SGOTM 10 - One Short Straw

[shyuhe]

I think we can fogbust the south with the explorer and LB. The northern LB should see if there are northern seafood as that'll influence a potential city up there.

Yes I was chopping from turn 0. I just cancelled to make sure that the chop doesn't finish before St. Pete's culture covers the tile and it's re-assigned to Moscow. Nothing worse than a chop going where you didn't intend it to.

The settler has not moved this turn. So it can move 2W, then next turn move 1E and settle. The chop will finish after St. P is settled, so the hammers will go to Moscow as planned. It will just reveal extra tiles to the west before we commit to St. P's location.

edit: I'll probably play this turn tonight as well. I don't think there's much more to discuss until we come out of revolt.

 

[Soirana]

deleted into oblivion

 

[babybluepants]

Wouldn't settler W-SW reveal more? Or, are you expecting more seafood? I think you should make the settler and then let's confirm city location before playing on.

 

[mdy]

The second settler has not moved yet. As Soirana (or someone) suggested, it may be better to move 2W before doubling back to settle on the ivory.

I agree. As we are in anarchy we won't lose anything.

I also think we should be able to move the longbow along the peninsular without worrying about barb spawn (at least for now)

 

[shyuhe]

Team, we have a problem. I moved the settler 2W, and get this:

Do we want to settle SW to block him off?

 

[Soirana]

deleted into oblivion

 

[babybluepants]

I'm still for settling as per plan. It's the better site, and we're not squeezing in an extra city anyway. What do we know about him? You only see the explorer and the border outline?

Let's test his expansion rate and the viability of choking, as Soirana suggested. I'll have some time tmr.

 

[shyuhe]

The purple-ish thing you can barely make out is Gandhi's border. His capital is 3W of the ivory. The only reason why I suggest settling on the SW ivory is to block Gandhi in. I will try editing the test save to incorporate Gandhi and see how fast he spits out a settler.

The unit underneath the explorer is a fast worker. I'm going to go ahead and hit enter to roll it over to the next turn. We'll see what Gandhi's units do.

 

[shyuhe]

Here is your Session Turn Log from 1285 AD to 1295 AD:

Turn 277, 1285 AD: The revolution has begun!!!
Turn 277, 1285 AD: Stalin adopts Bureaucracy!
Turn 277, 1285 AD: Stalin adopts Serfdom!
Turn 277, 1285 AD: Stalin adopts Mercantilism!
Turn 277, 1285 AD: Stalin adopts Pacifism!

Turn 278, 1290 AD: Moscow has been founded.
Turn 278, 1290 AD: Will Sign Open Borders: Gandhi
Turn 278, 1290 AD: The anarchy is over! Your government is re-established.
Turn 278, 1290 AD: Gandhi adopts Hereditary Rule!
Turn 278, 1290 AD: Gandhi adopts Bureaucracy!
Turn 278, 1290 AD: Gandhi adopts Caste System!
Turn 278, 1290 AD: Gandhi adopts Mercantilism!
Turn 278, 1290 AD: Gandhi adopts Organized Religion!

The game is at 1295 AD, no units moved.

 

[shyuhe]

And correct, no vassals = no colony maintenance. State property isn't as necessary as usual.

So I think a choke on Gandhi may be necessary here. He has low attack courage so 2 LBs on the forested hill (next to his capital) should stunt him, I think. As long as he doesn't get metal, I doubt he'll be able to dislodge them.

 

[Soirana]

deleted into oblivion

 

[mdy]

If he has decided to send a settler towards the SE it is probably to late to contain him. If he has gone W then chopping an early 3rd settler should be enough to block him off.

We could consider settling in place. We would still have 2 seafoods, 3 ivory, 2 floodplains and we would avoid a lot of overlap on the capital. It will be a holy city so culture should not be a problem.

I still think we need to send the longbow north. There might be another civ up there we need to take account of and if there isn't we will still need something to fogbust the peninsular to prevent barb spawn.

 

[Soirana]

deleted into oblivion

 

[shyuhe]

I believe the settler "bug" was removed in version 3.19. It can also result in "accidental" moves of the settler so I'd rather not deal with it.

I think settling where the settler is doesn't accomplish much unfortunately. As Soirana points out, it doesn't deal with the worker chops already put into the forest. Furthermore, it may not succeed in blocking Gandhi. I'm thinking the best option is to move the soutnern LB onto the hill to see if there's a settler running around. If not, we can either try choking him with the LB (settling on the eastern ivory) or choke him with a city (settle on the western ivory).

St. Pete will be a holy city so it should hold up against Gandhi's capital culture.

 

[Soirana]

deleted into oblivion

 

[babybluepants]

BTW, Murky has a very steep culture graph. Xteam is very slow to develop but has a steep power graph. I guess they're taking two different approaches to Gandhi...

I just remembered from my initial tests a while ago that the AI tends to sit on the second settler for some reason. Maybe they like a capital holy city? Anyway, even if that's the case, he'll probably escort with a LB, so we can't really intercept with only one unit.

I thought I would quickly run some random starts to see what his average expansion rate is. I'll post my results in an hour or so.

 

[babybluepants]

This is on random duel pangaea, through to 1650 AD:

Spoiler :

TEST 1

Cities: Bombay 1320 AD; Vijayanagara 1445 AD; Pataliputra 1520 AD; Varanasi 1580 AD
Tech: Education / Liberalism - Astronomy (1630 AD)
Civics: Hereditary Rule / Bureaucracy / Caste System / Mercantilism / Organized Religion; Pacifism in 1345 AD
GP: GE (Sistine) 1370 AD / GE (Notre Dame) 1455 AD / GE (Sankore) 1495 AD / GE (Spiral) 1580 AD / GS 1635 AD

TEST 2

Cities: Bombay 1310 AD; Vijayanagara 1460 AD
Tech: Education / Liberalism - Astronomy (1555 AD) / Nationalism
Civics: Hereditary Rule / Bureaucracy / Caste System / Mercantilism / Organized Religion; Pacifism in 1345 AD
GP: GS 1355 AD / GM 1430 AD / GM 1525 AD / GM 1530 AD / GM 1615 AD

TEST 3

Cities: Bombay 1300 AD; Vijayanagara 1470 AD; Pataliputra 1575 AD; Varanasi 1640 AD
Tech: Education / Nationalism / Liberalism - Astronomy (1650 AD)
Civics: Hereditary Rule / Bureaucracy / Caste System / Mercantilism / Organized Religion; Pacifism in 1345 AD
GP: GE (Sistine) 1355 AD / GE (Notre Dame) 1435 AD / GE (Sankore) 1550 AD / GE (Spiral) 1620 AD / GS 1635 AD

TEST 4

Cities: Bombay 1315 AD; Vijayanagara 1580 AD; Pataliputra 1645 AD
Tech: Gunpowder / Nationalism
Civics: Hereditary Rule / Bureaucracy / Caste System / Mercantilism / Organized Religion; Pacifism in 1345 AD
GP: GE (Sistine) 1370 AD / GA 1460 AD / GE (Notre Dame) 1500 AD / GE (Sankore) 1645 AD

TEST 5

Cities: Bombay 1310 AD; Vijayanagara 1520 AD; Pataliputra 1655 AD
Tech: Education / Liberalism - Nationalism (1600 AD)
Civics: Hereditary Rule / Bureaucracy / Caste System / Mercantilism / Organized Religion; Pacifism in 1345 AD
GP: GE (Sistine) 1365 AD / GS 1410 AD / GS 1485 AD / GE (Notre Dame) 1535 AD / GE (Sankore) 1575 AD

TEST 6

Cities: Bombay 1305 AD; Vijayanagara 1450 AD; Pataliputra 1590 AD
Tech: Education
Civics: Hereditary Rule / Bureaucracy / Caste System / Mercantilism / Organized Religion; Pacifism in 1345 AD
GP: GA 1390 AD / GE (Sistine) 1475 AD / GE (Notre Dame) 1520 AD / GA 1640 AD

Edit: added two more tests.

 

[babybluepants]

The third city date is pretty consistent. He goes for Sistine immediately and runs Caste, so we can forget about culture warring. The super early Lib date in TEST 2 is odd - his GP's in that one are just weird. Maybe we can ignore it.

We'll have a hard time trying to out-expand him. I think we'll most likely have to choke. We might as well steal his workers right away, in that case. I would love to intercept the second settler, but it's not really doable with one LB.

 

[PaulusIII]

Block straight away, we have no choice. I don't see other viable options.

 

[Soirana]

deleted into oblivion