SGOTM 09 - Smurkz

Alright, with nothing new of interest, is anyone against moving 1S to settle, while revolting to Environmentalism?

I propose the following opening:
T0: Move 1S, revolt to Environmentalism. Could anyone calculate how early Police State would start costing money? +25% is not an insignificant bonus to unit production.
T1: Settle, start worker, work 3-yield tile. Research on Agriculture obviously.
T3: Borders expand. Hopefully they would encompass a 3-yield +1C tile, but I won't count on it.
T7: Finish Agriculture - we need to discuss what comes next so I think this would be a good place to hand off the first turnset.
T11: Worker completes, start farm on Corn. Capital starts warrior.
T14: Corn farm complete.
T15: Worker starts farm on second Corn, growth to size 2, switch out warrior (4 hammers) for a second worker.
T18: Second Corn farm complete.
T19: Worker moves onto hill to start a windmill (2F 2P 3C - yummy).
T20: Second worker complete, moves to other hill to start a second windmill.
T21: Complete the warrior.
T22: Growth to size 3, work forest one turn.
T23: Windmill #1 complete, switch to work that instead.
T24: Growth to size 4, second windmill complete, work it. Switch to build a third worker. First worker goes to a riverside forest for preservation (2F 1P 3C - almost as yummy, but with the +1 :)...).
T25: Second worker goes to another riverside forest for preservation.
T27: Third worker completed, go to another forest to preserve.
T28: Growth to size 5, work forest.
T30: Growth to size 6, forest preserve completed raising happy cap to 6. Work it.
T31: Forest preserve completed raising happy cap to 7. Work it over forest.

We can keep growing quite a bit like this, staying one or more steps ahead in happiness, the question is when we stop to build a settler, but that should be quite fast. We're making +10 fpt and +7 hpt at size 6 for instance (and an impressive 21 commerce per turn!).

Tech route: Agri -> AH -> Writing, or Agri -> Wheel -> Pottery -> Writing? The sooner we can work scientists the better. But I wonder if Wheel would not be a tech we want sooner rather than later, to help avoid excessive worker moves. Building a road is still 2 turns though...

If we go the Wheel route to Writing, we could have it on turn 27, and a library on 36. Would be nice if we could speed that up though, test games needed! I challenge you all to have a library up before turn 36, using any method, and we can compare general development. :)
 
Hmm, one other thought. I doubt the AIs will be as good as we are at utilizing the power of these techs, so we should have quite the edge early on. Oracle should definitely be in our mid-term plan. Question is, do we want to use it for an early Civil Service, or do we dare to save it for something later? Education? Would it be worth it to delay CS if it means a free Education? Is Education really that valuable (as we know we need 6 unis for that Oxford), or would we take Nationalism instead? Or even dare for Constitution? We need test games!!! :)
 
How about going straight for Electricity and extra commerce for our windmills? No? :p

Alright, with nothing new of interest, is anyone against moving 1S to settle, while revolting to Environmentalism?
Click to expand...

I have nothing against it, but then I haven't exactly tested it yet, either. I'm still pining for a game that has actual barbs in it. *hopeful look* Because I'm only going to be to play once probably, if at all.

As far as police state goes, does anyone have accurate upkeep formulas for BTS 3.17?

Edit: although that would be one thing that'd be fairly easy to test in the game itself. If I only had time.
 
So, now it starts the marvelous debate of settling in place vs moving elsewhere. before we start discussing it, I vote for settling in place: only possible reason to move is settling a second city by the fish and that is not a very compeling argument IMHO

P.S I just used the flying camera magic and discovered:
-2 mountains right to the south of the discovered tiles
-Forested hills maybe 2 W of the tundra hill in the west
-forested flat land to the east, with just one tile of water separating us of it. Not sure if it is connected to our landmass ( there is something linking them, but it looks a lot with sea ice :/ )
 
Edit: Corrections made to the following according to comments below.

Here are some of the basics of the setup for this game, for those of us who, like me, tend to get a little lost in the tech tree. Most of you can probably safely skip this post :p . But it helped me to write it out, so here it is.

Pericles of Greece, Philosophical and Creative. Philo gives +100% GPP production and 100% hammer bonus on University. Creative, besides the +2 culture per city, gives 100% hammer bonus to library, theater and colosseum.

UU and UB are the phalanx and the odeon, the phalanx being basically an axeman without the chariot weakness and the odeon a souped-up colosseum (2 happy faces off the bat, among other things).

Our techs are:

Fascism: Enables the police state civic that Niklas mentioned, +25% hammer bonus to units (Also -50% war weariness). Also Mount Rushmore (-25% war weariness), and paratroopers, which require Rifling that we don't have.

Fishing: workboats, water tiles

Flight: paratroopers again, plus airport and a bunch of units that require oil. Which we can see already, but which we're not going to be able to use for a long, long time.

Hunting: scout, spearman (with metal); can build camps

Machinery: This is a pretty big one. Enables crossbowman (with Archery and iron), maceman (Civil Service and iron (or is it any metal?)); can build windmill and watermill. Combined with replaceable parts and the environmentalism civic, these become rather nice tiles.
---- windmill on grassland hill: 2f 2h 3c (another +1c on river, right?)
---- windmill on plains hill: 1f 3h 3c (ditto)
---- watermill on grassland: 2f 2h 1c
---- watermill on plains: 1f 3h 1c
Windmills will take 4 turns to complete on quick speed, watermills 6.
Another consequence of having machinery is that all we need for crossbows of our own (see previous comment re: barbs) is Archery and Iron-working (to find iron).

Medicine: Another big one. Besides hospitals, Red Cross and Sid's Sushi (requires Corporation), medicine enables the Environmentalism civic, which will be huge for us: +6 health in all cities, and +2 commerce on all windmills and forest preserves.

Physics: Lets us build airships :crazyeye:, which are an 8-range, 4-strength, 54-hammer air unit with a max damage of 20%. Useful for recon? Who knows. Also reveals uranium, so if we have any, that'll be a few extra coins.

Replaceable Parts: Can build lumbermills (6 turns, one extra hammer on the tile). Adds 1 hammer to each windmill and watermill, which is important.

Scientific Method: Reveals oil, which we can't make use of until combustion, a long way off. Renders the Great Library, the Parthenon and all monasteries obsolete before we can even build them. (Which means Organized Religion is our only way to build missionaries.) Significantly, allows forest preserves to be built, which combined with the environmentalism health bonus should allow for large populations wherever we have forests and enough food to grow.
---- forest preserve on a grassland forest: 2f 1h 2c (+1c with river)
---- forest preserve on a grassland hill forest: 1f 2h 2c (ditto)
---- forest preserve on a plains forest: 1f 2h 2c (ditto)
---- forest preserve on a plains hill forest: 3h 2c (ditto)
And one happy face in the city for each forest preserve in its BFC. :D Forest preserves will also take 6 turns each.

Superconductor: Can build laboratory (needs observatory first, which is at Astronomy), plus SS Thrusters.

One interesting thing is that Electricity is researchable for us right from the start, and would give another 1c to each windmill and 2c to each watermill. Clearly it's too expensive to do very soon, but we may well be able to make use of it before it would normally be available in the tech tree. [Radio and fission are right behind electricity and mass media right behind radio, none with additional pre-requisites, btw, for whatever that's worth.]

Biology and communism are also interesting techs for various reasons, but those don't have huge shortcuts to them, so won't become available much earlier than usual. Oh well.

Another interesting thing is that the Rocketry beeline is only 11 techs long, and 10 of those techs are just to get us to Rifling. Once we have that, we can go for Rocketry and Apollo at any time. Satellites is pretty "close", too, requiring only Rocketry and Radio, though Industrialism for aluminum is a long way away as usual.
 
I played very fast to 40AD using both environmentalism and police state to see how bad the upkeep was. I got the following results:

No upkeep at the point of three cities, sizes 9, 2 and 1. (total pop 12)

2 upkeep on adding the fourth city (9-2-1-1; total pop 13)

Still 2 upkeep through 11-3-3-2. (total 19)

Up to 4 upkeep when the fifth city was added: 11-3-3-2-1. (total 20)

The next 3 pop points each saw an increase in upkeep, up to a total of 7 at 12-3-3-3-2. (total 23)

Didn't go to 8 upkeep until 13-4-3-3-3 (total 26), but then increased at each of the next two pop growths, to a total of 10 at 13-4-4-4-3 (total 28).

At that point the sixth city was founded, adding 1 more pop and 2 more upkeep (totals 29 and 12).

That stayed stable through several pop growths, up to 15-4-4-4-4-1 (total 32), but then jumped 4 points when the seventh city was founded in 40AD, winding up at 16 upkeep and a total population of 33.

At that point the break-even was down to 40%, making 90-something beakers at 100% research. As you can tell by the city sizes, I did very little worker development outside the capital, and never did a second revolution to anything else.

The last thing I did was to revolt back to decentralism -- this dropped civic upkeep all of 3 points, down to 13.
 
Great posts Renata, they were sure useful for me too. :goodjob:

I'll just comment on a few things that I feel need clarification:
Renata said:
Fascism: Enables the police state civic that Niklas mentioned, +25% hammer bonus to units. Also Mount Rushmore, which I can't remember what it does, and paratroopers, which require Rifling that we don't have.
Click to expand...
Police State also gives -50% WW. Rushmore decreases that with another -25%. And just to note, if you also have jails for the last -25%, you don't experience WW at all. Jails come with Constitution though, so they will take a while.

windmill on grassland hill: 2f 2h 3c (another +1c on river, right?)
Click to expand...
Yes, 2F 2P 4C on river. :drool: Too bad we don't see any river hills, but one can always hope.

watermill on grassland: 2f 2h 2c [ETA comment -- built a watermill in a test game and it was only 2f 2h 1c -- what am I missing? I thought watermills were supposed to give +1h +1c.]
Click to expand...
I check in the XML, it says +1P only. +1P more from Replaceable Parts, +2C from Electricity.

Medicine: Another big one. Besides hospitals, Red Cross and Sid's Sushi...
Click to expand...
Just to be clear, Sid's Sushi requires Corporation too, so no rushing for a GM. ;)

Physics: Lets us build airships :crazyeye:, which are an 8-move, 4-strength, 54-hammer unit that can only take 20% maximum off an opponent's strength.
Click to expand...
Airships have range 8, not move 8. Like all flight units they must be based in a city or fort, and can do recon (or bombing) missions from there, within its range. So we could use it for recon of our immediate surroundings, but not further than that.

However, with OB we can station our flight units in our opponents' cities as well. Rebasing takes one turn, and has unlimited range.

Superconductor: Can build laboratory and research institute, plus SS Thrusters.
Click to expand...
No research institute. It's the Russian UB that replaces the laboratory.

Another interesting thing is that the Rocketry beeline is only 11 techs long, and 10 of those techs are just to get us to Rifling. Once we have that, we can go for Rocketry and Apollo at any time. Satellites is pretty "close", too, requiring only Rocketry and Radio, though Industrialism for aluminum is a long way away as usual.
Click to expand...
This is very interesting. Apollo on its own isn't very useful, but it would be interesting to check just what techs we need to get all the space ship components.

Renata said:
The last thing I did was to revolt back to decentralism -- this dropped civic upkeep all of 3 points, down to 13.
Click to expand...
Thanks for doing this! I think it's pretty obvious with those numbers that we should definitely go for Police State as well.

r_rolo1 said:
So, now it starts the marvelous debate of settling in place vs moving elsewhere. before we start discussing it, I vote for settling in place: only possible reason to move is settling a second city by the fish and that is not a very compeling argument IMHO
Click to expand...
That's not at all the argument I was using. My argument was rather a) maximize forests, b) save a hill for a windmill (yummy), and c) most importantly we have nothing to lose by moving since we will revolt right away anyway, so the normal benefit of settling in place (saving one turn) doesn't apply. A city by the fish is rather unimportant, I agree.

It would be very interesting to hear your arguments for settling in place though. The more strategies we discuss, the better.

P.S I just used the flying camera magic and discovered:
-2 mountains right to the south of the discovered tiles
-Forested hills maybe 2 W of the tundra hill in the west
-forested flat land to the east, with just one tile of water separating us of it. Not sure if it is connected to our landmass ( there is something linking them, but it looks a lot with sea ice :/ )
Click to expand...
Very interesting as usual! :goodjob: The land appears to extend east in the southeastern corner of our visible area, so I wouldn't be surprised if we are connected.
 
Ok, my main concern is that this game is in quick speed and time spent in acheiving a better starting position has more damaging potential than in slower speeds. That and the experience of last SGOTM :p

P.S We can't build Labs for a while. Labs need Observatories and observatories need Astro .
 
r_rolo1 said:
Ok, my main concern is that this game is in quick speed and time spent in acheiving a better starting position has more damaging potential than in slower speeds.
Click to expand...
... unless you plan to let the first turn be in Anarchy anyway. If you do, which we do, then there's no reason at all not to pick the best location that you can reach during that turn. Would you argue that in place is a better location if you got to choose any spot?

That and the experience of last SGOTM :p
Click to expand...
The difference from last SGOTM is that in place is not an obvious powerhouse. I doubt we'll see many settling there actually.
 
Thanks for the corrections and clarifications, Niklas and rolo. When I get time I'll go back and edit appropriately.
 
unkle said:
Renata, a test save based on Chris work is attached. Barbs on.
Click to expand...
Great, thanks a lot unkle and Chris! :goodjob:

Will play it tonight to challenge Niklas on the turn 36 issue :p
Click to expand...
Eh, um, I, eh, forgot that we were Creative and get +100% on that library. So make that turn 32. :)
 
r_rolo1 said:
I just used the flying camera magic and discovered:
-2 mountains right to the south of the discovered tiles.
Click to expand...

I was just waiting for Rolo to use his aviation skills... :) Yes, settling in place is definitely worth considering. If we go 1S we immediately lose 3 forests from the BFC [Edit: make that 4, including the city center], and if I understand Rolo's notes about the mountains, we will gain little or nothing on the west of the BFC by going S. Is that correct? Of course, there may be even better tiles on the S/SE edge of the BFC if we move S but I don't think we can tell from moving because of the trees. Is that correct?

As an aside, since forest preserves increase the probability of spontaneous forest spread, we might be able to chop a forest every so often for hammers and expect it to grow back in a decent amount of time if there are lots of adjacent forests---renewable resources!

Thanks very much, Renata, for the summary. And Chris for the "exploit" heads up. I don't recall seeing path lines being affected by terrain---maybe you need a machine with decent graphics (i.e., not mine) in order to see that? Anyway, please heed Alan's warning about mistaken moves while playing with the mouse!
 
There are no mountains in the BFC if moving 1S. There is a mountain 4S of the settler's current position though - using AlanH's exploit to figure it out. If someone wants to play with that on our current save I suggest using the scout for the movement. Since he has already moved, there's no risk accidentally moving him anywhere. Of course you don't get the settle icon, but we don't really need that anyway.

I played Chris' test game up to turn 53, at which point I sloppily lost the Oracle to Izzy by 1 turn (and 4 hammers). At that point I had Alpha, IW, CoL, Maths and Philosophy (bulbed), and was waiting to take CS from the Oracle the turn after. I had had both CoL and Maths for several turns already so it was just stupidity that made me lose the Oracle. Still, it goes to show that if we want the Oracle we probably need to target it early on.

My tech path was Agri->Wheel->Pot->Writing->Alpha. I then set research to Maths and traded for Myst, Mining, AH and Archery on the first turn. On the turn after I switched research to Medi->PH (those two took 3 turns total!)->CoL and then back to Maths.

Closing down for Earth Hour now. :)
 
Corrected my post #66.
 
Renata, your summaries post were helpful. Even though it seemed like tedious work to just restate the obvious, sometimes the obvious is just plain overlooked.

Thanks!
 
Two comments:

First, re: moving south. One thing that move definitely does is take four known forests out of our BFC. Given our latitude, we'll likely pick up some to the south as well, but probably not 4 out of 5. Plus there's the unforested grassland tile, which may have a resource. Or maybe not. (I see Chris was kind enough to stick horses there. :) )

In return, as Niklas has pointed out, we get a windmill in place of a riverside forest preserve for one extra hammer every turn we work it; plus, the windmill is two turns faster to build.


Second, would someone kindly volunteer to check out how tech bulbing will be affected by our extra techs? Are any of the usual standbys altered or made impossible, and does anything unusual but interesting present itself?
 
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