SGOTM 08 - Smurkz

unkle · Oct 14, 2008

Shaka's capitol.

best GPFarm ever.

which means we should get it soon.

On the GP side, we also need to consider free GPs, at least for corp fouding:
* Music (really doable)
* Physics (For sure)
* Fusion (Too late I guess)
* Economics (doable too)
No great prophet for free though.

Renata · Oct 14, 2008

What's in Shaka's capital? I can't find a screenshot and am on the wrong computer to open the game at the moment. All I remember is a ton of forest and a possible iron hill.

unkle · Oct 14, 2008

3 clams, rice and copper.
Ok not best gpfarm ever, but still very cool (that's +13/14 food depending on irrigation) meaning 6/7 specialists.
Copper means we can build something there (ligthouse if destroyed).

Renata · Oct 14, 2008

And the forests (if they're mostly still there) would mean we could get the wonder up fast. Ok, worth considering.

Xcalibrator · Oct 14, 2008

The discussion and plans look good--sorry I can't add much--got a big deadline tomorrow at 4:30 and still only have 1 good typing hand. All I'd add is that once we get Alphabet it would be good to trade for Iron Working asap, or research ourselves if it's quick and we're tired of waiting. Iron is the last revealed resource until coal and oil and I'd really like to know where it is for settling purposes--we may need to grab a bit of jungle to get it, or adjust the stone island sites.

Methos · Oct 14, 2008

From testing in WB and Niklas looking at the code, it appears that the only way we can get the marble to connect is by either war/peace, the founding of a city, or a city changing hands. It appears that with forts, you have to build the road after the fort.

Any who are online, please join us in our discussion.

Niklas · Oct 14, 2008

I hate this game. I feel like jungle-on-rice all over again.

Xcalibrator · Oct 14, 2008

Unbelievable. OK, how about pillage the fort and road(s?) and rebuild with 2 or more workers?

[Edit: not sure about the timing, but could we also use this as an opportunity to carry a settler/military/worker to the stone island a bit earlier, after the military has pillaged? And/or run more scientists in the capitol to speed up research and find out where the iron is?

Reading 586 more closely... Or just settle the stone island asap and forget the pillage/rebuild?]

Methos · Oct 14, 2008

Xcalibrator said:
Unbelievable. OK, how about pillage the fort and road(s?) and rebuild with 2 or more workers?

We've discussed that idea and it would take too long. The fort would be pillaged before the road.

ChrisShaffer · Oct 14, 2008

The chat log

Spoiler :

Xcalibrator · Oct 14, 2008

Sounds like you talked about this in the chat log, but this clearly is a bug and maybe we could ask Alan et al. if it would be OK to go back a couple turns and reload if we cross our hearts and promise to replay everything else exactly the same. I mean, seriously, this may really mess up several teams' games. In case we're just out of luck, though, I would NOT post in the maintenance thread and give other teams a heads-up. We're one of the farthest along and there's no sense (other than being thoughtful, considerate, kind, and responsible) in giving other teams advance warning.

Hmm. Of course, if the moderators let other teams know, then that would give the fort trick away--quite possible some of them don't know about it. But the moderators could probably tell that from their thread discussions. Geez, hard to know what to do. Probably the fairest is to let us have a replay and have the mods keep an eye out in the other threads for anyone else running into this problem.

[Edit: Possibly simpler is to have a moderator edit our save with World Builder--but will that prevent future submissions since the file has been tampered with?]

Methos · Oct 14, 2008

I can't see the GOTM Staff allowing us to do a replay, nor can I see us asking for one. We've learned a lesson and now we need to figure out how to work with it. Currently it looks like declaring war is our best option if we still want marble this turn.

ChrisShaffer · Oct 14, 2008

Methos, I'm confused about why you needed to edit my chat log - I had already stripped out the email address parts?

Renata · Oct 14, 2008

I very much doubt we'd be allowed to replay due to something like this; I suspect the argument would be that we get to take advantage of weird little bits of code that work in our favor as long as they're not completely game-breaking exploits, so why should we get out of it when a weird little bit of code works against us in a not-completely-game-breaking way? Or at least that's how I'd argue if it were up to me, probably.

I'm not afraid to be proven wrong though if someone wants to write up a concise explanation for AlanH.

In any case, assuming we must play on as is, I see our options as follows:

1. Do nothing, just wait for the marble to get hooked up on its own before starting the Great Library; get a barracks, settler, galley or some military in YoSmurkz in the meantime. The positive side to this approach is mostly that we avoid the negatives of the other options. The negative is that we have no idea how long it might be before one of the AIs declares war (or makes peace), or founds or takes over a city. It might be next turn; it might take ten. And in the meantime we have no idea how to manage our forest chops, and will probably miss the opportunity to arrange a suitably large overflow going into the GL build. In the meantime, we lose the equivalent of roughly 20 beakers and 20 national GP points per turn of delay in the GL and NE.

2. Do nothing drastic, but hedge our bets by building a settler right away to found our next town as soon as possible. This puts a constraint on what we do with our towns in the next several turns, but otherwise changes nothing except guaranteeing that the longest we'd have to delay GL/NE is about eight turns.

3. Do as for #2, just in case, but also plan to ask Shaka if he'll declare on Joao once we have something to bribe him with (i.e. alphabet). This might shave a turn or two off the delay if we get lucky, and has the side benefit of being something we might want to consider doing anyway: it keeps Shaka off our backs, and might mean that his troops are busy elsewhere once we're ready to attack ourselves. The only negative is a -1 with Joao for getting someone to declare on him (and the possibility of being asked to fight ourselves before we're ready). Oh, and I guess we don't really want to strengthen Shaka too much with extra techs. So three negatives.

4. Declare war on Joao right now. The biggest positive is that we'd have the marble right away, no delay, and declaring on Joao would be considerably less risky than declaring on Shaka. (Though not without risk, as Shaka might be bribeable at some point, or might decide to "pile on".) The big negative is that we lose Joao as a potential trading partner right when we're at the point of being able to trade (Shaka won't trade before Pleased, IIRC). We'd have to find someone else to get the techs we want to buy, and there's no guarantee anyone's out there, or that we could find them in a reasonable period of time (especially with our explorers vulnerable to attack by Joao's armies).

5. Declare on Shaka right away. Ok, so we'd still be able to do tech trades with Joao, but we'd lose the 6 base commerce we're getting from Shaka's trade routes right now, and likely wind up locked into near-constant war with him until one of us is dead. We could probably survive, but it would hurt, and we couldn't rule out the possibility of needing to delay the GL/NE anyway at some point to help out. (We can't delay the GLight, probably.) Any pillaging would hurt us badly.

So that's all I can think of. Any additional options anyone can think of? Thoughts?

Xcalibrator · Oct 14, 2008

My record on strategic thought in this thread is very bad, but somewhat better on tactics. I favor option 2 (build settler) with the twist of settling on the northern part of the stone island--it saves galley moves and we're going to want a city there eventually. If we settle on the NE corner we get fish for fast growth and we'll pick up the goodie hut pretty quickly. If we land there, unfog the hidden tiles, and see it's not so great we'll have to move, but I think there's less chance of mucking up the choice of site than there is with the site near the stone--lots of fairly useless tiles there and we might miss out on iron (or coal, oil, Al, etc in the future) if we guess wrong.

Methos · Oct 14, 2008

ChrisShaffer said:
Methos, I'm confused about why you needed to edit my chat log - I had already stripped out the email address parts?

I wasn't apparently clear in my IM. Instead of Methos it had the beginning of my email address. Yes, it didn't have the @_, but it could very simply be used to figure out what it was. Same with everyone else's. I apologize if I offended you. I merely wished to protect everyone's privacy. I should have asked you via IM/PM first. My mistake.

Niklas · Oct 14, 2008

We only lose three base beakers if we declare on Shaka, since the 2-commerce trade routes we have now would be changed into 1-commerce trade routes among our own towns. Still, it's a drastic move to say the least.

I must admit I'm feeling a bit desillusioned right now (again probably a sign that I take this a bit too seriously :rolleyes:

), and I'm not in the mood for strategizing. But I'm leaning towards building a settler and hoping that something happens somewhere. Didn't we see a Shaka settler a while back? Or did that settle already (he has 4 towns now)?

I have bad experiences with appealing to the mods. Still, the jungle-over-rice thing was a random event, a feature of the game which is definitely by design even if it's a misfeature to me. In hindsight the whole argument was stupid. But what happened to us now is a bug, there's no other way to describe it. Building Fort followed by Road would have connected the Marble, building Road followed by Fort didn't. No one could argue that's a designed feature.

Should we make an appeal? We would replay the last 12 turns as close to the original as ever possible, except building fort before road, to get around the bug. I'm not sure I want to get my hopes up though...

Renata · Oct 14, 2008

Maybe someone who has access to the game right now can check on how many towns Shaka has? If it's still only three, we're sure to have a settlement within a couple of turns and that might make the decision easier.

I'm against making an appeal, personally. It clearly *is* a bug, and it clearly *will* damage us, but I don't think it has the kind of drastically game-changing effect it would have to have to justify a 12 turn replay. I know it's aggravating, and must be even more so to those who've been working so hard on this plan for the past couple of weeks. I wish it hadn't happened.

In any case, I'm not against taking a day or two to regroup if that's what's needed, Niklas.

I'm for building a settler, myself, and I think XCal's suggestion of settling the northern island site first is a good one as long as we don't plan on needing stone in the short term. Do we? It's not like any other civ is in a position to steal the stone from us.

unkle · Oct 14, 2008

Ok I would not ask Alan anything, since it is not game breaker... Still bad, but.

I'd go with early settler (to whip or not to whip///), declaring war before Alpha trades sounds not good to me at all.

r_rolo1 · Oct 14, 2008

My opinion about the appeal is simple : even if we can't get anything for us , it will be a warning sign for the rest of the ppl ( I don't think anyone will consider this a intended feature

). Even if only because of that, appealing would be useful .

But on game: I think the best we can do is to settle in the stone island..... all the other options are not in our hands ( meeting anyone else, AI making new city, war ... ). Niklas told me that we could put a setler on line in 3 turns ... it would take 5 turns IIRC to take the settler there. So it is possible to have a new city on our own in 9 ,10 turns top.

The big issue is what we would do in between

. Too bad that we don't have meditation, or some turns on S. Paya would be a good option....

SGOTM 08 - Smurkz

Emperor

homicidal jungle cat

Emperor

homicidal jungle cat

Ultraviolet Catastrophe

HoF Quattromaster

Fully Functional

Ultraviolet Catastrophe

HoF Quattromaster

Board gamer

Ultraviolet Catastrophe

HoF Quattromaster

Board gamer

homicidal jungle cat

Ultraviolet Catastrophe

HoF Quattromaster

Fully Functional

homicidal jungle cat

Emperor

King of myself

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