SGOTM 07 - Fifth Element

[Sweetacshon]

To me, it looks like a fp to the east of the mountains, with another mountain to the south. To the west of the mountains, it also looks a little like a moutain south of the tundra forest, but is hard to tell. It does look like we get a protective barrier, anyway. To the west, gems would be nice, but I'm fairly certain we'll get metal somewhere (Gyathaar wouldn't be that cruel, would he?). On that point, with fur, we can grow to pop 5 and limit growth with the prod'n tiles or scientists, so I'm not too worried about that. We'll have the GT soon enough.

 

[Merum]

oh, and response to Merum from a few pages back - small world, eh?

I'll make it a little smaller still... I once worked at a place called Sabre, lol.

 

[WastinTime]

btw the map is surely modified, never seen so many resources so close each other... one more damn happy resource would be appreciated.

The real reason to settle in place is that our river ends right there.

The map generater will add extra resources to the starting locations, so having 18 civs on Tiny makes for a resource rich map.

 

[culdeus]

Love the mountains. That will help a bunch. I've never built a fort, but I can imagine a "great wall" of forts stretching from the mountains to what I imagine will be the ocean to the west.

Can you settle now and take another shot? This will reveal 5 more tiles.

 

[MacBalt]

Let's see, here is my vote count on settling now:

Y- Balthalion
?- greatbeyond
Y- WastinTime
Y- Sweetacshon
Y- Sabre
Y- dutchfire
Y- Blubmuz
Y- Merum
Y- culdeus

Haven't heard from greatbeyond, so I'll wait a while longer unless our Captain wants to make an executive decision.

When we agree to go ahead, I propose the following:

- Settle in place on plains hill
- Select warrior as the first build
- Select Fishing as the technology to research
- Work a Grassland Forest tile for 2 & 1
- I will NOT end the turn (in case we want to change build based on what pops out of the fog)
- Take screenshot
- Save the game
- Post the shot

Was the first screenshot okay for everyone? I shrunk it a little for the web, but I could post a full size one if that would be better.

 

[Sweetacshon]

Nope, that pic size was fine for me, no need to change it. Go ahead and play, by all means. Again I say just play some extra turns if you're comfortable with it. Unless something is in the fog, I'm sure nothing out of the ordinary will happen until culture/size pops or fishing comes in. Up to you, tho.

 

[MacBalt]

I prefer to pause again after the screenshot. I'm thinking that with both fur and deer in our FC (plus whatever might come out of the fog) we may want to consider changing our build order. We ought to have time to discuss it, anyway. We're not in any rush, after all...

Hey, what is the position on camera flying in SGOTM? I didn't see it outlawed in the rules, but I don't want to try it if it's going to get us in trouble. I could take and post some interesting & cool (but probably misleading ) screenshots if we want (and if it really is acceptable to do that).

 

[culdeus]

There should be no hurry. I think in past games people were delaying because 10 turns would take upwards of 90 minutes and were struggling to come up with time to do it. I figure in this game 10 turns might take less than 10 minutes even at the end. If that.

 

[WastinTime]

FYI, I will be out of town (no internet) Friday - Sunday. Hopefully my turnset isn't until next week.

 

[MacBalt]

FYI, I will be out of town (no internet) Friday - Sunday. Hopefully my turnset isn't until next week.

Okay, for me at least that IS a good reason to speed things up right now. I think it is important that WastinTime gets a chance to review the starting position and contribute to the discussion about our plan changes for the early game. Unless anyone objects, I'm going to make an "executive decision" of my own and take the next step at 2:00 PM GMT-7 (that's about 1 1/2 hours from now). If there aren't substantial changes in the starting situation I'll post a proposed game plan for my turnset by, say, 7:30 PM tonight. If there are substantial changes then I suggest we use the weekend to play through a revised test game map and review our options without playing through the turnset until next week.

By the way, how many turns am I going to play? The information I've found is conflicting/ambiguous. What do you say, Captain?

 

[MacBalt]

Okay, it is starting to look like a zoo out there (only about 60 or 70 turns before we expected it to! ).

 

[greatbeyond]

I had to work today and only got a chance to look at the original screen shot and was not able to reply. Settling in place was the best decision.

Regarding this last screen shot. I assume it is the end of the first turn, but the area revealed looks bigger than it should be. I will modify one of my maps to match this screen shot. I am going to guess that we are on a continent with fewer Civs, as none of their cities or units is in sight yet.

In a few test games last night I was DOW by at least one Civ very early and most were aggressive. It was such a contrast to the very first set of games I played.

I think Fishing or BW is good for our first tech. If BW, we build a Warrior and then a Worker. If Fishing, a Warrior and then a Fishing Boat. The reason to go with BW first is we can then (with the abundance of forests) chop a WB or anything else very quickly. In addition, now that Sheep and Deer have been revealed they give us good land tiles to work, when their techs are researched. Going with BW hopefully reveals Copper as well. If not, we need to consider Archery for protection. In my test games where we didn't have Copper in our BFC, the enemy declared early when I had only Warriors.

In each of the test games where I have tried to get the Oracle I failed by at least 6 turns. Because I went BW, Masonry, The Wheel, Myst, Poly, Priesthood. If we even want to try it, we must go Myst, Poly, Priesthood and start the Oracle, we can then go BW, Masonry and attempt to finish by chopping.

 

[culdeus]

starting with fishing will give a WB in IIRC 11 turns. Can't beat that.

I have some faith we might be able to pull this off with those tiles and the chokepoints. Will need to deploy a galley to choke off the sea tiles as well. I've had guys try to land on me by 1000BC and pillage the crabs which is just catastrophic.

 

[MacBalt]

Regarding this last screen shot. I assume it is the end of the first turn, but the area revealed looks bigger than it should be. I will modify one of my maps to match this screen shot. I am going to guess that we are on a continent with fewer Civs, as none of their cities or units is in sight yet.

Hey GB, I don't mean to step on your toes but I already made a very quick modification to your original test game (the one we've be using the most up to now). It is exactly the same as your original map (I think) with the following exceptions:

- the warrior has already moved.
- starting tiles changed to match the new screenshot.
- the copper is now in the river/plains tile 1N of the settler.
- floodplains in the river bend under the fog to the SE.
- guessed at two mountains - one at 3E of warrior & the second 1S of that.
- all goody huts have been removed from the map (unless I missed something).

I think your modifications based on the small continent/fewer civs idea would be better, so please don't abandon those plans. I think you should remove all the goody huts though, as I think they are routinely taken out of all new SGOTMs.

If anyone spots any errors please speak up. I'm not proud!

 

[greatbeyond]

I not sure yet about the landmasses but may run two different tests. Not seeing any other units yet makes me believe that we are indeed on a less crowded landmass. It already looks large enough that I don't think we're lucky enough to be on an island by ourselves. I will update maps as information is revealed.

There appears to be a hill in the part of the mountain range that is obscured by fog, as my tests show if it was a mountain, the top would be revealed. I don't believe there are any floodplains along the river but with the save, you can probably tell better. I haven't added Copper or Iron into the BFC cross as of yet. I'm not that confident that AlanH is that generous. I do not believe there are any restrictions on flying or rotating the camera to look around our world. Sometimes you can get a good idea what lies under the fog by looking at the edges of the fog and zooming/rotating the camera.

I believe another pause of ~24 hours is fine to allow some more tests now that we can see all of our BFC.

 

[greatbeyond]

I modified my Test map after examining things more closely. It is Tundra and not a Hill between two of the Mountains to the SW. It is also FP in the bend of the river to the SE. There are mountains to the East of the Warrior.

I have attached the updated test map with two large continents

 

[culdeus]

Oof, Peter had me dead by conquest in 1200BC. That bottom left choke point will get flushed out by cultural borders under most circumstances and without forest it's usefulness is low.

I'm going to try gifting techs to neighbors. Any border rubbing seems to be the biggest factor here.

 

[Sweetacshon]

Regarding this last screen shot. I assume it is the end of the first turn, but the area revealed looks bigger than it should be. I will modify one of my maps to match this screen shot. I am going to guess that we are on a continent with fewer Civs, as none of their cities or units is in sight yet.

I don't think we can make assumption based on this, as it is still turn 0, and the AI hasn't had a turn yet, so you couldn't see their non existent boundaries.

I will try the test map again, but I'm still feeling the fishing/wb route is better as we're bringing in more research that way. The quicker we can get to alpha, the quicker we get a leg up on the AI. We do have to balance this with getting our power up a little so the AI doesn't think we're too weak too early, tho, so...? test test test

 

[MacBalt]

What a difference! My first test game with the new geography went much better than before. Won't claim it is as good as it could be, but I made it to Liberalism first and I've never done that on Deity before! (Didn't even have to reload! ) Highlights and Details follow. I like this tech path and build order. It gets Library/Academy/Alphabet at about the same times as our earlier "Alphabet" strategy, and it comes with the added benefit of an early-ish worker. (Amazing what a few sheep can do! )

Please let me know if you find anything better, as I'll probably base the game plan for my turnset off of this strategy unless someone shows us all a better way to go. (Things get a somewhat sloppy after Turn 50 or so, so no need to pull that apart yet. I just included it for fun. ) Best of all, there was no early DOW. I'll test it again a few times to make sure, but I should be able to put together some kind of new game plan by tomorrow night.

Highlights:

• Tech Path: Fishing-AH-Writing-Alphabet-Poly-Lit-Priesthood-COL-CS
• Build Order: Worker (1/2)-WB-finish worker-WB-warrior-Library
• Writing in Turn 27/28 (first is finish date, second is pop-up date)
• Library in Turn 38/39
• Alphabet in Turn 46/47
• Great Scientist/Academy in Turn 55/56
• Great Library in Turn 66/67
• Civil Service in Turn 85/86
• National Epic in Turn 107/108
• First to Liberalism in Turn 121/122 (175 AD)
• Tech Parity/Superiority from Alphabet trades thru Liberalism
• Minimal chopping (5 tiles through Liberalism, only 3 in FC)
• Best of All: No Early DOW
• First Political Demand came on Turn 50 (for resource-crab)
• Second Political Demand came on Turn 66 (for tech-Polytheism)
• Third Political Demand came on Turn 69 (cancel deals with Liz)
• Never Opened Borders with Khan (and Peter? -can't remember)
• (used the "After Warrior" test game save from post #154)

Game Notes are Attached:

 

[BLubmuz]

Hey, hey slow down!
I think the most important thing we need to know is if we have some choke point to block possible invaders.
To do this we need to scout carefully our neighborhood.
Then send the warrior as far as possible.

I think will have this knowledge by the end of your TS Balth, so i propose to wait 'til there to discuss our plans.
No further discussion needed on anything useful for your TS.

BTW, i'm playing that Deity OCC AW linked by Sweeta in the first page, a lot of fun with that choke point.
Just look at this guy, and note he's NOT attached to a GG.