SGOTM 08 - Smurkz

[Niklas]

Quick plan for the next two turns:

Yo!:
Switch to settler, build for two turns with current tile allocation. Should end on turn 93 with 80 hammers in bin.

Hari:
Keep building Axeman with current tile allocation.

Harapura:
Keep building Torch with current tile allocation.

Workers:
#1: Move N into Hari, then to forested hill near Yo. Would start chop-mining on turn 93, so that decision can wait if we need to delay.
#2: Embark on galley and then disembark on forest. Would start chopping on turn 93, can wait.
#3: Road hill tile near Harapura where the worker is. We only "lose" 1 move on that, since we will want a road there sooner or later.
#4: Keep chop-mining hill near Yo. Won't complete until turn 94.

Diplomacy:
Keep looking for "We have enough on our hands" or the emergence of Alphabet on the scene.

Research:
Run one more turn on 0% research, then one turn on Alphabet at full speed.

Units:
W2 Warrior keeps exploring in a south-westernly direction, trying to cover as much ground as possible to find new contacts.
Galley trapped by ice will retrace a few steps and sail down the southern land visible.
Warrior in Shaka lands will keep watching Ulundi and uMmmm each turn.
Other units stay in place.

Any comments before I play? I should be able to play in about 2 hours.

 

[Renata]

Why one more turn at 0%?

 

[Niklas]

Hmm, good question. I figured 8 turns at -6 wouldn't be affordable, but our bpt should rise over the next turns so it should be faster than that. So I'll go 100% over both turns.

Playing shortly, get around on IM if you wanna join in.

 

[Niklas]

That was fast: >>The Save<<

Turn 90/500 (625 BC) [14-Oct-2008 19:55:10]
Research begun: Alphabet (35 Turns)
Yosmurkzhappy finishes: Axeman

Turn 91/500 (600 BC) [14-Oct-2008 20:06:18]
Yosmurkzhappy begins: The Great Library (25 turns)

-----------------------------------------------------

Turn 91/500 (600 BC) [14-Oct-2008 20:06:18]
Yosmurkzhappy begins: Settler (5 turns)
Niklas: 3 axes, 2 impi and 1 archer in Ulundi

Turn 92/500 (575 BC) [16-Oct-2008 22:55:05]
Niklas: Marble is connected!

Ok, now we can plan for real so I won't play on tonight.

Shot of Ulundi:

Shot of southwest exploration:

 

[ChrisShaffer]

So, what do we do with 1 turn of settler hammers?

 

[Xcalibrator]

Marble--hooray!!! Nothing new on tech trading, I take it? Yum, nice city site to the NE of our frontier explorer. Shaka's building up a nice little invasion force, hmm? Construction is moving up my wish list.

 

[Renata]

The most recent plan was to complete the settler with a whip once the whip unhappy wore off, thus getting the doubled overflow for the GL. I'm not sure the GL can be managed any faster than that, but at least we can look at it now knowing we have marble.

I still have fond imaginings of siccing Shaka on Joao once we have alphabet and (hopefully) something to bribe with. It'd make our lives so much easier. We'd want to check Joao's relationship status with us, though, to make sure he'd still be cautious (for trading techs) with an additional -1.

 

[Niklas]

It may be possible to speed up the GLib even further by whipping 2 pop this turn on the settler. The overflow would be 17 (x2=34) instead of the 10 (x2=20) we'd get from whipping when the ends. Still, if we save one turn on the GLib by sacrificing 14+ scientist-turns, I'm not so sure it's worth the deal. Will do the maths tho.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Well, we lose 14 scientist turns, but we get back 2 scientist turns when the GLib is built, so it's 12, plus we get one more turn of GPP from the GLib, plus we get the settler to stone island faster.

Still not sure it's worth the trade, but there are lots of small things on the whip side of the scale.

 

[Niklas]

Too tired to put up pictures now, you'll have to make do with a sheet. I'll add the pics tomorrow, or someone else can do it. The sheet details four different scenarios: 1) whip 2 pop now; 2) whip 1 pop next turn; 3) whip 2 pop on 99; 4) whip 1 pop on 99. I'm leaning towards number 3, which gets us the next GS fastest.

Note that this file is for Excel 2007, and if you use 2003 you'll need to download a compatibility pack. I've done so and it works great. The file also uses macros, so you'll need to enable them, otherwise all you get is a lot of #### all over the place.

More tomorrow, now ...

 

[ChrisShaffer]

does the spreadsheet really need to be in xlsx format? What Excel 2007 features are you using? OpenOffice can't read xlsx yet, so I'll have to run it through a converter website to make it an xls file that I can open.

 

[Renata]

If you figure out how to do that, can you pass the method on to me? My working computer only has Open Office also.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

I use zamzar.com

 

[Niklas]

Blame Methos.

Seriously though, I'll do a conversion and if it works in xls then there's no reason not to stick to that. OpenOffice is of course a big reason to switch, I hadn't tried it there yet.

 

[Renata]

Hmm, zamzar says it can't convert "xlsm".

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Yeah, I couldn't get past that either. I've never seen an xlsm file before.

 

[Niklas]

xlsm is a file containing macros, 2007 makes the separation explicit. The standard xslx format can't contain anything but the sheet itself.

Here's a 2003 version, it seems to work well as far as I can tell.

 

[Methos]

Blame Methos.

Sorry, I started the sheet using 2007.

 

[Renata]

Open office doesn't like it; I get BASIC runtime error: object variable not set over and over.

Edit: and then after wearing out my fingertip hitting "OK" over and over and over, it did open up, but only to the macro page; the data pages were blank. And then it wouldn't let me close the program; had to CTRL-ALT-DEL. In any case, like I said: Open Office doesn't like it.

 

[Niklas]

That's a bummer, but this sheet really couldn't have been written without the macros. If OpenOffice can't handle them then we can't use this sheet with OO.