SGOTM 10 - Team Liz

[Abegweit]

It just occurred to me that there is an additional disadvantage to moving inland, a far more important one. Teams that moved to A will get four strong coastal cities instead of three.

This underlines the difficulties in planning when you don't really know what's out there. How could we have known how crucial MoWs would be at the beginning of the game?

Even given this factor, I still think we made the right move. I can't wait to see our score graph in 20 turns. I will be very disappointed if we are not on top of the curve.

Edit: this issue of getting good cities on the coast has big implications for the placement of our FP.

 

[Andronicus]

You can tell which teams settled in place (highest culture after 20 turns) - cat & dogs, fuzzy wuzzy (? X team), which settled 1 tile away (ie A) - Klarius and 4 others and which settled 2 away (lowest culture after 20 turns as only 18 turns of palace) - the A team and us.
I think it will take more turns for us to catch up in score. Note also because we sacrificed some growth and pushed for early granary our score is slightly reduced, but our growth potential should be high by getting our SF going early

edit -territory graph shows none of teams so far (Klarius, X team, Wotan) with second city by 2550BC - we should do it


edit 2 to include teams posting first save later

 

[Abegweit]

Yes. You're right. Furthermore, both Klarius and Wotan built a worker in the second set and A team appears to have gone the late granary route. I would expect their score to score dip too.

What's up with X?

edit (response to crossposted edit) - Indeed we should And if my assumption that A Team went the late granary route is right, they won't either.

edit 2 - I think I have the answer about X. They built a worker even earlier than us.

 

[Paul#42]

I like the dot map, too.

After long debate (with myself) I like the yellow dot, too. It can share the wheet once we have changed government.

Slow units can move from town to town after construction so we should be able to stand some pressure in our core if the going get's tough

EDIT: I'm still way behind in discussion.
Yet I promise to make my homework...

 

[Abegweit]

The point about the sharing the wheat is very important. And orange can share the deer. In fact all, our food bonuses are shareable

 

[Redbad]

And here are the votes from the Netherlands...

3000BC
Pachacuti knows bronze, masonry & ceremonial and is broke.
MM and start executing the new plan.

2950BC zzz

2900BC Pachacuti has 25 gold, no new techs

2850BC zzz

2800BC zzz

2750BC zzz

2710BC settler
I'm realising I can't settle York at orange because the next chop would go to York. So York will be settled at pink.

2670BC zzz

2630BC Pachacuti has 50 gold, no new techs
York founded at pink and third shield is corrupted, production to curragh, working the oyster.

2590BC York working the sheep

2550BC zzz

2510BC settler -> orange

2470BC warrior: MP London

2430BC Nottingham founded at orange and third shield is not corrupted, production to curragh, working the sheep.

2390BC warrior: MP London, Pachacuti is broke again, no new techs

As you can see there are goats SE of Nottigham (both 2F,2S unimproved).

edit: btw no bg under the chopped forest

 

[Redbad]

By the behaviour of Inca it is, I think, reasonable to assume there's a second "normal" civ on our continent. It very much looks like Pachacuti has bought Mysticism from that civ, as he went broke at the same time that he started the Oracle.

The propaganda campaign doesn't seem to have hurt, as York's production is still on schedule. I'm not very familiar with propaganda campaigns, but I don't recall seeing one that early. Does this imply something?

 

[Redbad]

Suggestions for the next session:
London: two settlers: 1 for yellow and 1 for red
worker1 (west): improve sheep
worker2 (east): improve floodplain
York: worker, warrior
worker3 (York): improve S of York
Nottingham: warrior, worker

*
*
have to decide on research after writing and if we want to trade writing
*
*

 

[Abegweit]

Looks good. Good catch about the chop. At this point we are number one in both territory and score

Propaganda? That's scary. And more than a little unfair too, IMO. Random flips to the barbs can seriously unbalance the contest.

The most important question at this point is what the city build order should be.

First is clearly Purple. It grabs a goat for itself and gives one to Nottingham. This city should do warrior-worker-warrior-worker... for a long time.

After that it gets murkier.

Light blue is a likely candidate for a worker factory. As I recall, grass fish is +2 food even in despo and lake fish is definitely +1. Lotta work here though but getting it done is high priority. Despite this it shouldn't be the next city because it has too little resources atm.

With the information we have here, I would say the order should be purple - red - yellow - ltblue - blue.

Nottingham is currently doing three uncorrupted shields. With the goat, it will get four uncorrupted and one corrupted. It should take advantage of this to build a granary immediately. The curragh will complete when it reaches size 1.10 so it will get 4x3 + 10x4 = 52 shields when the food box is full. One forest chop will be enough. The worker should finish the irrigation, road the tile, move to the sheep and road, move to the forest, chop and road, move back to the sheep, and irrigate. This will take 1+3+1+4+1+4+3+4=20, which fits perfectly with the granary build.

Agenda for the next set of turns

a) Remove a bit of black from the map. We have spent too long in the dark. IMO, one of the warriors should move out from London to explore especially the area between red and purple.

b) City builds
Nottingham: granary
York: worker-warrior...
Purple: warrior-worker...
Red: worker...

c) General comments.
Remember that London must be adjusted each time it grows or shrinks.
See worker moves for Nottingham.

 

[Abegweit]

Cross-post comments.

By the behaviour of Inca it is, I think, reasonable to assume there's a second "normal" civ on our continent. It very much looks like Pachacuti has bought Mysticism from that civ, as he went broke at the same time that he started the Oracle.

Your conclusion seems virtually certain. Hopefully our curraghs can track them down. I guess that we have the typical 2-3 opponents on our continents. There maybe more than two continents as well. One thing for sure, any civ sharing Barbaralia is going to get seriously raped.

The propaganda campaign doesn't seem to have hurt, as York's production is still on schedule. I'm not very familiar with propaganda campaigns, but I don't recall seeing one that early. Does this imply something?

Yeah. It does. More nasty barb tricks. I believe that propaganda leads to city flips. As such I think it is extremely unfair as it adds a huge random factor to the game.

have to decide on research after writing and if we want to trade writing

CoL sure looks good to me. I see no reason to be scared of getting the slingshot. The AI will be busy researching Iron Working and Mapmaking. Let them go ahead. As usual we will get Republic, Math (if still needed) and Currency.

If we know 2 or 3 civs by the time we get Writing, it should be worth about three techs in trade. The time to trade is when the value one of the civs places on it declines to one tech. If we still only know the Incas, it should still be worth more than anything he has except Math.

Suggestions for the next session

See mine which were cross-posted.

Edit: after thinking about it, I agree on yellow before red. Purple still comes first though. Two goats are too good to pass up.

 

[Abegweit]

Apparently the enemy knows espionage. Read about it here

Edit1: there's something else which bothers me here. The cost of this is over 100g.

Where did they come up with that kind of money?

Edit2:

See my comments over in the Maintenance Thread, assuming they are allowed to stand. If this Intelligence Agency feature remains in the game, I vote to withdraw from the competition. After all, it's no longer a competition anyway. It's a crap shoot and no one has any way to defend themselves except by filling their cities up with units and praying that the Fist of the Devil doesn't strike.

This might have been a neat idea for mid-ME. Not at the beginning of the game.

 

[Abegweit]

On another topic, I found out two more things about the game from CAII.

1) The PirateShip is the Barb UU. This means we can't build it as I had thought. Should have known from the name, I suppose.

It is therefore important to make sure that we get our UU before they get theirs.


2) Barbarism is even more corrupt than Despotism.

This means it should be easy enough for us to stay ahead of the barbs in science so long as the other AIs stay backwards.

 

[Abegweit]

@Mods. Is it possible to find out whether the Barbarian Guard has lethal bombard? It makes a huge difference to strategy.

 

[Abegweit]

I got a PM from Gyathaar. Here it is together with my response.

If you actually read the forum link in the article you posted in your thread and did some maths you would realize that it is very easy to remove all risks of what you fear.

Note that the formula in the article itself is incorrect, use the one in forum post.. the native citizen part is important..

I indeed didn't read the link. I didn't think it necessary.

The formula says:

spy + government + culture - 5 * units - improvment - capital + nationality

As I read it, the citizen issue relates to whether Barb, not whether English.

I also understand these numbers to be percentages. Then it comes down to s - 5u + g + 10. The 10 is for all teams who were innocent enough to move at the start, which I believe is all but Cats&Dogs. I am guessing that s is like communism but g is like despotism.

IOW, you are safe once you get to Republic but it is hugely dangerous in small despotic empires unless massive numbers of units are built together with at least one temple. Exactly backwards.

Production sabotage could also be a game breaker and nothing can protect against that.

I still think it's a bad idea.

At the very minimum, you should publish the facts you just gave me, especially as the article is wrong.

Edit: in re-reading the article, I think I got it wrong. We are impressed by the Barb culture This means that we have (s + g - 5u + 20)% chance of a flip. As I say, I think that means 30 - 5u. It will take six units to stop a flip until we get a temple, when it's "only" 4.

 

[Gyathaar]

The message you got is when propaganda fails btw (in your case made 0 citizens unhappy, since 1 would have made the city flip)

As I read it, the citizen issue relates to whether Barb, not whether English.

I reread the article.. and it does indeed seem like you are correct

 

[Abegweit]

Ahhh...

Bigger cities are safer cities although as Oystein points out, there are curious effects around multiples of 4.

Size 1: 30% chance
Size 2: 9% chance
Size 3: 3% chance.
Size 4: 12% chance (I think)

 

[Abegweit]

The more I think about this, the more I realise that Production Sabotage is even worse than Propaganda. Almost all of the teams will have settler factories so the loss of an early city is not a huge setback. Big. But not enormous.

But how you you feel if you were 185 shields into your FP in a 50% corrupt town (or even 85 shields) and then the Fist of the Devil smashed into your face?

 

[Andronicus]

@ Abegweit
I understand your frustration at being exposed to a risk that we have no (or little) control over.
My response is somewhat different.
I like the idea that this game throws a few curve balls our way, makes it different from your standard game. How we respond to that by altering our tactics and strategy to minimise potential harm and how we cope as a team with "bad luck" is within our control. The game will always have significant luck factors, yet good players more often recover from bad luck and get into situations where luck affects outcome less often. You are a good player, I believe we can "manage" situations as they arise.
If we are subject to a very unlucky dice roll which shoots our chances of doing well in the competition, I would still take something away from being able to mount a recovery.
I am far more frustrated by setbacks of our own doing through carelessness or poor playing - most particuarly if they are mine.

For me - I will carefully read and re-read Oystein's article to see if we can reduce the chances of "bad luck"

 

[Abegweit]

There is no counter to Production Sabotage. We put a lot of work into this game. The start was your briliant observation that moving inland was the right way to go. It would appear that only one other team found this move. After that Redbad and I invested many hours figuring out how best to leverage your insight. As a consequence we are currently in the lead despite not being one of the favourites.

Then all this work is supposed to be thrown up to the whims of the RNG??? I'm sorry but if This Thing hangs around, I'm gone. It's no fun watching the Sword of Damocles hang around your neck. Especially since you didn't know it hang lower because youi moved off the starting tile. Or that a real Farmer's Gambit could lead to city flips? Or the importance of MoWs and settling on the coast?

WRT the latter, I have still not gotten an answer to the question of whether BGs have lethal bombard. My belief (an ah have bin doin a whole lotta believin on this thread) is that they don't. If they do, MoWs are pretty close to useless.

 

[Andronicus]

Prices:
Parameters:
dist - distance from actual city or capital to your nearest city
pop - size of actual city or capital
level - level of settlement, 1 for town, 2 for city and 3 for metropol
opp_cult - opponents culture
your_cult - your culture
techs - no of opponents techs
units - total number of opponents units
shield - number of shields the opponent have invested

Factors found in editor:
base - base cost
mapsize - average of width and height
techrate

Mission Base Cost formula
Build an Embassy 20 dist*level + base + pop
Investigate City 10 dist*level + base * pop
Steal Technology 10 dist*level + base * techs*techrate/100
Steal World Map 1 dist*level + base * mapsize
Plant Spy 60 dist*level + base
Steal Plans 10 dist*level + base * unit
Initiate Propaganda 100 dist*level + base * pop * (1 + opp_cult/your_cult)
Sabotage Production 10 dist*level + base * shield
Expose Enemy Spy 80 dist*level + base

For the misson where there is a choice of risk, multiply på 3/2 for carefully and 2 for safely.

From this -
I est distance to barb capital to say 30 tiles
level = 1 for size 1-6, 2 for size 7-12
base for sabotage = 10

Therefore cost to barb nation for size 1-6 town of having production sabotaged is
30+10*shields in box
ie 3 shields in box will cost 60g, 30 shields in box -> 330g, 100 shields in box 1030g.
Only the latter is likely to be game breaker, although lower ones affecting SF would be a pain. I think the chances of barb nation aquiring the sort of gold to destroy a half built FP are small, I suspect they will spend it as they get it rather than accumulate.

Barb nation is likely to accumulate similar amounts in all games, resulting in comparable levels of espionage. I am sure there are opportunities for tactics to minimise the damage they cause us (one that comes to mind is settling a corrupt town hopefully closer to barbs as a target for propaganda with a small force outside to retake - if barb nation is rich this should net us some gold)

I really think we should view this as an opportunity to think outside the box