SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

[Dhoomstriker]

we missed a riverside silver on plains hill. We missed an ice too, probably.
I told it!

Don't be so hard on yourself. You predicted a Tundra Silver, which we agreed was not worth chasing after. No one on the team predicted a Plains Silver.

Time will tell (Copper, Iron, and Horse locations), as well as the chance at Hinduism will tell, whether our capitol's location can get us ahead in other ways.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

My intention was to loop around just barely outside our visiblity range to see all the nearest tiles first

I'm fine with you doing that. Again, I'd just ask that if you're near Coast, go all the way to it if you can, instead of staying 1 square away from it, to see if there are Seafood Resources that can be combined with nearby land Resources.

Also, as you're "barely" uncovering, I'd rather see the odd 1 or 2 "black knowledge" gaps that indicate you explored as wide a path as possible... i.e. do something like "go 3 squares into the black" and then loop around, so that if you get on the odd Hills square, you'll see the 2 hidden squares' worth of radius between our uncovered lands and where you explored. In fact, around our capitol, I'd even add 1 more square... so maybe make that "go 4 squares into the black," because our cultural borders will later pop and reveal more of the nearby territory. Anyway, I'm sure that you'll do a fine job of it!

 

[Dhoomstriker]

3. Switch to Agriculture as soon as Hinduism is founded (either by us or the AI).

One more point to add here: if we found the religion, don't switch to it. I can give reasons why, upon request.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Another Initial Turnset comment:
Here's just a minor cautionary statement. It seems that the Unusual Suspects team lost their Warrior in their first 20-turn turnset. So, be on the lookout for scary animals!

 

[Mitchum]

View attachment 251082OK. I took Dhoomstriker's save and I've updated it with the latest info. If you see any issues, please let me know.

Dhoomstriker, I couldn't figure out how to get rid of the black barbarian signs...

A tip that works for me, I keep the actual save in a completely different (and harder to navigate) directory than my test games. That way, I don't open up the real save by mistake and start testing away with our actual save.

 

[unclethrill]

Another Initial Turnset comment:
Here's just a minor cautionary statement. It seems that the Unusual Suspects team lost their Warrior in their first 20-turn turnset. So, be on the lookout for scary animals!

I agree. There appears to be lots of forests so we should be able to stick to them pretty well.

 

[Mitchum]

I agree with this plan. I think we should be fine if we take care of our warriors.

I'm in favor of Dhoomstrikers test C [Partially build a Warrior -> Worker -> continue working on the Warrior while growing to Size 3 -> complete the Warrior ASAP].

I was thinking about this on my way home from work. If we think we have a bit of leeway on the Oracle, I'd like to consider slotting in BW before Priesthood. Plus, if there is copper in them there hills, we get the extra hammers that much sooner.

That would make our tech path: Polytheism -> Agriculture -> Masonry -> Monotheism -> Bronze Working -> Priesthood. Is ths doable? Will we still have a shot at the Oracle?

I guess we'll have to run some tests to see about when the Oracle is built with these game settings. We'll have to run tests later as we get closer to completing Monotheism as well since we should know some of the AI that are in our game.

 

[Irgy]

I was thinking about this on my way home from work. If we think we have a bit of leeway on the Oracle, I'd like to consider slotting in BW before Priesthood. Plus, if there is copper in them there hills, we get the extra hammers that much sooner.

That would make our tech path: Polytheism -> Agriculture -> Masonry -> Monotheism -> Bronze Working -> Priesthood. Is ths doable? Will we still have a shot at the Oracle?

I guess we'll have to run some tests to see about when the Oracle is built with these game settings. We'll have to run tests later as we get closer to completing Monotheism as well since we should know some of the AI that are in our game.

I would have thought that would get the oracle almost as fast as ... -> priesthood -> bronze working anyway. It surely takes forever to build it with no marble and no chopping or whipping, if we have bronze we can pre-chop forests while we research priesthood.

 

[unclethrill]

I was thinking about this on my way home from work. If we think we have a bit of leeway on the Oracle, I'd like to consider slotting in BW before Priesthood. Plus, if there is copper in them there hills, we get the extra hammers that much sooner.

That would make our tech path: Polytheism -> Agriculture -> Masonry -> Monotheism -> Bronze Working -> Priesthood. Is ths doable? Will we still have a shot at the Oracle?

I guess we'll have to run some tests to see about when the Oracle is built with these game settings. We'll have to run tests later as we get closer to completing Monotheism as well since we should know some of the AI that are in our game.

Okay I ran a quick test of this path. I didn't keep close track of everything but on turn 98, I had 5 warriors, 1 worker, 3 cities, 2 religions, the great wall (it was something to put hammers into) and I lost the oracle with 7 turns left.
We will need to run more tests as we meet AI and discover territory but I think that switching BW and priesthood is a better choice. That way we can build the oracle while researching BW.

I'll try to do some more testing this weekend but in general I think we have around 95 turns to finish the oracle. After that it will be tough.

 

[Mitchum]

Okay I ran a quick test of this path. I didn't keep close track of everything but on turn 98, I had 5 warriors, 1 worker, 3 cities, 2 religions, the great wall (it was something to put hammers into) and I lost the oracle with 7 turns left.
We will need to run more tests as we meet AI and discover territory but I think that switching BW and priesthood is a better choice. That way we can build the oracle while researching BW.

I'll try to do some more testing this weekend but in general I think we have around 95 turns to finish the oracle. After that it will be tough.

Lost by 7 turns? Thanks for running the test. The only thing I would mention is that 1 worker for 3 cities is a bit low. It's best to have a 1:1 ratio, or even more (e.g. 4 workers for 3 cities). If you had two more workers rather than the Great Wall, do you think you may have been able to chop yourself to the win? Did you build the Oracle in the capital or another city? Also, did you see many barbs? Any archers? Axes?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I vote for Bronze Working -> Priesthood. Below is my analysis of why I vote that way

I would have thought that would get the oracle almost as fast as ... -> priesthood -> bronze working anyway. It surely takes forever to build it with no marble and no chopping or whipping, if we have bronze we can pre-chop forests while we research priesthood.

Without settling another city or two, I will give the approximate numbers that we will see.

Spoiler Why this comparison is fair :

Note that we hope can balance the Corruption costs of our 2nd and 3rd cities by generating at least an equal number of Flasks, such that Binary Gold and Binary Science will make them equivalent to not building those cities, at a minimum.

After learning Priesthood on Turn 69, 2275 BC, by working the PHRiver and a GHForRiv, we get 7 Hammers per turn. After some growth for 5 turns, that value can be increased to 9 Hammers per turn.

Bronze Working would come in 18 turns later.

So that gives us 5 * 7 + 13 * 9 = 35 + 117 = 152 Hammers

The claim is that by pre-chopping, we can make up for those missing 152 Hammers.

Well, a Forest chop takes 5 turns.

Spoiler Why Forest Pre-Chopping is reasonably efficient with a Fast Worker :

We have a Fast Worker, so moving onto a Forest and away from a Forest to an adjacent Forest doesn't lose us a Worker turn, as long as the two Forests are on flatland (i.e. no Hills on that square). With a lot of the Forests on flatland, we can pre-chop several of them for 4 turns each efficiently, without losing Worker turns from movement, if we plan out the chopping order very well.

A Forest pre-chop will take 4 turns, but since we aren't losing Worker turns due to Worker movement, we can just total the number of Worker turns gained and use that figure directly.

If we start to research Bronze Working on Turn 61, 2475 BC, we can learn it in approximately 16-17 Turns (depending upon whether we keep working the Irrigated Grassland River square--which in the real game may even get overgrown by a Forest). But let's say it is learned in 16 Turns, because we'll want to put a focus on doing so.

Instead of building The Oracle right away, after our 3rd Settler is completed, we can build another 2 Workers.

Spoiler How to count our Settlers :

When counting Settlers (or any units, such as Warriors, be sure to count your initial one. Why shouldn't the initial Settler count? Besides, counting it makes discussions easier, because then the 3rd Settler equals your 3rd city, instead of your "2nd Settler built" equaling your 3rd City--that's harder to think about.

Our 2nd Worker will take 6 turns to build, starting at the time where we have 9 turns left to go on Bronze Working. After that we can probably pump out our 3rd Worker and maybe 4th Worker by the time that we've researched Priesthood.

On Turn 77, we learn Bronze Working and start chopping with our 2 Workers.

Spoiler Implication for improving Cities 2 and 3 :

That means that our Worker/Workers are not supporting our other cities, but we can build something like Warrior->Worker first in those other cities, so that they have a bit of defence (possible placed as fog-busters, possibly placed as city defence) and can have their own Worker each.

On turn 80, we get our 3rd Worker and then realize that we can build a 4th Worker by the time that Priesthood comes in--both happening in 6 turns.

On turn 86, 1850 BC, we start work on The Oracle with no Hammers invested into it. We've just built our 4th Worker from the capitol (other cities may or may not have built one by now).
The 3 Workers that we had working for us gave us this many Worker turns:
9 + 9 + 6 = 24 Worker turns.

Spoiler Discounting Worker movement turns :

Again, since we can move the Workers around (with good planning) with very few Worker turns lost, let's assume that we can get 0 turns lost initially and maybe 1 or 2 lost later on that we won't calculate.

Each Forest chop in the fat cross gives us 30 Hammers and takes 5 Worker turns to complete.

That gives us 30 * 4.8 = 144 pre-chopped-worth of Hammers, slightly less than the 152 Hammers we get from manually building The Oracle up to this point in time.


Now, that's less Hammers than purely building The Oracle, but there are several factors at play here:
1) We will have a lot more Workers running around, since we used our Corn's excess food and small amount of base-Hammer production (1 Mined Hills square and one Forested Hills square) to make Workers instead of growing to use even more Forested Hills squares. Those Workers will help us to chop even more squares quickly, after we start work on The Oracle. We'll get considerably more Forest chops than we would with 1 Worker in the build-Oracle-first scenario, by the time that The Oracle is complete
2) Those Workers can even Mine the Grassland Hills Forest River squares for us, netting us an extra Hammer and Commerce that much sooner, at the cost of less Hammers from Forest chops
3) The build-Oracle-first scenario could also build an extra Worker or two, at the cost of raw Hammers put into The Oracle. If it did so, however, then the Workers would sit around (or would improve our 2nd and 3rd cities) for a bit longer
4) The number of Forests available are limited, but we have 15 of them in our fat cross. We might want to keep a few around for the extra Health benefit and for Forest-regrowth, but those should be more than enough to mostly-chop The Oracle: 225 Hammers (The Oracle) / 30 Hammers per Forest = 7.5 chops. So, with 6 to 7 Forest chops, we can complete The Oracle and still have many Forests available to us


Summary
The numbers are close and slightly in favour of the Priesthood-first scenario at the time of having learned both Bronze Working and Priesthood, but I am strongly leaning towards the Bronze-Working-first scenario, mostly because it is very efficient to build Workers with our excess Food, while it is pretty inefficient to grow our city only to be able to work 3 (Food + Hammer) squares, as in the Priesthood-first scenario.

We have "the excuse" of "having" to build Workers in the Bronze Working first scenario, since we are UNABLE to start manually building The Oracle, while building these Workers in the Priesthood-first scenario just gets us a few Workers that still have to sit around for 9 extra turns than they would in the Bronze-Working-first scenario, reducing their value.

If we had a lot less Forests, then the Priesthood-first option would be the way to go, as the number of Forests would be our limiting factor, but here, the number of Forests available is so high that our best bet is to get out a bunch of Workers early on and start making good use of those chops.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Rethinking our City 2 Settling location to include the Silver Resource

I'll try to do some more testing this weekend but in general I think we have around 95 turns to finish the oracle. After that it will be tough.

Well that's a real downer. I learned Priesthood on turn 86, 1850 BC by getting Bronze Working first. However, Writing will take another 17 turns to research.

Perhaps we have to rethink our second city's settling location. We'll somehow need more Commerce and a city by that square is quite probably the way to go--it's close for enough for our Worker to improve that Mine quickly and it is a square that can be worked relatively soon by City 2 (at worst case, 8 turns after learning Monotheism [which is learned on Turn 61, 2475 BC], if we don't get Hinduism in the capitol and if we settle the Silver city without Silver in the initial 9 squares of city radius).


I have won a Cultural game in the early 1700 ADs by settling Legendary City 3 as late as 1000 AD, so we don't HAVE to make our first 3 cities settled our Legendary Cities. Perhaps DynamicSpirit wasn't very evil and thus put a Seafood or other Food Resource near that Silver for benefit the teams that settled in place.


I'd still suggest leaving the duty of scouting of the Silver Resource to our Warrior 2 (the first one that we build, as opposed to our initial Warrior, called Warrior 1), as that area is less likely to have animals or other Barbs spawning, so it is thus safer to explore it later, while the "wild unknowns" to the west, north, and east of our capitol will be best explored ASAP before the Barbs our there get tougher.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Dhoomstriker, I couldn't figure out how to get rid of the black barbarian signs...

A tip that works for me, I keep the actual save in a completely different (and harder to navigate) directory than my test games. That way, I don't open up the real save by mistake and start testing away with our actual save.

The Barb Civ's signs can be added or removed using the "Enter landmark mode" option, which is the top left World Builder icon.

As for your tip, I think that we should at least have ONE Barb sign at our capitol's location, perhaps saying "Test Saved Game," as that's the "trick" that I have been using to confirm that I am using the test game. Barb Civ signs can't be added in the real game, as we can't access the World Builder, so it's a very unique way of being able to quickly double-check which saved game you loaded.

 

[unclethrill]

Fair enough scenario Dhoom. I did not run the numbers to this detail. My tests were more to get a general idea of when the Oracle was off the table than to have a test game where I get it.


In the three tests I ran, the Oracle was taken by the AI between T95 and T100. I think we need to target T90 or below to safely get it.

In my perfect world (for this game at least), I would like to have 3 cities down and get the Oracle on or before T90. I would also like to be able to get the second city down before Mono is done so that the first two cities have 1 religion each and then taking Theo from the Oracle would net Christianity in the third city.

I think we should be able to pull this all off with good MM. Does anyone think that these goals are not in line with our strategy or unachievable?

 

[unclethrill]

Rethinking our City 2 Settling location to include the Silver Resource


Well that's a real downer. I learned Priesthood on turn 86, 1850 BC by getting Bronze Working first. However, Writing will take another 17 turns to research.

I don't think we have any chance if we go that late. We will have to find a way to get it done by T90 IMO. More testing will be needed but if we don't think we can get it by then, we should look at alternative techs to get.

Perhaps we have to rethink our second city's settling location. We'll somehow need more Commerce and a city by that square is quite probably the way to go--it's close for enough for our Worker to improve that Mine quickly and it is a square that can be worked relatively soon by City 2 (at worst case, 8 turns after learning Monotheism [which is learned on Turn 61, 2475 BC], if we don't get Hinduism in the capitol and if we settle the Silver city without Silver in the initial 9 squares of city radius).

I really hate to use that location for a second city unless we have no other choice. I feel sure that we will be meeting someone (or some two) soon and on Emp with these settings we will need to block off some land early. We need the warrior exploring to show us choke points and the first couple cities will need to fill those points. All the religions in the world won't help us if we only get 3 or 4 cities down due to the AI REXing us.
I'm not going against the lots-o-religion idea (I really like it) but We will need to make the first couple city locations count and by that silver won't likely help in this.

I have won a Cultural game in the early 1700 ADs by settling Legendary City 3 as late as 1000 AD, so we don't HAVE to make our first 3 cities settled our Legendary Cities. Perhaps DynamicSpirit wasn't very evil and thus put a Seafood or other Food Resource near that Silver for benefit the teams that settled in place.


I'd still suggest leaving the duty of scouting of the Silver Resource to our Warrior 2 (the first one that we build, as opposed to our initial Warrior, called Warrior 1), as that area is less likely to have animals or other Barbs spawning, so it is thus safer to explore it later, while the "wild unknowns" to the west, north, and east of our capitol will be best explored ASAP before the Barbs our there get tougher.

I agree completely on this. The warrior we have needs to stick to the top area of the map. A little NW and then head East across the top of the capital.

 

[unclethrill]

It will be 24 hours or a little more before I can get anymore tests run. Irgy, will you be done with your TS by then? I would much rather run more tests after we have an updated test map so that they will be a bit more accurate.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Can we do it? What efficiencies can we look for?
Commerce will be our limiting factor. We'll have enough Hammers from Forest chops. I didn't even factor in the Organized Religion bonus, which, if we get a Religion in our capitol, can help us quite a bit.

In fact, if we get Hinduism, then I'd argue that we could "spend" the first couple of Forest chops on Workers, to build an even bigger Worker army for chopping out The Oracle under Organized Religion. Alternatively, if we get Judaism only but it spreads to the capitol, then this situation can also work.

If we don't have a religion in the capitol, then I think we will have to save all of our pre-chopping work to be used in The Oracle and then later use chops for Workers or Settlers.


So, I don't worry much about the Hammers if we get Bronze Working first. We somehow need more Commerce and that Silver Resource is one way to get it. If we can also find a nearby city for City 3 that either won't cost us too much in corruption or possibly has a Flood Plain square or other River square to work, it won't likely COST us that much but it also won't necessarily GAIN us that much in Commerce, either. The benefit of the 3rd city, besides the obvious land grab, is that it allows us to have more base units before each unit costs us 1 Gold / turn, meaning that chopping out a couple of Workers to maybe have 5 Workers chopping The Oracle at once could be a feasible scenario.


We won't be able to get Pottery (or even The Wheel) before Writing, so it'll be tight. If we miss The Oracle, we'll just have to live with that fact, but with that Mined Silver used for City 2, I think that we'll still have a very good chance at getting it.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I really hate to use that location for a second city unless we have no other choice.

I understand, so we can hope to find another city location that will give us a Gem or Gold that we can Mine for Commerce.


Failing finding another mineable Commerce Resource, we won't even having Hunting for Camping a Fur or Pottery for Cottages, and of course not Calendar for many other Commerce-based Resources. That would leave us with using the Silver location.


Usually, I don't remember to get a Moai Statues city until really late in the game, so it will be neat to get one early on.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Oracle Options

I don't think we have any chance if we go that late. We will have to find a way to get it done by T90 IMO. More testing will be needed but if we don't think we can get it by then, we should look at alternative techs to get.

Monarchy is something that we can get for certain, as it has no other pre-requisites once we've learned Priesthood. Although I said that we could use Temple whipping for happiness, Hereditary Rule would be another way to get even more Happiness sooner, since we don't have to worry about Anarchy. It's not as GREAT of a tech as our plan to Oracle Theology, but consider that a Great Prophet could lightbulb Theology. The Great Prophet, of course, comes that much earlier from building The Oracle earlier (as opposed to delaying building it until we learn Writing).


Early Monarchy with a Worker army to improve squares could be a good way to greatly speed up our REX and to kick-start our empire, and we wouldn't need to settle the Silver location to do it (although it would still be tight, as without the Silver Resource, we're learning Priesthood around Turn 87).


Unfortunately, other techs are out of the question.
(The Wheel + Pottery) takes about as long to learn as Writing, and Pottery is required in order to grab Metal Casting from The Oracle.

Confucianism is in the same boat as Christianity: Writing is a pre-requisite. The same goes for Aesthetics and Alphabet.

Iron Working would be kind of a silly tech to grab with The Oracle in a game where we can't declare war on the entire world.


Monarchy from The Oracle?
Soo... as our only alternative, we're looking at pushing the REX envelope with Monarchy from The Oracle, which, by the way, denies The Oracle to the AIs.

Monarchy DOES open up Divine Right, in case we wanted to Lightbulb it later, but that's probably only going to happen if we keep spawning Great Prophets by accident.

We can also afford to settle our City 2 and City 3 locations where we'd like, as we won't care that much about the extra Commerce. That said, it would still be safest to get the Silver or another mineable Resouce, in order to get Bronze Working and Priesthood out a bit sooner.

 

[BLubmuz]

I don't want diminish your testing guys, but in case we have marble the Oracle can even be built in city 2 if it has enough forests to chop.

I'm looking to an Autolog of a Epic game.
Turn _90 means 1750 BC
Turn 100 means 1500 BC

I usually consider turn 100 a safe date, turn 90 is a bit too stretched if we need to research something useful.

But i've seen some testing with Oracle BIAFAL on turn 98
So we can set turn 95 and hope.

The Silver will help a lot in shortening the research, even if that city will work only that tile, not growing.

But we can count on one of the best UU: the fast worker.
Also, having trade routes between our cities will help the research.
I think it's worth verify if researching the wheel can pay-off the turns spent with the 2 commerce (1 for each city) we gain by connecting them.

Also, if we have marble at hand of city 3, how can we connect it to the capital, even if we settle on that resource?

Another option, if we have (or see) marble, can be research the wheel, much cheaper than BW.