SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

[Irgy]

Play a test game until T100 or so (I've played 4 or 5). It should only take you 10 or 15 minutes. See what the barb situation looks like. If I had my warrior there by T50, life was good. If not, barbs were a serious concern. It may just change your mind...

I'm happy to take your word for it. However, if turn 50 is the goal, that gives the warrior 29 turns to walk up to 8 tiles east, 8 tiles back, a handful of tiles north-south to cover more ground, and still arrive at the spot you want him at in the west by turn 50. If turn 50 is the target then it actually works out just about perfect timing.

Wrong. When you whip you generate hammers, and they will overflow.
I meant PURE food converted in hammers, not excess food used to regrow after whipping.
Just test it, i'm 99% sure.

I can't follow what you mean at all here, so I'll just say a few things that might clear it up:
* Whipping is a completely different issue, I was never talking about whipping, just forget I even mentioned it.
* Dhoomstriker has now done a test which confirms that food converted to hammers while building settlers/workers does indeed overflow as hammers. This is what I was trying to say.
* If you finish a warrior, with a settler or worker in the queue, and grow the same turn, the food that overflows from the growth is put into the food storage not converted into hammers for the new worker/settler. I don't think anyone ever suggested otherwise, but this might be what's confusing you. Or it might not be.

 

[Mitchum]

I'm happy to take your word for it. However, if turn 50 is the goal, that gives the warrior 29 turns to walk up to 8 tiles east, 8 tiles back, a handful of tiles north-south to cover more ground, and still arrive at the spot you want him at in the west by turn 50. If turn 50 is the target then it actually works out just about perfect timing.

OK, I can be on board with this. The reason I feel okay with it is that our border expansion should expose the tiles to the south and east of the deer (assuming my fog gazing is correct and those are water tiles down there). If we don't see anything interesting, then we should settle where you suggested in your save. If we do see something exciting, then we have a decision to make...

 

[Dhoomstriker]

basically 1C/turn to have a priest hired.
Mainly the GP popped very soon.

I don't really think that an early Temple (i.e. built before The Oracle) is going to be an efficient scenario. We'll get the Great Prophet soon enough by building a Temple after we build The Oracle.

I'd have to see you run a test game to prove its value, but since we're building Settlers in the capitol and Warriors in City 2, I don't even see where we'd fit a Temple into our build order.

Just because Commerce was our bottleneck shouldn't mean that we should potentially create a Hammer bottleneck due to building a Temple first. From the test games that I ran, there was no "room" in the build to fit in a Temple. But if you can magic some Hammers from somewhere, maybe you can do it??? Certainly not if we build Warrior 2 before Worker 1, though, as then you throw away 9 Hammers + 8 Hammers = 17 Hammers... although you get those 8 Hammers as 8 Food, those 8 Food won't help build your Temple. If you argued that you might try to put those 17 Hammers into a Temple, you might have a stronger case for your Temple-first approach... Hint, Hint, Worker 1 before Warrior 2...

Since idea calls idea , take this other one: We build the temple and the Oracle in Bombay.

You and what army of citizens?

In order to grow City 2, we have to work a stupid square (2 Food + 1 Hammer) somewhere, either in City 2 (one such square exists) or in City 1 (because City 2 would steal its Corn before we had a better square improved for City 1 to work in place of the Corn).

Overall, that's far less efficient than working both a Corn and a Silver.

Plus, if you take even 1 turn away from the Silver now, then you simply delay our Writing date, which we all agreed was our bottleneck.

"Can't we chop The Oracle in City 2?" you might ask. Nope. Only 2 Forests exist which will go to City 2. The other Forest chops will all go to City 1. Without much production base in City 2, we will not have enough base Hammers + Forest chops to get The Oracle there within the required time frame.

The reward is huge: around turn 110-120 we can have 5 religions, one for each city founded, hopefully.

Are you planning on not settling City 3? Because that's about the only sacrifice (no Settler 3) that I can see allowing you to possibly achieve this claim. I'd like to see you try out a few test games, and then you'll see how ridiculous it sounds to get 2 Great People in the time frame that you are talking about, while still being able to expand and fog-bust the empire.

I thought that REX was our next highest priority, after religious beelining. You'd be giving up our REXing. Do you really think that you can convince the rest of the team to do so? What would we gain? We're already going to be really safe in getting Philosophy a bit later. What's 1 more religion now going to do for us, especially that it is worth giving up REXing in order to achieve?

And since we'll adopt OR only when we need to build something in a given city and switch to "no religion" once the building is finished, if we go for culture this will help a lot.

For a Cultural game, you won't do so; you'll run Organized Religion as much as possible. The most that I'll give you is one 5-turn-period of No State Religion, to expand borders. Then, it's back to Organized Religion as much as we can (Pacifism being the only other alternative).

For a Diplo game where we gave up early Agriculture and Bronze Working, we said that one of our ways of hoping to compete with other teams was to leverage the Organized Religion trait. I think that you'll have a bunch of "unhappy campers" on the team if you try and throw away this apparent advantage over other teams.

Please tell me if i need to be restricted.

Post away. Sometimes, it's fun for me to find arguments that are relatively easy to poke big holes in...

 

[Dhoomstriker]

In the real game, I would retreat as you suggested, although not with so much thought put into it.

The point being that after a few turns, say, T23, if no Lion has been spotted, then I'd take the risk to go 1E to the Plains Forest River square. Stay there for a long time. Around or shortly after Turn 50, if he's still alive, we'll have a couple of turns where Lions start to disappear from the map. During this small time window, we'll move Warrior north two squares to his target location.

That's your best case scenario. Don't count on it happening, but that would be ideal.

Keeping warrior 1 alive is critical to keeping the barbs under control. No pressure, unclethrill...

/\
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What he said. No pressure at all!

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I'm happy to take your word for it. However, if turn 50 is the goal, that gives the warrior 29 turns to walk up to 8 tiles east, 8 tiles back, a handful of tiles north-south to cover more ground, and still arrive at the spot you want him at in the west by turn 50. If turn 50 is the target then it actually works out just about perfect timing.

If it turns out that we go for the path of completing Warrior 2 before -> Worker 1, then:
I vote against any eastward exploration.

UNLESS...
Before Unclethrill plays, someone maps out a path that does a bit of eastward exploration, factors in possible healing time from a Barb Animal fight, swings back toward the ORANGE SQUARES in case our borders have not exposed them all, goes down to the BLUE SQUARES and explores them all--add in a couple of moves for moving around on land--our test game doesn't have much land there, so we can see the Ocean without trying, but in the real game, if there is a bit more land, we'll have to walk on the land a bit more just to see it all... and then still makes it to the west in time for fog-busting.


In particular, it's that healing time from a very likely Barb Animal fight to the east that has me most concerned.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I'd like to propose that we name our cities something more descriptive than Bombay (or Delhi). That way, when we refer to a city's name in our posts at a later date when we have 5+ cities, it will be easier for everyone to know which city we're talking about based only on the name alone. Does this make sense?

If so, I propose we call the silver city Silver City. Delhi can remain the same as it will have the only Indian city name, unless someone wants to rename it to something else (e.g. BLubmuzville, FEopolis, etc.)

Sure. That idea is fine for AFTER a city is settled.

Before it is settled, please call it by the city number, i.e. City 2, in case your naming doesn't match where we end up settling the city, just to avoid even more confusion. Sure, we're mostly set on City 2 being Silver City, but until we've sat down with the Settler, let's still call it City 2. Cool?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Did you give a thought that the current TSs are pretty boring, and that it will be more FUN to get to more interesting TSs?

I just fail to see what is fun in discussing 2H+1F, or was it 2F+1H? I lost track with all the endless words...

Working a 2F+1H or 1F+2H square is not fun. It's terrible. Yet, somehow, that's what keeps being advocated. Over and over again. Sue me if it takes many arguments to convince others that working such a square really sucks (and by extension, is not fun).

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Here, here!

Isn't it supposed to be: Hear, hear!

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I would want that a game is won by consistently making good decisions (even if some might be sub-optimal), not by making perfect decisions in the first 100 turns and good decisions during the rest...

Too bad what you want often isn't what life gives you. The same is true for Civ.

Don't take that comment as me advocating perfect play. That's not my approach at all. But it does need to be said that what you want to have happen really has no impact on what the game is going to do for us.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

The last SG was won by MW with 50 turns on the 2nd and 100 on 3rd probably with decisions took in the early 5 turns.
I know for sure their startegy was perfected around turn 20.

He, who is of great experience in playing SGOTM games, would be wise to provide a longer-term view, instead of just keeping the most recent game in mind. Would you say that this effect was true of all SGOTM games or moreso of the SGOTM you are discussing, especially with that most recent game having been a non-Ancient-Era-start game?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

And there I was voting warrior first so that he could go east, to scout the land in between us and Zara. Zara can't possibly be more than 8 tiles away, and the benefit of going warrior first is that we have another 15 turns to scout the land in between before heading back and checking for better silver city spots. Which is easily enough time to head there and back.

My biggest concern is missing some crazy double gold + pigs city to the east that we simply don't even unfog before Zara settles it himself instead. That's the only reason I'm saying warrior first.

As for all the discussion, I don't mind what we do as long as we do it soon, but my vote is still warrior first for the reasons above. Although if we're not planning to send the warrior east to look at that land anyway then I'm not so sure.

Time to change your vote, then.

About the only thing with Warrior 2 that we are unanimously agreed upon is that he is the best and last (if Warrior 1 dies) hope for avoiding Barb Archers spawning in the west.

So, regardless of whether he scouted east for a bit first, we cannot keep him in the east in order to get Settler 2 safely to a location in the east.

Therefore, we will not be settling east with Settler 2, as we cannot dare to send out an unescorted Settler in that area.


Just so that it is clear, I don't mind sending a Settler unescorted to the "future city for silver?" location that you picked out, as we'll be within our cultural borders on the the turn before we settle, meaning that we are 100% safe from Barb Animals, as Barb Animals can't enter city borders and the Settler can move 1 square and settle on the next turn, again without risk from Barb Animals, as City 2's borders will prevent Barb Animals from coming nearby on the turn that it gets settled.

 

[Mitchum]

Sure. That idea is fine for AFTER a city is settled.

Before it is settled, please call it by the city number, i.e. City 2, in case your naming doesn't match where we end up settling the city, just to avoid even more confusion. Sure, we're mostly set on City 2 being Silver City, but until we've sat down with the Settler, let's still call it City 2. Cool?

Yes and no. If we're comparing two possible locations for City 2, I would prefer to call them Silver and Rice (for example) so that it is clear which two locations we're comparing. Then one could make the claim: "Silver should be settled before Rice because..." rather than "The city 2E of the silver should be settled before the city E-NE of the rice because..." Regardless of which order they are settled or even if they have not been settled yet, we should be able name each location and refer to said location by name, right?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Oh, and just to add:
Our Settler 3 CAN settle to the east, because we'll be building Warrior 3 after Settler 2. However, if we go Warrior 2 -> Worker 1, then Warrior 3 is a bit delayed and Settler 3 is a bit delayed. On top of those delays, we lose Commerce.

And what do we gain? Well, scouting east was what we might have gained, but Settler 3 will have Warriors 3, 4, and 5 coming out before Settler 3, in order to take on that task. So, since Settler 2 can't go east, there's no need to scout east now.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Spoiler Minor quibble about what to call a city in our discussions :

Yes and no.

Sure, why not? I'm not trying to advocate a black and white rule here.

If we're comparing two possible locations for City 2, I would prefer to call them Silver and Rice (for example) so that it is clear which two locations we're comparing. Then one could make the claim: "Silver should be settled before Rice because..." rather than "The city 2E of the silver should be settled before the city E-NE of the rice because..." Regardless of which order they are settled or even if they have not been settled yet, we should be able name each location and refer to said location by name, right?

Sure, the point is context-sensitive.

In your example, saying Silver City makes more sense.

In another example, we might say "we need to get another Warrior out before we build City 2." In that context, we are focusing on the Warrior and shouldn't be trying to "push" our argument for the "Rice City" by calling it "Rice City" instead of the more generic "City 2."

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Also, I would really like to play a very good game, and win, and learn...
and this is supposed to leisure, not hard work.

Learning IS hard work. Do you remember when you were in school? Was it ever very easy? If you answer yes, then you probably weren't learning much in that class, were you?

(Although I shamefully admit that most of the hard work is done by others...)

You're welcome!

 

[Mitchum]

For a Cultural game, you won't do so; you'll run Organized Religion as much as possible. The most that I'll give you is one 5-turn-period of No State Religion, to expand borders. Then, it's back to Organized Religion as much as we can (Pacifism being the only other alternative).

For a Diplo game where we gave up early Agriculture and Bronze Working, we said that one of our ways of hoping to compete with other teams was to leverage the Organized Religion trait. I think that you'll have a bunch of "unhappy campers" on the team if you try and throw away this apparent advantage over other teams.

Only cities with our state religion get the Organized Religion bonus. Only cities producing at least 4 hammers get the OR bonus. So, early on, it should be fairly easy to find a five-tunr window when we can run no state religion to get the "free" border expansion in any of our holy cities.

I think planning for this makes sense, for 2 main (and obvious reasons). First, any border expansion claims more land, helping us keep the AI from infesting our peninsula. Second, the sooner a city has access to all tiles in its BFC, the better.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Worker 1 -> Warrior 2 path CAN MEET OUR SILVER-EXPLORATION AND FOG-BUSTING GOALS! No one bothered to run a proper test game... until now! Behold! Proof! We can have our cake and eat it, too!

Dhoomstriker, I think we're trying to balance the loss of 8 hammers (which I believe is a big deal) with the safety precautions to avoid a barb infestation from the West. The warrior first option got both fog busters in place by T42. Waiting on the warrior will delay that by some 15 turns, well past your T50 rule... Are you at all worried about that?

No, I am not worried. In my testing, I am able to get Warrior 2 one square away from his ideal fog-busting location. I allowed for extra movement to the south to fully scout the BLUE SQUARES.

I did not allocate time to scout the ORANGE SQUARES, but fog-gazing makes me think that all of those squares will be uncovered by our cultural border expansion anyway.

I am uploading a copy of my saved game. I tried to detail every move "in game" in a sign. The map will of course look like a giant mess, but anyone should be able to recreate my moves exactly, starting from my uploaded latest test saved game, the one with BLubmuz' location of Paris and with Forests adjusted.

By keeping Warrior 1 on the southern Forest, I was able to close the gap of missing squares of having Warrior 2 being 1 square south of where he's supposed to end up. Warrior 1 can carefully be moved back north at some point or can just stay there until one of Warriors 3 through 5 comes out west, in case we want to 100% fog-bust the west, instead of just 92% or so.


Essentially, by going Worker 1 -> Warrior 2, I was able to meet our fog-busting goals.


Since we won't be exploring east even if we go Warrior 2 -> Worker 1, and since we can meet our fog-busting goal, then the material gains made by getting Worker 1 first (1 Food + 17 Hammers + 4 Commerce, instead of 8 currently-useless Food) are certainly what we should be going after.


It's hard to argue with a conclusive test game.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Only cities producing at least 4 hammers get the OR bonus.

That will be City 1 as soon as we get the Plains Hills River square mined, which will happen in time for us to build our first building.

That will be City 2 any turn that we are working the Silver square.

That will happen relatively soon for a lot of cities, unless we settle a purely-Food-based city.

Only cities with our state religion get the Organized Religion bonus.

If we have bad religious spread, rather than switching to No State Religion, we can swap between religions. That way, we won't have 5 turns of wasting Organized Religion everywhere--we will just "pick which group of cities" get to take advantage of it. Timing Forest Chops and Whips will be the most important, as those actions get the biggest value out of the Organized Religion's bonus.

How's that for a cool idea of better leveraging the Organized Religion Civic, while still being able to pop borders in different cities over time? A winning idea, right?

 

[Mitchum]

How's that for a cool idea of better leveraging the Organized Religion Civic, while still being able to pop borders in different cities over time? A winning idea, right?

I agree that this can accomplish the same thing. Staying in OR allows us to build missionaries whenever we need them as well.

I had forgotten to add that you only get the OR bonus when building buildings. So, we just need to time the switch from religion to religion (or in and out of OR) when cities are building units. With proper planning, this should be doable when we only have 4 or 5 cities.

 

[Mitchum]

Essentially, by going Worker 1 -> Warrior 2, I was able to meet our fog-busting goals.

Since we won't be exploring east even if we go Warrior 2 -> Worker 1, and since we can meet our fog-busting goal, then the material gains made by getting Worker 1 first (1 Food + 17 Hammers + 4 Commerce, instead of 8 currently-useless Food) are certainly what we should be going after.

It's hard to argue with a conclusive test game.

Well done!!

With that said, HOLY CRAP! That took a bit to figure out. I can't imagine how long it took you to create. Wouldn't turn-by-turn descriptive text in a post with turn-by-turn warrior 1 and warrior 2 movements on the map been easier on us (and you)?

I have two questions:

1. Why did warrior 1 fiddle around in the northern peninsula? Did the bear cause this behaviour? Or were you trying to avoid the double lion attack from the east?
2. Why is warrior 2 spending 2 turns in two different locations on the tundra peninsula (T40/T41 and T42/T43)? I'm not including the spot that passed through on his way down and again on his way back up, since that is obvious. Were you waiting for barb animals to disappear and clear your path?