SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

[havr]

I'm dubious about the benefit of a shrine, particularly a shrine this early in the game. We won't have a single religion in 10 cities for quite some time (i.e. > 100 turns). But to follow your example, when we do have 10 cities, the shrine can generate 1000 gold in 100 turns (more if we have any gold multiplying buildings). A great prophet could get us about 1000 beakers into a tech immediately. Depending on the tech in question and how much we need it, the decision to build a shrine is not automatic. Plus, a shrine generates even more Great Prophet points, possibly giving us yet another unwanted GPro...

The 10 gold is worth more than 10 beakers: it frees up which gets the science modifiers. If I recall correctly library is cheaper then market + you have the 20% bonus that Dhoom mentioned.

It is true that we will not have 10 cities in a while, but while we have less cities we will have less maintenance. It is quite plausible that with a great shrine we can keep science at 100% without moving to 0% from time to time (like we do today).

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Dealing with a Non-Great-Scientist as our 2nd Great Person

Spoiler :

Is this only if we get the Pyramids? Otherwise, we surely want Monarchy at some point.

By the time that we get our 2nd Great Person, our tech path will not be far enough advancd for us to have researched Monarchy. That was all I was saying there.

In fact, Monarchy is one of the easiest techs to get in trade from AIs, so it is almost certainly going to be a tech that we will trade for, rather than spending valuable flasks on researching it, as we have other guaranteed ways (Temples, mainly) of getting Happiness.

I'm not overly concerned about GPP pollution of any sort, as we need to have 4 unused great people at the end of the game anyway (not to mention the usual option to use an unwanted great person for a golden age at some point).

That is a valid approach to take. The more that we concentrate our Wonders into one city, the more Great People that will be generated overall and the quicker that the next Great Person will be available. I was simply suggesting one way to ensure that one of our early Great People didn't have to "sit around waiting" until the end of the game.

Although if we're relying on one for something then of course that can be a problem.

Indeed, that was one of my main points--instead of worrying about missing a Great Scientist, we can equally leverage a Great Prophet to get us Bureaucracy, which will greatly speed up manual research on Philosophy, making up for getting the wrong Great Person.


People keep discussing all sorts of ideas to try and avoid building Wonders in the same city as each other. I am trying to lower these concerns by demonstrating ways of mitigating these concerns.

Wouldn't building a shrine be a better idea for the 2nd GPro (if we get him)...
The +10 gold can be useful early to keep our research going.

If we felt that we'd still have a good safety margin on being the first to Philosophy (the tech that our 2nd Great Person was supposed to Lightbulb for us, as per our game plan), then this option would certainly be open to us, as well.

Did we get a Great Prophet instead? THE RESULT: Lightbulbing Civil Service could work, as could building a Holy Shrine.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Comments on the Test Game

Grow first or Hammers first?--probably grow first if we have the Happiness to support said growth

Spoiler :

I ran a test where I mined the copper first and switched a citizen from the plains hill to the copper as soon as it was done

An alternative approach might be to take the citizen off of the Irrigated Grassland River square and put him on the Copper. It depends on how happy you can keep the people when you grow the city.

I am going to guess that you used a new Warrior built in Silverado as City Police in Delhi, as well as the extra Happiness from the Silver and the extra Happiness from Hinduism to make use of growing the city quicker.

Library before Temple

Spoiler :

We might even consider whipping the Library first, as a Library takes 2-3 people to whip it (closer to 2 population points after some Hammers have been invested and Organized Religion is in effect). Research is our bottleneck, here. When the city is larger, it is easier to whip for more people (you have to be at Size 6 in order to whip 3 people at once, for example).

A Temple can almost certainly be whipped with just 1 population point (I haven't checked, but that's my experience with the Spiritual Trait), so it can be whipped after the City shrinks from having whipped the Library.

Just because we are whipping the Library first does not mean that we will run Scientist Specialists before generating our first Great Person--it just means that we'll get more flasks over time for every flask generated in the capitol.

After Writing is researched, we should set our tech to 0% Science until the Library is complete, just to get that extra turn or two of Gold when our boost to flask output is still 0%.

THE ANSWER: Don't ask questions, just do it! Library before Temple. Done deal.

Delaying City 3?

Spoiler :

I only had to put two chops into the Oracle since the limiting factor was definitely researching Writing, not building the Oracle...
I settled city 3 between the three peaks (location e from Dhoomstriker's post IIRC). My gpt went from -3 to -7 at 100% research.

Will we benefit in getting The Oracle (by getting Writing) a bit faster if we delay settling City 3? Perhaps we can do so if we can keep an eye on Zara's borders and have Settler 3 sitting in the place that we want to settle.

If we can't get enough "eyes" on Zara's borders, in order to spot any Settlers that he sends out, then we will have to decide between the risk of not being able to get Code of Laws from The Oracle vs the risk that Zara might grab a spot near our chosen City 3 location, forcing us to rethink where we settle, due to not being able to settle within a 2 square radius of any other city built on the same continent.

OVERALL Warrior Placement and possibly temporarily saving on Unit Supply Costs

Spoiler :

I found a way to spawn bust the entire peninsula and all of the land north of Delhi and north of city 3.

Would you care to share the details of where you placed the Warriors?

Also, were we obtaining a lot of Maintenance costs from Unit Supply before Writing was researched? Could we possibly save some Unit Supply Maintenance by retreating a Warrior or two to just inside of our borders until Writing comes in?

Note that a Warrior within our borders still helps to spawn-bust in a 5x5 diametre--so, a good spot to put such a Warrior would be where there is a line of Forests just outside of our cultural border (such as to the north of Delhi), as the Warrior will help to passively spawn-bust further than our cultural borders can passively spawn-bust in such a location.

It could also be that if we settle City 3, we can reduce the Unit Supply cost by 1 or 2 if we sneak the nearby Warriors into City 3's borders temporarily.

An AI self-teching Code of Laws before we can grab it from The Oracle is not the end of the world

Spoiler :

Now the bad news: Louis learned CoL on T84, 9 turns before we would have gotten it.

Well, we've done all that we can, short of skipping Bronze Working, in our religious-chasing tech path to beeline Code of Laws. If we miss Confucianism, we'll be able to deal with the loss because we were lucky enough to pick up Hinduism.

Whoever builds The Oracle will just have to watch the Event Log very carefully before picking the appropriate tech--if Concusianism was founded, then we'll take Theology, to secure Christianity. We'll still want the Great Prophet as our 1st Great Person, in order to Lightbulb Code of Laws, as we'll still want to be the first to Philosophy, so our Great Person plan won't be upset by missing out on Confucianism.

Test Game Suggestions in regards to Checking Religion Dates

Spoiler :

We should all run a few tests with all of the religious zealots + Zara in the game to find out about when CoL is typically learned.

There's not much point in doing so. If someone manages to learn Code of Laws first, we won't really be changing our strategy at all, other than which tech is taken by The Oracle and which tech gets Lightbulbed by the Great Prophet.

No other change to our strategy will result, other than us likely making a World Enemy out of one of either the Buddhism Founder or the Confucianism Founder.

A test game would just give us an indication of what might happen, but no amount of test games will tell us exactly what will happen--we'll just have to deal with the resulting situation as it unfolds in our real game.

Knowing when a Wonder will be built is a different story and is a useful piece of info, as that info can help us to decide whether to spend the effort in chasing the Wonder at all. But, here, since very little change to our game plan will result from an AI beating us to Code of Laws, there's no real value in finding out "if" we might miss out on Confucianism.

The only value that I might see in running such a test game is to discover that IF we are beaten to Confucianism, how early in such a game does an AI research Philosophy? Even then, other factors, such as when the Human Player learns Alphabet and how soon Alphabet gets traded around, often has a great impact on the date, so it's hard to simiulate a proper test game for Philosophy's date, just by pressing the Enter key to repeatedly end the turn.

Losing The Oracle?

Spoiler :

If we get beaten to The Oracle, then the UP player needs to stop play immediately and we will need to evaluate the situation before proceeding. That's why I'm trying to suggest ways of us getting Writing a bit faster, to help mitigate this possible risk.

THE RESULT: If we miss The Oracle, go home and cry to Mommy!

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Lightbulbing Tehcs Misses out on Research Bonuses

Spoiler :

If I recall correctly library is cheaper then market

A Library comes earlier than a Market, so more cities will have one than they will have a Market.

That said, you can often build Markets in selected high-Food cities and run a couple of Merchant Specialists, in order to help balance your empire's Maintenance costs. That way, you won't really NEED to build Markets everywhere, anyway, as you'll have a lot fewer turns at 100% Gold.

+ you have the 20% bonus that Dhoom mentioned.

That is the downside to Lightbulbing techs when comparing directly to Gold--a Lightbulbed tech will not benefit from any pre-requisite bonuses, such as the default +20 bonus that all techs but the first 7 techs get.

That said, you often skip researching an "optional pre-requisite" tech when Lightbulbing, as you're trying to get the tech ASAP, so you are usually limited to just a 20% loss and not the 40% loss that you might otherwise compare to if you were manually researching the tech by first learning one of its optional pre-requesites (should the tech even have such a thing--not all techs do).

THE RESULT: Lightbulbing has its uses, such as getting a key tech early on with fewer pre-requisites already known.

 

[BLubmuz]

OK, i'm almost sold on not build a city along the river E of Dehli, unless there're resources now hidden.
I don't think that a 3rd city will ruin too much our economy if settled in the Cows/Oasis area. I'm thinking that 1W of cows can be a good location and we can have room for city on the Incense, grabbing the fish instead of the wheat. Later, much later.
What can be a ruin is the 4th city, the one which will grab stone and marble, at least until we learn the Wheel.

So, we can build a worker after the settler and put 2 warriors in the new city.
A worker will considerably help the Oracle, so only research can be a constraint.

Research:
PH > Writing > Wheel > Alpha

The build queue for Dehli can be Worker - Oracle - Temple.
But, if we manage to chop the Temple in the last turn before it completes, we'll gain a ton of overflow. Not building the settler we can probably do this.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Great Scientist for Philosophy--It Requires Knowledge of Math and Alphabet

Spoiler :

Spoiler Lightbulbing Preferences for a Great Scientist in BTS :

Great Scientist:

Writing
Mathematics
Scientific Method
Physics
Education
Printing Press
Fiber Optics
Computers
Laser (BTS)
The Wheel
Alphabet (BTS)
Philosophy
Chemistry
Fission
Fusion
Optics
Paper
Astronomy
Biology
Electricity
Flight
Genetics
Compass
Satellites
Aesthetics (BTS)
Sailing
Alphabet (Vanilla & Warlords)
Calendar
Medicine
Ecology
Advanced Flight (BTS)
Iron Working
Metal Casting
Engineering
Steam Power
Liberalism
Agriculture
Masonry
Bronze Working
Machinery
Gunpowder
Refrigeration
Superconductors (BTS)
Rocketry
Fishing
Combustion
Plastics
Composites
Stealth (BTS)
Mining
Military Science (BTS)
Radio
Meditation
Drama
Theology
Music
Civil Service
Democracy
Corporation
Communism
Economics
Hunting
Archery
Animal Husbandry
Construction
Robotics
Monotheism
Mass Media
Horseback Riding
Replaceable Parts
Rifling
Artillery
Future Tech]

What we can see here is that in addition to learning Math, we'll also need to learn Alphabet before Philosophy will be available as a Lightbulbable option.

We were planning on getting Alphabet anyway, but now we will have a bit more incentive to research it sometime after Math.

I still haven't seen evidence that AIs can Lightbulb a tech, but certainly, they won't be beelining Alphabet and Math and also be able to beat us to Lightbulbing Philosophy if they DO have the ability to Lightbulb techs, so the only way that we'll lose Philosophy is to manual research by an AI (or to an AI self-teching Code of Laws and Oracling Philosphy--that would really stink!).

THE RESULT: The AIs will likely only beat us to this tech via Manual Research, not via Lightbulbing.

 

[Mitchum]

OK, I ran two more test games. I used all of the same setting as our game. I used WB to put a spy into every city. I also gave myself tons of espionage generating buildings and several great spies and set my slider to 100% espionage (while building wealth) so that I could see what was happening at all times. Any time a new city was built, I tried to put another spy in it. I avoided researching an religious techs.

Test 1: Religion Test

I wanted to see when all of the various religions would be founded, so I put in all civs that favor religion (Mansa, Izzy, Hatty, Asoka, Zara, Monty). Here were the results:

T12 - Meditation - Izzy (that's my girl)
T27 - Polytheism - Mansa
T66 - Monotheism - Izzy (back at it)
T77 - Stonehenge - Hatty
T104 - First civ to learn Priesthood - Mansa
T105 - Temple of Artemis - Mansa
T110 - Great Wall - Hatty
T126 - Great Lighthouse - Mansa
T134 - Oracle - Mansa
T134 - Theology (from Oracle) - Mansa
T151 - Code of Laws - Zara
T157 - Pyramids - Monty

Test 2: Wonder Test

This time, I put in all of the wonder builders (Augustus Caesar, Huayna Capac, Louis, Ramesses, Asoka, Hatty). Here were the results:

T14 - Meditation - Asoka
T26 - Polytheism - Hatty
T59 - Monotheism - Louis
T67 - First civ to learn Priesthood - Hatty
T78 - Stonehenge - Ramesses
T91 - Great Wall - Louis
T105 - Oracle - Hatty w/marble
T119 - Great Lighthouse - Ramesses
T139 - Temple of Artemis - Louis
T146 - Pyramids - HC w/stone
N/A - Theology
N/A - Code of Laws

Brief Analysis

This is based on just two test games. Not a statistically significant number of samples, but it's all I have time for right now. If someone else wants to run a test or two to get a bit more data, please do. Or, check some of your old Emperor games and write down some of the finish dates for the items listed above.

I didn't notice any civs building any other wonders until both the Great Wall and Stonehenge were completed. We need to keep track of these wonders, knowing that the Oracle could begin being built next.

With the Oracle going on T105 at the earliest, we have some leeway, especially since we will be done before T95.

The earliest Pyramids was on T146 by an Industrious civ with stone. He built it in a minor city, so he could have finished sooner had he built it in his capital. If we do our chopping correctly, we could finish it in less than 5 turns from start to finish with all of the chops going in on the final 2 or 3 turns.

Code of Laws (T151) went quite late in the religion game. I would expect this to be an outlier and for it to go earlier in our game.

Theology was learned by Mansa thanks to the Oracle. If we get this wonder, I think we have quite a bit of leeway on this one.

No civ in the Wonder Test had even started research on CoL or Theology, so they would have been founded way later but I stopped my test once the Pyramids were built. Asoka and Hatty were the only civs that favor religion in that test though.

 

[Mitchum]

Comments on the Test Game

I am going to guess that you used a new Warrior built in Silverado as City Police in Delhi, as well as the extra Happiness from the Silver and the extra Happiness from Hinduism to make use of growing the city quicker.

Happiness was never an issue. With the silver and religion, I didn't need a warrior in Delhi until after T90

Just because we are whipping the Library first does not mean that we will run Scientist Specialists before generating our first Great Person--it just means that we'll get more flasks over time for every flask generated in the capitol.

After Writing is researched, we should set our tech to 0% Science until the Library is complete, just to get that extra turn or two of Gold when our boost to flask output is still 0%.

Yes, I like the idea of getting an early library in the capital. It won't be a huge deal right off the bat, adding 3 or 4 beakers per turn at most, but once we start working cottages and running bureaucracy, it will pay off. Also, we'll be able to run two scientist specialists without running Caste System if we want.

Will we benefit in getting The Oracle (by getting Writing) a bit faster if we delay settling City 3? Perhaps we can do so if we can keep an eye on Zara's borders and have Settler 3 sitting in the place that we want to settle.

This is a good option. As I said, my research dropped quite a bit when I settled city 3. We should be able to get Writing a few turns sooner and the Oracle can be finished with a third chop at any time. Plus, city 3 didn't really contribute that much since I didn't have any spare worker turns until about T90 to do any improvements there.

The biggest concern I have with this approach is that we want to use city 3 to minimize the chance that Zara settles toward us. If we see his settler and settle city 3 at that point, will the settler actually turn around? Or would he still settle toward us?

Would you care to share the details of where you placed the Warriors?

Unit supply was 1 gold per turn. Please verify, but I think this covers all land to the west, north, south and most of the east...

Spoiler :

 

[Mitchum]

No one has downloaded the lastest save with copper added here. Only two people had downloaded the one before this one. This worries me in two ways:

1. Two people are testing with the wrong save, or
2. No one else besides me is doing any testing on the correct save (at least 2 others may be running tests with the wrong save, which is better than nothing)

Neither of these options are good, in my opinion. If you ran a test, you would know that happiness will not be an issue. If you ran a test, you would know how many warriors is enough. If you ran a test, you would know how much research is dragged down bu units and city 3 and be able to come up with solutions for the problem. If you ran the test, you would know how and when to move the warriors to explore over the next four turns and how to fogbust the area. Etc.

I'm not picking on any one person, but I think our comments would be the most appropriate if everyone had at least played until T95 or until the Oracle is built (it only took me 15 minutes). This will allow us to discuss concrete and proven ideas for speeding it up. It will also give us an idea if it is safe to have havr play the next 4 turns so that we can start discussing city placement with more specific information about the map. Also, I wouldn't be surprised in Zara didn't settle his second city in the next 4 turns, which should help us even more.

I spend a lot of time trying to get the test saves just right (or as close as possible). Let's all benefit from my effort.

OK, I'm off my testing soap box... for now.

 

[unclethrill]

Sorry that I've been MIA for the past few days. I had no Internet access at work. I'll spend tonight trying to get caught back up.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Early Alphabet Doesn't Fit with our Strategy

Spoiler :

Research:
PH > Writing > Wheel > Alpha

Have you given up on Lightbulbing Theology? Because we'll need to self-tech Meditation in order to do so.

Also, so where in our build order do you want us to slot in the Hindu Missionary from the Capitol?

Because in order for Alphabet to be of use now, we'll likely need Zara to be Friendly with us.

We'll want him to share a religion with us, and we'll want that religion to be one that the capitol can run.

An alternative would be to build TWO Missionaries of another Religion and send one to Zara and the other to our capitol. Confucianism (if we get it) could give us one of those Missionaries, but then we'd have to build a Missionary immediately in the Size 1 city that founded the religion.

Yes, he knows at least one other AI, so that might help, but only if that other AI knows the same tech--otherwise, Zara still won't give it to us unless we are Friendly with Zara.


Trading with a Non-friendly Zara
I ran some tests. If Zara knows no other AIs, he will only trade a couple of "basic" techs--Fishing and Animal Husbandry.

If Zara knows one other AI, he will trade the same "basic" techs but won't trade us any additional techs unless that other AI also knows the tech.

If Zara manages to meet two other AIs, he will trade us the same "basic" techs but won't trade us any additional techs unless one of those other AIs also knows that tech. A weird exception was Math: Zara knows Shaka and Gilgamesh and Shaka has Math, however, Zara is still holding onto Math.

It seems that somewhere in BUFFY or BTS, they took out (accidentally?) the message that lets you determine if an AI is holding onto a tech because they want to build its corresponding Wonder. These days (for whatever reason), you don't get to hear about when an AI is denying you a tech due to them wanting to build the corresponding Wonder.

Perhaps Zara just likes the Hanging Gardens and won't trade away that tech for said reason. Perhaps he has another reason, like fearing that we'll beeline Construction after learning it.


After creating the saved game, I added Writing and Math to Gilgamesh's tech repertoire. All of a sudden, Zara will trade Math to us again. So, it seems that Zara treats Math as a very important tech that he won't trade around easily. That's probably the 1 tech that we REALLY wanted to get by beelining Alphabet instead of Mathematics, and HE WON'T GIVE IT TO US!


Regardless of the reason, according to my test game, unless Zara knows Math AND the other AIs that he has met also know Math, we will not be able to trade for Math from Zara unless he is at Friendly (and he happens to also conveniently research it for us).

I'll attach the test game. Here are some details about the test game:
- We only know Zara
- Zara knows Shaka and Gilgamesh
- I have no idea if Shaka or Gilgamesh know any of the other AIs--this point shouldn't matter, anyway
- The techs that Zara knows which we do not know are easy enough to see when you look at the trading screen
- I gave Mysticism and Meditation to Gilgamesh
- I gave Writing and Mathematics to Shaka


Setting up your own test game
Perhaps someone else can run a separate test game to validate or contradict my results.

Note that to have an AI "meet" another AI, I generated a map where we'd be isolated on a continent with Zara. Then, I would World-build in a Scout from a different AI and place it next to Zara's cultural borders. After ending the turn, the two AI would "meet" each other. Then, I deleted the other AI's Scout using the World-builder (this last step was probably not a necessary step, but it was a fun one!).

THE RESULT: Zara WILL NOT trade Math to us!



City 3--Delaying it means Writing comes Faster and thus The Oracle and Confucianism both come Faster

Spoiler :

I don't think that a 3rd city will ruin too much our economy if settled in the Cows/Oasis area.

Okay, but the question still remains: If someone runs a test game that says we can get Writing and The Oracle 1 turn faster by delaying the settling of City 3, would you be willing to delay settling City 3 for several turns? If no, then how many turns would we need to save on researching Writing before you would agree to delay settling City 3?

I'm thinking that 1W of cows can be a good location and we can have room for city on the Incense

I'll have to add that suggestion to the list of 5 other possible locations for the Cow + Oasis City.

A worker will considerably help the Oracle, so only research can be a constraint.

From my understanding, even 1 Worker will be enough to fully chop The Oracle on time, as research really is our major constraint here. That said, the extra Worker will be of great value to our empire.

Build Order: Worker 2 -> Oracle -> Library -> Temple

Spoiler :

The build queue for Dehli can be Worker - Oracle - Temple.

Would you agree that a Library before a Temple wouldn't seriously impact our Great Prophet date, while allowing us to research techs (such as the required Meditation tech) that much faster?

But, if we manage to chop the Temple in the last turn before it completes, we'll gain a ton of overflow.

Into what unit or building were you thinking to use this overflow? A Settler? If yes to the Settler, then when will we slate in a Library?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Mitchum wants to know about every inaccuracy in our test game. The RESULT: Tell him about anything that you find!

Spoiler :

No one has downloaded the lastest save with copper added here. Only two people had downloaded the one before this one. This worries me in two ways:

1. Two people are testing with the wrong save, or
2. No one else besides me is doing any testing on the correct save (at least 2 others may be running tests with the wrong save, which is better than nothing)

OR:
3. Dhoom knows how to World-build in a Copper. Dhoom didn't want to bother bugging you to upload a new saved game just to add a single Resource that anyone doing any serious testing would be able to add in themselves. Perhaps the other person is in the same situation.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Test Game Idea for the Code of Laws date: Organized Civs may chase after Code of Laws

Spoiler :

Code of Laws (T151) went quite late in the religion game. I would expect this to be an outlier and for it to go earlier in our game.

Organized Civs might be more willing to research this tech a lot earlier, as they beeline it for Courthouses.

I'll run a test for a "race to Code of Laws," using Leaders with the Organized Trait.


Also, the religious leaders tend to "stop teching after a religion" if they already have one. Since we're stealing a lot of the religions in our real game, they might be more encouraged to chase after the remaining religions.

Test Game Idea for Religions in General: Delete each Religion as soon as it is Founded

Spoiler :

It might be worth deleting the religions that get founded by the AIs as you go (the Edit City screen allows you to do so--just click on the religion icons for Religion In The City and Holy City--clicking on the icons will toggle them on or off).


EDIT: There IS 1 turn of delay between a religion being founded and it being adopted by an AI, making this test as feasible as possible, because you can remove all traces of a religion before an AI adopts it.

Spoiler What do I mean by feasible? :

Well, I don't know which of the following factors is the factor that causes AIs to reduce their religious beelining:
- if it just a matter of "having a State Religion"
- if it is "having at least 1 city with a religion"
- if it is "having at least 1 Holy City"
Whichever it is, if we can remove all of those possibilities using the World-builder, then hopefully, the AIs will continue to beeline religions as quickly as possible.

If you have your 4000 BC saved game for the religious beeline, then I can run the test again, but this time will remove religions immediately.

THE RESULT: The Religious AIs will (hopefully) continue to beeline additional religious techs, giving us some of their fastest dates possible!

 

[BLubmuz]

Have you given up on Lightbulbing Theology? Because we'll need to self-tech Meditation in order to do so.

No, just it's not a priority.
We can even have it in trade.

Also, so where in our build order do you want us to slot in the Hindu Missionary from the Capitol?

Hindu? why Hindu? why not send the Confu free missionary in Dehli and then adopt Confu?

Into what unit or building were you thinking to use this overflow? A Settler? If yes to the Settler, then when will we slate in a Library?

Unit? The Oracle!
C'mon, a bit of imagination!
Building a temple will let us put a priest at work: 1H+1C/turn until the GPro pops. Dehli is working poor land, so it's not a great loss: 1F+2H versus 1H+1G and 3GPP.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

We must self-tech Meditation, and soon

Spoiler :

No, just it's not a priority.
We can even have it in trade.

Most AIs will not research a religious tech if its corresponding religion was already learned. Zara is VERY UNLIKELY to know Meditation, as he did not found Buddhism.

Even if he did know it, it is VERY UNLIKELY that the 1 AI that he met will ALSO know that tech.

So, we will almost certainly be unable to trade for Meditation no matter how quickly you beeline Alphabet.

Discussion on Early Alphabet and how Religion is an Important Related Factor

Spoiler :

Hindu? why Hindu? why not send the Confu free missionary in Dehli and then adopt Confu?

I explained why. We'll want the Organized Religion bonus in the capitol. I gave several options to do so. One option would require us to build a Confucian Missionary in a Size 1 city--the Confucian Holy City. Until the Missionary is built and has successfully spread the religion in the capitol, we will either be:
- running a religion that counter to the one that we gave to Zara, or:
- running a religion that takes away the Organized Religion Hammer bonus in all cities (since the only city with that religion will be busy building a Missionary, which is a unit, so building it does not benefit from the Organized Religion Hammer bonus). However, we must remain in the expensive Organized Religion Civic during this time period, as if we slip out of it, then the Missionary cannot be built unless we first build a Monastary of the same religion.

THE RESULT: Early Alphabet is an idea that is very tough to execute effectively.


Library before Temple

Spoiler :

The build queue for Dehli can be Worker - Oracle - Temple.
But, if we manage to chop the Temple in the last turn before it completes, we'll gain a ton of overflow.

Into what unit or building were you thinking to use this overflow?

Unit? The Oracle!

Okay, I am clearly confused.
Here is what I understood from what you wrote:
We will build a Worker. When the Worker is done, we will build The Oracle. When we are done building The Oracle, we will build a Temple. On the last turn of building the Temple, we will chop a Forest. That Forest will provide a lot of overflow Hammers.

Since you listed nothing in your build queue after a Temple, I simply asked into what unit or building you would have the overflow go.

But you said The Oracle, which should have already been built by that point.

So I am confused as to what you meant.

Building a temple will let us put a priest at work: 1H+1C/turn until the GPro pops. Dehli is working poor land, so it's not a great loss: 1F+2H versus 1H+1G and 3GPP.

I do not think that you need to convince the team to build a Temple and to run a Priest Specialist. Doing so is in our plan and no one disagreed with this point.

However, I am suggesting that we take 2 extra turns to first build a Library (1 turn to invest Hammers into a building and another turn to whip it) before building the Temple. If we whip both the Library and the Temple, we will only delay building the Temple by 2 turns. In exchange, we will get a lot more Scientific value out of our capitol's Commerce that much sooner.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Test Game Results: Code of Laws race AND Observations on how AIs research techs early in the game

Spoiler :

I'll run a test for a "race to Code of Laws," using Leaders with the Organized Trait.

Here's what I observed:
- If we put a Great Spy by each AI, they will meet us on the next turn (even though our unit is invisible), which may slightly affect their tech research path, when they try to piggyback off of techs that we know
- I grabbed Hinduism and Judaism, to discourage the AIs from going down this path and making them play "closer" to what will happen in our real game. I learned Writing at about the same time that we planend to do so, right after Turn 90. Eventually, a couple of AIs grabbed Polytheism as an "after thought," or perhaps for building The Temple of Artemis
- The Organized Civs (I also threw in Qin, as the Chinese also tend to beeline Confucianism) had a race for Meditation
- Whenever a religious tech was learned by another AI, the others gave up on researching it immediately, and would only return to it after a while of researching many other techs. I saw this happen for a few religious techs, including Code of Laws. All other techs appeared to be researched to completion, although a tech that gives a Great Person, such as Music, might have a similar "temporarily discarding partial research" approach
- Once 1-2 AIs knew a tech, the other AIs that knew those AIs would tend to piggyback off of the research of the known techs. Thus, without Alphabet from the Human Player, there was a lot of goofing around in everyone repeatedly researching The Wheel, Animal Husbandry, Sailing, Iron Working, etc, long before chasing after Confucianism
- On Turn 125, 875 BC, Mao finally started to learn Writing, but when for Mathematics afterwards
- After Mao completed Writing, others started to research Writing, too. Some of them did so as soon as they were done their research on their currently-selected tech
- On Turn 152, 320 BC, Darius I of Persia finally started to learn Code of Laws. He would have learned it around Turn 165, but I destroyed most of his empire, to see if anyone else would start learning the tech
- On Turn 168, 80 BC, Mao finally also started learning Code of Laws
- When Darius I learned Code of Laws a couple of turns later, Mao immediately switched to learning a different tech (Calendar, I think it was)

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Happiness is not a Pressing Issue--We do not need to build a Warrior in the Capitol

Spoiler :

Happiness was never an issue. With the silver and religion, I didn't need a warrior in Delhi until after T90

Okay, thanks for clarifying.

The AI are VERY TRICKY when Settling--be careful, as they may beat you to a City Site that you thought FOR SURE would be yours!

Spoiler :

As I said, my research dropped quite a bit when I settled city 3. We should be able to get Writing a few turns sooner and the Oracle can be finished with a third chop at any time. Plus, city 3 didn't really contribute that much since I didn't have any spare worker turns until about T90 to do any improvements there.

The biggest concern I have with this approach is that we want to use city 3 to minimize the chance that Zara settles toward us. If we see his settler and settle city 3 at that point, will the settler actually turn around? Or would he still settle toward us?

He'll very likely re-evaluate where to settle.

A test game would tell us for sure.

However, the AI are tricky: they will escort a Settler with an Archer, appearing to move only 1 square at a time. Then BAM! They will intelilgently move the Settler to a flatland square and sit down on the same turn, moving the Archer the one square to guard the newly founded city.

It may be too much to ask for the UP player to be vigilant, knowing how few Warriors we will have in the area.

Settling the Stone + Marble City can save us Gold Per Turn from Unit Supply Maintenance

Spoiler :

Unit supply was 1 gold per turn. Please verify, but I think this covers all land to the west, north, south and most of the east...

Looks pretty good. We can then save the 1 gold per turn by settling a Marble + Stone City, once that city's borders expand, by leaving the two Warriors up there in their current places (on the Marble and NW of the Stone).

The north-eastern-most Warrior could even afford to stand 1 square to the east, without reducing our spawn-busting coverage.

 

[BLubmuz]

Most AIs will not research a religious tech if its corresponding religion was already learned. Zara is VERY UNLIKELY to know Meditation, as he did not found Buddhism.

Even if he did know it, it is VERY UNLIKELY that the 1 AI that he met will ALSO know that tech.

So, we will be almost certainly be unable to trade for Meditation no matter how quickly you beeline Alphabet.

Still, we have time for Alpha before Medi. Why not give our luck a chance?

I explained why. We'll want the Organized Religion bonus in the capitol. I gave several options to do so. One option would require us to build a Confucian Missionary in a Size 1 city--the Confucian Holy City. Until the Missionary is built and has successfully spread the religion in the capitol, we will either be:
- running a religion that counter to the one that we gave to Zara, or:
- running a religion that takes away the Organized Religion Hammer bonus in all cities (since the only city with that religion will be busy building a Missionary, which is a unit, so building it does not benefit from the Organized Religion Hammer bonus). However, we must remain in the expensive Organized Religion Civic during this time period, as if we slip out of it, then the Missionary cannot be built unless we first build a Monastary of the same religion.

Misunderstanding here!
No, we don't need to build an expensive missionary in a size 1 city.
step1: found Confucianism
step2: send the FREE missionary in Dehli
step2.1: if the missionary is successful, we can just change religion, so both cities will benefit. The problem is Silverado, but it's Jew anyway.
step3: once Dehli finishes Temple and Oracle (see below) we can build a missionary there to send to Zara.
also, Confu usually spreads very quickly and we have great chances it auto-spreads to Zara. Still, we can build the missionary for Siverado.

Okay, I am clearly confused.
Here is what I understood from what you wrote:
We will build a Worker. When the Worker is done, we will build The Oracle. When we are done building The Oracle, we will build a Temple. On the last turn of building the Temple, we will chop a Forest. That Forest will provide a lot of overflow Hammers.

Since you listed nothing in your build queue after a Temple, I simply asked into what unit or building you would have the overflow go.

But you said The Oracle, which should have already been built by that point.

So I am confused as to what you meant.

I see
Dehli:
- finish settler (1 turn)
- build worker
- build a warrior or happiness can be a problem. safety too.
- build a temple, with great care in chopping it the very last turn
- build the Oracle.
- take CoL. Game almost won.

clear now?
Some test can help. of course.

 

[BLubmuz]

Do we have decided if we mine that copper?

I think it's worth doing. A GL copper mine is 2F+4H. Every holy turn.
With OR, +1H only for that, every turn.
If we can spare chops for anything better than the Oracle without marble, better do so.

We already discussed the option to mine a hill, but that was only 1H+1C.
This is ways huge.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Early Alphabet won't work well with our strategy

Spoiler :

Still, we have time for Alpha before Medi. Why not give our luck a chance?

Do we really have the time? I recall from havr's testing that in researching Meditation immediately after Writing, Meditation became a bottleneck for Lightbulbing. I.e. we got the Great Prophet before we could use it.

In addition, the sooner that we learn Theology, the sooner that:
1. we will keep the other AIs away from the religious techs that lead up to Theology and thus the longer it will take for them to research Monarchy and thus the longer it will take for them to reseach the dreaded Feudalism
2. we will have the ability to expand the borders of our 4th city
3. we will stop losing 1 Gold Per Turn from having an extra Great Prophet sitting around doing nothing
4. we can stop worrying about an overseas AI, such as Isabella, beating us to Christianity


Missionaries coming too late to help Early Alphabet

we don't need to build an expensive missionary in a size 1 city.
step1: found Confucianism
step2: send the FREE missionary in Dehli
step2.1: if the missionary is successful, we can just change religion, so both cities will benefit. The problem is Silverado, but it's Jew anyway.
step3: once Dehli finishes Temple and Oracle (see below) we can build a missionary there to send to Zara.

Okay, but if our Missionary is not successful, then we'll HAVE to build another Misionary and it will most likely be a Hindu one.

But, let's just say that we do spread the right religion domestically. That just means that it will take that much longer for Zara to get a religion that we want him to have (either via automatic spread or via manual spread). It takes 10 turns (probably 15 turns on Epic) for us to gain each additonal +1 in "shared religion" bonus.

It will actually take a LONG time before Zara is Friendly with us.

My testing shows that he won't give us Math unless we are Friendly with him or unless the world already seems to know Math. In the latter case, we might as well give up on The Pyramids and The Hanging Gardens, as the AIs in BTS do chop and with their Math-benefiting chops, they can just as easily beat us to either Wonder.


If you are at all serious about getting The Pyramids, then we should grab Math manually before going after Alphabet.

Pottery before Math or Alphabet

Spoiler :

If you run a test game, you'll also see that researching either Math or Alphabet without first learning Pottery is going to take a VERY LONG TIME with 3 Cities settled.

So minimally, we'll need to slot Pottery in before either tech, unless we reveal a Grassland River Gem in the hidden squares to the west of Zara's capitol.

The closer our Holy City is to Zara, the more likely our religion will automatically spread to him

Spoiler :

Confu usually spreads very quickly and we have great chances it auto-spreads to Zara.

I'm not sure that there exists any concrete evidence that one religion spreads faster than any other religion.

However, we may get lucky in that City 3, being very close to Zara, will be more likely to spread its religion to a closeby city, which, luck would have it, if City 3 = a Cow + Oasis City, then Zara's capitol would be a closeby city!

Spreading a Second Religion in a Small-sized City Often Fails

Spoiler :

Still, we can build the missionary for Siverado.I see

Spreading a second religion to Silverado before it has grown to Size 3 is a bit of a gamble. The 1 population point isn't all that "willing" to be converted, while if there are more people there, then many of the atheists or those "fed up" with the existing religion are often much more willing to accept the new religion.

No Warrior is required in our Capitol's Build Order

Spoiler :

- build a warrior or happiness can be a problem. safety too.

Read Mitchum's test. He said that a Warrior would not be needed for happiness, even after growing the city a couple of times.

Finally, he was building Warriors in Silverado, so when it does come time to needing a Military Policeman, it would make more sense to delegate the building of this Warrior from Silverado, instead of making our capitol be busy on such an extraneous task, wouldn't you agree?

Worker 2 -> The Oracle, not Worker 2 -> Temple

Spoiler :

- build a temple, with great care in chopping it the very last turn
- build the Oracle.
- take CoL. Game almost won.

I don't understand why we wouldn't start on The Oracle immediate after the Worker is complete. What is the point of getting a Temple now, when it can be whipped in 2 turns at any time? For now, we'll want to maximize our population, so that we can work as many Hammer-producing squares as possible (Plains Hills River square, Copper square, and according to Mitchum, a Mined Grassland Hills River square), then, once The Oracle is complete, using some of that population to whip buildings, such as a Temple and a Library.


Getting the Temple sooner would only really be useful if we started running a Priest Specialist sooner. If we did THAT, then we'd get our Great Prophet even SOONER. Already, we won't get Meditation fast enough for our Great Prophet by researching Meditation after Writing. But instead, you want to HURRY UP the production of the Great Prophet while DELAYING the research on Meditation until after learning Alphabet. The net result? Our Great Prophet will simply sit around for a lot longer time. What's the benefit of us doing so?

The only thing that I can think of would be that we could start working on a Great Scientist a bit sooner, but without having run a test game using this scenario, I'm not certain if Temple before The Oracle plus running an early Priest will delay our Oracle date or not.

THE RESULT: An extra-early Great Prophet is mostly useless, although we could technically start generating a Great Scientist sooner. That's about the only justification we can try to make for Worker 2 -> Temple -> The Oracle.