SGOTM 09 - Xteam

[Frederiksberg]

Intuitive master of controlled Domination checking in

I understand you have thoroughly read up on the thread.

1. My immediate inclination is to settle on the northern corn, which would allow either a settler and/or a workboat to be built in (guessing, never tried a Quick game) about 8 turns. I read no mention of this approach in our thread. Has it been tried and rejected, summarily dismissed as obviously sub-optimal due to long-term limitations on the capital's contributions (lots of sea tiles), or is it worth exploring?

I tried this in an early, very short test game. The argument against is that the early gain may not be enough to offset the reduced number of grassland and hill tiles in the FC. The question is if building the GLH will somehow make this placement OK also in the longer term.

2. What effects does the universal knowledge of advanced technology have on the kind of barb units that appear; that is, how advanced, when?

Gyathaar wrote somewhere that the AI doesn't know any techs to begin with. In the SGOTM where we were teamed up with the barbs we learned that they receive free beakers every turn for all techs known by the civs in the game. As I recall they received more beakers if more civs knew a tech. So we should expect the barbs to learn Archery and Machinery quite early meaning that barb x-bows could appear early. We can use the test save and check the world builder now and then to see how advanced the barbs are.

In particular I want to compare the "grow to pop 2 while teching to bronzeworking and whip worker under slavery, vs the "build worker first"

Whipping the worker saves some food/hammers compared to building the worker. Question is how much delay there will be before we have the first worker. I think it's also worthwhile to test building the settler faster e.g. at pop 2 while working the two corn (or corn+fish if we settle on the northern corn). Pop growth is approximately doubled when we have two cities.

It will be marginally harder since it will take longer to get units in position. But in theory it should still work. If we want to try a phalanx or mace rush, we really want to prevent the target from hooking iron.

In order to do a successful phalanx rush in time we have little time to locate the AI and evaluate the political situation (how many AI, and which leaders). Maybe we really should build an extra scout also having in mind that units travel relatively slow on Quick speed.

 

[leif erikson]

I tried this in an early, very short test game. The argument against is that the early gain may not be enough to offset the reduced number of grassland and hill tiles in the FC. The question is if building the GLH will somehow make this placement OK also in the longer term.

Been reading the discussion and staring at the start location. If we want the Great Lighthouse, what is the possibility of settling on the forested grass hill one tile SE of the southern Corn tile? It gives us sea access, both corn tiles, two grass hills (and whatever is south), plus it should provide us quite a few river tiles. It also allows room to build a city in the north that can use the Fish and a Corn if we need it to. Perhaps, it si too many water tiles?

It calls to me to move the Scout two tiles south?

The big question for me is the significance of the blue circle to the north. Sometimes they pay off and other times, well .....

 

[Cactus Pete]

Just had a first run at the test game. Settling on the corn looks pretty powerful to me. Here's a save: http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=208250&stc=1&d=1238001031

 

[PaulisKhan]

I wrote quite a bit on coastal vs inland but then realised I was probably missing the point.

Are we treating our capital as a settler/worker pump for maximum early rex, or as the future seat of our power. That will determine the answer really.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Just had a first run at the test game. Settling on the corn looks pretty powerful to me.

I don't think there's any doubt that settling on the corn is best in the short term. The hard thing to evaluate is if the 2-3 turns gained + some extra commerce from the fish are worth the cost of having say 5-6 extra water tiles in the FC. Water tiles are notoriously low yield. On the plus side are the extra trade routes if we build GLH.

Are we treating our capital as a settler/worker pump for maximum early rex, or as the future seat of our power. That will determine the answer really.

Moving the palace costs 107 hammers or about the same as settler+worker. Is it likely that we can find a better spot for a capital in the vicinity? Anyway it's not without costs if we want to have the palace moved before CS is discovered. Btw. wouldn't the spot 2N of the settler be a better settler/worker pump location with 3 (maybe even 4) food resources?

 

[Cactus Pete]

I wrote quite a bit on coastal vs inland but then realised I was probably missing the point.

Are we treating our capital as a settler/worker pump for maximum early rex, or as the future seat of our power. That will determine the answer really.

I'm thinking settler/worker pump initially and then make what we can of it later. Because movement is so slow relative to other aspects of the game at Quick speed (e.g. it's 60 years of tech speed per turn, but the same distances traveled), getting workers building roads and settlers settled in a timely manner could be a major consideration. Suppose horses and a great city site are 10 tiles from our capital and nearer another AI. At best, the site would be 300 years away. Rushing early should be similarly compromised. My concern is not so much leveraging early development as avoiding excessive adverse effects from slow development.

 

[Frederiksberg]

On the issue of when to build the first settler I think there is a relatively simple geometric argument in favor of shooting for the earliest possible date. For the sake of simplicity I will assume that the yield defined as hammers+commerce of a city grows linearly with time except during the time when it's building a settler. The picture below illustrates the difference between early settler (red curve) and late settler (blue curve). Yield growth is doubled when the new city is founded. The total yield during a game is the area under the curves. This means that the gain of late settler over early settler corresponds to the pink area and the gain of the early settler (over late) corresponds to the yellow area. As time goes the yellow area is bound to grow bigger reflecting that the city founded late will never catch up to the city founded early and that difference in development will keep adding up over time.

This is, of course, a simplified picture and it doesn't necessarily mean that we should build settler at size 1. Size 2 may be a good bet.

 

[PaulisKhan]

normally there's a negative cost to founding new cities, and that's the maintainance before it starts working enough tiles to cover that and start making a profit, in a normal game this can have a devastating impact on research rate, however in this game we're reasonably sure that won't be a consideration due to the powerful improvements we have access to, so simply maximising the number of cities IS probably the optimum path.

I'm gradually being convinced of the power of a super rex early on as opposed to developing a mega capital. Those tiles improvements really do change the game significantly.
So maybe we SHOULD do something crazy like settler on the corn, pop out a worker extra fast, grow to size 2 while building a workboat and then spam settlers like crazy.

This could backfire if we're stuck on a smallish landmass though.

 

[Frederiksberg]

normally there's a negative cost to founding new cities, and that's the maintainance before it starts working enough tiles to cover that and start making a profit, in a normal game this can have a devastating impact on research rate, however in this game we're reasonably sure that won't be a consideration due to the powerful improvements we have access to, so simply maximising the number of cities IS probably the optimum path.

All in moderation, I think. For the first settler we need not consider the increased maintenance because it's almost zero but the added maintenance grows quadratically with the number of cities until it starts saturating (I think SCT mentioned 14 cities as the point of saturation). So we need to play a few extreme REX tests to better understand how far this strategy can be taken.

I'm gradually being convinced of the power of a super rex early on as opposed to developing a mega capital. Those tiles improvements really do change the game significantly.
So maybe we SHOULD do something crazy like settler on the corn, pop out a worker extra fast, grow to size 2 while building a workboat and then spam settlers like crazy.

This could backfire if we're stuck on a smallish landmass though.

I'm far from being convinced of anything yet and I think we need some more testing and preferably some longer tests.

 

[PaulisKhan]

I managed to crash the economy by 200 BC with 10 cities and 12 workers by settling on the corn.
That's not a bad effort.
This is including the electricity slingshot.

I was slow getting the wheel for roads to hook my cities up which slowed my route to currency which cost me many turns of free traderoutes.

The more I play this scenario the more I think we need two workers per settler.

 

[DJMGator13]

I managed to crash the economy by 200 BC with 10 cities and 12 workers by settling on the corn.
That's not a bad effort.
This is including the electricity slingshot.

I was slow getting the wheel for roads to hook my cities up which slowed my route to currency which cost me many turns of free traderoutes.

The more I play this scenario the more I think we need two workers per settler.

Good to hear about the electric sling. I'll try to give the updated practice game a go tomorrow night.

With the super rexing how large are you letting the capital grow before starting to pump settlers and workers?

 

[rrau]

In one of my tests, I bulbed electricity with 3 GS's. Could we do that with a radio sling? I think you have to have electricity to get radio.

 

[PaulisKhan]

With the super rexing how large are you letting the capital grow before starting to pump settlers and workers?

I think I was about pop 4 when I built the first settler and gradually grew to pop 6 as a result of building warrior escorts in between settlers/workers.

 

[PaulisKhan]

In one of my tests, I bulbed electricity with 3 GS's. Could we do that with a radio sling? I think you have to have electricity to get radio.

I'm a bit concerned about bulbing prodigious amount of GP as opposed to saving them for golden ages, 6 Golden ages is a serious consideration I think which would last us from around the age of nationalism all the way to future tech.
but I don't know how I would do the calculation to compare the benefits of early radio (Christo) vs an extra golden age or two.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Really like starting settler at pop2, using 2 chops (improving to a windmill and water wheel where the two forests were) while growing city (producing warrior but switching to settler as chops come in) and then quickly completing the settler after the chops. This gets a settler out just as we learn AH and should allow for a nice second city placement. Like to have that second city both hook up a military resource (ideally before 2000BC for barbs and/or possible worker steal) and fairly quickly build the Oracle. As the first settler is produced, we can revolt to slavery and be ready to take advantage of our capital's rapid growth rate to alternate between producing and whipping. An exploring workboat and advanced unit could be produced while in growth phase before granary and library (delayed to get to Priesthood) are available.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Early in the game, GAs are not so valuable. Doubt that holding early GPs for later GAs is optimal.

 

[PaulisKhan]

Early in the game, GAs are not so valuable. Doubt that holding early GPs for later GAs is optimal.

Late game GA's are very important for space colony, especially with a lot of mills in play. I'd be more than happy to horde half a dozen GP to lanch a series of golden ages initiated by the Taj, or to start the series just beforehand.
The only reason I don't do it more frequently in my own space games is that I'm hopeless at generating my great engineer in time if I push out too many other GP early.
I think almost all of the HoF space games are based heavily around running MoM enhanced golden ages throught as much of the endgame as possible.

 

[PaulisKhan]

Really like starting settler at pop2, using 2 chops (improving to a windmill and water wheel where the two forests were) while growing city (producing warrior but switching to settler as chops come in) and then quickly completing the settler after the chops.

I aimed for that too but I found myself growing so quickly while trying to get the warrior fogbusters/escorts out that I ended up at a much higher pop than planned.

I'm a bit unsure what the barbs will be like in this game and didn't want to take any chances with losing an early settler, how aggressive do you think we can be in settling that first city?
escort optional?

 

[leif erikson]

Save will be available tomorrow. I don't think there is any rush to begin. Testing the initial strategy seems to be the best use of time for this scenario as there are few turns to recover should we err.

If we are ready, we should decide where we want the Scout to go, move him, and then stop to decide on where to settle.

Proposal for play order:
ShannonCT
Frederiksberg
PaulisKhan
rrau
Cactus Pete
Grover22
DJMGator13
leif

Not sure of everyone's availability, so please let me know if you'd like a change.

Once you are "UP" in the roster, please let me know within 24 hours that you "Have It", which means you can play the set, and then post a Pre-Play Plan within the next 24 hours, and then you have 72 hours to play and post the save. These times are guidelines. In difficult parts of a game, we have, and should, take longer. If you are in game and need advice, please save the game and post the save by attaching it to the thread. At the end of the turn set, please upload the save file HERE.

Just a note, please be careful when you are viewing the save and not up. During the game, we cannot make any changes to the save, moving units or doing anything that cannot be undone. Additionally, we cannot replay any part of the game that has already been played. Please note which saves are ones we generate for testing and the real save. I keep them in separate folders. In naming test saves, let's use something like SG09Test...

 

[ShannonCT]

Here's a practice game I played where I settled Athens 1S of the starting location. My intuition is that it's better to not settle on freshwater corn. Rather, leave space for a GP farm on the north coast that can use fish and corn, and get more forests and river tiles in the capital.

Practice Game Turns 0 - 43

T0 - move settler 1S
T1 - settle Athens, start agriculture, start worker1
T7 - agriculture->mining
T11 - Athens worker1->warrior1, start corn1
T12 - mining->BW
T15 - Athens Pop2 start worker2, start corn2
T20 - Athens worker2->warrior1, start windmill1
T21 - Athens warrior1->warrior2, start windmill2
T22 - BW->AH, Athens Pop3, revolt to PS/slavery/enviro
T25 - Athens Pop4, start settler, start chop1
T26 - start chop2
T28 - AH->wheel, start windmill3
T29 - Athens settler1->worker3, watermill1
T30 - settler Sparta 3N of Athens, start WB, work corn
T31 - Athens worker3->scout2
T32 - wheel->pottery, Athens scout2->warrior2
T33 - Athens Pop5 warrior2->settler2, Sparta Pop2 whip WB, start chop3 and watermill2
T34 - Sparta WB->WB, start preserve1
T35 - pottery->myst, Sparta start worker4
T36 - Athens settler2->warrior3, start chop4
T37 - Athens warrior3->settler3
T38 - myst->meditation, settler Corinth 2SE1S of Athens start WB
T39 - Sparta worker4->WB
T41 - meditation->preist, Sparta Pop3 whip WB, Athens settler3->granary, start preserve2
T42 - Athens whip granary for 2pop, Sparta Pop3 WB->worker5
T43 - preist->writing, Athens Pop4 granary->Oracle, Corinth Pop2, settle Thebes 3SW of Athens start granary, start watermill3 and preserve2
T44 - stop

I stopped here because someone else completed Oracle. It hasn't been going so fast in most of my practice games, but it's good that we are aware of how early it can go. Maybe we can delay AH or Pottery or both. And if we have 4+ workers at this point, we can have them all chopping the Oracle.

Note that I built settler1 when Athens was at Pop4, so it could work 2 windmills. Maybe building at Pop2 is optimal.