SGOTM 10 - One Short Straw

[PaulusIII]

Since we're effectively not allowed to fight an aggressive war until the Manhattan Project, I'm inclined to sacrifice early universities/Oxford in favour of expansion. The capital (with a lighthouse in place for good measure, and bureaucracy boosted production) will be able to pump out settlers at high pace thanks to an abundance of food and the iron tile.

 

[Soirana]

deleted into oblivion

 

[babybluepants]

With immediate bureaucracy and a quick academy, a fast-growing capital can really push out some beakers early. Maybe it's ok to use it as a settler factory, but it might be better to leave that for the second city. Iron and ivory tiles notwithstanding, most of the settler production at the starting site would probably come from food, not hammers, so bureaucracy won't contribute much there.

How many cities are you guys hoping to settle exactly? What would the timeline for that be? The map setup can vary quite a bit with this game...

 

[mdy]

I think we should build as many cities as the map permits as quickly as we can, even if it means sacrificing early game research. A few hundred early game beakers won't make up for losing a good city site.

I suggest moving 1 lnogbow to the gold hill, and the other 1 tile N, the Explorer 1SE-1E, and the worker 1SW 1SE to determine the best capital site.

 

[babybluepants]

I like the worker move. Will the explorer find anything SE-E? It looks a little bit like there's only coast that way. If it goes to one of the golds, it can move 1 further south on the next turn. If we do your move, does 1E 1SE instead reveal a bit more coast? I'm too lazy to think.

I know it's probably too early for this, but it would also be good to confirm if we have 1t or 2t of anarchy to delay settling. I've been switching 4 civics for 2t. What about the rest of you?

 

[PaulusIII]

I don't think moving the explorer to the north will be much better since we can also see the coastline over there. We're better off using him SW in the way of the floodplains.

4 civics = 2 turns of anarchy.

 

[Soirana]

deleted into oblivion

 

[Soirana]

deleted into oblivion

 

[mdy]

I like the worker move. Will the explorer find anything SE-E? It looks a little bit like there's only coast that way.

True, but ther could be some seafood down there.Moving 1E-1SE will take 2 turns instead of one. We can't tell for sure whether the water next to the gold is a fresh water lake without moving a unit next to it.

If we perform 2 civic switches we will have 1 turn of anarchy, 2 turns with 3/4 civic changes and 3 turns if we change all 5 civics.

 

[babybluepants]

An explorer shouldn't lose a turn going onto different types of terrain.

 

[babybluepants]

Good point on wasting worker moves. Even with bureaucracy, I think it will take two turns of production after the two turns of anarchy to get out a second worker with a chop, right? Without bureau it's probably more like 4-5. I think it's ok to spend a turn exploring, since it can get further south on the first turn than the other units, revealing more information.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

And checking in
Still have catch up to do...

Cheers

 

[Soirana]

deleted into oblivion

 

[Soirana]

deleted into oblivion

 

[Soirana]

deleted into oblivion

 

[shyuhe]

They probably moved their units around to scout. I've been a bit busy as of late so haven't had a chance to look at the save. I'll hopefully do that tonight.

Interesting note about the global warming control Soirana. I'll try reproducing it as well. It may just be random luck that it happened in your test game that way.

 

[babybluepants]

worker chop - chop is 44 +22 via beaurau +11 via forge. 77hammers with worker being 81 [there is 10% discount due to settings]. This clearly can be finished in one turn, I do not know a way which interfer less with grow.

Yes, of course. I thought it was 66, as I forgot about the forge.

Settler is nearly 350 hammers. So building it with iron and elephant in no cap would take:
342/10>>> well above 30 turns. Hard to believe city can't grow into three more hammer tiles using granary and than pump them at "rapid pace".

I think we would grow rapidly and build with all the food tiles improved. The AI takes a bit of time to get going. We shouldn't do a 300+h build with pop 2.

Edit: I just noticed Soirana's comment about building with workshops... That sounds good, except do we really have time to develop our capital so much? Especially without serfdom... I've been going with sefdom, and I generally like it. The only issue is I find it really hard to get the Educ GS at a high probability without immediate Caste. This is even worse with Pacifism and immediate religion. I've been building the NE with the first GE to compensate.

 

[babybluepants]

I played through a similar game as Soirana. I cottaged the capital down at the 2 gold, and built NE at the start position. Workshopped and farmed the rest. Ended up with 8-9 cities, including 2-3 weak ones IIRC. The barbs did take a couple of prime spots. Lib @ 1600, Rocketry and Manhattan @ 1834. I reached about 1000bpt towards the end. Careless game, so can be improved quite a bit. I, however, didn't world-builder in uranium, and ended up without it (this also means I abandoned without actually building any nukes). This makes me really paranoid. I like going for Bio and Communism before Physics, but Astro/Phys gives much more of a cushion if Gyathar was evil and the only source we could claim is on some random island.

I traded for Econ, Corp, RP, Demo, MT, MS, Steam and, I believe Rifling, maybe something else and got a decent amount of cash. I did end up with Mansa Musa in this game, but I think I actually traded with Hammy more, so that wasn't it. The AI tech pace is abysmal.

Edit: Couple more things. I converted MM to my religion quite easily. Could've done the same to Hammy (my other neighbor), but I got him to great diplo regardless (mainly due to favourite civic), +14 towards the end, IIRC. Also, just a side note, I had 150hpt in my Ironworks city and 50-60 in the others (except gp farm), when I could build nukes, without any factories or plants, of course.

 

[mdy]

The only issue is I find it really hard to get the Educ GS at a high probability without immediate Caste. This is even worse with Pacifism and immediate religion. I've been building the NE with the first GE to compensate.

If we did not generate an engineer, and got a scientist as our first GP we could speed things up. An engineer specialist is a relativly inefficient way to generate hammers in the early game when growth is so important. We could also run 0% science for a while after we had nationalism so we would not need a very early GS.

This makes me really paranoid. I like going for Bio and Communism before Physics, but Astro/Phys gives much more of a cushion if Gyathar was evil and the only source we could claim is on some random island.

If we are running a hammer based economy via workshops then communism will give us far more food than biology(which we may be able to skip entirely). Given that uranium is effectivly essential for this SGOTM I think the chances of us not having easy access to uranium are effectivly 0.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Hi ,

I played some test games this evening with random map/opponents...

First impressions:
Immediate revolt in pacifism/any religious civic could be problematic... first game I got dogpiled by three AIs while expanding.
Expansion is the first priority, with barbs cities poping and map potentially crowded (one more AI than the default setting), we 'll need more settlers/workers than usual, asap.
Taking the above in consideration, I've been trying nationalism -> rush of Taj with first GE -> pacifism revolt -> growth of two GS for academy/education bulb.
Works nicely, but in one attempt, one AI bulbed edu then took liberalism... so there are risks with this approach. On the bright side, this could nab us fast constitution, and hammers for initial expansion (while teching nationalism, no specialists but a free GE from mercantilism are needed). Also this approach allows using serfdom, which I find more usefull than caste to quickly improve tiles (as Soirana said, we start with 4 unimproved ones and a worker...). Slavery could be usefull though.

About the capital: I am still not convinced by cottages: I found that expansion is the key with those settings/rules, so cottages won't help there. Moreover, growing scientists quickly asks for BIG cities Feel free to convince me otherwise

Will try different stuff next days
Do we have a roster order or something similar? When do we want to start the game? End of the month so most of the team is ready?

Cheers,
Ras