SGOTM 10 - Xteam

[ShannonCT]

If we know we are going to use Cossacks, shouldn't Nationalism and Military Tradition be in the required tech column?

Not strictly speaking. We could use riflemen or knights if we didn't have cossacks. Of course cossacks are better than either for this game.

I wouldn't count on 40 turns. In the test game, Augustus was very adept at Map Trading and had circumnavigation early if I traded maps with him. I think it might be a good idea to avoid map trading until we have circumnavigated? If SCT is correct and we are on the small continent, we hold the key to circumnavigation via map trading.

Map buying rather than map trading. We should hold some cash in reserve and buy maps without giving up ours. After circumnavigation, we can recover the money by selling our map.

 

[Cactus Pete]

"Map buying rather than map trading. We should hold some cash in reserve and buy maps without giving up ours. After circumnavigation, we can recover the money by selling our map." If AI at eastern or western boundary of exploration won't sell map, then probably will have the option to safely trade maps to speed circumnavigation once our caravel is well on its way around the globe. I like the idea of a spy aboard our first caravel (and I'm wondering why you're sugesting two or three -- thinking a galley might be helpful though), as one can get off and explore without fear of barbs.

 

[rrau]

When exactly do we need to build the caravel? 1st thing? I'd hate to delay rexing...And if our capital is not going to be coastal our second city really needs to have the worker and lots of potential hammers to get it out to get the circumnavigation bonus. Are we willing to take the worker away from the capital?

 

[Cactus Pete]

When exactly do we need to build the caravel? 1st thing? I'd hate to delay rexing...And if our capital is not going to be coastal our second city really needs to have the worker and lots of potential hammers to get it out to get the circumnavigation bonus. Are we willing to take the worker away from the capital?

You're right, rrau. It doesn't need to be the first thing built. On the other hand, we have to build something in our cites while they're growing. The plan is to whip and chop workers and settlers (to a large extent) so our cites can grow (allowing us to whip again in 15 turns) and/or be more productive. Also, seven turns into the game, we will have 4 workers, so not clear what your concern about taking the worker away from the capital is getting at.

 

[Mad Professor]

Did you have a look at 1884AD save from my first test game? I think I was quite far ahead of the AI by the time I finished the Manhattan Project. Why? Because the AI doesn't realize the value of spamming cities on a Renaissance start (it doesn't matter how low your tech rate goes at the start) and the AI doesn't bulb, instead building useless wonders, shrines, academies, etc.

Not yet I've been too busy trying renaissance starts and seeing how to get going, and playing with BtS features generally that I'm not familiar with. Good to know there's a high likelihood of of getting there way before the AI. Sounds like the flight tech path is something we go on only if once we have nukes and another military unit to do the leg work we decide that our later targets are going to require that we have it in order to stomp on them.

 

[Mad Professor]

Not strictly speaking. We could use riflemen or knights if we didn't have cossacks. Of course cossacks are better than either for this game.

Yes. I like the mobility of cossacks a lot. Rifles are so slow. Cossack mobility will save more turns in travel to enemy cities than mil trad will take to research I suspect. Both Knights and cossacks have the disadvantage of being rather vulnerable to enemy rifles though.

Of course, after the fission beeline, we could always use knights or rifles to start the attacks while we're teching to mil trad.

 

[Frederiksberg]

I finally got round to installing patch 3.19 and the BUFFY mod

So now I can at least look at the test game saves you have been uploading.

The difference in bulbed beakers between a GS and a GE indicates to me that we need a library fast in our initial GP farm. Perhaps we should time it with the 1st GE we get so that subsequent GP's will all become GS's.

 

[Cactus Pete]

The difference in bulbed beakers between a GS and a GE indicates to me that we need a library fast in our initial GP farm. Perhaps we should time it with the 1st GE we get so that subsequent GP's will all become GS's.

The timing idea makes sense. May not have to be too fast, though, as without Pacifism we're talking 34 turns.

I was planning to use the ivory city as my GP farm but to put first library in capital to take advantage of Bureaucracy and gold hills -- however, not sure how soon it makes sense to run science specialists in the capital, since growth is particularly valuable there with the multipliers operating. Now that you can test, Fred, like to know your thinking on that?

 

[PaulisKhan]

I was thinking a GE could be used for Kremlin so I have no problems with early GP polution early on.

 

[Mad Professor]

A question or two for those of you more experienced in post-vanilla features... (That would be about all of you, no?). The first is not much related to this game I don't think, but the second is.

I was playing with various starts and trying out various things... I have the 3.19 patch installed, and BUFFY seems to be working just fine (apart from that annoying message on how I can change the options which pops up every turn).

I was playing a military game (the AI seems to behave quite differently to vanilla!) and had a couple of vassals. Boudica was a "friendly" at me yet "didn't like me enough" to form a defensive pact. I assume this is something to do with vassals? She had a negative at me for something along the lines of "my rivals are your vassals" or something like that but she was still friendly.

So the first question, not much related to this game. I don't understand how vassals effect things like that. Am I right in assuming it was vassals she didn't like? Does she have to like all my vassals well enough for a defensive pact as well as me before she signs one? Vassals generally seem to just declare war and peace and pacts when they are told to but this case seems to be an exception - in this case they seemed to seriously effect the way I was viewed by another AI.

Now to something more related to this game. I notice generally that the AI is genius compared to vanilla (which is not saying much, but it is remarkable). But I'm also still thinking through espionage. I've read some articles, but when it comes to little details I'm still struggling. It seems that the information gained is very useful indeed, and the power of buildings that produce espionage points is very great. Early in an ancient start you seem only to be able to get lots of points by using the slider, which I am unwilling to do because of the effect on research (I haven't tested the espionage economy yet!) but later on (Code of Laws and later) when you can build buildings that accumulate points, then particularly in the industrial era and onwards when you can build things which multiply espionage points, you can accumulate quite a lot. I found this very useful indeed when attacking an AI later in the game when their "stack of doom" rolls down on you when you attack them. I was able to see it coming from a long way off because I could see the AI cities because of the accumulated espionage points, and prepare to meet it, and pick it apart on arrival. (I just LOVE the way mounted units rip siege units to shreds!! )

I'm getting to the question related to this game the long way around, but here it is. How important is espionage for us in this game? Will it pay to invest the necessary hammers in court houses, security bureaus, intelligence agencies, jails, etc.? When it gets down to little details, are the hammers invested going to give a good return?

 

[ShannonCT]

I was thinking a GE could be used for Kremlin so I have no problems with early GP polution early on.

We don't have use for the Kremlin until we can produce nukes, right? Why not build it in our best production city? With factory, plant, Ironworks, and workshops, it should only take 5-6 turns.

I tested out the strategy of putting NE and NP in the capital settled on the plains hill, and it worked pretty well. I was ready to build nukes in 1864 with factories and plants all in place. The five food resources and many forests are going to be hard to match at any other site.

 

[ShannonCT]

I was playing a military game (the AI seems to behave quite differently to vanilla!) and had a couple of vassals. Boudica was a "friendly" at me yet "didn't like me enough" to form a defensive pact. I assume this is something to do with vassals? She had a negative at me for something along the lines of "my rivals are your vassals" or something like that but she was still friendly.

She might have been considering the average of her attitude toward you AND your vassals.

I'm getting to the question related to this game the long way around, but here it is. How important is espionage for us in this game? Will it pay to invest the necessary hammers in court houses, security bureaus, intelligence agencies, jails, etc.? When it gets down to little details, are the hammers invested going to give a good return?

Courthouses aren't much use in State Property, but the other three buildings give quite a few EPs. It might be valuable to build those buildings in one city, and settle the free GSpy from Communism in that city. We could use EPs for passive information gathering, or for forcing the AI to change civics (like out of Emancipation).

 

[Frederiksberg]

We don't have use for the Kremlin until we can produce nukes, right? Why not build it in our best production city? With factory, plant, Ironworks, and workshops, it should only take 5-6 turns.

I agree with this. Speeding research early is more important than saving a few turns on Kremlin later. Rush buying is not going to add much to our production capacity anyway.

I tested out the strategy of putting NE and NP in the capital settled on the plains hill, and it worked pretty well. I was ready to build nukes in 1864 with factories and plants all in place. The five food resources and many forests are going to be hard to match at any other site.

This is interesting. It seems to me that we should try out making the city with the double gold our capital - after all Bureaucracy doesn't add any multipliers to beakers or gold from specialists. We have 2 turns of anarchy so the loss from waiting to found on the plains hill is small (1-2 worker turns). This also means that our GP farm will automatically have a religion (holy city) and could take advantage of Pacifism very early if we have the opportunity to adopt.

 

[Mad Professor]

I tested out the strategy of putting NE and NP in the capital settled on the plains hill, and it worked pretty well. I was ready to build nukes in 1864 with factories and plants all in place. The five food resources and many forests are going to be hard to match at any other site.

As a guide of the extent of nuking required, I counted 46 non-Russian cities at 1864 on SCT's latest test... That's 31,000 hammers into nukes if they all hit their target. Minimum.

[And hats off to SCT's teching in that test. The GSc's in Moscow were obviously quite powerful.]

Edit: Oh - that 31,000 hammers assumed the use of ICBM's. Sorry. Tactical nukes are around half the price as long as you have something to launch them off close enough to the target, and they can evade interception... ICBM's cannot be intercepted before SDI.

 

[leif erikson]

This is interesting. It seems to me that we should try out making the city with the double gold our capital - after all Bureaucracy doesn't add any multipliers to beakers or gold from specialists. We have 2 turns of anarchy so the loss from waiting to found on the plains hill is small (1-2 worker turns). This also means that our GP farm will automatically have a religion (holy city) and could take advantage of Pacifism very early if we have the opportunity to adopt.

I find myself agreeing with this approach. After playing around a bit and looking at SCT's save , it looks quite powerful to me.

It is interesting to review the log and see the number of great people being born!
I noticed you had enough to run two Golden Ages as well, very impressive.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Looking at the test games there seem to be a couple of essential "bottleneck" techs that we probably should concentrate on. I'm thinking of Biology and Communism.

I think we are going to run hammer economy using work shops fairly soon and that this is the best way to maximize the yield from the land. I also think that wind mills and water mills should be preferred to mines and cottages because food is more valuable than hammers (SCT's saves reflect these priorities).

So the period where we may want to use specialists to do research is likely limited and this decreases the urgency for Constitution. What seems unclear to me is which tech, Communism or Biology, that should be selected as first beeline tech. Anyway, for testing purposes I think we should record how fast we can get to both techs by beelining.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Another important thing is aggressive REX as suggested by SCT. I think he is right in pointing out that keeping a high initial research rate is not as important as usual because we already have the basic techs that enables us to improve the land, select appropriate civics etc. This means that the leveraging effect of fast initial research is substantially reduced and we can focus more on long term effects of having more cities.

In the REX phase we should aim to always whip/chop workers and settlers spending ideally only one turn building them the "normal" way. In many cases you want to whip a worker for two pop causing some overflow and I usually put this overflow into a settler before reverting to building something else that will allow city growth. This way it's even easier to keep down the number of turns spent building the settler.

 

[ShannonCT]

If we're going to spend 2 turns in anarchy at the beginning of the game, I can't see any benefit of actually settling on turn 0 (1285AD). We can't produce anything while in anarchy. So if we want to use the plains hill site for NE/NP and still make the best use of Bureaucracy, shouldn't we settle our capital on the desert hill on turn 2 (1295AD) and then settle the GP farm on the plains hill? The only drawback I can see to this is that it'll take a little longer to build a library, NE, and NP without the Bureaucracy bonus.

 

[Cactus Pete]

If we're going to spend 2 turns in anarchy at the beginning of the game, I can't see any benefit of actually settling on turn 0 (1285AD). We can't produce anything while in anarchy. So if we want to use the plains hill site for NE/NP and still make the best use of Bureaucracy, shouldn't we settle our capital on the desert hill on turn 2 (1295AD) and then settle the GP farm on the plains hill? The only drawback I can see to this is that it'll take a little longer to build a library, NE, and NP without the Bureaucracy bonus.

Where are you planning to move our worker? (Presume it's optimal to have him begin chopping a forest for the capital ASAP, since that gets the Bureaucracy bonus and two workers out quickly.) You're sure that the loss of several 78-hammer forests chops and the great benefit to rexing that provides is more than made up for by the eventual specialists and bulbing from NP? Note that building NE and NP will have to be done both without Bureau and without chops, and whipping wonders doesn't work well.

 

[ShannonCT]

Where are you planning to move our worker? (Presume it's optimal to have him begin chopping a forest for the capital ASAP, since that gets the Bureaucracy bonus and two workers out quickly.)

If we settle plains hill and desert hill, we'll need to chop and farm one riverside forest to irrigate the rice and corn. The forest 1S of the rice would fit the bill, and the chop would go to the desert hill capital.

You're sure that the loss of several 78-hammer forests chops and the great benefit to rexing that provides is more than made up for by the eventual specialists and bulbing from NP? Note that building NE and NP will have to be done both without Bureau and without chops, and whipping wonders doesn't work well.

No, I'm not sure. I was proposing that using the desert hill as the capital site instead of the plains hill would be superior than vice versa.

For REXing, the city layout from my first test game may be superior, given the number of forests that could be chopped into the capital. The one thing that the new proposed layout has going for it is that it would put 8 high-food/hammer tiles (rice, corn, cows, clams, clams, crab, fish, iron) in our first 2 cities instead of 5.

I think what we need is a REX competition to see which layout can achieve a particular REXing goal the fastest. So here's a goal I propose to test:

6 cities, all converted to the religion we found
At least 9 workers
At least 40 happy population
First to circumnavigation
Library built in GP farm

I'll test my new proposed layout first.