SGOTM 06 - Xteam

[ShannonCT]

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.

I should add that Oracle is a way to turn hammers into beakers at a 1:3.1 ratio and to deny any AI from doing the same (probably an AI that we haven't met). It guarantees us a religion on a continent where our neighbors might not found any religions because of the perceived danger. It gives us the option to whip courthouses in captured cities if our military success comes quickly (Mali?).

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.

Connecting stone without the border expansion is going to make for a food poor city. Unless iron is near the stone, it's going to be significantly less useful than a city that can work rice and horses.

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

That's what I get for using my old Vanilla tech tree instead of the ingame Civlopedia. So Myst-Poly-Preist could be a 20 turn delay to cats. So how much do we need cats?

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

Good points.

It will be interesting to see what others add.

Question: Any religions founded yet? (turn 45 already...)
This might give us a clue about when we could expect Stonehenge or Oracle to be built by AI and the the relative saftey of self-researching CoL later on.

 

[Frederiksberg]

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

There is one unsolved issue here: Axemen can't catch a settler party that is moving away from them. So either we must post axes on opposite sides of the AI capital (2 on each side) or use 2MP units. Maybe 3 chariots will do or rather 4 in battle against 2 skirmishers. I guess that chariots might do the job even though we will pay some extra gold because we need a whole bunch of them.

Well done in the WOTM .

 

[leif erikson]

Researching Mysticism allows us to build Monuments, a +1 Happy face with Churchill. Building Myst also allows Stonehenge. The way I see it is we could found city 3 one tile east as CP and JT have said, chop a forest for Monument and then two forests for Stonehenge and we have our cultural expansion, on the cheap?

My test experience tells me that we are going to need Cats and the sooner the better. Once the AI cities get to any size, they will pop rush Archers down to size 1 to protect themselves, as well as improve their cultural defense. And if there is no Iron readily available, that makes Cats all the more necessary to help the Axes, and they will need it. I do understand that our raiding parties could minimize the population and cultural growth. I think things will progress faster with Cats.

 

[ShannonCT]

Question: Any religions founded yet? (turn 45 already...)
This might give us a clue about when we could expect Stonehenge or Oracle to be built by AI and the the relative saftey of self-researching CoL later on.

Buddhism was founded early. Hinduism has not been founded.

There is one unsolved issue here: Axemen can't catch a settler party that is moving away from them. So either we must post axes on opposite sides of the AI capital (2 on each side) or use 2MP units. Maybe 3 chariots will do or rather 4 in battle against 2 skirmishers. I guess that chariots might do the job even though we will pay some extra gold because we need a whole bunch of them.

This wont be as big a problem for any AI capital on the coast. If you find a capital on the east coast for example, place your axemen west of the capital. The settling party can't run in the opposite direction as the axemen. The axemen can follow alongside until the settling party steps on open terrain, and then kill!

My test experience tells me that we are going to need Cats and the sooner the better. Once the AI cities get to any size, they will pop rush Archers down to size 1 to protect themselves, as well as improve their cultural defense. And if there is no Iron readily available, that makes Cats all the more necessary to help the Axes, and they will need it. I do understand that our raiding parties could minimize the population and cultural growth. I think things will progress faster with Cats.

Agreed that if we can't hook iron, cats will be essential. If we can hook iron, swords can capture non-hill cities with good success.

I suggest Fred play through the discovery of Wheel and Iron Working (about 30 turns). That will answer questions about whether we can hook iron, whether we have been lucky enough to kill Mansa, where Hannibal and Alex are, and what kind of units we'll need to kill them.

 

[leif erikson]

I suggest Fred play through the discovery of Wheel and Iron Working (about 30 turns). That will answer questions about whether we can hook iron, whether we have been lucky enough to kill Mansa, where Hannibal and Alex are, and what kind of units we'll need to kill them.

Do we want to add Mysticism to the list? Once the Gold Hill is hooked up and worked at size 3, that shouldn't take long and gives us some options?

 

[ShannonCT]

Do we want to add Mysticism to the list? Once the Gold Hill is hooked up and worked at size 3, that shouldn't take long and gives us some options?

If everyone is agreed to go for Mysticism after IW, that should be ok too. We mostly need to know where iron is and hopefully to see what the other AI capitals look like to make major decisions.

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

I suggest Fred play through the discovery of Wheel and Iron Working (about 30 turns). That will answer questions about whether we can hook iron, whether we have been lucky enough to kill Mansa, where Hannibal and Alex are, and what kind of units we'll need to kill them.

Yes this is good, to keep things moving. As leif said, Fred could play for a few more turns after IW, but a 2/3rds turn update after iron is revealed and capitals located would be good.

So the plan for builds/workers (from earlier discussion / still to be fully detailed) was to grow to size 3 ASAP and work gold/cows/copper while chopping settler. Fred to build 2 axes (and maybe 1 warrior) while growing to size 3.

Exploring warrior to locate Hannibal and Alex, thunder-axe to say hello to Mansa.

We should attack Alex's scout on our copper so we can work it again. (90% odds is it?)

 

[Cactus Pete]

It's not clear to me what option could tempt me to divert from IW -- position of iron will have great influence on future course of play. I'm certainly happy for Fred to play more than 30 turns, but let's at least stop and discuss then. Going to Mysticism next is not a clear choice in my mind..

I've almost no experience with AW, and that makes me especially cautious, as I don't know what to expect. Not sure we still need the insurance policy of having an axe built to the point of whipping, but I assume that an attack by multiple units could happen, and it would likely be costly if we are unprepared.

 

[leif erikson]

You are all correct. I need to put my thinking cap back on.

I think Fred playing through The Wheel and IW is the best stopping place for now. At that point, we can see how many turns have elapsed, what the tactical situation is and what we think is next before going on. My concern for stopping Fred at IW is that testing has shown that the period when IW completes may be when AI units have started showing up and it may be difficult to easily hand off at that point? But we shall see what transpires and decide then.

How does that sound to you Fred?

 

[ShannonCT]

We should attack Alex's scout on our copper so we can work it again. (90% odds is it?)

It was at least 95% if I remember correctly.

I've almost no experience with AW, and that makes me especially cautious, as I don't know what to expect. Not sure we still need the insurance policy of having an axe built to the point of whipping, but I assume that an attack by multiple units could happen, and it would likely be costly if we are unprepared.

We should avoid whipping an axeman if we can with the high yield tiles we can work. The danger is going to be pretty low anyway. With axemen heading towards the likely locations of Athens and Carthage, we should see any raiders before they get close. And when we're working cows, copper, and gold, we get 11 hammers per turn, and so we can produce a warrior every two turns.

 

[DJMGator13]

Not sure how many of you played the Civ III SGOTM AW game but I was on the Wooden Spoon team for that one. One mistake we made was going for Wonders instead of troops. So investing 225 hammers to gain a border expansion needs to be considered carefully.

225 hammers = 9 chariots (at normal speed, need to apply epic modifier) or 5.6 swords

Do we know who founded the 2 religions yet? I assume none of the 3 AI's we've met (haven't pulled up the save yet). Will one of them survive long enough to make contact with another landmass to allow us to take religion from a captured city?

Sidenote: Back when I was studying some of the maps layouts for the BTS Beta5 game, a Big and Small map, I noticed that horses tended to be located near the coast (w/i 10 tiles) and frequently either in the upper north or lower south. They were rarely appearing midcontinent. I'd que up a game and then go into WB and just look at where the resources where located. I did this about 20-25 times just to get a feel for the map type.

Not sure when I'll be back online - Good luck and save some action for me.

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

All the best for your operation.

Wishing you a speedy recovery.

We will leave the quivering remains of the pulverised AI for you to dispatch on your return.

 

[Frederiksberg]

I think Fred playing through The Wheel and IW is the best stopping place for now. At that point, we can see how many turns have elapsed, what the tactical situation is and what we think is next before going on. My concern for stopping Fred at IW is that testing has shown that the period when IW completes may be when AI units have started showing up and it may be difficult to easily hand off at that point? But we shall see what transpires and decide then.

How does that sound to you Fred?

I agree with this. I don't like if the turn sets become too long and I would like if we could soon reduce the number of turns per set. Knowing the location of iron sounds like a good stopping point though and as CP says it will influence our decisions. Worst case scenario is that one or more of the AI have settled their capital on top of iron or copper as we saw in the previous SGOTM.

I also agree that the decision to go for the Oracle may not be as clear cut as we first thought. One issue is that we don't know if Astronomy is needed. If it's not needed we know from SGOTM5 that we only need to tech until IW and Sailing and after that build only barracks, military units and perhaps a few Granaries. In that scenario the hammers for Oracle and the gold for the religious techs would be wasted. On the other hand, building too many military units is also bad if Astronomy is required to win. I would propose that we follow a strategy that takes into account both scenarios. Maybe by building some of the infrastructure like barracks and granaries instead of only units while we wait for information. We really need to get a workboat out very soon!

This wont be as big a problem for any AI capital on the coast. If you find a capital on the east coast for example, place your axemen west of the capital. The settling party can't run in the opposite direction as the axemen. The axemen can follow alongside until the settling party steps on open terrain, and then kill!

Yes, we can hope that many of the AI capitals are located on the coast thus in many cases removing half of the compass direction settlers can move in.

I noticed that there are only 5 passages through the southern and eastern mountains. If we connect these tiles with road it might be possible for a couple of units to deny access to approaching archer stacks.

When do we resume play? I might be able to play before Christmas, but we could also stick to the original plan and pause the game until beginning of January.

 

[leif erikson]

When do we resume play? I might be able to play before Christmas, but we could also stick to the original plan and pause the game until beginning of January.

It seems to me that everyone has been on the forum and has participated thus far. If you are comfortable with the discussion and have some time, I think you can play the next turn set. If we get down to only two or three of us, then I think we should hold until after New Year.

If folks want to wait a while, please post that and we can hold.

Good luck Gator, hopes for a speedy recovery!

 

[Frederiksberg]

OK. I will probably post a draft plan today and then play sometime during the weekend.

Good luck and save some action for me.

Sure! See you later Gator!

 

[ShannonCT]

We really need to get a workboat out very soon!

When do we resume play? I might be able to play before Christmas, but we could also stick to the original plan and pause the game until beginning of January.

A workboat is probably the most useful thing that City 2 (York) could produce as its first build. The window for an exploratory workboat is going to be small in an AW game, so better do it soon or not at all. York should be founded by Turn 70, so it would be in your hands to start the build. The only other build that might make some sense in York is a barracks, to anticipate the hooking of iron. Any warriors or axes we need would be produced faster in London.

So I think you could play a turnset in the next few days and then give everyone a chance to enjoy the holidays without worrying about whether they need to be giving a lot of input on the game. Personally, my ability to give meaningful input will be limited starting tonight and going through Dec. 31, as I will not have access to Warlords. I will be going through Worldbuilder withdrawl I'm sure.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Hope Fred will play his set. Perhaps then have a break in play for the holidays, but continue discussion on the thread among those with the time available, and let rrau post a plan at her leisure but with an extension of the usual 24 hours before she plays to allow eveyone to give feedback. Should be an interesting discussion.

 

[rrau]

If we want to slow down, that would be good. I probably won't be able to play until after Xmas since family's coming in this weedend and I don't want to rush through before then.

 

[ShannonCT]

I have deciphered Mansa's power graph based on this article: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/demographics.php.

Spoiler :

I'm pretty sure that Mansa has researched Archery (spike 3) and we know that he has researched BW (spike 6) because he adopted slavery. I'm also sure that he has not built a skirmisher yet, because that would show up as a jump half as big as the spike from archery. From the starting position of his power graph, we can tell that he started with no warriors; all of those power points come from Mining and Wheel. Spike 2 must be Hunting. Spike 3 is actually two successive spikes, each of which is either an increase to Pop2 or a warrior. I'm assuming only 1 of those was actually a warrior. Spikes 4 and 5 are also either warrior builds or an increase to Pop4. He couldn't build two warriors with his production so low, but I guess he could have popped one from a hut. More likely is that he has a lot of food and got to Pop4 quickly, and that he has built a total of two warriors.

Godspeed to our axeman, and may Mansa be too foolish to whip a skirmisher.