SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

[Irgy]

Wow, so many posts since I started my last one. The tech begging thing sounds better than trading, although I wouldn't have expected it to work. We can still trade Math to him otherwise if it does though, right?

 

[Irgy]

Oh, and I'm not a big fan of the idea of letting Saladin settle on our land just to get Buddhism from him. I'd much rather settle his land We need all the population we can get, right? It's a very interesting idea in general though.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Begging for Iron Working + Fishing at the same time from Zara and what to do if he refuses

Spoiler :

So this is the only tech dealing we should do this turn?

If we are successful, yes.

If we try it and are unsuccessful (i.e. if Zara refuses), I recommend that we trade Alphabet to Zara for those 2 techs.

Are you fairly confident that he will give them to us?

The test game says so. We've made the test game reflect the actual game as much as possible. So, yes, I am "fairly confident." Am I 100% certain? No. But it's hard to be 100% certain in a game like Civ 4. "Fairly confident" will have to do.

Even if Zara refuses but would have given us a lesser deal, it wouldn't have helped us out at all. We want those 2 techs now. So, it's an all-or-nothing kind of a deal. Just getting one of those techs in a demand won't solve our tech trading situation.

If so, this is a huge deal, allowing us to get a lot more out of Alphabet, especially with two leaders to trade with.

It may not work, but we should still be okay, since we have enough techs to trade to them. It's just a nice bonus if we can get Iron Working + Fishing (asked for at the same time) for free.

Also, you said that if he accepts this deal, he will cancel our resource trade next turn. Why?

You can only have one demand active with each AI at a time.

When you demand techs from an AI, they can't "take them back" and make you "unlearn" those techs. So, demanding techs is the exception to the rule. Anything that is a over-time demand (Resources and/or Gold per Turn) will be cancelled on the turn following your next demand. I also confirmed this fact in the test game.

Is it because he gave us his cow for free and won't give us techs for free too?

He gave us Clam for free, which is why he'll cancel the Clam.

He'll still give us techs for free. We might be asking for too much, but the test game says that he'll give them to us. Also asking for Hunting in the test game made Zara refuse.

If we only get one of Iron Working or Fishing, it won't help us, since we'll still have to trade away the same number of techs to the AIs. Only if we successfully "beg" Zara to give us both at the same time will we save ourselves a tech trade.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

The order of actions for Trading and Tech Begging

The tech begging thing sounds better than trading, although I wouldn't have expected it to work.

I left the test game as an exercise, so that you guys could try it for yourselves, instead of just trusting me.

We can still trade Math to him otherwise if it does though, right?

The rest of T150
First, we get Open Borders and Wine from Saladin for Open Borders and a Health Resource.
Next, we confirm that Zara is Pleased with us.
If Zara is Pleased with us, we will ask Zara to give us both Iron Working + Fishing at once, without offering him anything.
If he agrees, no more trading occurs on this turn.
If he disagrees or if he was Cautious with us and thus we did not ask him for techs for free, we will trade Alphabet to Zara for Iron Working + Fishing.
No more trading occurs on this turn.

On this turn, we'll also hire a Scientist in Delhi in place of the GHRiv Mine
We will also have Worker 1 move 1W to chop the Crab City's GFor

I am also going to ask that we confirm that Currency is selected and our Science Rate is set to 0%, unless someone wants to argue for a different tech.

The start of T151
Once our Settler in Delhi is complete, we'll start to produce a Worker
Next, we will reassess our trading options, which means that BLubz will let us know what's available for trade.


The Trap for Saladin = Hopefully, extra Cities that he won't settle and we can settle a bit later
We're not letting Saladin settle, we're just going to trap his Settler

Oh, and I'm not a big fan of the idea of letting Saladin settle on our land just to get Buddhism from him.

The plan is not to let him settle. But remember how Zara's Settling Party got messed up earlier? We want to be able to do the same to Saladin, so that he stops building Settlers (or at least builds less of them).

The goal will be to let him land somewhere near the Crab or Rice. Then, settle both Crab and Rice Cities on the turn that he lands.

BLubz said that he was going to make a dot map screenshot, so I hope that he still plans to do so, just to confirm that we all understand where to settle these Cities.

Even if Saladin has Open Borders with us, it will take him longer to land his Settling Party and then figure out where to go next than it will to send a Galley straight to the Three Clams spot.

We're about to get 2 Settlers out, so we can almost certainly beat him to the Crab and Rice City locations, but there is a risk that he will follow-up his Work Boat with a Galley. We want his Settler Party to land in the SW, which will buy us extra turns.

His Settler Party might just stand around doing nothing. It might try and settle a City between our Cities (which would mean that we could easily later take it over culturally). Or it might try and walk to the Three Clams spot. We should be able to beat it to the Three Clams spot, especially since we'll see him walking there and can whip the Settler in Bedrock at that point (although it's better not to whip the Settler in Bedrock if we can avoid doing so).


This strategy requires BLubmuz to put the Settlers for the Crab City and Rice City in place but NOT CREATE THE CITIES until:
a) Saladin lands a Settler Party, and then we must do so immediately
OR
b) a number of Worker actions have been executed, allowing us to improve the nearby terrain. I gave the exact details in a previous message and then I also mentioned that point a second time; I don't want to have to do it a third time--people can read the original message if they want to know what the conditions for settling all 3 Cities will be

I'd much rather settle his land We need all the population we can get, right?

Exactly. That's the whole point of this strategy.

If we settle all of our land just before Saladin arrives, he'll settle somewhere else. If we instead trick his Settler Party into landing in a spot where we won't let him get a City, it will mean that he won't beat us to a different City location. We'll get an extra City out of the bargain.

 

[Irgy]

Ok, I get what you're doing at least. I'm still pretty dubious about it because it feels like it could easily not work or completely backfire, and there's an obvious cost involved, but it's an awesome idea.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Ok, I get what you're doing at least. I'm still pretty dubious about it because it feels like it could easily not work or completely backfire, and there's an obvious cost involved, but it's an awesome idea.

Well, I tried it out in a test game, but the differences were that the AI's Galley + Settler Party were World-buildered in and the AI's main Cities were not really anywhere near to us.

The AI's Settler Party landed somewhere in between Crab and Rice Cities. By setting on that turn with just the Rice City, in one test, I found that the AI Settler Party just sat there. In another test, I settled just the Crab City and the AI Settler party started to move north, at which point I settled the Rice City and kicked the AI out of our borders.

Those tests were done a while ago, and I'll be too busy for a while to run more, but you're free to try your own.

I don't want to pin Saladin's behaviour exactly based on test games where the conditions may be a bit different, but what was clear was that the AI's Settler Party wasn't getting back on its Galley. So, once the Settler Party lands, consider it to be "stranded." Then, it's just up to us to determine if the timing of completing the Settler in Bedrock will require a whip or not; that is, if the AI Settler Party even bothers to race for the Three Clams location.

 

[BLubmuz]

I confirm that Zara is still Pleased, that i started Currency and that i've set research to 0%.

Now, can anyone post a short plan for my TS?
I will try to draft one in few hours.

I'm still dubious to start trades with Sal right now.

I know i'm delaying my PPPs and so on, but this is due to RL constraints.

My point about the risk to run out of time for this game is still valid and my constraints in those days are just waht can happen to anyone of us in the wrong moment (when a player is UP). Swaps cost RL time, since we must confirm, focus, etc. We need to be faster in plan-confirm-play. No reason to be perfect and to not finish the game.

 

[unclethrill]

Okay here is my opinion on being able to finish:

The game runs from April 23 to August 23. This is approximately 17 weeks.
We are currently at the 8 1/2 week point.
We are at T150.

Our ultimate goal is to finish around 330 turns. That puts us at almost half the turns done and right at half the time gone.

Based on these numbers, we are really not in a bad situation on time. Of course we can't stall too much but there doesn't appear to be any real reason to just hurry up and take a chance on making a mistake right now. Especially with all the effort we have put in up to this point.

Hopefully this analysis will help put to rest some of the fears some of us have been expressing (including myself).

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I confirm that Zara is still Pleased, that i started Currency and that i've set research to 0%.

Now, can anyone post a short plan for my TS?

I'll repost what I wrote above, with this new info in mind. I still think that we should just play this short little bit and then see what's up for trade on the next turn.

After that, I suggest that we agree upon the trade and you make only the trade as your next action (let's call it PPP2 Part 2). After that point, we should hopefully know both Iron Working and Animal Husbandry, and you can either give me screenshots, the save it self, or textual descriptions that tell us where to put the Iron and Horses, should there be any besides the Horse Resource that Zara obviously has.

With the info of where the Resources are at, I can update the test saved game and you can use it to help create your turnset's PPP3 (which should hopefully take us to the end of the turnset).


PPP2 Part 1
T150
Trade Open Borders plus Wine (in the same trade deal) from Saladin for Open Borders and a Health Resource

Talk with Zara and ask him to give us both Iron Working + Fishing at once, without offering him anything. "Could you spare this for a good friend?" is the text that you want to click on once both Iron Working and Fishing are on the table

If he agrees, no more trading occurs on this turn.
If he disagrees, trade Alphabet to Zara for Iron Working + Fishing.
No more trading occurs on this turn.

***EDIT:*** Leave Delhi working the GHRiv Mine instead of hiring a 6th Scientist there. So, work the 2 Corns, Copper, GHRiv Mine, and 5 Scientists, as we were already doing
Move Worker 1 1W (SE + E of the Crab and NW + N of the Fish) and Chop the Crab City's GFor
Unfortify Warrior 2 (if you already Fortified him) on the PFor (E + E of the Crab). Skip his turn (Spacebar)

Spoiler :

I suggest that you keep skipping his turn on each turn, as doing so will allow you to immediately spot Saladin's Galley. Remember that Galleys all appear "empty" in BTS, because you can't see the units in them, but if a Galley is coming our way, it WILL contain units.

T151 (the start of it)
Now's the turn where we get a Summary of Civs. Write down our status relative to other Civs and let us know (Most Cultured, Most Wealthy, etc)
Expect Zara to cancel the Clam deal. Choose the "Fair enough" option.

Spoiler :

We can't beg again so soon after the first begging--if we beg again now, we just extend the time period before we can successfully beg again (a bad thing to do). So, no more begging for a couple of turnsets. We also don't have anything to trade with him for the Clam. Whichever of Wheat or Corn Saladin did not get from us is not worth a Clam, since Wheat and Corn both count as 2 Health points with a Granary.

Build a Settler in Delhi -> Worker
Save the game
Report back to the thread about the trading situation

End of PPP2 Part 1


PPP2 Part 2
Make whatever trade we agreed upon
Save the game using a different name for the saved game

Spoiler :

Note that the game can sometimes, although rarely, crash if you save over top of an old saved game. Doing so corrupts the old saved game and crashes the current game, which requires us to report the issue to the SGOTM staff. It's a good habit to get into: avoid saving over an existing saved game, just to avoid this bug.

End of PPP2 Part 2

I know i'm delaying my PPPs and so on, but this is due to RL constraints.

No worries. We understand. As UT said, we need not be worried. As long as participation of the team remains active, we won't run into timing issues, as someone can always take over a turnset, if real life demands it.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

PPP3 Initial Thoughts

It is hard to plan too many Worker Actions right now
We're mostly going to have to wait to see Iron and Horse Resources before we plan out the Worker actions.

However, there are a couple of items that I think we can discuss.


Civics + Religion Switching Together

OK, done.
- revolted to No state religion/paganism

Now that we're in Paganism, we'll have to remember to switch into BOTH Organized Religion AND Slavery at the same time. We will also want to immediately switch into Confucianism, so that we will get the Organized Religion bonus on any whip action that we perform.

We will then need to stay in Organized Religion for a while, since Riverdale's next build will be a Confucian Missionary and Delhi will be building The Hanging Gardens.

Even if we do get Buddhism, it won't hurt to have Confucianism in many of our Cities, too, in case we need to switch into that religion temporarily (say, to convince Zara to switch Civics or to attack someone). The more Cities that have both religions, the less of an impact will occur if we need to switch religions temporarily just to manipulate Zara later on.



Warrior 6 (in the northern Desert)

Turn 150
- moved warrior 1NW from the desert hill

Great idea! We'll fog-bust a bit more of the Coast this way. I am guessing that we plan to fortify him there, right? Later, once we send out Galleys, we may need to bring this unit back into our cultural borders, in order to save on Unit Supply costs. But that situation isn't going to happen for a little while.


Workers 3 and 4 at Wheaties, plus where do we plan to get our Settlers for this off-continent expansion?

- both workers in Wheaties have chopped/stop, chop complete next turn, settler in 2

I realise that you stopped both Workers in order to keep us flexible, but it will cost us 1 turn just to come back to this Forest, so we should plan to chop it now.

DISCUSSION POINT: Since we are going to build a Worker in Delhi AND since people seem to be highly in favour of off-continent REXing AND since we likely still have a monopoly on Theology, I suggest that we build a second Settler in Wheaties next, instead of the planned Worker.

We will need to build a Settler from SOMEWHERE if we want to settle off-continent, right?

Bedrock will be whipped to the bone building a Galley or two and will take forever to build a Settler.

Delhi will be busy building The Hanging Gardens and then either building another Wonder or trying to get a 4th Great Person.

Silverado takes, what, 38 turns (way too long) to build a Settler?

All of our other Cities will be too small.

In fact, we might want to pump out TWO MORE Settlers from Wheaties before we build the Granary + the Apostolic Palace. Otherwise, we won't be getting Settlers out anytime soon.

We can chop these Settlers (the PFor chop that is about to be completed can be followed-up by chopping both PHFors, starting with the northern PHFor and working our way south to the other PHFor, since the southern one actually has a chance of spreading itself so we'll want to make it last a bit longer). One Worker out of Workers 3 and 4 can do this chopping--the first one done chopping the PFor.

The other Worker will hopefully be able to start Pasturing the Cow once it gets its next movement point.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

RE: Hiring a Scientist in Delhi
Okay, I played around with the numbers a bit.

Yes, we can get a Great Person (hopefully, a Great Scientist) in Delhi 1 turn sooner, by hiring a 6th Scientist Specialist. But doing so delays our production in Delhi by 4 to 5 turns. We risk losing The Hanging Gardens if we delay things that long.

So, while it worked to hire another Scientist when we were building a Missionary, since we're instead going to build a more expensive Worker, we need the Hammers more than we need the Great People Points.

If we keep working the GHRiv Mine and just have 5 Scientists, then the Worker can be built on the same turn that we get our Great Person, meaning that the timing of switching out of Caste System can coincide perfectly with when we need Slavery + Organized Religion + Confucianism in Delhi for the Aqueduct.

We might not need Slavery in Delhi, but we for sure want it for Riverdale.

It still has yet to be tested if whipping the Aqueduct is going to be worth it (it probably will be worth it, though).

 

[Mitchum]

PPP2 Part 1
T150
Trade Open Borders plus Wine (in the same trade deal) from Saladin for Open Borders and a Health Resource

Talk with Zara and ask him to give us both Iron Working + Fishing at once, without offering him anything. "Could you spare this for a good friend?" is the text that you want to click on once both Iron Working and Fishing are on the table

If he agrees, no more trading occurs on this turn.
If he disagrees, trade Alphabet to Zara for Iron Working + Fishing.
No more trading occurs on this turn.

Leave Delhi working the GHRiv Mine instead of hiring a 6th Scientist there. So, work the 2 Corns, Copper, GHRiv Mine, and 5 Scientists, as we were already doing
Move Worker 1 1W (SE + E of the Crab and NW + N of the Fish) and Chop the Crab City's GFor
Unfortify Warrior 2 (if you already Fortified him) on the PFor (E + E of the Crab). Skip his turn (Spacebar)

T151 (the start of it)

Now's the turn where we get a Summary of Civs. Write down our status relative to other Civs and let us know (Most Cultured, Most Wealthy, etc)

Expect Zara to cancel the Clam deal. Choose the "Fair enough" option.

Build a Settler in Delhi -> Worker

Save the game

Report back to the thread about the trading situation

End of PPP2 Part 1

This sounds like a good mini-PPP. Hopefully there is nothing controversial in here and BLubmuz can play this today...

 

[BLubmuz]

This sounds like a good mini-PPP. Hopefully there is nothing controversial in here and BLubmuz can play this today...

I can probably do it.
But i'd like to open the save, ask for the gift techs to Zara, try different options, then report here. Of course i will not make any irreversible move, so i won't save.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I can probably do it.
But i'd like to open the save, ask for the gift techs to Zara, try different options, then report here. Of course i will not make any irreversible move, so i won't save.

Just to clarify, because it is not clear from what you wrote...

Asking for a gift is an irreversible move.

So, as long as you are talking about trying to ask for different things using the test saved game, that sounds like a good plan.

If you're talking about the real game, we only get one chance to beg for a gift. You must keep the results, no matter what they are. If we ask a second time, not only will the AI refuse if asked a second time whenever you ask within 10 turns of the first time asking, but their hidden "begging" variable will have its integer value reduced every time that you ask, and this variable won't go down to a 0% chance of success unless you ask multiple times. So, asking twice in the real game would just hurt us.

 

[unclethrill]

good with me

 

[Dhoomstriker]

So, as long as you are talking about trying to ask for different things using the test saved game, that sounds like a good plan.

On that note, if you do come up with a different set of techs to beg for, it would be appreciated if you posted your suggested change to the thread before playing through with it, so that we have a chance to agree/disagree.

 

[Mitchum]

I can probably do it.
But i'd like to open the save, ask for the gift techs to Zara, try different options, then report here. Of course i will not make any irreversible move, so i won't save.

And of course, reloading a previous save after begging for a tech (an irreversible move) is forbidden. You know this since you're a vetran SGOTMer, but I just wanted to be crystal clear...

 

[BLubmuz]

And of course, reloading a previous save after begging for a tech (an irreversible move) is forbidden. You know this since you're a vetran SGOTMer, but I just wanted to be crystal clear...

I would try the possible trades, not the begging. Just to see what we can have, mainly from Sal.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I would try the possible trades, not the begging. Just to see what we can have, mainly from Sal.

I thought that you said you weren't a big fan of trading with Saladin. I also thought that you'd already checked out the trading possibilities.

Please note that we can't beg from Saladin, since there is no way that we went from Annoyed to Pleased just by getting rid of a -4 negative Diplo modifier (you don't even have to check, it is a fact that you can't change your attitude that much with a difference of 4 points).

EDIT: Begging when an AI is not Pleased or Friendly is one of the worst things that you can do in a Diplo game, as the AI will almost always refuse you and you will get a PERMANENT -1 negative Diplo modifier. Please be very careful and it's probably best to "play around" in the test game first and then figure out exactly the order of clicks and recording down the exact text that you expect to click on (I don't know if you play in Italian, and if yes, the text may be different from what I can quote to you, so a test game would tell you exactly the text to look for). Kindly do so before trying things out in the real game.

Anyway, after learning that the begging would work (with Zara only!!!), I don't even have any interest in trading on the first turn. Even then, if the begging from Zara fails, I'd rather trade Alphabet with Zara if we have the choice between the two Leaders.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I thought that we were already agreed for what to do T150. If not, please be sure to post your suggested changes and get approval before playing them.


If you want to play around some more, please use the test game.

I've updated it with the info that you have given me.

Some facts are still missing, such as whether Saladin wants any of our Resources in trade, but I made a guess that he will take something from us and thus I updated Isabella to want our Wheat (previously, she had both Wheat and Corn).