SGOTM 10 - One Short Straw

[shyuhe]

1W of gold won't work both golds until it hits size 5, right? Corn, rice, cows, then grass gold, then desert gold. Wet corn is definitely a strong tile and is better to get online soon... mdy's suggestion is very appealing. We don't need caste with that opening since we'll be working more tiles instead of specialists. My only concern would be (1) does it slow down bulbing to education? and (2) when do we swap to caste/pacifism? I would prefer to use pacifism instead of HR. State religion gives us an extra , and I doubt we'll be building more than a single unit for military police in the beginning. I think we'll hit representation before we have a need to build HR military police.

 

[PaulusIII]

Capital: In place. High food will help fuel early expansion.

Second city: The desert hill we discussed earlier. Good early commerce.

Start on Nationalism, GS Edu (if we cannot trade for it) then Lib. If we get Lib we should take Constitution.

Civics: HR/Bureau/Serfdom/Merc. Don't commit to religion yet until we see our enemies.

 

[mdy]

Location: Gone fishing for the summer
Posts: 2,800 1W of gold won't work both golds until it hits size 5, right? Corn, rice, cows, then grass gold, then desert gold.

Yes. With our curretn happy cap we should not need the additional happiness from H.R. or a state religion for a long time.

It would slow down the bulbing of education, but using binary research this should not delay liberalism. We could switvh to caste/pacifism t the sam time we revolt to representation.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Have you guys kept track of Taj Mahal building dates? Are we in a rush for that? My main concern is that if we don't rush it, it will either be missed or delay a lot our expansion & universities building.

 

[babybluepants]

Why do we need the Taj? If we actually build it, it kills our expansion. If we pop a GE for it, we lose a GS bulb which is worth way more than a non-MoM golden age in the REX stage. Also, if we're skipping Democracy (which I think we should), GA's are useless for bulbing, so I'd avoid them...

If we go 1W of gold, I almost think we have a better second city 1W of fish, but that's a bit bizarre and takes 4t. Maybe that should be a third city. Where exactly is the FP/ivory city going in this scenario?

When is the deadline for running test games? ie when do we actually start this game?

I don't think we should rush this, since there's hardly a consensus, and it's the most important decision in the game. When is Soirana back? Should we wait?

Can we somehow make play-testing objective? I've been playing through to 1600 very quickly and recording stats (like tech progress and pace, number of cities, pop, number of workers, buildings built, GP's). I'm trying to test probably every version that's been mentioned. It doesn't take long if you just point and click, but I won't really have any time to play this 'till the weekend. How about the rest of you?

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

OK, I 've been thinking we would build the Taj since the beginning, true that's perhaps a mistake without marble (I did want to rush him with a GE)... but trust me, I never planned on farming GArtists ...
I agree about skipping democraty, I've been ok with this since before we started this thread
I can't tell about fps/phant city without more exploration... as for other city sites, I will play test games this week end to have an idea, I am only guessing from xp for now, which is not necesseraly valuable (but I can't play before that really )...
Give us your results, I will look at the same details (but it will take me time I don't know how you can play fast!)...
If the team is OK, I would wait for Soirana, it's usually harder to have a good idea of what'is going on if you miss the start!

Cheers

 

[babybluepants]

OK, I 've been thinking we would build the Taj since the beginning, true that's perhaps a mistake without marble (I did want to rush him with a GE)... but trust me, I never planned on farming GArtists ...

I know. But you can accidentally pop one or two... Maybe with marble, if it's still available after a while, and we can afford it... I think it depends on how the game plays out.

Give us your results, I will look at the same details (but it will take me time I don't know how you can play fast!)...

That's easy, man. I do it by playing super extra crappy.

I'll post whatever I have this weekend, sure. If we're waiting a while for Soirana, and I think we should, there's no rush.

 

[shyuhe]

I'm busy with work and all so I won't have time to play test for a bit. So waiting for Soirana to come back isn't an issue for me.

Regarding Taj, I would consider it later on but I think we need to concentrate on expanding more. We can't grab cities later so we want to take as much land as we can early on.

I think 1W gold puts the second west of the SW phants. Obviously it depends on the terrain over there but I don't think it'll be a bad spot. It'll have minimum, 2 phants + 2 floodplains. City #3 in that scenario would likely be the fish farm.

 

[Soirana]

deleted into oblivion

 

[mdy]

Relying on a trade for gunpowder is potentially risky and would not allow us to get a more expensive tech with liberalism. Generating 2GP's will take 50 turns (25 with pacifism), given this I think we should try to make our first GP a scientist for the Education bulb. I have been doing some testing and the barbs only ever seem to spawn galleys, not triemes/caravels. Can anyone else confirm this? If so a 2 fish site to the north may be the best site for a 2nd city as it could generate the GS quicker than a FP/ivory city unless there is another good food source down there. Maybe we should move the worker to have a look?

 

[shyuhe]

Barbs never spawn an oceangoing unit more advanced than a galley as far as I know. Except privateers that show up as "barbarians" but are really AI units.

I would prefer to settle the gold capital and send the worker to irrigate the corn ASAP. Scouting west with the worker will take 2 worker turns, and I think the information gained is of minimal advantage. The fishing site for an early GP farm looks pretty strong.

 

[babybluepants]

I've only seen galleys, yes. I don't think barb ships are a good enough reason to pass up a pile of seafood, anyway. I'm reluctant to settle the fp/ivory site without knowing more about it. 2 FP's and 2 ivory equals 12fpt 8hpt 4gpt at pop 4, while the 3 seafood and iron equal 20fpt 6hpt 7gpt. It's also faster to set up the fish city, with a chop almost giving us 2 WB's, and there are hill mines for prod later. I guess I like mdy's capital now. In-place is definitely better for REX, but the 1W of gold site has a lot of long-term potential.

I'm really divided between Caste and Serf now. Serf is only marginally better for expansion and growth, I think, but that could mean something if we have close neighbors... Caste/Pac is way better overall. We can have an academy, GS bulb Educ, then GS bulb PP just before Lib/Const comes in, tech GP, then bulb Chem.

Has anyone looked at the other teams' graphs? What's MW up to? Are they whipping? It seems they only have 3 pop @ t9, and they lost some score on the last turnset. I can't really figure out their culture graph with slavery, though...

 

[babybluepants]

I would prefer to settle the gold capital and send the worker to irrigate the corn ASAP. Scouting west with the worker will take 2 worker turns, and I think the information gained is of minimal advantage. The fishing site for an early GP farm looks pretty strong.

I prefer chopping out another worker or two.

 

[shyuhe]

I wonder if MW lost a city or gifted a city. That's about the only way you can lose points, other than massive whipping. Maybe they whipped a wonder.

I actually don't mind doing a revolt to caste later in the game, as I think the early serfdom is that much more powerful. Caste won't be useful with the capital (settler/workers) so it'll only be effective for the second city. But getting the second city running with surplus food will take some time - and using worker chops to build 2WB's + a library will compensate for the lack of infinite specialists.

It looks like lots of teams took the two turn revolt.

Perhaps the FP should be left for a third city. How do people feel about the 1W gold capital? I believe 3 are in favor of that now (me, mdy, bbp).

 

[babybluepants]

I wonder if MW lost a city or gifted a city. That's about the only way you can lose points, other than massive whipping. Maybe they whipped a wonder.

It looks like lots of teams took the two turn revolt.

I don't think they necessarily lost a city. It's 6 points per 1 pop, so their last turnset they probably whipped away 3 citizens (or more with some growth).

It also looks like Chokonuts are the only team with a capital already built on t2 - I guess others are going for the 2-gold, as well.

 

[mdy]

Perhaps the FP should be left for a third city./QUOTE]

I agree. How about:

Found capital 1W of gold, build worker(chopped) 2 longbows for city garrison, then a library whilst growing to size 5 and starting on as settler. The longbows we currently have can be used for exploration/fogbusting. Hire engineer specialist here

2nd city on the grass forest hill to the north, build workboat, trieme, library. Hire a citizen specialist until we can run the scientists.

At this point we should only need 1 worker per city.


1st tech: Nationalism

How long should we make the turnsets?

 

[babybluepants]

Do we know how early barbs show up? My feeling is that we don't really need any CG LB's or triremes right away. I'd rather speed up the libraries. Also, I really think we should have 3 workers immediately.

 

[Soirana]

deleted into oblivion

 

[mdy]

Honestly i played with warriors. Longbow is overkill since fog bust and early barbarian cities lock enough land./QUOTE]

We need fogbusters to stop barb cities forming as we can't take any before nukes. We will need to buils something other than settlers while the capital grows to size 5. Other than a library we don't really have anything else immediatly useful to build there.

Also, I really think we should have 3 workers immediately./QUOTE]
3 workers + serfdom is massive overkill, we simply won't be able to work that many improvements early on.

I still do not understand why you want self tech lib.../QUOTE]

The free tech is more expensive. It slows down the AI's tech rate. We can't guarantee that we will be able to trade for education, and we don't really want to encourage the AI down the democracy path by trading nationalism/constitution to them.

 

[shyuhe]

Are we all agreed about the capital location? If so, I'd like to move the 1st settler 1W of gold and the second settler 1NE (towards the fish site). I would like to move the worker east to start farming the corn.

We also need to finalize what we're revolting into.