SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

[Mitchum]

Then next problem that I see is that if the AI splits the two early religions then we will likely have half the world Hindu and half Buddhist. If this is the case, diplo gets real hard real fast. This brings me back to the chance that a cultural may be the better choice.

Yes and no. In my game, I easily got Mansa and Napolean to switch from Judaism to Confucianism by spreading my religion to just 2 cities. With Hatty, the founder of Jedaism, I was able to get her to convert to Confucianism after spreading my religion to 3 of her 6 cities. A few turns later, she switched back to Judaism since it was in all of her cities. So after spreading my religion to all 6 of her cities, she switched to Confucianism a second time. This was a few turns before the vote, so I'm not sure if she would have switched back to Jadaism since the game was over.

 

[havr]

Guys,

The discussions are all very interesting. But, my feeling is that at some point we should make a decision and start playing. The decision will not be optimal (it can't be optimal), but we will have to live with it.

Dhoom's convinced me with his Religion chasing strategy -- if we were to go to with diplo. But as pointed out there is some risks. I still in the opinion we should go for cultural, but I can live with diplo equally well. Lets decide and start to play.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Dhoomstriker, since you can't play the game where you are, can you spend a bit of time looking at the charts for any nuggets that could be useful for us?

I have been able to get the game running here, but I took a look at the charts anyway.

I think that we could potentially get some useful info out of them, but it's hard to tell exactly how the charts are done.

My GUESS is that points on the graph only appear after the saved game is uploaded. For example, the Power graph, for example, shows every team having a flat line, except for the Plastic Ducks team. However, the Plastic Ducks team played a really long first session, up until Turn 36, 3100 BC. Thus, while it looks like the Plastic Ducks' Power level steadily rose higher than others teams' Power levels, my guess is that the graphs only "fill in the gaps between points on the graph with straight lines," meaning that all of the spots along the lines in between the starting and ending points are just averaged values and thus those spots on the line graphs that do not correspond to uploaded saved game points provide no useful information.

So, it's really tough to tell WHEN the Plastic Ducks' Power level jumped up to 15, but what we do know is that on Turn 36, 3100 BC, they had a Power level of 15, compared to all other teams' Power levels being at the initial level of 4, as late as Turn 21, 3475 BC. So, I caution anyone looking at the graphs to not interpret the lines connecting points, but only to evaluate the points that correspond to an uploaded saved game. Further, we don't know if the Plastic Ducks made it to Power level 15 ON turn 36 or if they did so a couple of turns prior to turn 36.


Because the ChokoMisfits uploaded a saved game on Turn 1 (i.e. 1 turn after the initial turn of Turn 0), and because they have no cultural value as of Turn 1, we know that they moved their Settler on Turn 0.


The 3 teams that played to the same turn (Barley Demons, Gypsy Kings, and Maple Sporks)--i.e. just played a "full turnset" without "stopping because of an interesting decision needing to be made"--all have similar cultural increases up until Turn 19, 2525 BC. That means they all settled on the same turn as each other.

Now, I'm not certain how the graph counts turns... but let us just say that a game uploaded on Turn 19, 2525 BC, is one that was played from the start of Turn 0, through the end of Turn 0, to the end of Turn 18, and partway through Turn 19. So, that leaves Turns 0 through 18 = 19 turns worth of cultural generation. Since each of those teams have 36 Culture (18 x 2) instead of 38 Culture (19 x 2), we can surmise that each of those teams moved the Settler on Turn 0 and settled on Turn 1.


The Smurkz team, who played up until Turn 10, 3750 BC, had 18 Culture at that point. Playing Turns 0 through 9 until the end of the turn would be 10 turns' worth of ended turns, but 18 = 9 x 2, so that team also moved their Settler and settled on Turn 1. What's INTERESTING is that the Graph's lines for the Smurks team and the other 3 teams that played until the same date appear not to overlap, but my guess is that it is an issue of the way the graph is presented--the half-way point of the x-axis is at Turn 10, while the end point is at Turn 19. Had the Smurks uploaded their saved game as of Turn 9, then the Cultural lines of all 4 teams would have overlapped exactly (that is my interpretation, anyway). So, once again, you have to be careful in interpreting the graphs--do not let graph lines that appear to diverge make you believe that the values are different for different teams--we only have the values at the time of their uploaded games to draw any useful info from.


Plastic Ducks on Turn 36, 3100 BC appear to have had 70 Culture, where Turns 0 through 35 were ended, but Turn 36 was not ended, resulting in 36 turns, but only 35 turns has 2 culture gained, so they moved their Settler
Phoenix Rising on Turn 21, 3475 BC appear to have had 42 Culture, where Turns 0 through 20 were ended, resulting in 21 turns, so they settled on Turn 0


In summary:
Barley Demons settled on Turn 1
ChokoMisfits moved their Settler on Turn 0, so will settle on Turn 1 or later
Gypsy Kings settled on Turn 1
Maple Sporks settled on Turn 1
Plastic Ducks settled on Turn 1
Phoenix Rising settled on Turn 0
Smurkz settled on Turn 1

I will STRONGLY CAUTION anyone analyzing the Game Progress area not to click on any of the teams' names--for whatever reason, probably for the ease of the Admins but to the danger of the rest of us, those team names link to their team threads, which are threads that we are not allowed to open. So, don't even copy and paste the other teams' names if you want to talk about them--type them out like I did, to avoid your browser goofing things up during a copy & paste operation and having your browser load their restricted thread.


So, what does my analysis mean? Well, either I suck at reading the graphs or else it means that only one other team (Phoenix Rising) chose to settle on Turn 0.

Now, I am a big fan of NOT copying what other teams do--if you like to mirror the moves of your opponent, I'll play you a game of chess where you play as black and I'll play as white--I will allow you to mirror my moves. I will have you check-mated in 4 moves.

But, what we CAN do is (using test games only, please, not the real game) run some scenarios: settle in place and figure out what we need to build and research in order to get a Score of 58 and Power of 4 (no change from the initial Power level) on Turn 21, and then we'll know the build order and research path of Phoenix Rising.

We can also make a fair assumption that other teams moved to the Plains Hills square and settled there, so we CAN (again, using test games only, please) try a few scenarios to see how we can obtain the following Score and Power values by moving to and settling on the Plains Hills square:
Turn 10, 3750 BC: A Score of 33 and a Power of 4 (no change from the initial Power level)
Turn 19, 3525 BC: A Score of 39 and a Power of 4 (no change from the initial Power level)
Turn 21, 3475 BC: A Score of 58 and a Power of 4 (no change from the initial Power level)
Turn 36, 3100 BC: A Score of 101 and a Power of 15


So those are 5 sets of values that someone can try to obtain using Mitchum's test save game.

 

[BLubmuz]

Now, I am a big fan of NOT copying what other teams do--if you like to mirror the moves of your opponent, I'll play you a game of chess where you play as black and I'll play as white--I will allow you to mirror my moves. I will have you check-mated in 4 moves.
Try with me...

But, what we CAN do is (using test games only, please, not the real game)
this goes without saying

Reading your analysis, seems that no one team founded an early religion.
Was this a choice or a lost race?

About graphs: you're correct, they just draw a straight line between one upload and next one. Sometimes, later in the game you can also see some odd jumps due to very close uploads.
In any case, you can see the lenght of the sessions between any upload selecting the list instead of the graphs.

And yes, it's well known that Team names link to Team threads. To the latest post, IIRC.

To newbies benefit, i add also that we're not allowed to download any other Team save. The less to open it.

Now that we seem to know that every or almost every other team settled on turn 1, so presumably on the PH, please don't use this as a way to counter our proposals to do so. I'm sure that we can risk 1 more turn goin' back to the flat terrain if we see nothing good.
OTOH, if many teams settled on turn 1, can you think they probably have seen something interesting? I do.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

RE: Test Path A]

Stats: 157/186 beakers in Masonry. 1 Pop. 0F 0H. 1 farm, 1 mine and 1 partial farm. 2 workers. I'm not sure what the second worker will likely start mine, but after that, we'll have 2 idle workers. Maybe a warrior build rather than a second worker would have made more sense...

The idea of getting a second Worker was because we wouldn't be growing while building a Warrior and working the only improved square available to us--the Plains Hills square.

Other alternatives to A] i. Worker->Worker and your suggested A] ii. Worker->Warrior (while either working the unimproved Corn or the PHMine) include:
A] iii. Worker->starting work on a Settler (working the PHMine), partially stopping work on it once the Corn is irrigated, growing to Size 2, then completing the Settler, netting us an early Settler
A] iv. Worker->Stonehenge (working the PHMine), and continuing to build Stonehenge whenever we aren't building Workers/Settlers, although we might want to slip in a Warrior in there, so this idea might be a little risky without another Warrior

Anyway, you are right that Worker->Warrior would probably give us a better comparison with Path B], so that we can see a more direct impact of what growing without the Irrigated Corn would do to us. I was trying to find a way (by building a Settler using the Mined Plains Hills square) to use the improved (Mined) PH square, but A] iii. and A] iv. also find a use for that improved square.

 

[BLubmuz]

From the list of saves, 12 Teams.

5 (included us) have not uploaded
1 (Smurkz) turn 10
3 (Barley Demons, Gypsy Kings, and Maple Sporks) turn 19
1 (Phoenix falling) turn 21
1 (Plastic Ducks) turn 36
1 (ChokoBleah) turn 1

EDIT before to spend time on all those tests, would not be better decide where to settle?
There will be many changes to your calculations if we settle on the hill !

 

[Dhoomstriker]

(presumably we get the extra beakers because many of the AI we had met already knew Agriculture when we started researching it, thus giving us a small bonus)

Since we have the equivalent of Flood Plains squares (the 2 Corn River squares), we're getting extra Commerce due to working 2 Corn squares ASAP--i.e. 1 extra Commerce per turn. The difference between being at Size 2 at Turn 15 via Path C] and Size 2 at Turn 32 via Path B] gives us the majority of the difference in Flasks--17 of them, with only 4 Flasks coming from elsewhere (probably, as you surmised, from an additional AI or two learning Agriculture before we did). That difference in Agriculture not only gains us 4 Flasks, but it puts the corresponding AI or two FURTHER BEHIND by about 4 Flasks or about 2 Flasks each if it were 2 AI, meaning that we'll increase our chances of being the first to Monotheism by piggy-backing off of the AIs techs instead of them piggy-backing off of ours.

On the other hand, if we're going for cultural, I prefer option B (Agriculture first). It's hard to effectively use more than 3 or 4 religions in a cultural victory and we will like found 2 or 3 of the later ones ourselves. We'd only need one to spread to us organically for a great culture game.

My best Cultural games are ones where I built the Cathedrals for 5+ Religions, so I would strongly disagree that religions beyond the 4th one don't matter that much. Additional religions have less of an impact in a game where you plan to have masses of Great Artists and plan to Bomb your way to victory, but since we're giving up Great People, that kind of a game isn't going to be ideal here, so for a Cultural game in this SGOTM, we'd want 5+ Religions--and if we can skip researching Divine Right (i.e. get 5+ religions without requiring one of them to be Islam), we'll be much farther ahead of any SGOTM competitors who also go for a Cultural victory.

Note that we are also behind by 10 worker turns.

What's interesting here is that while we are "behind" by 10 Worker turns, those turns hardly matter, since we are all in agreement to chase after Monotheism for Judaism.

By going down this tech path, our Worker will have a "gap" of time where nothing can be done after the Corns are Irrigated and the 1 unforested Hills square is mined. So, the FASTER that we can get to Bronze Working via our agreed-upon tech path, the sooner that the Worker can be productive again.

I would argue that after the Worker "catches up" with the other scenario of the Worker Irrigating Corn right from the gate will actually NOT be GEOMETRICALLY behind. In fact, since the Worker will have nothing to do, once the Worker has "caught up"--i.e. has improved the same 3 squares, then the two Paths will merge again in total output per square, as additional citizens won't be able to work any other improved squares. What that means is that the cost to delaying Agriculture is FINITE and it is mostly going to be a tradeoff, as Mitchum has outlined, of a bit less Food and Hammers initially for MORE Commerce (spent as Flasks).

The IMPLICATION here is that we will actually get Bronze Working the FASTEST with the Polytheism -> Agriculture, Warrior -> Worker path, meaning that our Worker will once again become MORE PRODUCTIVE by chopping Forests ASAP, whereas the other paths will have the Worker "hurrying-up and waiting" until Bronze Working can finally come in.


I would argue that IF we can get Hinduism, it will help for either victory condition. I would also argue that picking a path that maximizes our tech rate is a good one to follow in terms of getting to Monotheism, The Oracle, and Bronze Working as soon as we possibly can.

I would also claim that since we are going after Monotheism, the Worker will have nothing to do during a "downtime period," so I would be happy reducing that downtime period (by getting to Bronze Working on the earliest turn possible, given our tech path) at the cost of getting the Worker out-of-the-gate a bit later.


If we start research on Polytheism and miss founding Hinduism, we'll balance out the differences between the Test Paths by starting on Agriculture a bit sooner, while still benefiting from the extra Commerce regardless of when we start on Agriculture.

Finally, no research effort into Hinduism gets wasted--if we partially research it, we are able to piggy-back on the AIs' research of Agriculture, but they won't be able to piggy-back on our partial research into Polytheism. Meanwhile, we'd need Polytheism as our next tech ANYWAY, so we lose nothing in terms of Flasks invested by going after Polytheism first, even if we miss Hinduism.



So, if it isn't obvious, I am arguing towards this path:

My thoughts are that option C (Polytheism first and warrior first) is the best of both worlds.

 

[Mitchum]

I came to the same conclusion in a less thorough and thought provoking way. I think Dhoomstriker's breakdown of the cost/benefit of Polytheism first makes the advantage of this decision a bit more clear.

However, we still need to address BLubmuz' concern about getting over to the other continent and finding a Buddhist love fest...

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Reading your analysis, seems that no one team founded an early religion.

Not yet, anyway. There are other teams and there's still the chance of getting one of the first 2 religions a bit later, as Irgy was saying can be possible. Many teams won't have completed research on their second tech yet.

Was this a choice or a lost race?

Probably a choice in most cases, since you usually don't chase a religion if you move your Settler.

If someone figures out the Score values, then we can have a better idea of whether they went for Agriculture or a different tech initially.

I'm sure that we can risk 1 more turn goin' back to the flat terrain if we see nothing good.

That's part of the reason why claiming that moving to the Plains Hills square is "scouting" is incorrect. The initial Settler's location is on a Forest. So, do not mislead us by believing that moving to the Plains Hills square allows us to scout. UNLESS YOU WANT A CAPITOL WITHOUT BOTH Corn Resources IN IT, by moving to the Plains Hills square, you either are committing to settling on the Plains Hills square or else you are committing not to settle for TWO turns, as every settling location where there are 2 Corns would take at least one full turn to move to when starting on the Plains Hills square.

Now that we seem to know that every or almost every other team settled on turn 1, so presumably on the PH, please don't use this as a way to counter our proposals to do so.

Nowhere did I say that I would do things just because just about everyone else did something in a different way. All I said that I wouldn't do things just because just about everyone else DID do something. What I'd rather do is do something based on facts, information, logic, fitting that something in with our overall strategy and goals, and team consensus.

this goes without saying

We have 4 players on the team who are playing a SGOTM for their first time. I don't think that you should make any assumptions about our knowledge of how the SGOTM process works. Yes, we've all read the rules, but it helps to be reminded of the intricacies of the game every once and a while. I'm not even certain that the rules pages told us not to click on links to team names on the Progress page. Even if such a thing was stated somewhere, nowhere did it give us the tip to "try not to copy and paste team names or other linked data from that page, because you might misclick or your browser might misinterpret your mouse actions as a click, thus leading our team to the dishonourable doom of being disqualified due to unintentionally breaking the rules." So, if there are any other little things to watch out for, you, as one of the veterans of the SGOTM process, are someone whom we would like to rely on for sharing that knowledge.

 

[BLubmuz]

However, we still need to address BLubmuz' concern about getting over to the other continent and finding a Buddhist love fest...

Hard to do
Perhaps if you and Dhoom can stop your love fest and start talkin' where to move that warrior (for what matters) and mainly where to settle we surely can save some day...

 

[Dhoomstriker]

However, we still need to address BLubmuz' concern about getting over to the other continent and finding a Buddhist love fest...

On the contrary, I would LOVE to see that situation happen.

Consider the possibility of there being another continent, where religious spread is unlikely to happen until after Astronomy or else after Galleys have found a really round-about path around the world.

Let's say that there are 2 AIs over there. They'd make for perfect war declaration targets, wouldn't they?

Let's say that there are 3 AIs over there. We'd just need to grab Buddhism (settle a city there, settle many cities throughout the world and Open Borders with one of them, or else capture a city from one of them) and then we would use Buddhist love to win the game. 2 of our neighbours could give us their land area. We would manually spread Buddhism to our other neighbour (it's not too much to ask to spam a religion to one AI, is it?)

Let's say that there are 4 AIs over there. Then the situation with 3 AIs over there is similar except that in this case, it's even better, as we wouldn't need to spam Buddhism at all.

EDIT: Let's say that all but 1 of the AIs is over there. That situation exactly matches the recent Vanilla Diplo-only GOTM, and having them mostly united in one religion is how I won: I grabbed the religion that had spread like wildfire on the other side of the world and made it my own.


I would rather have two halves of the world, each half united in its own religion, than to see 3 or more religions being run around the world. The Diplo situation becomes infinitely more easy to manipulate in this way, as we won't have to shun just about every AI for fear of each AI being the Worst Enemy of at least one other AI out there--two "blocks" of relatively-frieindly-with-each-other AIs leads to us being able to trade with one block and then either backstab that block or else bring others into the fold of that flock.

 

[BLubmuz]

That's part of the reason why claiming that moving to the Plains Hills square is "scouting" is incorrect. The initial Settler's location is on a Forest. So, do not mislead us by believing that moving to the Plains Hills square allows us to scout. UNLESS YOU WANT A CAPITOL WITHOUT BOTH Corn Resources IN IT, by moving to the Plains Hills square, you either are committing to settling on the Plains Hills square or else you are committing not to settle for TWO turns, as every settling location where there are 2 Corns would take at least one full turn to move to when starting on the Plains Hills square.

How can you say i'm going to mislead anyone?
I said exactly what we need to do to not regret to have not did it. We have 3 choices to work both corn:
a) in place
b) 1E
c) 1SE , better known as the PH

Once we are on the PH we can decide with actual knowledge of what the Capital BFC is.

I said that the price to pay is
- 1 turn in case we like what we see
- 2 turns in case we think it's better go back to a) or move to b)

i quote myself

I'm sure that we can risk 1 more turn goin' back to the flat terrain if we see nothing good.
OTOH, if many teams settled on turn 1, can you think they probably have seen something interesting? I do.

Sorry if it was not clear, i hope it's now.
If you think i write something stupid, think first that i'm not writing in my language.
Better ask for further explanations if you're in doubt. It's more than possible that sometimes, maybe often i make some mistake.

If you add that i type pretty fast and my typos the picture is complete.

Now, back on topic, i'd like to risk. Great risk, great reward. (see my motto)

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Dealing with an Overseas Religious Block

- they found only one religion: Buddhism, this will surely auto spread or be actively spreaded and they will form a compact, friendly block sharing the same religion.
- how do you think they will welcome us? i suspect they would hardly open their borders to us

To start off relations, we simply switch to No State Religion or Free Religion, depending upon whether we built the Shwedagon Paya. Then, once we're aware of who is whom's Worst Enemy, we gift tech or resources enough to be able to Open Borders and start the Resource trading.

Later, once we've obtained that religion (Buddhism, in your example), then they'll all be on our side. Gifting the United Nations will be even easier, as we can build it locally and gift it to a neighbour, instead of having to secure an overseas city first.

- when we'll need to move war to have those resources (they're already trade them each other, no way to have them in trade)

Enter Tanya, our uber secret spy. "Hahaha, wasted!" she says, after pillaging the last of an AI's Resource that was used to trade for the Resource that we want to obtain.

Now, try to imagine to have some religious zealots in that pack: Izzy, Monty, Hatty, Justin, Brennus, pick your favourite(s) ...

I'd rather have religious zealots in a game where we control most of the Holy Cities, as religious zealots are more likely to switch to a religion that they control the Holy City of than other Civs will be. So, the more religious zealots are in the game, the better our chances, given our Overall Strategy, against the other SGTOM teams.


Settling In Place vs on the Plains Hills River square

First, how do you think you can beat an Emperor AI working one measly coin? An improved gold mine is what we need to manage this.

We will be in good shape Commerce-wise, working 3 River squares for our Food and Hammer squares. Normally, you have to have Flood Plains to do so well Commerce-wise in the early game, but we get the benefit of Flood Plains that don't cause unhealthiness.

Then, there's the option to not settle in turn 0, which can be another handicap in founding a Hindu.

And then what? Work 2 River Corns and 1 Grassland Forest, 1 Plains Forest, or 1 Grassland Hills Forest, each for a total of 3 Food and Hammers?
Every turn that a team does so, compared to us working 2 Corns and 1 Plains Hills Mined square, we produce the same quantity of Food and Hammers as a team that settled on the Plains Hills square, but we produce one extra Commerce--all because they wasted the good Plains Hills River square. I'd be more for climbing that Plains Hills square if there were other unForested Hills River squares around, but I don't see any.


The fact is that many teams have jumped the gun and have decided to climb the Plains Hills square "because it is the in-thing to do." That square is one of our early good squares (5 Food + Hammers + Commerce), compared to the other nearby squares that only net 3 each (4 later with Irrigation, a Mine, or a Cottage and eventually more later with a Cottage) and they didn't think twice before they hopped on it and wasted it. To them the loss.


The Shwedagon Paya
We may also want to consider what to do with this Wonder. Here are two ideas:
- gift Aesthetics to a neighbour that does not have Free Religion as their favourite Civic, hoping that they'll beat an AI that does like Free Religion into building it
- aiming to build it ourselves

 

[BLubmuz]

On the contrary, I would LOVE to see that situation happen.

3 names for you:

Montezuma
Tokugawa
Isabella

Do you think we can ever have OB with them if we are in another religion?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Sorry if it was not clear, i hope it's now.

It is now, thanks. I incorrectly interpreted your "1 more turn" comment to mean the turn that we moved onto the Plains Hills square.

2 turns in case we think it's better go back to a) or move to b)

Agreed. My point was only to make sure that everyone else was aware of this cost of moving to the Plains Hills square. Thank you for spelling it out for us.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

3 names for you:

Montezuma
Isabella

Do you think we can ever have OB with them if we are in another religion?

Switch religion to No State Religion before they ask you not to trade with someone or before you refuse a request to join a war with them, then Open Borders with them, to hopefully get their religion to spread to us.

Tokugawa

Switch religion to No State Religion AND gift him enough tech to get him to +4 You Traded with us--he's the only AI that requires a Pleased relationship in order to Open Borders with you. He's usually better off as the "targeted United Nations opponent," though, as its hard for other AIs to Open Borders with him and thus its hard for others to like him very much. Due to that fact, it's unlikely that he'd be included in our game, as it could make the Diplo game a bit too easy.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Not true. If an AI beelines Hinduism and starts with Mysticism, we'll LOSE the race whether we start researching it on T0 or T1. If an AI does not beeline Hindusim, we'll WIN the race whether we start researching it on T0 or T1. Am I missing something?

AIs randomly research techs based on a generated seed. By moving your units differently or by taking different actions that can change the seed's value, the AIs will often pick different techs.

So, by moving to the Plains Hills square, we change the seed. We can't know if that move will work in our favour or against it. What we CAN know is that based on the Scores of other SGOTM teams, we can predict which techs the other SGOTM teams chased after. If any of said teams appeared to chase after a religious tech, then we'll be able to get a feel for a scenario of movement of the Settler (or lack thereof) that will fail at founding a religion (or succeed at, if we wait for other teams to play first or the teams that already started to play more turns).

 

[BLubmuz]

Enter Tanya, our uber secret spy. "Hahaha, wasted!" she says, after pillaging the last of an AI's Resource that was used to trade for the Resource that we want to obtain.
Command & Conquer? i like that

Settling In Place vs on the Plains Hills River square

The fact is that many teams have jumped the gun and have decided to climb the Plains Hills square "because it is the in-thing to do." That square is one of our early good squares (5 Food + Hammers + Commerce), compared to the other nearby squares that only net 3 each (4 later with Irrigation, a Mine, or a Cottage and eventually more later with a Cottage) and they didn't think twice before they hopped on it and wasted it. To them the loss.

are 2 corns and a PH enough for Capital? Your arguments were mine in the beginning. Looking better to the screenie make me think how poor are the 3 mostwestern tiles.
We can see 15 tiles of the in-place BFC and the only good ones are the corn and the riverside PH.
Forests are a good thing, but once chopped...

We're on Epic, we can settle on turn 2 if needed. But we can never recover resources we can't work because they're just outside the BFC.

I know it's a kind of fashion to settle on a PH. Trust me, it's not my case.

But hit the "build city" button and regret it one second later it's a thing that already happened to me, as i think to all of us. Not this time.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I gave up on waiting for someone else to attempt fog-gazing and did some myself.

Here is what I am convinced of:
- The square to the SE + SE of the Settler's initial location is a Tundra Hills square
- The square to the NE + NE of the Settler's initial location is a Hills square, which I believe if an unforested Grassland Hills square but I am only certain about the Hills part
- The square to the E + E of the Settler's initial location is a Grassland Hills Forest River square
- The square to the NE + E of the Settler's initial location is a Grassland Hills Forest River square


So, settling in place will net us 4 Hills squares, 3 of which are on Rivers. I'm quite happy with that situation.

Settling 1E will get us even more Hills squares, 3 of them being, from what I can tell, unforested, but one of those is not really good for much, with it being a Tundra Hills square. So, we'll have potentially 1 more square for our Worker to improve before Bronze Working and we'll have a bit more production capacity overall.

Settling 1SE on the Plains Hills square is likely going to give us a few Tundra squares in our capitol. Consider the following reasoning:
Most of the Forests nearby are Confinerous Forests. However, I have proven through painstaking trial-and-error of placing different types of terrain and different types of Forest that the squares to the SW + S and SE + S of the Settler's initial location are both Grassland "Frozen Forests"--the kind that you normally see on Tundra or Ice. My guess is that the Map Creator or the map-generating process edited both of those squares to be Grassland squares, as they were likely initially Tundra squares. That makes me believe that there will be more Tundra squares to the S, especially to the SE near that Tundra Hills square, that are squares which were unedited by the Map Creator or the map-generating process, since they fall outside of the initial settling location.

So, I contend that several of the "hidden squares" to the SE that you might have hoped would turn out good in a gamble will actually turn out to be Tundra squares (yuck!). I don't know about you, but I'd rather have a few Grassland Cottage squares (by settling in place) or a couple of more productive Hills squares (1-2, from my guess--not counting the Tundra Hills square) by settling 1E than to pick up a few extra Tundra squares by settling 1SE on the Plains Hills square.

For a Cultural game, in place is going to be the best spot to settle, with 1E coming a close second, as going 1E will mean being able to get just a bit more production. Settling 1SE will suck for a Cultural game.

For a Diplo game, you can weigh in the additional Hammer from settling on the Plains Hills square, but in my eyes, we'd just be wasting a nice Riverside Plains Hills square and we may very well end up with only 3 Minable Hills, where one of those is one that we wouldn't want to work (the Tundra Hills square) except in extremely desperate times.


I am attaching my saved games... I used one where I did not have the Warrior and Settler placed, but I put "Barbarian-coloured" Signs on the map, to tell you where to put a Warrior and a Settler. I did so in case different terrain levels would reveal extra hidden squares, which I do not think that you can "rehide." I also had to move the Settler and Warrior from their original location for that very reason. So, if you want to do a little bit of work in improving the saved game by updating its surrounding terrain via fog-gazing or via comparing changes that you make to the screenshot that I will upload of the actual saved game, then you can do so. I called this saved game "Dhoomstriker1--No units placed BC-4000.CivBeyondSwordSave."


For anyone else that just wants to accept my map attempt as "good enough"--there are still a few things that aren't quite right just outside of the visible area that make treelines and terrain not appear exactly the same--you can use the "Dhoomstriker1--Units placed BC-4000.CivBeyondSwordSave" saved game, as its the same as the other saved game except that I put the Settler and Warrior in the right spots.


Sorry Mitchum--I would have used your saved game as a base, but it wasn't set up to use BUFFY, so I didn't even try loading it. At least this way, we'll get another set of AI opponents and religious tech times to compare against, should anyone choose to play my version of the map.


Here are two screenshots (the actual saved game and my attempt at recreating it), sized the same and centred the same with the same Field of View value (42), so that you can view the images in two windows--say in two browser windows by first opening this page in two browser windows and then right-clicking on each image in a separate window and choosing the "View Image" option--and then quickly Alt+Tab multiple times between the two browser windows (or whatever the equivalent hotkey combination is in Linux) to visually compare the two screenshots and see that I came close, but not quite the same in my recreation:
ACTUAL GAME:

MY RECREATION OF THE GAME:

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Another couple of comments about my map creation effort
I spent several hours on creating those maps. I put in a lot of effort and still I was unable to figure out a way to recreate the squares just outside of the visible area to the SW of our visible area. Since we weren't really contemplating settling in that direction, I just gave up in trying to perfect those squares.

Instead, I focused my efforts on the squares that mattered the most--those to the east--and I think that I was able to confirm many of Mitchum's and at least one of BLubmuz' fog-gazing comments.


Recreating that River exactly was a very time-consuming task--doing so took more than 2 hours! What a Modder-unfriendly aspect of map creation River placements are! It was hardly worth doing so, except that it made my comparisons that much more accurate when Alt+Tabbing between a screenshot of the actual game versus a screenshot of my recreation of it.


Tanks are Not Allowed

Command & Conquer? i like that

Hopefully, we won't need to research up to tanks in order to win this game! Actually, that's one thing that we absolutely cannot do--researching Industrialism would obsolete Ivory.

So, we can't use Tanks, Marines, Battleships, or Industrial Parks in our game. With good planning, we won't need them, but if you're used to using them in your games, be prepared for the fact that they are outside the scope of anyone wanting to win the Laurels (Gold, Silver, or Bronze) for this game!

Note that for anyone who is curious, the only other "required Resource" which can become obsolete is Fur, which does not go obsolete until Plastics--a tech which has Industrialism as its pre-requisite, so we won't even have to worry about accidentally researching Plastics, as we won't be researching its pre-requisite of Industrialism.