SGOTM 08 - Geezers

[Harbourboy]

Such dilemmas and dramas! The beauty of SGOTMs!

 

[Misotu]

I have now played through the early turns in the test game around half-a-dozen times (trying different wonder build choices). I have missed the Oracle only once in all of those attempts but in that game it was built on turn 78, which came as a bit of a shock! I agree that going for Bureaucracy is more of a gamble than my initial tests seemed to indicate I still think it's worth the risk though.

I agree that max growth/commerce is the thing - I always have to delay the Oracle, sometimes by over 20 turns. My suggestions for ways to get maths & CoL done faster:

• Definitely research fishing NEXT & get that workboat out there!
• Max out capital population to the happiness cap as soon as possible
• Research writing as early as possible - it's too late in the list at the moment - and chop that library
• Run at least one scientist (2 is possible and perhaps should be done) as soon as the library is up (we'll want an academy in the capital as early as poss anyhow)
• I have always researched poly rather than meditation, for the reasons already stated, but if we do meditation instead it saves a couple of turns.

Of course, if we want to be much safer, we could do as AgedOne mentions and take the Oracle early, going for Code of Laws instead of Bureaucracy?

Researching the wheel is a tricky one. If we do, we eventually get an extra pop in the capital from the gold happiness, plus commerce between the first and second cities. The question is whether the initial delay is worth the later benefit in slingshot research terms - haven't tested this but I suspect it is faster to delay researching wheel.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

• Definitely research fishing NEXT & get that workboat out there!
• Max out capital population to the happiness cap as soon as possible
• Research writing as early as possible - it's too late in the list at the moment - and chop that library
• Run at least one scientist (2 is possible and perhaps should be done) as soon as the library is up (we'll want an academy in the capital as early as poss anyhow)
• I have always researched poly rather than meditation, for the reasons already stated, but if we do meditation instead it saves a couple of turns.

Ah now this is very helpful Misotu. Because I've been trying to grab Henge, GW and work towards the Mids I've kept Yaso fairly heavy rather than emphasising growth/commerce.

If this is the only real way to be certain of the slingshot then we need to decide which wonders we are willing to miss to ensure the slingshot. Personally I think we should skip the Henge in favour of the GW.

 

[erikthecelt]

Sam, the problem with GW is it produces spies not prophets. The GW should only be built in a city where you do not want to produce GP ever. In this game, we need a more prophets.

@Misotu - good point about researching writing earlier, I forgot we already had AH - I usually have to don't have that when I'm trying for the sling.

The tech path now looks like fishing, writing, myst, med, priest.

Mark seemed keen on getting the Henge early, can we do it with this tech order? I'm leaning towards another test game rather than playing the turn set tonight.

 

[Misotu]

Such dilemmas and dramas! The beauty of SGOTMs!

We ain't seen nothing yet

I've played a few games on to around 1200 AD taking the build as many Wonders as possible route while keeping half an eye on culture in 3 cities.

There are so many ways to end up in a mess with this one, it's just not funny.

 

[erikthecelt]

Try looking at the objective of dominating without going over the domination limit. I think we will be best off if we cripple the AI first, build a large empire and then build the wonders. It's my usual style of play when I'm going for a time victory. I keep one AI hanging around in a lousy city while I spend the rest of my time building wonders. The CS sling will get us early maces to use for the first one or two conquests. I would not worry about the early wonders so much, the REX and control of game is more important. The wonders will get built in cities we can keep.

 

[The-Hawk]

RE: City 2. I agree with Erik that we can’t decide on city 2 location yet. I think we need to open up fog to the west of the cows and near the pigs before we decide. At the moment, I like 1W of the cows. If we are going for culture, we want lots of grassland for cottages. On the other hand, if we are going for “slow culture”, then maybe Sam’s idea of 1 NW is better (so we can run more GPs). However, we need more info.

RE: GP’s. Erik thanks for the list. One thing is obvious, we probably won’t be bulbing many techs.

RE: Slavery, Erik why is it bad in BtS? I didn’t know anything had changed from vanilla/warlords?

RE: Tech path. I going to visit my older daughter at school this weekend . I'll have my laptop from work, so I can post, but not play with the save. So I can’t test tech paths. I’m not so sure about fishing, seems likely the value of the extra commerce will be offset by the turns to research it. However, as some of you have looked closer at this, I’m OK if that is the choice. I would not do wheel. Generally when I slingshot (I do it routinely on Immortal), I research no techs except those on the direct path.

RE: Early wonders. This is worth more discussion. If our second city is high hammers, then we should try for one or two. I would make a vote for Mids… if we are going for all the corporations, we will need a GE at some point. Early Mids might be the only way to get one. Also, if we are running lots of specialists to pop GP's, then Representation would be great.

 

[erikthecelt]

BTS has created slave revolts, the longer you are in slavery, the more frequently they seem to occur. A slave revolt can last for several turns which would derail our slingshot. The best way to make use of slavery in BTS is to start a Golden Age and switch to slavery (no anarchy), whip everything you want to and then switch out of slavery before the end of the GA.
I avoid revolting to slavery as routine which is the vanilla/warlords approach. Even if you have cash on hand to pay for the end of the revolt, you've lost one full turn of production.

Edit: Given the debate I will run a simulation and crunch the numbers on fishing tonight. I am with Misotu, it's generally faster if you have the food to build up the citizens. The second city can be used to build WB for the capital while it builds the Henge.

 

[The-Hawk]

Ahhh... slave revolts. Didn't know there was a connection. I hate random events, turn them off in my HOF games. So for me, slavery is still often a BtS option.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

The tech path now looks like fishing, writing, myst, med, priest.

Mark seemed keen on getting the Henge early, can we do it with this tech order? I'm leaning towards another test game rather than playing the turn set tonight.

I had a try at this tech order, chopping WB and lost Henge. I tried a different tech order & found that Yaso was waiting on tech to finish. Going for one or more test games to sort out the correct tech & production order strikes me as an excellent idea.

Re. slave revolts and the like it seems the key is to keep some spare gold around, say 100 or so. That way we only lose a turn of production. Of course this is where the lack of goody huts near to our start hits us.

 

[erikthecelt]

What did you whip and when?
That spare gold has to come out of the critical path - tech research.
If the choice is Henge or CS sling, which do you want?

Beaker Costs
CoL 350
Mason 80
Myst 50
Priest 60
Math 250
Med 80
Writing 120
Total 990

Current Beaker Rate: 16 turns to research at current rate is 62.
The second city will cut the beaker rate because there will be no trade route (no roads and no sailing).
Fishing will add 4 bpt (beakers per turn), straight up it takes 3 turns to research, so the cost is 80 beakers (real cost plus opportunity cost) so we need 65 turns of research instead of 62 at the rate of 16 bpt.
Assuming we get the first wb at turn 15 (time to complete settler and build WB) we have 50 turns to recover the cost. 2 bpt for 50 turns is 100 b. Assuming the second WB is available on turn 30 we have a further return of 60 b. That's 160 b or slightly less than half the cost of CoL just for working the seafood.
15 * 16 = 240 (1st wb)
15 * 18 = 270 (2nd wb)
520/20 = 26

Edit - fixed the calculation
15 + 15 +26 = 56 a saving of 7 turns without running any scientists or any MM of coastal squares to increase the research rate.

 

[Harbourboy]

It is great to see us actually testing and analysing options this time. We've never been good at that in previous games.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

What did you whip and when?
That spare gold has to come out of the critical path - tech research.

I haven't whipped anything. My comment about slave revolts was talking generally about BTS. In this game we haven't got any gold anyway. We lose 1 once we found our second city which means research goes down to 90%.

I've just tried Fishing, Myst, Writing, Masonry, Poly, Priesthood, Maths, CoL. I chopped the settler, built the WB normally, built the Henge,chopped the library, part built the Mids whilst waiting for priesthood and then started the Oracle. The AI built the Oracle on T78. From what Misotu says it looks as though I was unlucky. At that point Oracle had 4 turns to go & CoL 11 turns. Hari whatever was building the GW with 7 turns to go.

The timings are a bit misleading as the test save techs a bit slower that the actual game and production is slightly slower in Yaso.

If the choice is Henge or CS sling, which do you want?

I think it's more a case of do we chance the CS slingshot or go for the safe CoL option?

 

[erikthecelt]

CS is 800 beakers and boosts our productivity enormously. I wouls say the risk is well worth it.

 

[Harbourboy]

I bet the good teams manage the Civil Service slingshot easily, so why shouldn't we be able to do it? There are only a handful of genuinely important decisions to be made to get there.

 

[Misotu]

@erikthecelt: Have just run a test on fishing, but I hope you'll do yours too - I had a few problems with random events so it was difficult to keep things consistent. I prioritised research/growth over hammers and got extra production when needed from chopping.

With Fishing: Ran 2 scientists and micro-managed hammers/sea tiles to optimise as far as possible. City grew to size 5. Three possible outcomes:
1 Great scientist generated - built academy. Bureaucracy on turn 73
2 Great scientist generated - bulbed mathematics. Bureaucracy on turn 70 (but could have been quite a few turns earlier if I had pre-chopped a couple of forests).
3 Great prophet generated - built the shrine. Bureaucracy on turn 77.

Without Fishing: Ran 2 scientists. City grew to size 4. Three possible outcomes, but I've only managed to produce one of them because of a repetitive random event :
1 Great prophet generated - built the shrine. Bureaucracy on turn 79.

So fishing is probably better than no fishing, although the end time difference is not dramatic, only 2-3 turns. However, with the fishing option, our capital ends up 1 pop larger, we have an extra tech and another build option. If we are looking for something to build for a few turns, a scouting work boat is a good option.

The best time I can get from this point seems to be turn 70, and that was *very* fiddly, requiring timed chops to coincide with finishing eg the workboat the turn before the library is available, finishing the library the turn before the Henge is available and using the overflow for each new item rather than ending up with a load of chopped hammers before the next item on the build list is available to build.

I have a horrible feeling that turn 70 may not be early enough. In one of my tests I was beaten to the Oracle on turn 74. Do we want to consider building the Oracle earlier and taking a different tech? If this were a Gauntlet, I'd definitely go for CS but we only have one shot here. I suppose we can gamble on a scientist & pre-chop forests ready to bulb maths - that might get it down to around turn 64.

Edited to add: Of course, I'm basing these turns on the test game where you can't get to the fish. I don't think I'd build a second workboat right away though - I'd build the library and Henge first and then consider it because the library is a better research boost and Henge means if we run 2 scientists we get a GP in a time frame that makes a difference. Course, if we *didn't* build Henge & just ran 2 scientists, we could guarantee a scientist rather than gambling. Would it arrive in time though ? (I don't think I can face another test on that same map tonight!!)

 

[The-Hawk]

CS is 800 beakers and boosts our productivity enormously. I wouls say the risk is well worth it.

I agree with this. The main penalty for missing CS-slingshot is the beakers we put into CoL (versus taking CoL for free). This is not a bad penalty. We also will get gold back from the missed Oracle, also not a bad thing. Of course, it means we will need to capture Oracle from whichever AI was brazen enough to steal it from us.

 

[The-Hawk]

Oops... crossed posts with Misotu.

Between Misotu's and Erik's analysis, sounds like fishing is a winner. I would not bulb math, seems like a waste of a GS.

 

[Misotu]

I agree with this. The main penalty for missing CS-slingshot is the beakers we put into CoL (versus taking CoL for free). This is not a bad penalty. We also will get gold back from the missed Oracle, also not a bad thing. Of course, it means we will need to capture Oracle from whichever AI was brazen enough to steal it from us.

Loving the positive waves

OK, OK I know, you're right. I can hardly believe I'm thinking along these lines. Bulbing maths is horrible. I would never consider it. This is a sign of too-many-test-games desperation

But ... you know ... if we did it right at the last moment, one turn to go to build the Oracle, bulb maths, press turn end and ...

Don't you just hate that message "The Oracle has been built in a distant land"

Followed by "Gandhi adopts hereditary rule"

 

[Sam_Yeager]

With Fishing[/B]: Ran 2 scientists and micro-managed hammers/sea tiles to optimise as far as possible. City grew to size 5. Three possible outcomes:
1 Great scientist generated - built academy. Bureaucracy on turn 73
2 Great scientist generated - bulbed mathematics. Bureaucracy on turn 70 (but could have been quite a few turns earlier if I had pre-chopped a couple of forests).
3 Great prophet generated - built the shrine. Bureaucracy on turn 77.

Without Fishing: Ran 2 scientists. City grew to size 4. Three possible outcomes, but I've only managed to produce one of them because of a repetitive random event :
1 Great prophet generated - built the shrine. Bureaucracy on turn 79.

What's your tech path Misotu and what are you building in Yaso? Are you founding a second city or just sticking with Yaso? I just can't understand how you're finishing so early.