the number of units we have to supply for harassment, so that our research is not greatly slowed.

This is one reason I have been contemplating the use of HA's instead of swords. We might be able to do with fewer HA's compared to swords because they can cover an area 4 times as big with their better mobility.

I worked it out in my test game so that two more axes were produced while growing to Pop3, farming bananas, and mining gold. London can be MMed so that second axe, Pop3, and gold mine all come on the same turn, and then the settler can be built with those awesome tiles and two forest chops.

I will work out an MM'ing plan based on this. Do we need more warriors?

As far away as the Mali capital is, and with the associated maintenance costs for distance, is the plan to raze it?

Unless it's really bad I think we should keep it. Normally an AI capital will be a strong city. And with the possible CoL slingshot we could build a courthouse there if needed.

 

[ShannonCT]

The AI will, however, keep sending out settlers accompanied by two archers and later in the game it will start sending stacks of archers towards our cities. So in order to fully neutralize the AI counterplay we need to be able to hunt down and attack these settling parties.

I don't know if it's such a bad thing to have the AI build a couple extra cities. These cities seem quite weak and very slow to develop. They don't send a worker with their settling parties and they usually just build more archers. Of course if we have the opportunity to kill a party and get a free worker, we should take it. But I'm not too worried about these extra cities being a big threat. I'll do some more WB tests to see how these cities typically develop over 50 turns. But they might be a nice way to fill out our continent.

My first thought was that we need Horse Archers for this purpose but maybe chariots can do the job? There are some benefits of using Horse Archers rather than swords - primarily the ability to respond fast to changing threats. They will also perform better in a war, where we are targetting archers and settlers in the open capturing and razing small newly founded cities. I could imagine a strategy where we use axes to lock down the AI capitals and HA's to deal with the archers and settlers in the open thus preventing the AI from ever expanding beyond 1-2 cities. Swords and cats will first be needed when we go in for the kill. Except if one or more of the AI have settled on top of copper or iron, that is.

There are a couple things I dont like about horse archers here. 1) They are better for open field combat against axes and swords than they are for taking cities. If we really are able to keep the three AIs we've met limited to archers, chariots can kill archers out in the open with good success. 2) Hunting->Archery->HB Riding is a dead end. If we stay aggressive, we probably wont need spears or archers. Staying away from Hunting will let us continue to build cheap warriors for MPs in cities that face no threat.

I will work out an MM'ing plan based on this. Do we need more warriors?

I could think of some good uses for more warriors. 1 as an MP for city 2, 1 to scout further north and fogbust on that hill west of the horses. 1 to explore south. I'm sure you could MM London to delay Pop3 for a turn or two in exchange for an extra warrior.

Unless it's really bad I think we should keep it. Normally an AI capital will be a strong city. And with the possible CoL slingshot we could build a courthouse there if needed.

No doubt. Maintenance discussion to follow...

 

[ShannonCT]

Fred, one of the things you could try to do with one of our existing home defense warriors is to scout a few tiles to the west of London at the same time when axe 2 and axe 3 are arriving and moving south. The axes can intercept any threats and the warrior will have a few turns to figure out how far that land bridge might go.

 

[ShannonCT]

Maintenance on Mali's capital:

Mali's capital is 2 tiles north and 13 tiles east of London. At that distance, there is a distance-based maintenance cost of 2.31 + .33 per population, and an empire-size-based maintenance cost of .46 + .02 per population (roughly). (Additionally, London gets an empire size cost of .48.) So that's 3.12 GPT at Pop1, 3.45 at Pop2, 3.84 at Pop3, etc... Every city gets 1 commerce by default. If the capital can work a 2 commerce tile at Pop1 (seafood?) and 1 more commerce tile per additional 3 population, it will be commerce neutral. That's not even counting the additional units that we can support with the extra population.

I'm guessing by the Manufacturing graph that Mali's capital has been developing a lot of food resources. If it is landlocked, that would mean low commerce grain and animals, and there will probably be a skirmisher there anyway. If it is coastal, it will probably be working several seafood, and there will be a good chance that there is no skirmisher yet. So I think the problem solves itself. The kind of capital that would be best for us financially is also the kind that we're most likely to be able to capture.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Fred, one of the things you could try to do with one of our existing home defense warriors is to scout a few tiles to the west of London at the same time when axe 2 and axe 3 are arriving and moving south. The axes can intercept any threats and the warrior will have a few turns to figure out how far that land bridge might go.

Good idea, I will make a note of that.

I guess we are in no hurry, so I would like to play a few test games with HA's and swords respectively to better judge the differences.

I agree that in a standard game you would prefer swords because they can get CR promotions and what you normally do is to march up a SoD to the cities you want and then capture. And normally you only have one enemy to deal with. In our situation we might decide to slowly strangle the AI rather than killing them off fast in order to limit the number of units needed. HA's are perfectly capable of capturing cities with little cultural defense and they can obviously defeat archers in the open. The same can be done with chariots, but a chariot attacking an archer is not a certain win so we will loose many more units this way.

I don't think Hunting and Archery are dead ends - we are going to want these anyway. HBR could be considered a dead end unless we want to use HA's and maybe Knights later in the game. Remember that we can't trade for any of these techs later in the game we have to research everything ourselves.

I think it's dangerous to allow the AI to expand unchallenged - even cities with unimproved land will grow and become sources of archer production. In the one test game I played these stacks of 3-4 archers were quite annoying when they came to pillage.

 

[DJMGator13]

Fred, one of the things you could try to do with one of our existing home defense warriors is to scout a few tiles to the west of London at the same time when axe 2 and axe 3 are arriving and moving south. The axes can intercept any threats and the warrior will have a few turns to figure out how far that land bridge might go.

Hopefully not to another AI.

 

[ShannonCT]

HA's are perfectly capable of capturing cities with little cultural defense and they can obviously defeat archers in the open. The same can be done with chariots, but a chariot attacking an archer is not a certain win so we will loose many more units this way.

Axes will be good defense against archer raids as long as we are attacked from a limited number of directions. Chariots should be good for dealing with barbs, which spawn mostly warriors and axemen. It would be good to figure out what lies to the north. If we and Mali are the northernmost civs on this continent, then we probably only have to worry about attacks from two directions, South and East. And if we send another axe or two over to Mali (assuming we don't kill them in a few turns), we can neuter them completely, and further limit our direction of defense.

As far as city capturing, let me work out the cost/benefit of swords and horse archers.

I don't think Hunting and Archery are dead ends - we are going to want these anyway. HBR could be considered a dead end unless we want to use HA's and maybe Knights later in the game. Remember that we can't trade for any of these techs later in the game we have to research everything ourselves.

There are still a lot of unknowns, but I could see us going the whole game without ever needing Hunting or Archery. Spearmen, archers, and longbows are all defensive units that you don't need if you are the aggressor in the early game. And a chariot is a better scout than a scout.

Do you agree that we should go for IW after Wheel?

I think it's dangerous to allow the AI to expand unchallenged - even cities with unimproved land will grow and become sources of archer production. In the one test game I played these stacks of 3-4 archers were quite annoying when they came to pillage.

I have to do more investigation into how fast these 2nd cities develop their land. If they are just building archers from unimproved tiles, it's not a big threat, but more of an annoyance. But I agree that it is better to kill a settling party than to allow it to build a city. And if we can quickly get two axemen constricting each enemy, that should stop any further expansion. Two axemen per civ isn't going to send unit maintenance any higher than 1 or 2.

Hopefully not to another AI.

I think it's probably a dead end, because I saw a Carthagenian scout go over there, and a few turns later (5? 10? I should have made a note) come back out. If there was another civ over there blocking his way, we would probably have seen someone by now. But maybe it's a place where a culture bridge city could be useful.

 

[rrau]

If we can kill all settler parties, we can force the AI's to devote time to building more settlers instead of archers.

 

[ShannonCT]

Swords vs. Horse Archers

Techs required for Horse Archers cost a total of 747 beakers
Tech required for Swordsmen costs 429 beakers

Cost of a Horse Archer is 75 hammers
Cost of a Swordsman is 60 hammers

Winning percentages against archers in cities:

CombatII Horse Archer vs. Archer + 75% defense: 76.9% (+ 4.6% retreat)
CombatII Horse Archer vs. Archer + 115% defense: 66.4% (+ 6.7% retreat)
CombatII Horse Archer vs. Archer + 145% defense: 34.1% (+ 13.2% retreat)
CombatII Horse Archer vs. Archer + 165% defense: 29.9% (+ 14% retreat)
CombatIII Horse Archer vs. Archer + 165% defense: 34.3% (+ 13.1% retreat)

CityRaiderII Swordsman vs. Archer + 75% defense: 94.8%
CityRaiderII Swordsman vs. Archer + 115% defense: 70.0%
CityRaiderII Swordsman vs. Archer + 145% defense: 59.5%
CityRaiderII Swordsman vs. Archer + 165% defense: 28.8%
CityRaiderIII Swordsman vs. Archer + 165% defense: 63%

(75% defensive bonus represents an archer fortified in a 0 culture city. 115% is an archer fortified in a 40% culture city. 145% is an archer fortified on a hill in a 20% culture city. 165% is an archer fortified on a hill in a 40% culture city.)

Other benefits of Horse Archers are their 50% attack bonus against cats/trebs and of course their 2 movement points. Horse Archers are more versatile. Swords will be specialized city takers. The City Raider bonuses increase in strength from I to II to III, and make CRIII Swords quite a bit better against cities than CombatIII Horse Archers.

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

Possibility of the third city 1 tile east of B to get stone.

Better to grow city to size three and get gold mined than to go all out to get second city founded ASAP, but once to size three, second city takes precedence over fighting (but perhaps not harassment) unless there is high probabilty of significant success (probably --certainly, if no iron -- will need cats to win without great losses and with multiple promotions, hopefully of swords, and we need second gold mine to speed to Construction). I know I may be at odds with JT and probably others here, so we need to hash this out.

I agree, city3 1E of spot B would work great if we chop Oracle.

I agree with you CP that we shouldn't get caught up thinking we have to rush the AI and risk heavy losses using only axes. We think about taking cities only after the production of swords.

In the near term, 1 axe per enemy would go a long way in keeping them backward.

How about Wheel -> IW -> Myst -> Poly -> Preist -> Writing -> Math -> Construction. And hopefully CoL with Oracle. If we can hook iron, swords can take some of the easier cities and then the tough ones can be dispatched with cats.

Site A for City 2 is defintely superior in the short term and not much worse in the long term.

1 axe per enemy is a good short term goal for our military.

I like the research path. Even if we miss Oracle, we get Poly which we need for the "Epics", and Priesthood will slightly discount our research for Writing. Oh yeah, and we want CoL anyway

SiteA for city2

As rrau and Fred have mentioned, destroying a settler escort would be excellent. Once we have 1axe per AI we can choose an AI to target for settler killing. Maybe Mali since they have skirmishers and we gain more by forcing him to build settlers instead. Even if his settler ecorts found a city, we can raze it (sacrificing a unit if needed) and I would predict his capital builds another settler to head to the same spot. Then rinse and repeat

I like chariots as our mobility unit rather than HA's. True we will have more maintenance costs since we have 2 chariots for the price of 1 HA, but I think we get more bang for our buck and don't sink beakers into hunting,archery,horseback riding if we can possibly do without.

With our axe headed for Mali, we should move him in on a direct diagonal path from the NW of the capital. We might save ourselves one turn of Mansa knowing we are coming for him. If we find a skirmisher, the best place to park our axe might be on the east side of his border. Perhaps then he will send his first settler to the west, and closer to us. Also, when we have a new axe out looking for Alex, the new axe can take over Mali duties and our original Mali axe can carry on the Alex pursuit in the eastern direction (saving 5 turns moving east, which might be the difference between Alex building his first axe or not?!).

 

[ShannonCT]

If we find a skirmisher, the best place to park our axe might be on the east side of his border. Perhaps then he will send his first settler to the west, and closer to us. Also, when we have a new axe out looking for Alex, the new axe can take over Mali duties and our original Mali axe can carry on the Alex pursuit in the eastern direction (saving 5 turns moving east, which might be the difference between Alex building his first axe or not?!).

I am more expecting Mali to be on or near the coast. Just based on the Big and Small maps I have generated in BTS, this map is shaping up to look like this...

...except with the cities to the east shifted down 5 tiles. I guess our warrior and axeman will find out soon enough.

Here's a random sample of BTS Big and Small minimaps.

Spoiler :

Notice that the large landmasses that look the most like our map so far generally aren't wide enough to accomodate 3 capitals along the same horizontal axis.

 

[Cactus Pete]

I agree, city3 1E of spot B would work great if we chop Oracle. Let's not get too committed to the Oracle. We don't have marble, and it would require putting off getting to Construction and Sailing. If Stonehenge has not been built by the time we get stone hooked up, then we might want to chop that first.

As rrau and Fred have mentioned, destroying a settler escort would be excellent. "If we can kill all settler parties, we can force the AI's to devote time to building more settlers instead of archers." What she said. Once we have 1axe per AI we can choose an AI to target for settler killing. Maybe Mali since they have skirmishers and we gain more by forcing him to build settlers instead.

I like chariots as our mobility unit rather than HA's. True we will have more maintenance costs since we have 2 chariots for the price of 1 HA, but I think we get more bang for our buck and don't sink beakers into hunting,archery,horseback riding if we can possibly do without. I'm inclined in this direction too. We are on a map where the movement advantage of horses is somewhat neutralized once we get off our home continent. Swords, on the other hand, increase their value dramatically with success and are likely to be much more useful in off-continent adventures.QUOTE]

Congrats to JT on his fastest domination in WOTM15. Glad to have those skills on the team.

 

[leif erikson]

I guess we are in no hurry, so I would like to play a few test games with HA's and swords respectively to better judge the differences.

I think we all agreed that we aren't in a hurry. I think the discussion thus far is fruitful, as we continue to come together in vision.

I think that teching to Iron Working after Wheel is the way to go. If there is no Iron readily available, then we may have to consider Horse Archers to help us win the Iron. Although I think using those beakers toward Construction may be more productive...

Nice work JT in WOTM15!

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

Congrats to JT on his fastest domination in WOTM15. Glad to have those skills on the team.

Thanks Cactus Pete. My first genuine speed award, it was a fun game and I managed to get a bronze too.

 

[ShannonCT]

Let's not get too committed to the Oracle. We don't have marble, and it would require putting off getting to Construction and Sailing. If Stonehenge has not been built by the time we get stone hooked up, then we might want to chop that first.

Just for reference, Writing (needed for Math->Construction) requires either Pottery or Preisthood. Pottery is 171 beakers minus some discount for having all prereqs. Mysticism-Polytheism-Preisthood is 447 beakers. So that might be around 15 turns delay to Construction.

Oracle costs 225 hammers. If we have two workers chop the plains/hill/forest east of the horses and build a mine there so the city itself could contribute 5 hammers per turn, Oracle could be had for 5 chops in about 23 turns or for 4 chops in about 26 turns.

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

Good discussion, it has made me think...

What is the Oracle?

It is a way to turn hammers into beakers right? We build the wonder for 225 hammers and pick CoL worth something like 745 beakers. Cool, 1:3.1 conversion. BUT we spend 447 beakers researching to Priesthood.

Don't we have a way to turn 1hammer to 3gold at anytime we choose by using the wall/chop/overflow? So do we really need to risk the Oracle? Having gold from wall/chop/overflow helps tech speed over time, whereas the benefit of the Oracle is we get it all at once giving us CoL early. But do we need it early? We aren't going to have the hammers right away for courthouses if we are building military, so if we can find a suitable alternative to religion for border expansion then having it early is basically useless.

Stonehenge is 2 chops if we have stone right? But can we build it in time...
We also have to comprimise on city placement if we want to connect stone without waiting for a border expansion.

I'm not sure what the best method for border expansion is, but the Oracle -> CoL might not be as good as I first thought.

(Also, Animal Husbandry opens up Writing too (not just Pottery/Preisthood).