SGOTM 09 - Smurkz

[Renata]

Personally I think we should maybe err to the south. I think that 3E-1S of the clams would be best for lighting up the barb city, but it's not especially likely to find us another civ. Something closer to due south would be more likely for that, though that illuminates fewer new tiles overall. I'm not sure.

I wish that fish tile south of Athens had two gold pieces attached!

 

[Xcalibrator]

Airships see (at least) 5 tiles from the recon point, in a square that is (at least) 11x11. I drew out a little map and if we want to get a look at the barb city and also emphasize seeing east without overlapping too much with a due E look, then recon from 5E6S of the capital. If we want to look at the barb city and also emphasize looking a bit more south (picking up several fogged land tiles from our southern exploration) while still getting a pretty good view out east, then recon from 3E7S of the capital. I prefer the 2nd option as it covers more of the south and sets us up to better cover the SW.

 

[Renata]

Actually, I think I do too, and since I'm the one with the save , that's what I'll do. Back in a few.

 

[Niklas]

I'm fine with either of the locations Xcal suggested.

 

[Renata]

Ok, no AIs (two promising places to look once we have Athens back, though), but Atlantis is pretty fearsome. I'm taking screenshots, but can't get one of the garrison, so I'll list it.

10 warriors
6 C3 medic
3 CR3 medic
1 C1 CR2 medic

5 archers
1 CD 2 guerilla 2 medic
1 C1 guerilla 3 medic
3 C3 guerilla medic

It also has walls/castle and 150% cultural defense. And it's on a single-tile plains hill island, naturally. Also, it's size 16, has Moai (edit: or dike? does that apply to ocean tiles?) and whatever accoutrement it is that makes all water tiles yield 3 food. I'll let you guys figure out the rest of the bad news from the screenshots.

Gyathaar obviously put a lot of thought into this. Let's congratulate him, after we kick him around a little bit.

 

[Renata]

Spoiler the north side of Atlantis :

Spoiler the south side of Atlantis :

Spoiler Atlantis up close :

And one more shot of the extreme south of what can be seen; I'm not sure if we've gotten this good a view before or not. Clearly the land extends at least one tile south of the pigs.

Spoiler extra pic :

Save is attached.

 

[r_rolo1]

I remember someone saying that the barb city was like that .....

 

[ChrisShaffer]

How can you go half a tile into the fog?

 

[ChrisShaffer]

I really wonder if the barbarians hit everyone with equal force.

 

[r_rolo1]

So the barb city has:
-Ikhanda
-Totem pole
-Granary
-Dun ( no , it is not a wall )
-Lighthouse
-Trading Post
-Dike (it is on the other side of the city and you can only see it with flying camera )
-Castle
-Drydocks ( not sure )
-Forge
-Globe
-Nat Park
-West point
-Palace
-Mil Academy
-HE
-Scotland Yard ( that glassed building... not sure either )

We see Atlantis working 8 tiles ( i assume it is also working the coastal ones we don't see , so make it 10 )+ city tile ( 2 F 1C 3 H ), so it has a nice known output of 32 F 29 C ( + 4 from palace , so 33 C ) 13 H .

I made some flybys with flying camera and there is definitely A LOT of land south of those pigs ( maybe to the other pole..... but atleast more 6-8 tiles to the south. There is land exactly in the other side of atlantis from us ( you can see signs of it with the tile yield on ) and to the east of us ( looks as big as our own island and it is definitely galley reachable ).

 

[Xcalibrator]

[Cross post with Rolo]
I'm betting the thing with the red cross on top is the Red Cross, which would make 6 nat'l wonders with Scotland Yard. Dikes are Dutch, Trading Posts are Viking, ikhanda, dun, totem pole?? -- how can they mix different civs' UBs? [For that matter, how can you have more than 2 nat'l wonders without OCC?] And what happens when we conquer Atlantis? The UBs revert to our equivalents, any nat'l wonders we already have are lost from Atlantis, but if there are more than 2 remaining nat'l wonders there, which would be lost? Random, or by date of construction?

What really confuses me is that I don't know of any building that gives an extra (beyond lighthouse) food to sea tiles.

While it's nice to see what the barbs have, we'll have plenty of time to sort that out before we can even think about attacking Atlantis. In the near term (5 turns or so), there's no reason we can't just forge ahead, right? We want to explore with our airship, research deeper into the tech tree for trade bait (until/unless it's clear that we won't find anyone to trade with), hook up the copper, and settle a city.

As a starting point for discussion, I'd say that over the next 3 turns we should have the workers road to and mine the copper, build 1 archer and send him toward the forest tile W of the mountain and fortify (assuming no barb comes near), start a settler, research IW (since knowing where there's iron may be quite important in choosing a city site) and then Paper (?), and send our airship to recon from 8E, 6S5W, and 8W.

 

[r_rolo1]

Xc, remember that all the limits to buildings are coded to be implemented while trying to build them. As you don't build things in WB, there aren't such restrictions. You can pile all the nat wonders in the same city or put Rathaus, sacrificial altar, Courthouse and Ziggurat in the same city ( have to try that to see what happens to maintenance )

To say the truth, Gyathaar could had made this far worse. There isn't any Ind park or factories of any kind and no sign of science buildings..... Atlantis was made to be a nuinsance, not a game breaking issue. Eve adding Moai to this city would probably make it a monster

About what would we get from the city if taken: assuming that the nat wonders would go away in best chance we would get:
-Inteligence agency ( assured )
-Mill acad ( assured )
-Lighthouse
-Granary
-Forge
-( not sure of this, given that we can't build it there ) levee, that would be useless

So , Atlantis IMHO ( unless we can deduct settled GPs in the city ) is probably not worth capturing.

As for exploring... I definitely want to see the land to the west and to the east. I think that this should be the first lands exlored by the airship

 

[Renata]

I could play a few turns tomorrow; otherwise not until Monday. I'm comfortable with XCal's sketch of a plan, except maybe I think the tech path needs some discussion.

 

[Xcalibrator]

I'd be very happy for you to play more soon, Renata. But yeah, we should discuss the techs more. On third thought, I revert to my position that we should skip IW for now and see if we can meet somebody for trade. We have a few more turns before the settler is built to get IW and see where the iron is. [How many turns to research IW?]

As for the airship recon plan, maybe we want to revise that slightly. As Niklas noted, the 20% damaged barb galley suggests that somebody's airship hit it; if our next recon at 8East doesn't meet anybody, putting it on top of Atlantis would be a good way to fill in more of the SE map (and also fill in the shadow behind Atlantis). So I'd do 8E, Atlantis (if needed), 6S5W, and 8W. After that we should probably discuss what to do (rebase to a Hammy city, or Eastern city, or build our coastal fort), which will depend on what we've found.

BTW, if we want to build galleys in our northern city (when/if it gets built), we'll need two coastal forts to bypass the icebergs and get them down to the region of Athens. I'm just sayin'.

 

[Niklas]

I'll have more comments later today, but for now I am strongly against researching IW. We simply don't need it, and we must cut corners if we are to have a chance in the long run. We already have Copper, that should see us through for quite some time.

If we are serious about running a SE, I would want to see us research Nationalism -> Representation next, halting to detour for Calendar after we've traded for Sailing (assuming we can). We build MoM and Taj (need Masonry to hook up marble too), and switch from PS to Rep during the ensuing golden age.

NE is most certainly not crucial, and certainly not worth the time to research Aes->Lit instead of waiting and trading for them. We are Philo and running Pac, giving us 300% in all cities. Building NE ups that to 400%, a mere 33% net increase, in one city.

One thing I would like to stress for this game even more than the last is that we should be generous with tech to our trading partners. There's no doubt that we will win this game, and the more help we get the faster we will do so. Unlike last game we won't have to slog militarily through AIs that are boosted by the techs we give them, so there's really no drawback. We should make sure to get the most of our trade chances, but otherwise it should be perpetual x-mas for the AIs.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

We should be serious about running an SE.

 

[Renata]

If you see how I've set the next tech, you know how I vote.

(Nationalism.)

 

[Xcalibrator]

Sounds good to me.

On the airship recon, I think the first one should be 8E1S--the 1S gives us a little more coverage in the region where we hope to find an AI and we'll only miss things along the very edge of the icecap up north.

What about builds? I'd feel safer with an archer protecting our preserve, etc. near the capital, and we'll also need something to put in our new city. This is probably our last chance to build a warrior (and save some hammers), but an archer would be safer. On the other hand, since our philosophy should tend toward living dangerously, maybe we should keep the one archer in our capital, send our warrior to the new city (north by the sheep I'm assuming?), and take our chances with defense against the Athens Barbs. In either case, we need an archer now. I vote archer --> settler and for Renata to play today.

[Edit: Nah, since we can crank out archers in the capital, send the archer to the new city and keep the warrior at home.]

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Didn't unkle strongly object to the northern city location?

 

[unkle]

A city site with one food only in a SE is probably meaningless to us, right now at least.
Of course, it could run 2Sci at size 5 and stay there. It is realy unclear to me if this is better than working preserve and let it grow (at least it could have decent hammers). I was more inclined in getting the fish from settling on Bronze, but it is probably not better...

On my objection, if I would play the game, I'd probably go for mining Bronze and start piling maces to get back our southern city (3-4 ?), rather than settling a new city site that will not grow really fast (sheep is +2, lake could be another +2 but requires a lighthouse). The fact that the city will not produce useful naval units without forts is also a minor issue.