SGOTM 10 - Xteam

So the plan would be, once Education is available, to determine if we could trade for it (perhaps without actually doing so), and, if we could, then assess whether we would then be in a position to accelerate research to Liberalism?

Sure, though I'm not sure how to assess our chances of getting Liberalism first. I think it will have to be a risk/reward decision. But that's not a decision we need to worry about now.

So of the two points of controversy for my turnset, it seems to me that researching PP to start is a good move, but I'll start with research at 0% because we need to accumulate some cash for buying maps and it would be better to save some money to run at 100% research when we have a library(s). And I think we will be able to work more good tiles sooner if we wait until Moscow is at Pop3 to whip the 4th worker. Is that what you did in your games Fred?
 
"wait until Moscow is at Pop3 to whip the 4th worker." Fred argued against this earlier before he had tested, but with Bureau at work in the capital and other workers available to improve the limited number of tiles needed, suspect this is optimal.

Ready for the game to begin once everyone concurs.
 
ShannonCT said:
Fred's 2nd test game seems to confirm that bulbing Astro, Physics, and Bio is better than self-research. In general, self-researching techs that can be bulbed by GSs is a bad idea because we'll have an abundance of them with the NE/NP combination.

Yes, this tech path gives us some extra techs and Biology at about the same time. Self research of PP makes sense because a GM gives fewer beakers than a GS so we should in general try for some GS's.

But adopting Pacifism early, before Caste, will also mean an extra turn of revolt. It seems there's really no upside to chasing an earlier GP.

Yes but if we wait until we can do the simultaneous switch to Caste and Pacifism the calculations look differently. Mainly because the library in St. Pete will come before Caste. This means that the loss is around 3 turns (and then one saved due to one turn less of anarchy) and if the map means that we have room for 8 or 10 cities rather than only 6 the REX phase where slavery is needed will be prolonged and the switch to Caste will come even later. In this case the loss is 3-4 turns. In conclusion we will loose at least 2 turns on the Biology date by waiting to adopt Pacifism and Caste simultaneously and in some cases up to 3-4 turns. I also forgot to factor in the increased chance of getting a 2nd GE which is probably worth at least a turn on average. So it's probably 3-5 turns of delay to Biology if we do the simultaneous civic switch.

ShannonCT said:
The potential downside depends on which AI we face. In this test game, we had Qin, who's favorite civic is Bureaucracy, and Justinian, who will trade techs at Annoyed. And you never know how many diplo hits we're going to take for trading with worst enemies or refusing to stop trading.

Here you only mention difficulties we will have anyway unless we choose not to adopt religion at all.

ShannonCT said:
I notice in your first test game you stopped trading with Boudica at Izzy's request. Boudica was the one who ended up with Liberalism, a tech the AI will never withhold if they are happy enough. I think we'd be better off trying to keep all AI at least Cautious (except Ragnar, Shaka, and Toku). Early open borders and resource trades may be key to this.

Don't read too much into the test game. I payed absolutely zero attention to diplomacy because it wasn't a problem in relation to reaching Biology. It was probably a mistake to stop trading with Boudica and it should have been refused. Waiting to adopt religion is not going to prevent the AI from asking us to cancel deals. Early resource trades can always be obtained by gifting a resource and my experience was that after gifting our map it was possible to bring the difficult AI to cautious and then open borders. Another option is gifting a tech (or selling it cheap) which will be possible as a result of our big tech lead.

To sum up: I don't like waiting for the simultaneous Caste/Pacifism switch since it will cost us 3-5 turns on the Biology date depending on the extent of the REX and I still don't see that we can't overcome the problems with religious differences by gifting map/tech to get open borders. It worked in the test games. A compromise would be to wait with adopting religion while doing the initial scouting looking to buy a map. If we build a caravel as the first thing in Moscow (besides whipping a worker at some point) we could do quite some exploration inside say the first 25 turns and with a very small impact on the Biology date.

ShannonCT said:
So of the two points of controversy for my turnset, it seems to me that researching PP to start is a good move, but I'll start with research at 0% because we need to accumulate some cash for buying maps and it would be better to save some money to run at 100% research when we have a library(s). And I think we will be able to work more good tiles sooner if we wait until Moscow is at Pop3 to whip the 4th worker. Is that what you did in your games Fred?

Zero research until we have ~100 gold shouldn't be a problem. I whipped two workers and chopped one as CP suggested and I haven't tested if it may be better to postpone whipping a few turns. I don't see that the state of the granary has any relevance, what matters is that we have enough workers to follow the pop growth so that we don't have to work many unimproved tiles. In this game I think we need at least 1.5 workers per city.

Cactus Pete said:
So the plan would be, once Education is available, to determine if we could trade for it (perhaps without actually doing so), and, if we could, then assess whether we would then be in a position to accelerate research to Liberalism?

In one of my tests I could have won the Lib race and taken Biology because none of the AI were researching it. So we should probably look out for the possibility. We could gamble a little and build a temple in St. Pete with the intention of adding some prophet GPP. If we are lucky we get a GP before the AI has Liberalism and we could then bulb it after trading for Education. As soon as Liberalism is discovered we could stop adding the prophet points.
 
Yes but if we wait until we can do the simultaneous switch to Caste and Pacifism the calculations look differently. Mainly because the library in St. Pete will come before Caste. This means that the loss is around 3 turns (and then one saved due to one turn less of anarchy) and if the map means that we have room for 8 or 10 cities rather than only 6 the REX phase where slavery is needed will be prolonged and the switch to Caste will come even later. In this case the loss is 3-4 turns. In conclusion we will loose at least 2 turns on the Biology date by waiting to adopt Pacifism and Caste simultaneously and in some cases up to 3-4 turns. I also forgot to factor in the increased chance of getting a 2nd GE which is probably worth at least a turn on average. So it's probably 3-5 turns of delay to Biology if we do the simultaneous civic switch.

I agree that the length of the REXing phase will affect the timing of Pacifism and Caste adoption. I guess we'll have to see what the map shows. Maybe we will have room for 5 cities. Maybe 10.

Another thing you should consider in your calculations is that it may be undesirable to start running scientists specialists right after St. Pete finishes its library. If using two more tiles means we can build NE faster and REX faster, maybe the cost of not adopting Pacifism is still 1/24 of a turn per turn.

To sum up: I don't like waiting for the simultaneous Caste/Pacifism switch since it will cost us 3-5 turns on the Biology date depending on the extent of the REX and I still don't see that we can't overcome the problems with religious differences by gifting map/tech to get open borders. It worked in the test games. A compromise would be to wait with adopting religion while doing the initial scouting looking to buy a map. If we build a caravel as the first thing in Moscow (besides whipping a worker at some point) we could do quite some exploration inside say the first 25 turns and with a very small impact on the Biology date.

My first builds in Moscow have been workboat, warrior, warrior with worker whipped at Pop3. I think we can build these four things before a caravel and still be ready to adopt religion by the time St. Pete finishes a library. As you say, we only lose 1/24 of a turn per turn on Biology before the library (actually less if other cities are helping to produce GSs for Biology).

Zero research until we have ~100 gold shouldn't be a problem. I whipped two workers and chopped one as CP suggested and I haven't tested if it may be better to postpone whipping a few turns. I don't see that the state of the granary has any relevance, what matters is that we have enough workers to follow the pop growth so that we don't have to work many unimproved tiles. In this game I think we need at least 1.5 workers per city.

On the other hand, we don't want so many workers that their ability to improve tiles far outstrips the cities' ability to work the tiles. If we leave Moscow 2 pop to start, it can work two high food tiles to get to Pop3 more quickly.

In one of my tests I could have won the Lib race and taken Biology because none of the AI were researching it. So we should probably look out for the possibility. We could gamble a little and build a temple in St. Pete with the intention of adding some prophet GPP. If we are lucky we get a GP before the AI has Liberalism and we could then bulb it after trading for Education. As soon as Liberalism is discovered we could stop adding the prophet points.

How do you know the AI wasn't researching Liberalism? Unless we have a lot of EPs, we wont know what the AI is researching. We could guess based on the XML:

- <Flavors>
- <Flavor>
<FlavorType>FLAVOR_RELIGION</FlavorType>
<iFlavor>1</iFlavor>
</Flavor>
- <Flavor>
<FlavorType>FLAVOR_SCIENCE</FlavorType>
<iFlavor>4</iFlavor>
</Flavor>
- <Flavor>
<FlavorType>FLAVOR_CULTURE</FlavorType>
<iFlavor>5</iFlavor>
</Flavor>
</Flavors>

Liberalism is prefered mostly by Science and Culture loving AI.
 
Proposed Plan for my turnset:

Civics: Adopt HR, Bureaucracy, Slavery, and Mercantilism on T0

Research: Start PP but turn research to 0% to start

Cities: Settle Moscow on desert hill (first) and St. Pete on plains hill (second) on T2
Moscow builds workboat, caravel, warrior, warrior with worker whipped at Pop3
St. Pete builds worker (whipped), workboat, workboat, workboat

Workers: First worker chops forest 1S of rice, then improves rice, corn, cows
Second worker (whipped in St. Pete) improves rice, corn, cows
Third worker (chopped in Moscow) roads grass-gold, then improves rice, corn, cows
Then workers build grass-gold mine, irrigate rice/corn, improve iron, hook ivory
 
improve iron
This means you do not intend to hook Iron?
If iron gets hooked, no more cheap, MP, Warriors. :)

EDIT - Yes to all the rest. :D
 
ShannonCT said:
On the other hand, we don't want so many workers that their ability to improve tiles far outstrips the cities' ability to work the tiles. If we leave Moscow 2 pop to start, it can work two high food tiles to get to Pop3 more quickly.

It seems reasonable to wait a while with the fourth worker if your tests show that you have time to improve tiles fast enough to keep up with city growth.

ShannonCT said:
How do you know the AI wasn't researching Liberalism?

I didn't know this but in one of my test games no AI had Liberalism when I was done researching Biology (waiting only for the last GS) so I started research of Liberalism because it's needed for Communism. Got within two turns of it when Biology was done and the test stopped.

ShannonCT said:
Moscow builds workboat, warrior, warrior, caravel with worker whipped at Pop3

We already have 3 units for land based recon - 2 longbows and an explorer so I think we should prioritize the caravel over the warriors i.e. build wb, caravel, warrior, warrior with worker whipped somewhere. This way we are almost certain of getting circumnavigation even if we are unable to map trade and have to sail around the world ourselves. It also means that we can meet the AI earlier and adopt religion earlier. I postponed the warriors in my test games and saw no problems with that.
 
Moscow builds workboat, warrior, warrior, caravel with worker whipped at Pop3
St. Pete builds worker (whipped), workboat, workboat, workboat

Workers: First worker chops forest 1S of rice, then improves rice, corn, cows
Second worker (whipped in St. Pete) improves rice, corn, cows
Think you are going to need to build the Moscow worker for a turn or two to add hammers to the chop. Suggest doing this immediately before tiles are improved.
 
It seems reasonable to wait a while with the fourth worker if your tests show that you have time to improve tiles fast enough to keep up with city growth.

Yes, I find that I can improve the rice, corn, cows, and grass gold faster than the cities can use them this way, and the turns with these tiles being unused is minimal.

We already have 3 units for land based recon - 2 longbows and an explorer so I think we should prioritize the caravel over the warriors i.e. build wb, caravel, warrior, warrior with worker whipped somewhere. This way we are almost certain of getting circumnavigation even if we are unable to map trade and have to sail around the world ourselves. It also means that we can meet the AI earlier and adopt religion earlier. I postponed the warriors in my test games and saw no problems with that.

OK, I thought we needed the warriors first to avoid unhappiness, but if I mine gold after improving rice, corn, and cows, I can keep the cities happy until Moscow builds two warriors.

Changes have been added to the plan. I can start playing in 8 hours.
 
looks good. I hope to have a new computer within a month, but will have to buy a new copy of Civ IV too since I could only find my BTS discs when I was packing up.

I like the idea of whoever suggested it, about keeping our options open for grabbing Bio from Lib if the opportunity presents itself.

---

Sorry to hear about events Rrrau, take care of yourself and family.
 
I've played through T14 with all MM going according to plan. The big news is that we have Gandhi right on our doorstep. He's settled his second city so that its BFC is right next to our two BFC's (not overlapping). There's also some Magenta borders slightly visible to the north (maybe China) that we will contact with our caravel soon.

Have a look if you like.
 

Attachments

:eek: That sure is close!!

We'll have to watch that Ghandi doesn't settle the few remaining city sites we have available.
Perhaps 1 east of LB A?
In the north on the end of the peninsula, between the Fish and the Crabs.
EDIT - On the grass hill?

Hope we can settle to the East. :please:
 
Guess settling on the ivory after a one turn delay was definitely not the best option.

Before we go much further, we need to at least consider declaring war on Ghandi before he hooks up a metal (or even the ivory) in order to keep him from settling our island (and perhaps monopolizing the uranium). How about testing what happens if we declare and send longbows into his territory? Do we want to take the time to send our explorer in his territory to get some info for the test?

Our explorer is too far away to get on the caravel, unless we want to delay its building. What about quickly chopping the forest SW of Moscow either to build another explorer or another lb (and wait for the explorer)?
 
Haven't seen the save yet.

If there is little space left on our island I'm inclined to build a galley fairly soon. We need to explore if there are any accessible islands nearby that we can settle. I think we should let the caravel explore without delay so that circumnavigation is not put at risk.

What can we achieve from a war on Gandhi given that we can't capture any cities?
 
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