SGOTM 07 - Xteam

[Jimmy Thunder]

Does anyone know how to accurately determine the "worst enemy" from the leader relations matrix?

My understanding is that their worst enemy is the civ that they have the lowest +/- modifier toward AND the relationship has to be at least ANNOYED.

[*]We will need to build wonders that give GA points thus decreasing the chance of getting GS's.

We DO want GS's... firstly for our Academy and secondly for all the lightbulb techs on the way to Liberalism/Communism. Great Library provides three great scientist point sources so it is the best wonder to counteract/dilute Great Artist Points from Globe Theatre.

With regard to the comment about Pyramids allowing us to better choose favourite civics.... both you AND the target civ have to be running their favourite civic, so getting an early Police State etc is no advantage since the AI is still many years from being able to run it themselves.

Great Artists are not hugely useful in this game. Maybe for lightbulbing Radio/MassMedia (but with their lower inherant beaker value) or gifting to our PA partner for a culture bomb in a conquested area.

 

[leif erikson]

Great Artists are not hugely useful in this game. Maybe for lightbulbing Radio/MassMedia (but with their lower inherant beaker value) or gifting to our PA partner for a culture bomb in a conquested area.

I usd them for two things. First, Beijing seems to always be culturally squeezed by someone. It allowed attacking civs to come right up to the city nearly untouched. I set off a culture bomb to restore the BFC on several occasions. The other thing is that they can be assigned to the city where they generate 12 culture per turn and, iirc, 3 GPT. That crummy 3 GPT allowed me to build a few more units for protection and maintain 100% research. Other than that, they are fairly useless.

 

[rrau]

I have it down to 42 turns to Mids, and have gotten them 3 straight times with SCT's save posted in the SGOTM06 thread. The sequence:
Found in place, start Warrior and Fishing.
Turn 5 - Warrior completes, Worker.
Turn 6 - Fishing completes, start Masonry. Change Worker to Work Boat. Beijing at size 1 with 6 turns until growth.
On turn 12, Beijing grows to size 2. Citizens work a grass forest and a forested plains hill. Work Boat now due in two turns.
Turn 14, Work Boat completes, back to Worker. Citizens work Forested Grass and Fur tiles.
Turn 15 - Crab connected. Citizens work Crab and Fur tiles.
Turn 16 - Masonry comes in, start Wheel, due in 5-turns.
Turn 21 - Wheel comes in, start Bronze Working, due in 11 turns.
Turn 22 - Worker completes, start Mids. Worker to Stone. Citizens work Crab and Forested Grass.
Turn 28 - Quarry complete. Beijing grows to size 3. Citizens work Crab, Stone Hill and a Forested Plains Hill.
Turn 31 - Route complete, Stone connected. Worker moves to forested grass east of Beijing, where we want a Cottage later. Citizens work Crab, Stone and Forested Plain Hill tiles.
Turn 33 - Bronze Working completes, start Pottery, no revolt. Worker starts forest chop.
Turn 35 - Forest chop completes.
Turn 36 - Worker to forested plains hill NE of Beijing.
Turn 39 - Pottery completes, start Writing. Forest chop completes.
Turn 42 - Mids completes. Beijing is at size 3 and we have a Crab connected for food.

Turn 42 seems very doable to me!

Sorry, but all the times I tried your tech path, and build orders, I had one warrior in town and got stomped by axes a few turns after pyramids completed. I think we need to rethink things.

 

[ShannonCT]

On Worker steal. I haven't tried this yet but may have some more time this evening. The problem I've been thinking about is getting him safely back to our territory. In test games, by the time I've traveled to a place beyond our immediate neighbors, their borders often close and lock the Warrior from getting home until Open Borders. This would nullify the effect of the steal and may allow him to be stolen back? There isn't much room to move between all these borders...

Worker steal only works in a limited number of circumstances. In my test game, I was able to steal a worker from Hatty and get it back to our city. I guess another consideration would be how likely an AI is to make peace after a war declaration. Gator, can you answer this?

How does stealing a worker speed it up?

Mids can be built faster with an extra chopper.

I have it down to 42 turns to Mids, and have gotten them 3 straight times with SCT's save posted in the SGOTM06 thread.

...

Turn 42 seems very doable to me!

Nice work. Seems it's better from a Pyramids standpoint to get BW 4th and not 2nd. I guess the danger is getting attacked before BW.

It's very likely that there will be time for only one early Wonder and I would like to propose that we consider The Great Lighthouse. I don't think that our capital and leader is particularly well suited for a specialist economy for several reasons:

• Qin is financial so we will get 3gpt (4.5gpt with Bureaucracy) from many tiles like coast, river bank cottages, villages etc. Thus it will often be better to work tiles that will give us both beakers and growth rather than hiring specialists.
• We will need to build wonders that give GA points thus decreasing the chance of getting GS's.
• Trade routes will soon yield more than 3gpt each and the Bureaucracy bonus will apply to gold from trade routes (and tiles) but not to beakers coming from scientists. In my test game trade routes were yielding 6-8gpt in the early AD's (9-12 with Bureaucracy).

For these reasons I'm leaning towards building the Great Lighthouse rather than the Pyramids if we have to choose between them.

If we are beelining to Mass Media, I would emphasize the importance of getting as many Great Scientists as possible, as well as at least 1 Great Engineer. With health being a big limiting factor to our population, we can't grow our city big enough to work a lot of cottages. When we're at our health limit, growing bigger starts to eat into our surplus food. Hiring science specialists at this point instead of working more grassland cottages gives a comparable beaker return (if we have the Mids) and gives us 9 GPPs per turn (with Pacifism and National Epic). I'm advocating that we run 2 scientists when possible so that along with 2 free scientists from the Great Library, Mids give us an extra 12 base beakers per turn. We'd still be getting the majority of our beakers from commerce, but we'd get more great people for bulbing more tradeable techs.

The Great Lighthouse takes a while to become powerful. Trade routes aren't worth very much early in the game. The GL only becomes better than the Mids (beaker-wise) during the period between Civil Service and Corporation.

The Pyramids also have the advantage of giving us the possibility of a Great Engineer for Machinery or for building the UN. And we can build the Pyramids with a 150% hammer bonus, compared with a 50% bonus on the Great Lighthouse. Using Leif's sequence, we have a very high chance of getting the Mids first.

I've also worked out a sequence where we research BW after Fishing and get the Mids on turn 45.

 

[leif erikson]

Sorry, but all the times I tried your tech path, and build orders, I had one warrior in town and got stomped by axes a few turns after pyramids completed. I think we need to rethink things.

Which saves were you using? I am a bit surprised as all the testing I did was pretty peaceful? I used the two you made and the one SCT posted. I wonder what the difference is in what we are doing?

 

[rrau]

I used my latest one trial 4. Maybe it's just an aggressive bunch, but Victoria marched an army across the continent once directly to me. Kinda surprised me when she did that. I haven't been able to make it to alphabet and trade for archery before getting stomped on that map.

 

[Mad Professor]

Just catching up on some good discussion over the last 36 hours.

Personally, I'm in favour of going Fishing->Wheel->Pottery->Hunting(just in time to get fur)->Writing->Alphabet.

The early Alphabet gives you better trading opportunities, e.g. you can get lots of techs by just trading away Writing.

The thing I don't like about this is the lack of archers. Archers in a city one a hill (And the hill looks like a good place to settle) do a HUGE amount better than warriors in the same position, especially when the attackers are axes. Now with excellent diplomacy you can avoid the angry axes to some extent, but luck will still play a part. My own experience in the test game I played was peaceful, but it might not have been. Religion spread has a lot to do with it fairly quickly I guess, and that explains perhaps Rrau's experience of getting those warriors stomped on. Even without someone being annoyed at you (you might refuse to adopt religion to avoid bad relations) you can still get attacked by someone like Nappy or Khan or Monty, or a bunch of others simply because they feel like it. If all you've got is warriors sitting around the pyramids, you'll lose them. I think archery should come in there somewhere. In this game our power will be WAY lower than everyone else all game - well most of it - and that is enough incentive for some to attack you no matter how good a diplomat you are.

Build workboats before workers since improved tiles don't give us a massive yield (like cows or irrigated corn would). We don't need masonry until we start building wonders, putting a mine on the hills is just as good for production.

Absolutely on the workboats. I found the good food offshore very useful in rebuilding pop after using the whip, and for running two scientists for quite a while after building a llibrary. (I was following that plan in the academy article fairly closely).

On the subject of library, going for something like the pyramids would be instead of an early library would it not? So we'd be wanting our first GP to be an engineer right? Has anyone thought of the consequenecs of this further down the track - ie how fast we get to Communism/Mass Media?

 

[Mad Professor]

If we are beelining to Mass Media, I would emphasize the importance of getting as many Great Scientists as possible, as well as at least 1 Great Engineer. With health being a big limiting factor to our population, we can't grow our city big enough to work a lot of cottages. When we're at our health limit, growing bigger starts to eat into our surplus food. Hiring science specialists at this point instead of working more grassland cottages gives a comparable beaker return (if we have the Mids) and gives us 9 GPPs per turn (with Pacifism and National Epic). I'm advocating that we run 2 scientists when possible so that along with 2 free scientists from the Great Library, Mids give us an extra 12 base beakers per turn. We'd still be getting the majority of our beakers from commerce, but we'd get more great people for bulbing more tradeable techs.

I'm thinking similarly to SCT here. The strategy in the academy article (and that's not the only way to play, I know) was heavily dependent on those scientists for upping tech pace and getting you GS's. Also critical was the Globe Theatre to remove the happy problem, leaving you with only a health problem to deal with, and so SCT's comments on health here are to the point I think.

The Pyramids also have the advantage of giving us the possibility of a Great Engineer for Machinery or for building the UN. And we can build the Pyramids with a 150% hammer bonus, compared with a 50% bonus on the Great Lighthouse. Using Leif's sequence, we have a very high chance of getting the Mids first.

This is the point which might make beelining the mids worth the delay in a library. I haven't sat down to work it all out - what is the cost of your first GS being only the second GP...? This looks like a calculation to think about.

 

[Frederiksberg]

My understanding is that their worst enemy is the civ that they have the lowest +/- modifier toward AND the relationship has to be at least ANNOYED.

That fits my experience. Only problem left is when two civs have the same modifier with a 3rd civ that is annoyed at both.

We DO want GS's... firstly for our Academy and secondly for all the lightbulb techs on the way to Liberalism/Communism. Great Library provides three great scientist point sources so it is the best wonder to counteract/dilute Great Artist Points from Globe Theatre.

Maybe you misunderstood my point. I know we don't want Great Artists but we probably have no other choice than building the Globe Theater and the National Epic. Someone explained during the last SGOTM that the chance of getting a Great Scientist can't be influenced by changing the number of scientists because this probability is calculated in a strange way. In my test game the probability of GA's was around one third.

If we are beelining to Mass Media, I would emphasize the importance of getting as many Great Scientists as possible, as well as at least 1 Great Engineer. With health being a big limiting factor to our population, we can't grow our city big enough to work a lot of cottages. When we're at our health limit, growing bigger starts to eat into our surplus food. Hiring science specialists at this point instead of working more grassland cottages gives a comparable beaker return (if we have the Mids) and gives us 9 GPPs per turn (with Pacifism and National Epic). I'm advocating that we run 2 scientists when possible so that along with 2 free scientists from the Great Library, Mids give us an extra 12 base beakers per turn. We'd still be getting the majority of our beakers from commerce, but we'd get more great people for bulbing more tradeable techs.

In my test game I could easily grow to size 16. Most likely you can trade a couple of health resources and keep some of the forests. When we reach the health limit there is no harm in hiring some scientists but the value added by the Pyramids is low. At the time when we are ready to hire the scientists two extra trade routes would be worth 6-8 gpt each meaning that we would get 12-16 base beakers per turn and 18-24 base beaker with Bureaucracy. If we run 2 scientists early growth will be zero until we get a lighthouse.

The Great Lighthouse takes a while to become powerful. Trade routes aren't worth very much early in the game. The GL only becomes better than the Mids (beaker-wise) during the period between Civil Service and Corporation.

Trade routes become valuable quite fast and have a value of 3gpt in the late BC's and with Bureaucracy the trade routes are vastly superior to the 6-12 extra beakers coming from the Pyramids.

The Pyramids also have the advantage of giving us the possibility of a Great Engineer for Machinery or for building the UN. And we can build the Pyramids with a 150% hammer bonus, compared with a 50% bonus on the Great Lighthouse. Using Leif's sequence, we have a very high chance of getting the Mids first.

The added possibility of getting a GE is the best argument in favor of the Pyramids if we keep him for building the UN. There is no guarantee that we get a GE and we don't know if we will be needing the UN. Even with the bonus from stone the Pyramids are still more expensive to build than the Great Lighthouse.

 

[leif erikson]

In my test game I could easily grow to size 16. Most likely you can trade a couple of health resources and keep some of the forests. When we reach the health limit there is no harm in hiring some scientists but the value added by the Pyramids is low. At the time when we are ready to hire the scientists two extra trade routes would be worth 6-8 gpt each meaning that we would get 12-16 base beakers per turn and 18-24 base beaker with Bureaucracy. If we run 2 scientists early growth will be zero until we get a lighthouse.

I'd like to know how you managed a pop 16 Beijing. The highest I ever got to was 12 and that happened as I could trade, once in a while, for Clams. Did you farm, instead of cottage, the riverside tile for extra food?

The added possibility of getting a GE is the best argument in favor of the Pyramids if we keep him for building the UN. There is no guarantee that we get a GE and we don't know if we will be needing the UN. Even with the bonus from stone the Pyramids are still more expensive to build than the Great Lighthouse.

What other option have we for a GE? I tried Caste System, Engineers aren't included. The only option I could see was a Forge, but that carries a -1 in health. I could have used some GE's during most of the games tested.

EDIT - I think we need to do some testing on whether gaining the Pyramids makes us a target for other civs? No matter what we end up doing, I think the need for Great Scientists make trying for The Great Library a must.

 

[Frederiksberg]

I'd like to know how you managed a pop 16 Beijing. The highest I ever got to was 12 and that happened as I could trade, once in a while, for Clams. Did you farm, instead of cottage, the riverside tile for extra food?

I traded for fish and clam, built harbor and aqueduct and kept 6 forests. This gave a total of 14 health points

What other option have we for a GE? I tried Caste System, Engineers aren't included. The only option I could see was a Forge, but that carries a -1 in health. I could have used some GE's during most of the games tested.

Hanging Gardens and Hagia Sophia gives engineer points.

EDIT - I think we need to do some testing on whether gaining the Pyramids makes us a target for other civs? No matter what we end up doing, I think the need for Great Scientists make trying for The Great Library a must.

I think we all agree that we should build the Great Library. I will see if I can find time to test building the Great Lighthouse.

 

[ShannonCT]

The thing I don't like about this is the lack of archers. Archers in a city one a hill (And the hill looks like a good place to settle) do a HUGE amount better than warriors in the same position, especially when the attackers are axes. Now with excellent diplomacy you can avoid the angry axes to some extent, but luck will still play a part. My own experience in the test game I played was peaceful, but it might not have been. Religion spread has a lot to do with it fairly quickly I guess, and that explains perhaps Rrau's experience of getting those warriors stomped on. Even without someone being annoyed at you (you might refuse to adopt religion to avoid bad relations) you can still get attacked by someone like Nappy or Khan or Monty, or a bunch of others simply because they feel like it. If all you've got is warriors sitting around the pyramids, you'll lose them. I think archery should come in there somewhere. In this game our power will be WAY lower than everyone else all game - well most of it - and that is enough incentive for some to attack you no matter how good a diplomat you are.

This is a good reason for getting BW as the 2nd tech even if it delays Pyramids by a few turns (I can get Mids on turn 45 with Fishing-BW-Masonry-Wheel sequence). If we find copper in our BFC, we don't need Archery. If no copper, we can research Hunting after Wheel and start monitoring the power graphs of our neighbors. If we are seeing a big spike, we can research Archery and whip/chop many archers quickly. If we can survive until we get Alphabet, we should be in the clear, because we can pay an AI to stop attacking us and we can bribe our neighbors to attack other AI.

Absolutely on the workboats. I found the good food offshore very useful in rebuilding pop after using the whip, and for running two scientists for quite a while after building a llibrary. (I was following that plan in the academy article fairly closely).

On the subject of library, going for something like the pyramids would be instead of an early library would it not? So we'd be wanting our first GP to be an engineer right? Has anyone thought of the consequenecs of this further down the track - ie how fast we get to Communism/Mass Media?

We can finish the Mids around the same time or before we get Writing, so it would have no effect on the speed of our library. Engineers are good for Machinery (which is on the Mass Media/Communism path) and good for rushing the UN. Pyramids are also good for rushing the UN under Universal Suffrage.

Maybe you misunderstood my point. I know we don't want Great Artists but we probably have no other choice than building the Globe Theater and the National Epic. Someone explained during the last SGOTM that the chance of getting a Great Scientist can't be influenced by changing the number of scientists because this probability is calculated in a strange way. In my test game the probability of GA's was around one third.

It's not true that hiring more scientists doesn't affect the chance of getting a GS. More scientists = greater probability of a GS.

In my test game I could easily grow to size 16. Most likely you can trade a couple of health resources and keep some of the forests. When we reach the health limit there is no harm in hiring some scientists but the value added by the Pyramids is low. At the time when we are ready to hire the scientists two extra trade routes would be worth 6-8 gpt each meaning that we would get 12-16 base beakers per turn and 18-24 base beaker with Bureaucracy. If we run 2 scientists early growth will be zero until we get a lighthouse.

I'm thinking that we should run scientists much earlier than you're suggesting. I suggest we use our first GS for bulbing Philosophy. Pacifism will double our GPPs and is a cheap civic when one has a small army. And Philosophy is great tradebait. Second GS I've been using for an Academy. Third for part of Education (Helps a lot in being first to Liberalism). Other possible uses are for Optics, Astronomy, Printing Press, Scientific Method, etc etc... There's no such thing as too many GSs in this game. They really make a big difference in getting to Communism early.

Trade routes become valuable quite fast and have a value of 3gpt in the late BC's and with Bureaucracy the trade routes are vastly superior to the 6-12 extra beakers coming from the Pyramids.

I think we should do a gauntlet before we start the game. Some of us build Mids and hybrid economy and some build Great Lighthouse and a commerce economy and we see who gets to Communism first (because getting a PA increases research 2-3 fold and minimizes the beaker difference between Mids and GL).

I will post a save soon that starts at the point where we have researched Fishing and BW, so that our games will be more comparable (the randomness of where the early religions are founded makes a big difference).

Hanging Gardens and Hagia Sophia gives engineer points.

Hanging Gardens is worth thinking about.

 

[ShannonCT]

Ok, here's the gauntlet:

We've researched Fishing and Bronze Working.
We've built a warrior, a workboat, and we're building a worker.
None of the AI we've met have founded Buddhism or Hinduism.

Be the first to get a Permanent Alliance.

 

[DJMGator13]

I guess another consideration would be how likely an AI is to make peace after a war declaration. Gator, can you answer this?

Sort of. The <iRefuseToTalkWarThreshold> tag defines a set number of turns that the AI will refuse to talk to us. It ranges from 6 to 10 turns, with a mode of 8 turns.

Then there is a <iMakePeaceRand> this determines the probability that the AI is willing to make peace. It says the lower the number the better chance for peace, which makes sense when you see that Asoka is at 10 and Genghis is at 80. This setting ranges from 10 to 80 with a mode of 20 and 17 of 26 leaders at either 10 or 20.

When you consider power ratings in the equations, there is a chance that we could get "dogpiled" instead of an offer of peace.

The <iDogPileWarRand> will measure if the AI's power is greater than 1.5x our power and then use this probability to bring in another opponent against us. The lower the value the higher the chance of a dogpile. This value ranges from 25 to 100, with a mode of 50 and 6 of 26 leaders at 25.

Considering our power rating is going to be real low all these measure the AI uses will be in favor of them declaring if asked.

 

[Frederiksberg]

It's not true that hiring more scientists doesn't affect the chance of getting a GS. More scientists = greater probability of a GS.

Do you have a reference for this. I believe JT had some explanation in the last SGOTM of how this was calculated.

I'm thinking that we should run scientists much earlier than you're suggesting. I suggest we use our first GS for bulbing Philosophy. Pacifism will double our GPPs and is a cheap civic when one has a small army. And Philosophy is great tradebait. Second GS I've been using for an Academy. Third for part of Education (Helps a lot in being first to Liberalism). Other possible uses are for Optics, Astronomy, Printing Press, Scientific Method, etc etc... There's no such thing as too many GSs in this game. They really make a big difference in getting to Communism early.

Building the GLH instead of the Pyramids doesn't change the GPP we get it only adds a few beakers to each specialist by use of Representation.

I think we should do a gauntlet before we start the game. Some of us build Mids and hybrid economy and some build Great Lighthouse and a commerce economy and we see who gets to Communism first (because getting a PA increases research 2-3 fold and minimizes the beaker difference between Mids and GL).

I will post a save soon that starts at the point where we have researched Fishing and BW, so that our games will be more comparable (the randomness of where the early religions are founded makes a big difference).

Good idea - I will see if I can find some time to play a test game. Maybe we should agree to make some intermediate saves for comparison and to better analyze the differences.

 

[rrau]

Urgh.....I only saved the turn I got the PA. I did notice that with the GL instead of pyramids, I was able to research faster and had trouble finding techs to trade for. Right before the PA, the only people I was able to trade with were Huaynac, my target and Mansa. I allied with Huaynac and am deciding whether to go for military victory, or since we're so far ahead in tech, a space victory.

It was a rather late PA because the only person I shared a war with was 3 or 4 on my list of possible allies against the English, who everyone hated my game due to differing religion. I was first to communism and traded for military tradition after I got communism because only one or two others had it and not people on my list to make DA's with.

Edit: Communism learned turn 190.

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

Do you have a reference for this. I believe JT had some explanation in the last SGOTM of how this was calculated.

What Shannon is saying is true, if you have a mixture of GPP types, then adding additional scientists will increase your chance for Great Scientist.

The final probability is an average over all of the turns that GPP's were generated toward the Great Person. Each turn, the probability for that given turn is based purely on the number of different GPP SOURCES active that turn.

E.G.

Over 20 turns:
1x GScientist Wonder and 2x scientists for turns 1-10 (3 out of 3 GPP sources are scientist), then 1x GS Wonder 2x scientists and 1x GArtist Wonder for turns 11-20 (3 out of 4 GPP sources are scientist) --------->

(100% x 10 + 75% x 10) / 20 = 87.5% chance of scientist


It's quite simple, I'm just not very good at explaining it.

 

[leif erikson]

Ok, here's the gauntlet:

We've researched Fishing and Bronze Working.
We've built a warrior, a workboat, and we're building a worker.
None of the AI we've met have founded Buddhism or Hinduism.

Be the first to get a Permanent Alliance.

I signed a PA in 1200 AD. Was pretty lucky because it was peaceful most of the game. Got Pyramids and Great Library. My target was Hauyna Capac, following with you rrau, and he declared on Peter and asked me to join in. I then bought Louis in and he protected me from Peter's troops. The war lasted way over 40 turns and I just kept researching. Got liberalism first and took Astronomy, had it monopoly. Got Communism and HC signed immediately. I have both a log in XCel and several intermediate saves, should anyone need them. The 1200 AD save is attached.

 

[rrau]

Much better than my result. *sighs* I still have much to learn.

Although, I am happy that I was able to continue to play my game out to my first deity win

[edit] I opened your save and it looks like you only got communism about 10 or so turns before I did, so most of my time was waiting on those 40 turns to pass once I was able to make peace. If we get a PA that early in our game, and our continent is big enough, we could probably go for domination.

 

[leif erikson]

Although, I am happy that I was able to continue to play my game out to my first deity win

Congratulations on your first Deity win!!

I'm too tired to continue tonight, but should also play it out as I have never won on Deity either...

I was a bit surprised at the ease of it. That tech lead makes all the difference. It actually could have been faster. In order to keep my Incan friend happy, I changed civics a couple of times at his request. Made him

Off to bed...