SGOTM 08 - Trash Team

[remconius]

A few answers to your questions:

I'm still not sure on the prophet farm idea - they may be the only way to build shrines, but I tend to find that other great people are more useful, especially in achieving a tech advantage which is always nice if we plan on getting wonders with pointy sticks - or pointy sticks that shoot!

We are still awaiting a few more test game results, but we currently live by the idea that the AI will not build all shrines. It's the most random factor and one way to build extra instant wonders is to have Great prophets ready when capturing religious capitals. It's also powerful to have a capital with 2 shrines in it and allows running 90-100% science throughout the game.

Regarding the initial location, I don't see the benefit from moving to the cow from the starting place - sure a thoroughfare is nice, but I think sub-optimal without further information - losing a hill and fresh water.

Don't forget the cow also gives +1 food in the capital from the start which is a very nice boost to the early moves.
The throughfare could be handy or crucial depending on the map, but we dont know until after we settle and walk around.
Also marble comes in range after 2 border pops instead of 3.

 

[KingMorgan]

Not keen on settling on the cow. As for a path to marble, it's all costal so we don;t need any cultural borders to have a path to it. We also need the hammers from the pasture as we are a liitle hammer poor at capital, we'd need sailing and hammers for a galley so it's just no effienct to try to grab the marble early, my thinking is to found a city 1S of the marble later on. There will be a 2 tile overlap, but we get offshore trade routes and minimum maintenance costs.

I have played a few test games, and we need to REX on both Big and Small or we not be able to settle more than 4 decent cities. I'v found even sword /axes rushes on normal speed take far too long. I was on small with Jao and for every city i took or raised he'd settle another one. Even with cats it proved time consuming and expensive.

My thinking is definitly a quick REX and only building wonders from chops or if we have stone/marble. As we are CRE, that 3rd border pop should come at a time when we have natural access to galleys.

I have a test game which i'm nearly finished, i'll post it later on. Having Gold in our BFC is a MAJOR help. tbh i think that marble is red herring. My preferred Strat is to REX then take steel with Lib and conquer the continet with Greds/Cannons/Balista Elephants.

Map dependant - of course

 

[ese-aSH]

A proposition for a general outline of our start:

-Build a warrior while teching fishing.
-Build a workboat when fishing's complete, start on AH.
-Grow to size 2, start worker. Start the Wheel when AH completes.
-Grow to size four while building warrior/workboat. Start BW after the Wheel.
-Start a settler and whip it for 2pop, build worker with the overflow, settle second city.
-Research towards priesthood while building Stonehenge in capital. Second city builds troops/whatever. Research path at this point depends on whether we want CoL or Theology from Oracle. CoL is more useful for peaceful expamsion, Theology gives uo theocracy for warring.

Opinions? Would it be better to go worker first, building workboats to aid with the settler construction?

I read somewhere (i dont remember the thread ) that worker is always best start. But here we are expansive : that means 4h become 5h for a worker. Since we have no plain hill bfc we wont get 4h on size 1.
IMHO a good start :
- grow size 2 building warrior (8 turns) ; tech BW
- build worker (tiles : 2f1h1c 1f2h 1f2h = 4f5h1c --> 4f6h1c = 10 turns)
- mine gold / hill 2S (did anyone ever see gold on grassland hill ?) / tech fishing
- chop WB / tech AH
- build / chop henge while growing size 6 ; at 6 whip settler for 3.

 

[stuge]

Yeah, I don't think that building a workboat before worker is very efficient if you don't start with fishing.

Your plan looks good, but our first settler will come a tad late. If we're in danger of getting boxed in, it will be better to build the settler before Stonehenge.

 

[pigswill]

I'd rather go for early Oracle than early Stonehenge. They both give the same number of gppt, we can get a settler out before Oracle more easily than a settler before Stonehenge. CoL slingshot should (hopefully) give us a religion. If we get confu we can build a temple and assign a priest to speed up gppt. If we pick up a GS and a prophet we can bulb Philosophy for Taoism which gives us a choice of shrine cities (or a two headed hydra) while CoL and philosophy put us well on the way to liberalism.

Good point re growing to pop 2 before building a worker, BW before fishing also makes sense because while Jadexmap doesn't give early copper the real map might (and we do have trees around our capital)

 

[ese-aSH]

@pigswill : on monarch we can get the henge before first settler and oracle just after (i tested it several times).

having only one of them means 50 turns before GProphet comes. having both means the prophet will come ~15 turns after we finish oracle.

Yet Stonehenge is totally useless for a creative / non charismatic civ, its only use for us are the GPP. If we just build a temple after the oracle (temple : 80h, it will take something like 10 turns to build, that means already 20GPP accumulated) and run a priest for 16 turns (16 * (3+2) = 80GPP). total here : 26 turns after oracle.

PRO :
- less GPP pollution in capital
- +1 happy in capital du to temple
CONS:
- less GPP production if we found another religion (but prophet are easy to get once we have a shrine)
- 1 more wonder to capture (stonehenge)

 

[cripp7]

I read somewhere (i dont remember the thread ) that worker is always best start. But here we are expansive : that means 4h become 5h for a worker. Since we have no plain hill bfc we wont get 4h on size 1.
IMHO a good start :
- grow size 2 building warrior (8 turns) ; tech BW
- build worker (tiles : 2f1h1c 1f2h 1f2h = 4f5h1c --> 4f6h1c = 10 turns)
- mine gold / hill 2S (did anyone ever see gold on grassland hill ?) / tech fishing
- chop WB / tech AH
- build / chop henge while growing size 6 ; at 6 whip settler for 3.

That sounds pretty good, but why whip for 3? wouldn't that take to big a hit for regrow, do you get more overflow if you put enough hammers to whip for 2?

 

[stuge]

The maximum overflow from whipping (with no bonuses applied) is 29 hammers, so if we whip the settler, we should do it for 2 pop. There's really no reason to whip more pop away except to save lots of turns on something important. Like, say, whipping buildings for a non-caste GP farm.

 

[ese-aSH]

That sounds pretty good, but why whip for 3? wouldn't that take to big a hit for regrow, do you get more overflow if you put enough hammers to whip for 2?

settler is 100h

if you grow size 5, you have to invest 40h+ in it to be able to whip (40h is ~4 turns). then you whip for 2 and fall back to size 3.

if you grow size 5, invest 10h+ in the settler (1 turn), grow size 6 and then whip for 3, you fall back to size 3 too.

you save 3 turns of settler production doing so (if the ratio food/prod is high we could try to maximize the overflow by investing 39h in the settler instead of 10).

 

[pigswill]

Done a few run throughs: one version I got city#2 2400bc, Oracle2000bc, capital pop2; another version I got city#2 2200bc, Oracle 1920bc, capital pop 5. Going this way you have to get the confu missionary back to the capital before it can start on a temple but with pop 5 one chop and a double whip will get you the temple fairly quickly.
I'd be interested which year you got Oracle going Stonehenge first because it would be bad news to get beaten to the Oracle.

 

[KingMorgan]

Here is a test game finished at 1957AD with 53 wonders, won a Diplomatic Victory (first ever!) although was 5 turns off space vic.

Worth noting what a pain it is when a good chunk of wonders are built off continet and need to be 'liberated'. Luckily my Inf and Arty were up against lowgbows and the odd machine gun, almost felt sorry for Zara!!

53 x 5 wonders on turn 376 = 0.704

Stole the Corps from Hupac, a few stray nukes after the SS launch proved very effective, with the Mod Arm rushing in.

i'm convinced that i could finish a good 50 turns earlier, was very slack and lazy torwards the end. I had a few random GProps which kindly provided the shrines i captured. Not conviced we should make a GP farm just to supply them, unless we need the gold throughout the game. Also was held back as Justine stole my 8th city site, lack of FPal held me back for a bit.

The attached save is 1 turn from finish, i'd advise people to take a look, the playback at the end should show the flow of the game and provides a few pointers to look out for, there is a lot of room for improvement!!

View attachment Morgan AD-1956 TEST BnS.CivBeyondSwordSave

 

[remconius]

Excellent stuff!

Looks very good.

I still think 0.7 is the minimum we need to put in a good score.

Two things you missed:
-West point needs a level 6 unit, which should not have been a problem.
-Temple of Solomon in the Judaist capital (which you have...)

These two extra wonders would give 0.74.

Finishing in turn 340 (36 turns earlier) would give 0.81

Finishing 53 turns earlier would even give 0.9 rounded... !

That would be an excellent score!

[edit] And Portugal still has one wonder... [/edit]

 

[chopster]

Yes, a point to note would be that in this game, every wonder counts - therefore I'd like to put up a suggestion (even this early) that our first great general be attached to a unit to give fastest access to Heroic Epic and West Point.

I am away again this weekend, so it will be Monday before I can play any test games, but I really feel we shouldn't begin the game, short of some initial exploration, until we've complied a thorough initial strategy - this can change but we need to agree on the WHAT before we decide on the HOW.

 

[stuge]

I did some early game testing, as per pigs' reguest.

The best I could do was SH in 2400 BC and Oracle+second city in 1720 BC. I delayed founding the second city because I wanted to make the capital the holy city for GP farming. Obviously this will not do if we're in danger of getting boxed in. This way the first GP was born in 1340 BC and the second one shortly thereafter.

If we have to settle 1-2 cities quickly, SH is a big no-no.

 

[ese-aSH]

I really feel we shouldn't begin the game, short of some initial exploration, until we've complied a thorough initial strategy - this can change but we need to agree on the WHAT before we decide on the HOW.

I agree with, yet most of the strategy can not be decided until we know a little more on the map (particularly which civ are we facing).
I am still sceptical about stonehenge (no stone + creative).

seeing what KingMorgan said, its is possible to achieve our objective finishing quite late (turn 375), and I dont see how it would be possible to do a better score if we finish around turn 250 ( 250 / 5 * 0.7 = 35, which means almost all of the pre-corp wonders, including shrines).

 

[remconius]

I agree that SH is probably costing too much in the area of early expansion. If we start with some techs and expansion, we can follow up with the Oracle and found Taoism or Confucianism in the capital we are in good shape to set up a GProphet farm. Similar to Stuges testing.

If we try to finish around turn 250 we need to get close to the magic number of 42 wonders. So we need a Great Prophet farm for all shrines, build 11 national wonders and 24 world wonders. At turn 250, each wonders add 0.02 to the wonder score so max 0.84 with 42 wonders.

If we finish later we have to try to get all wonders (or close to 62) to max wonder score.

 

[ese-aSH]

to get a GP farm we just have to make sure our first holy city (shrine == 3 priest slots) gets plenty of food.
It means that our first settler should settle on a 'food premium' site since we should be able to found a religion with the oracle (and at the time oracle is built we would have only 2 cities, and the capital is unlikely to become the holy city).

@remconius : one issue with early victory is -> we have no guarantee this will be possible.


Speaking of economic strategy :
kmer are EXP/CRE
that means we have one of the best combinations of 'cheap buildings' :
libray (90h) / colosseum (80h) / theatre (50h) / granary (60h) / harbour (80h)
+ CRE means we dont need to build monuments (30h)

In a way we can consider that each city will save 45 + 40 + 25 + 30 + 40 (only for coastal) + 30 = 210h (170 for non coastal).

Also remember our UB comes with maths and gives +1 food (== +1/2 specialist).

To me this civ suit better with SE :
- EXP gives +2health, +health from cheap granary / harbour + our UB gives health too.
- cheap theatre / colosseum (and this building comes with our UU, so we will tech construction anyway) boost happyness.
- cheap library means we can afford to build 1 in every city (even prod dedicated cities) and run scientists.

If the map looks like an archipelago, pure SE would allow us to workshop / watermill all tiles and get some production anyway (prod is the big issue on archipelago).

 

[remconius]

Good points!

I agree early victory is not always possible (personally I am not very good at them...)

SE also suits this game well as it helps Great Prophet farm and GP for corporations (if we get that far...) For SE we need Mids I reckon? Oracle/shrine/GP farm in city 2 and mids in capital?

Actually in the spirit of the variant we should try to get the fastest finish date with all 62 wonders!

 

[ese-aSH]

early SE does not need Mids, but is far superior with it.

I hate to go for the mids when I got no stone...
The oracle -> mc slingshot -> whip forge -> get a GE -> insta mids is the only way I build pyramids when no stone / not industrious.
but this would delay the GP a lot.
with the oracle, CoL slingshot + a temple (lets say 8 turns to build the temple) it will take :
2*8 + (2+3)*17 = 16 + 85
25 turns to get a prophet after oracle completion

with the MC slingshot, say we need 6 turns before whipping the forge in 2nd city :
6*0 + 34*3 = 101 --> 40 turns before GE.
during this 40 turn, run a priest only 6 turns in capital so we got 98 GProphet Points (40*2 + 6*3), and then 21 turns to reach 200.

total here is 61 turns.

Yet we dont need our shrine very early (the point is to have the shrine when we need our prophet farm).

 

[remconius]

Early shrine is not a prio, like you say. We just need one at some point to have GP farm and generate 4-5 prophets. The last 2-3 we dont need till way in the end of the game.

We do need a religous capital for the shrine. Can we found judaism and then go for oracle/MC slingshot?