SGOTM 10 - One Short Straw

[babybluepants]

^ I didn't even realize I said anything like that. Whatever time you have for this, it's cool, dude. I meant more that Soirana should play next, 'cause he's already played through it about a hundred times.

Looks like i am getting most boring part...

I don't know... the last set was pretty damn boring. shyuhe got all the unexpected surprises.

 

[shyuhe]

All of our cities come with granaries so the food storage mechanism isn't really an issue...

The roster looks fine, although I think we'll have to be flexible to make sure this game keeps on going.

The worker steal is a good plan. Do we want to continue war in an attempt to put a city behind Gandhi or are we giving up on that plan? I think it's a little risky and it would be safer to just let him settle over there. It looks like there are plenty of islands for us to go settle anyways.

 

[shyuhe]

Also, what improvements are we going to build around Moscow? I think the workers will need new projects soon. I don't mind cottaging Moscow, as it gets the bureau bonus. The other cities should get farms for now.

 

[babybluepants]

I don't think we should continue the war, but that doesn't mean we're not settling behind him. Under Soirana's plan, we get OB again soon. Gandhi will probably settle the north iron next, and the DOW slows down his expansion big time. We're probably not looking at him settling anywhere south or west until the late 1500's, when we could have 5-6 cities.

 

[babybluepants]

Also, what improvements are we going to build around Moscow? I think the workers will need new projects soon. I don't mind cottaging Moscow, as it gets the bureau bonus. The other cities should get farms for now.

Hill mines first. That should cover the settler spam stage, working 2 gold, corn, rice, cow, PH and GH at size 7, maybe a specialist at size 8 or another GH. St Pete's gonna need some improvements soon, but we'll have to wait and see if we can snatch 2 workers first before detailed plan. Cottages may be ok, but we probably won't grow past 8 for a while... Workshops are kinda crappy until at least Caste, but really Chem.

My biggest worry for the next while is Bombay culture taking away St Pete tiles. We'll need the FP's once we start running a GP farm. In one of my tests Gandhi GA bombed Bombay, but even without that, he puts some pressure on us.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

@Shyuhe my granary comment was a side joke in reference to Soirana's post in the ALC...

I would go with farm in the cap to grow faster. Will allow more scientists turns. Workshops/mills if that's not our long term science city (workshops are worth it already in caste system, and it's not worth it to cottage if we are to replace them after chemistry imho).

I am a huge believer that Gandhi will drop a wonder in Bombay if it's not a culture bomb as you say. A shrine will come soon enough anyway. Any wonder should go in St Pet.
Southern explorer should move one SW at least too (don't remember if you covered this already).

Cheers

edit: ofc my comment on farms is for after having mined all remainging hills but the desert ones

 

[shyuhe]

Ah I missed the granary joke. Although the information was definitely useful

We will need some cottages to pay the bills until we go on the warpath. I don't expect to get much gold in trade so I think cottaging the bureau capital isn't that bad. Obviously there are hills to mine for the immediate future so we can deal with those for now.

How are we going to protect St P's culture then? Short of rushing a culture wonder, I'm not sure there's much we can do about it.

 

[babybluepants]

I think we can cottage the river grass tiles, at least. Except maybe where they lap St Pete - those might need to be farms (I haven't really looked into it).

I'm leaning more towards popping a GE and rushing Taj in St Pete now, but I'm still unsure. The way it's timed, we could use the golden age hammers to speed up NE, a settler and a university, and maybe speed initial development in new cities. There's not much else we could do. Popping a GA for a bomb is a bit extreme, I wouldn't really consider it.

 

[shyuhe]

The only downside of the GE plan is that is severely delays the academy in the capital. So I think it's better to go GS first followed by a mad dash to the GE. We can probably run an engineer + 2 scientists in Moscow at that point to get the next GP. If we get a GE, we rush the Taj, if we get a GS, we bulb education. I'm also starting to understand why Murky whipped a big building... I think they whipped out the Taj to fight Gandhi's culture.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

All green tiles shared with St Pet are riverside... I would really go with farms... we have two gold to pay the bills and scientists points value is far bigger than cottage output right now. Even with bureacraty. Then with chemistry, RP, communism, the output compared to a workshop or a rivermill will not be great. This is not an ancient start... the only thing that could justify cottages would be a beeline to democraty, are we going for this? SL isn't wishable here...

 

[Soirana]

deleted into oblivion

 

[babybluepants]

Most likely we already made mistake due to adopting early pacifism. Instead running org with faster switch to caste+paci.

Maybe, except we're not adopting religion before libraries for another reason...

It is still possible to squeeze monastery and misisonairy with some chops but this is already gamble versus autospread.

Getting him to convert would be great long term. A monastery is also a bit of culture in St Pete - may be the difference between having an FP or not, for all we know. I'm not sure we can afford those builds right now, though.

On other things: I really doubt MW whipping wonder. More likely just after finishing settler for city four they whipped another one to sinchronize last universities or something like that. but we really guessing here.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Overall i think we need to sort macro questions - settle behind Ghandi or not, cottage cap or not.

Agreed.

 

[mdy]

Getting him to convert would be great long term.

I doubt that it will be possible to convert Gandhi as he has his own holy city.

If we are low on slider than we will need markets and banks.... I'd rather put cap on hammers producing commerce if slider is problem [and it most likely will be].

I thought the slider was set to 0 so we can run at 100% once we have the libraries? This means we should not have issues with the slider for quite a long time. In the long run building wealth in some outlying cities, with a 100% science cottaged capital is much more effective than building workshops in the capital. There should be no need for banks/markets at all unless we need them for Wall Street/happiness.

The only downside of the GE plan is that is severely delays the academy in the capital. So I think it's better to go GS first followed by a mad dash to the GE. We can probably run an engineer + 2 scientists in Moscow at that point to get the next GP. If we get a GE, we rush the Taj, if we get a GS, we bulb education. I'm also starting to understand why Murky whipped a big building... I think they whipped out the Taj to fight Gandhi's culture.

I don't think a GE is worth delaying the academy/bulb. Getting an extra floodplain is not worth it espesially as the GE points will needlessly pollute the GP pool. A godern Age is not that useful anyway.

 

[babybluepants]

Without emancipation, we won't get a mature town before nukes (I'm thinking somewhere in the 1800-1850 era), assuming we don't start working a cottage pre-1550 or so (probable settler spam end date?). A riverside village with PP and bureau is 7 base gpt. If we start working it at 1600, we mature it to a village at 1802, if I'm not mistaken... Basically, we would not be getting substantial or sustained return in research, compared to specialists. If we invest in cottages, I think of it as a tool for stockpiling gold once the warring starts... I don't really know what I'm saying. Frankly, deciding on this kind of macro stuff is slightly beyond my intelligence level, but it would be nice to see some analysis from the rest of you... A riverside cottage with bureau is ok even to start, though - 3gpt right away, as if financial.

I thought the slider was set to 0 so we can run at 100% once we have the libraries? This means we should not have issues with the slider for quite a long time. In the long run building wealth in some outlying cities, with a 100% science cottaged capital is much more effective than building workshops in the capital. There should be no need for banks/markets at all unless we need them for Wall Street/happiness.

If we stockpile about 600g, we can approximately run 100% on that alone to 1600+ AD, assuming we expand to 6 cities by then. This should get us Lib circa 1600, as well. After that, secondary cities building wealth is what I expected.

Getting an extra floodplain is not worth it

Could potentially be worse than 1 FP...

I doubt that it will be possible to convert Gandhi as he has his own holy city

I managed to convert Mansa Musa in one of my early tests, pretty easily. It's possible, but not necessarily a sure thing. At this point we're already behind, and it would be a substantial investment out of St Pete. There's other stuff we need to build there...

 

[shyuhe]

I don't think Gandhi will convert.

We won't have slider issues for some time because of the gold we've been banking.

I am sold on skipping the GE, or at least trying to get two scientists first.

I would like to settle behind Gandhi if possible but what are the timetables for getting the settler? If we can nab two workers, I think it'll be fairly easy to do.

 

[Soirana]

deleted into oblivion

 

[mdy]

The AI's switch to whichever religion is in the most cities. If 2 are present in the same number of cities the one for which it has the holy city is prefered. Given the AI's habit of spreading religion even if we did manage to convert him, he would be unlikely to stay converted for long.

Could potentially be worse than 1 FP...

True-but we will probably lose the western elephant at some point anyway and there aren't any other good tiles under threat.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Macro decision: I already stated my opinion about the capital...
about settling behind Gandhi: I have two questions: is this city better than any of the horse/clam/crab site, the iron/silver/fish site, the iron/fish site north of Moscow? When are we planning to settle this?

Myself, I don't see it better than any of the mentionned sites thus I wouldn't prioritize it.

MM question: do we plan on an exploring wb soon? Knowing what the eastern islands have to offer is what could motivate or not settling past Gandhi.

@mdy: I seem to remember that population counts toward that too (a little like the AP)?

Cheers,
Raskolnikov

 

[Soirana]

deleted into oblivion

 

[shyuhe]

I agree that we should settle behind Gandhi if it's feasible. Each city we settle = one less city we have to nuke.

@Soirana - do you want to farm/shop Moscow? I'll try to post some tests of that later tonight if I find the time. And I'm sorry if the direction of discussion is frustrating. If you have time to post a play plan, I think that'll move things along.