SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

[Mitchum]

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 other than the tundra hill, it sounds like your fog gazing and mine came up with the same results (I didn't mention the river in my screen shot, but I think it's quite obvious ). Plus the tundra hill correlates to BLubmuz' assessment. So unless anyone else wants to do some fog gazing, we've got a consensus.

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.

I recall reading that the map generator will never put a peak, desert or tundra tile in a capital's BFC. Obviously, the game admins could have made changes to it...

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.

Don't forget the possibility of the plains hill having a strategic resource (copper or iron would be nice). I've read that if you SIP, you're almost guaranteed at least 4 resources in the BFC. I don't have any empirical data, but it sounds correct based on my games. That doesn't mean that SIP is always the best option though, especially if the game admins removed a resource or two...

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.

No worries. When I opened my test save today, I noticed that Buffy was missing.

I'm leaning toward SIP on this one. I think the BFC will be just fine based on our fog gazing. Plenty of food, plenty of hills, fresh water, 10 or 11 riverside tiles. That works for me even without any additional resources.

 

[Irgy]

Can I just say that all this reading the other teams' graphs, particularly for clues on how to influence random seeds, feels a bit dirty to me. That said, if it's considered acceptable then I'm all for it - I'm not one to not do something that's considered acceptable just because I don't like it.


The biggest benefit of the plains hill as a location (other than of course the 4-turns earlier worker) is that we trade 7 basically mediocre tiles, known to contain no resources, for 7 completely unknown tiles. We lose 2 forest-grass-hills, two forest-grass, two forest-plains and a grassland, and we get 7 rolls of the dice to replace them.

All the talk so far seems to be implicitly assuming we'll get absolutely nothing on those tiles that we would gain but can't currently see. In fact worse than nothing, the assumption seems to be that we won't even replace the hills we lose. The calculations seem to assume there's 7 tiles of tundra to the SE. The fact is we have no way of knowing. Fog gazing only shows us tiles we work either way (except the plains-hill/peak 2SE)

I could just as easily talk about the 4 floodplains and double gold we might gain by moving. The question really is "Do we expect the tiles we gain to be better or worse on average than the 7 resourceless run-of-the-mill tiles we lose?"


I'm also concerned that we're prioritising beakers far too high:

... We give up 35F and 13H for 21 beakers

After I argued last game that trading food/hammers for beakers one for one was a bad deal (admittedly without neccesarily convincing everyone), I'm now faced with the view that this 21 for 48 is a good deal. I see us happily spurning up to 12 turns of working corn, while talking about micromanaging a few bonus beakers (through re-ordering techs) that we might not even be able to do in the first place. As much fun as chasing religions is, we still have a plan to REX and peacefully claim as much land as possible don't we? How much of one are we willing to sacrifice for the other? I'm all for beelining Monotheism, but I'm not convinced that every sacrifice we might make for a few beakers here and there is automatically worthwhile because of it.

If I get time tonight, I'll run a test game settling on the plains hill, to compare to Mitchum's games. I'll assume a big pile of tundra on every square we can't fog-gaze just for the sake of argument, although I might compare what would happen if there was workable tiles there.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

The Apostrophes in the name of team T'dr'duzk b'hazg t't seem to be causing troubles with the Team Summary pages.

In particular, on the page that corresponds to "Display Format" = "List of saves," most teams have a value under the "List of Submitted Files" heading which lists the date of their most recently uploaded saved game, plus a link.

Well, that team has uploaded a saved game, but the "List of Submitted Files" heading not only still says "Start," but it also isn't a link. So, something there is broken, unless it was the upload process itself that is broken.


Further, on each of the Score, Culture, and Power values graphs, no values appear for team T'dr'duzk b'hazg t't.

 

[Irgy]

Nice work on the fog-gazing experiment Dhoomstriker. I'm intrigued that the SE-SE hill needed to be tundra and not just plains, as I certainly can't see the slightest hint of tundra coloured pixels myself. I'll take your word for it though. Also, did you consider options involving some degree of coast (as someone suggested at some point) to the SW?

If the SE-SE hill really is tundra, then this working theory everyone seems to have (without knowing they're using it) that the tiles we can't see are all worthless actually gains a bit more credibility. I mean, we might still get some fur, deer or silver, and the tundra might not continue, but it certainly skews the probabilities a fair bit.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Can I just say that all this reading the other teams' graphs, particularly for clues on how to influence random seeds, feels a bit dirty to me. That said, if it's considered acceptable then I'm all for it - I'm not one to not do something that's considered acceptable just because I don't like it.

Not only is it within the rules, but there is a lot of precedent for it. Many teams in the past have used this information to help sway their decisions and I wouldn't doubt the same will be true in this game. While I agree with what you are saying, especially since in normal XOTM games we really stay as much away from this kind of "info gathering" as possible, by opening First Spoilers as late as 500 AD, this practice seems to not only be expected by encouraged as part of the SGOTMs. Like it or not, many other teams will be looking over the uploaded values, so we might as well gain the same info that they can, even if that info comes "after the fact" for some of the teams (they can at least get a feel for how well others are "catching up to them," etc.


The only update is that I have to the info is that we know for certain that:
ChokoMisfits settled on Turn 1.

Also, the Score value for ChokoMisfits and T'dr'duzk b'hazg t't matches the same Score as one of the Score values that I previously quoted, so we don't yet have any additional combinations of units/techs that other teams obtained which need to be figured out.


While you're running test games, if you can keep a record of your Score values and when they change, in addition to the other info that I asked people playing test games to keep track of, then we'll "for free" get some of the Score info, as you plan to run the test games anyway. I have no idea how to track Power levels as a numerical value, so if you don't know how either, don't worry too much about the Power values--they weren't changing nearly as much as Score, anyway, and presumably Score values are different enough between techs and units that we can get all of the info that we need just by tracking the Score values alone.

Feel free to edit in whatever resources you want in the "hidden squares" of my test game--Gold, Flood Plains, whatever. All I ask is that you focus on using the Corn squares before using Flood Plains or Gold, etc, to give us the closest comparison between games as possible.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Nice work on the fog-gazing experiment Dhoomstriker. I'm intrigued that the SE-SE hill needed to be tundra and not just plains, as I certainly can't see the slightest hint of tundra coloured pixels myself. I'll take your word for it though. Also, did you consider options involving some degree of coast (as someone suggested at some point) to the SW?

Try changing the Tundra to a Plains terrain value. Then take a screenshot centred on the Warrior (select the Warrior and press the "C" key) with a Field of View value of 42.

To compare it against the original screenshot that I made, you'll probably have to open my screenshot in Microsoft Paint (or your favourite photo-editing program) and then select the entire new screenshot and drag it to the left by about 240 pixels and up by about 120 pixels (I think that those are the values I used for trimming the screenshots so that they could be uploaded to the forum). Or, carefully of course, take a similar screenshot of the actual saved game with the same Field of View value and centred on the Warrior (I'd suggest pressing the Print Screen key and then Exiting to the game's main menu before Alt+Tabbing to paste the screenshot in Microsoft Paint, so that when you Alt+Tab back to the game, you don't accidentally move a unit in our actual game). The latter option would be a bit easier for comparing screenshots but requires a bit more care.


What you should notice is that the colour of the bottom right edge of the Plains Hills River square will change slightly. That's about all that I had to go on in many cases for my fog-gazing, but with the River being correct and many of the Forests being correct, that little change in colour stood out that much more accurately.


EDIT: Just for you, I'll try and grab you a screenshot now, but I'll need to go to bed soon thereafter, so if you need to verify any other info, you have the process listed above and you'll be on your own to do so.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Fictitious Scenario of there being a Plains Hills square (instead of the actual Tundra Hills square) to the SE + SE of the Settler's initial location:

EDITED TEXT from here and below: It's not only a bit of the bottom right part of the Plains Hills square, but a bit of the top right of the square to the S of the Plains Hills square and a bit of the top left of the square to the SE of the Plains Hills square that get coloured slightly differently.

As you can see, this kind of effort is very painstaking.


For a Cultural game, we're likely going to have 3 Legendary Cities sized around 17 to 20 in city size, so the Grassland squares that we get on the west side of our fat cross by settling in place are actually decent squares to have, as each can contain a Cottage without costing us anything in terms of Food. The only restraint will be Health levels, as Happiness levels would be controlled by a Cultural Slider. For a Diplo game, we're not likely to bother having our cities be that big--we'll likely whip or draft an army instead, so those extra squares being Grassland in favour of a junkier type of terrain don't matter as much.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I mean, we might still get some fur, deer or silver, and the tundra might not continue, but it certainly skews the probabilities a fair bit.

We won't get Fur, as there is only one source of it and that's controlled by the Barbs. Only if that city is far away from us would it be of any value as a consideration in this SGOTM, so we have to assume that said city is far enough from us and not on our doorstep.

Tundra Deer suck, especially if they don't start with a Forest on them.

Tundra Silver are okay, but are usually surrounded by other Tundra squares, which is something that we'd want to avoid getting for our capitol in a Cultural game. Tundra Silver is also weaker than Silver elsewhere, since Tundra "eats up" one of the Commerce and one of the Hammers, making it an okay square I would say not much different from a matured Grassland Cottage square. Considering that each Tundra square that isn't Silver is throwing away the equivalent of a Cottaged Grassland square for a Cultural game, it's a big risk to go to the Plains Hills square, especially since if we don't like what we see, we've wasted 2 turns (20 Commerce plus some lost production and/or growth, depending upon what our first build is).

 

[Mitchum]

We can make some deductions about what the other teams did based on their demographic data. When I used to play PBEM (Play By E-Mail) games, I could tell exactly what every player was doing just by looking at their demographics (in Vanilla you can see them as soon as you meet them). We only know score, power and culture, so let's work with the first two (Dhoomstriker already talked about the culture numbers).

Power goes up (or down) based on many factors:

Factor 1- Population. For every two population you get 1000 soldiers. So;
1pop = 0 soldiers
2pop= 1000
3pop= 1000
4pop= 2000
5pop= 2000
6pop= 3000 and so on.

Factor 2 - Technologes. The early game technologies that affect power are:
2000 soldiers – Sailing, Hunting, Mining, Animal Husbandry
4000 soldiers- Wheel
6000 soldiers- Archery
8000 soldiers- Bronze Working
10000 soldiers- Horseback Riding, Iron Working

Factor 3 - City improvements
2000 soldiers- Walls
3000 soldiers- Barracks

Factor 4 - Units
2000 soldiers – Warrior
3000 soldiers – Archer
4000 soldiers – Spearman, Chariot
6000 soldiers – Swordsman, Axeman

We start at 4,000 (i.e. 4) because we start with Mining (2K) and a warrior (2K)

So, the Plastic Ducks have a power of 15 on T36. That means that they added 11 to their power. My guess is that this was from BW (8K - this is usually the first big jump I would see in my PBEM games), 1 warrior (2K) and growing their capital to either pop 2 or 3 (1K). Their tech path was likely Agriculture -> BW. They stopped on T36 rather than their planned T40 because they just learned BW and realized that they settled on the copper...

Score is based on 4 things:

Factor 1 - Population
We start with a population score of 0. Just by settling, our population score goes up to 6. So every pop is about 6 points. I recall in my PBEM games that it wasn't always exactly 6. It may go up as the size of the city goes up. But this approximation will work for our early game comparisons.

Factor 2 - Land
We start with a land score of 0 and it stays 0 when settling. IIRC, it takes 10 turns (game speed dependent likely, but all of my PBEM games were on Normal) after claiming the land to get points added to your score. So, when your borders pop, your score goes up 10 turns later. I just ran a quick test and it was after 20 turns in a game with our settings. Keep in mind that if your BFC contains any water squares, you're scores does not go up for controlling them.

Factor 3 - Technology
We start the game with a technology score of 11 for the 2 techs we know. That means that every 2 ancient techs give a score of 11 (later techs give a higher value and there may be some rounding going on).

Factor 4 - Wonders
When you start the game, you score here is 0. When you settle, it jumps to 16 for the palace.

By the way, all of these number are likely map size, speed and # of land tiles dependent. In my PBEM games, I would just watch how my score changed over time based on what I was doing and I would use those same rules to figure out what my opponents were doing.

So, once the game starts and the city is settled, the starting score is 33 (6+0+11+16).

I just ran a quick test to check the above: Settled on T1 on PH, Agriculture -> BW, worker -> warrior (grow to 2) -> settler. Worker improves one corn and then the other. I played until turn 36 and this is what I got:
Score: 88 (4 water tiles in my BFC - my score would have been 96 if my BFC were all land)
Power: 15K
I just learned BW this turn!!!

Does this look like anyone's game? I'm thinking the Plastic Ducks did exactly this and stopped when they found that they had settled on Copper. Note that the slight score difference (101 vs. 96) could be attributed to the fact that the actual game has fewer land squares than my test game.

Why stop at T36 (and not T40 or some other round number) unless something happened that made you pause, right?

One more reason not to settle on the plains hill, me thinks.

 

[BLubmuz]

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.

There's a trick i learnt for rivers: once in rivers mode, you can draw the river with mouse left and move. But you can delete the river from a single tile right clicking on that tile while in river mode. then you can draw again pressing left and move.

If you don't know this, you can actually spend hours in drawing a river shape.

Tanks are Not Allowed
Quote:
Command & Conquer? i like that

Sure... i was referring to Tanya, one of the hero units in that game, since you named her. Maybe she was in Red Alert? can we have a Colonel Burton, just in case?

How do you managed to draw signs in black? ususlly they have the color of your Civ.

The Apostrophes in the name of team T'dr'duzk b'hazg t't seem to be causing troubles with the Team Summary pages.

The list of saves is OK for me, but no lines in their graphs. There's a chance that those Dwarves lovers (can we call them this way?) have just uploaded their save and not all of the links were updated from the database when you look at them.
I wait some hour, then if i see nothing new i'll PM Alan.

Talkin'bout Alan, have you seen his answer about Skype? I'm not sure how to interpret it. I think we can do even if he doesn't likes. At least he does not mention a rule infraction.

 

[BLubmuz]

I've seen all your fogbusting, worldbuildering and more...
Tundra, we're at least in 2 to say this. Let's assume there's silver. It's not that great and it can be worked by another city or can be just hooked for happiness when it arrives in 3rd ring. It's not much better than a mature cottage, probably a little worse.

But it can be ticket to the CS sling if worked by the Capital in the opening. Before a cottage will mature we'll grow old. If it's silver it's there. Ready. Just mine it.

And if you want to chase religions, in case of silver, what about Meditation > CoL > Oracle Philo? Then we have to manually research Theo. No judaism for us.

Philo from the Oracle it's easier than CS, since does not need Math.

But until we climb that hill all this will stay only theory.
Let's do that, then we can discuss.

 

[BLubmuz]

We can't continue to spend tons of post, but mostly time without taking a decision.

We have only 2 for now, the research can be discussed later.

1) Where to move the warrior
for what i can see there're 2 chances:
1a) NW
1b) SW
1c) somewhere else (please specify)
those options seems to be the most discussed, so i've put a 3rd one in case i'm wrong.

2) Settler
2a) move to PH
2b) settle in place and maybe regret 1 second later

24 hours from the time of this post to decide.

My votes:
1b
2a

I already gave my reasons for the settler.
I don't actually care about the warrior, he can't reveal nothing interesting for our opening.

 

[Irgy]

My votes:
1a (warrior NW)
2b (settle in place)

I know I've been fighting for settling on the plains hill, and I still think 4 turns more corn is a big deal, but Dhoomstriker's excellent experiment to confim the tundra hill has turned me. I don't want to put a whole bunch of tundra in the capital. It could still be the best move but I'm not going to push for it.

If we can try and vote on both these issues in the next 24 hours I will should able to move the warrior tomorrow night (assuming we come to some sort of consensus).

 

[BLubmuz]

I don't want to put a whole bunch of tundra in the capital.

what if that tundra hill is the only tundra in BFC?
I'm not proposing to settle there, just to go there. I already posted on this matter.

We won't get Fur, as there is only one source of it and that's controlled by the Barbs. Only if that city is far away from us would it be of any value as a consideration in this SGOTM, so we have to assume that said city is far enough from us and not on our doorstep.

Even if i can presume this is right, how can you say "controlled by the Barbs"?

Tundra Deer suck, especially if they don't start with a Forest on them.

Tundra Silver are okay, but are usually surrounded by other Tundra squares

Maybe deer sucks, but it's not bad for a Philo Leader to have some more food and health.

What if that hill has silver and no other tundra is in BFC? Please remember this is an heavily edited map.

I remember you my Plan B: if we see nothing good, let's back to the start or 1E of the start.
We'll lose 1 more turn, but surely we have nothing to regret.

 

[Mitchum]

Can I just say that all this reading the other teams' graphs, particularly for clues on how to influence random seeds, feels a bit dirty to me. That said, if it's considered acceptable then I'm all for it - I'm not one to not do something that's considered acceptable just because I don't like it.

In past SGOTMs, I've noticed that some of the teams do this quite extensively, so I consider it legal and part of the game.

I'm also concerned that we're prioritising beakers far too high:

... We give up 35F and 13H for 21 beakers

After I argued last game that trading food/hammers for beakers one for one was a bad deal (admittedly without neccesarily convincing everyone), I'm now faced with the view that this 21 for 48 is a good deal. I see us happily spurning up to 12 turns of working corn, while talking about micromanaging a few bonus beakers (through re-ordering techs) that we might not even be able to do in the first place. As much fun as chasing religions is, we still have a plan to REX and peacefully claim as much land as possible don't we? How much of one are we willing to sacrifice for the other? I'm all for beelining Monotheism, but I'm not convinced that every sacrifice we might make for a few beakers here and there is automatically worthwhile because of it.

I think you took my comment out of context by only quoting part of my comment. If you read the whole thing:

My thoughts are that option C (Polytheism first and warrior first) is the best of both worlds. Comparing it to option B (Agriculture first) We give up 35F and 13H for 21 beakers (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), a shot at founding an early religion and a second early warrior for scouting. Note that we are also behind by 10 worker turns. ​

you'll notice that I'm listing all of the tradeoffs, not just the C, F and H. What I was trying to say is that we give up "F, H and 10 worker turns" for "C, a shot at an early religion, and an earlier second warrior".

I agree with you that 35F and 13H is better than 21C. However, when you throw in the other things and look at the bigger picture, losing those F and H may be worth it.

 

[Mitchum]

We have only 2 for now, the research can be discussed later.

1) Where to move the warrior
for what i can see there're 2 chances:
1a) NW
1b) SW
1c) somewhere else (please specify)
those options seems to be the most discussed, so i've put a 3rd one in case i'm wrong.

2) Settler
2a) move to PH
2b) settle in place and maybe regret 1 second later.

My votes:
1b) SW - I don't think our initial warrior movement will change where we settle. I'm thinking more about efficient exploration. Moving SW (to the coast?) and then in a counter-clockwise direction around the capital.
2b) SIP and maybe be glad that we did 1 second later. Also avoids the copper in the PH...

 

[Mitchum]

Why stop at T36 (and not T40 or some other round number) unless something happened that made you pause, right?

One more reason not to settle on the plains hill, me thinks.

Is it legal to quote yourself?

I was thinking about this last night in bed and realized that they may have had a PPP to research to BW and stop so that they could decide what to research next. In any event, I still think there is a strategic resource on the PH tile and would prefer not to settle there.

 

[Mitchum]

The standard tech opening for this game would normally be Agriculture -> BW. This would give us the best situation for early REX. Pottery and Writing would also be early techs to help with growth (granary), commerce (cottages) and research (library + cottages + GS + Academy).

So, if we truly go for as many early religions as possible, our game will likely fall behind the standard opening with respect to REX, research and city development.

The biggest benefit of the early religion grab is to have better control over the diplo situation with respect to religion. However, is this something that we MUST do? Can we still win a diplo or cultural game without doing this? Is it worth the tradeoff to stunt our early development?

In the diplo-only GOTM game, Dhoomstriker went for the early religion grab. I went the more traditional approach and was only the founder of one religion: Confucianism. Dhoomstiker beat me by some 20 turns IIRC. Here come my excuses: I was not familiar with when an AI would accept a city as a gift. I ended up building the UN in a very new city that I thought an AI would take in trade. It took me almost 30 turns to build the UN, even with a GE. Then, I found out later that the AI would not accept this city. Had I built the UN in my capital, it could have been done in less than 10 turns for sure. This would have put me very close to the victory date of Dhoomstriker. See my writeups here and here.

Why am I making excuses? Well actually, I'm not. I'm just pointing out that you can win a diplo game without founding as many religions as possible. Is it harder? Probably, but not insurmountable since I won even though I am not one to pay attention to diplo in a typical game. In said GOTM game, Always Peace was selected, which severely limited the tools available in the game, making it that much harder and yet I was still able to pull it off with only one relgion under my belt.

I'm starting to have second thoughts about chasing any early religions (does not include Confucianism or Taoism) that are not on a typical REX tech path. Since our early warring will likely be nil (unless we get declared on by an AI), early peaceful REX ensures that a) we get the best shot at the premium settling spots which may or may not include the luxury resources we need to win the game and b) we have the best shot at claiming the most land = more cities = more population = our vote counts for more in any UN vote.

What are others thoughts regarding early religion chasing vs. early REX strategy?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

We won't get Fur, as there is only one source of it and that's controlled by the Barbs. Only if that city is far away from us would it be of any value as a consideration in this SGOTM, so we have to assume that said city is far enough from us and not on our doorstep.

Even if i can presume this is right, how can you say "controlled by the Barbs"?

I still have to go back and read some of the other messages, but I felt that I just HAD to jump in and answer this one: PLEASE READ MESSAGE 1 of this thread!

And I quote...

fur is so rare that only one unique supply exists, and that is heavily guarded by the most vile barbarians. Doubtless this was the result of meddling by the Devil Satan when the world was young and the Gods not paying sufficient attention.

Unless you believe that this game will entail an encounter with the Vedek Aerians (spelling?), or other such "pile of Barbs near to our capitol," then it only makes sense to have a heavily-guarded stronghold in an isolated part of the map. It would be too easy for the player to grab this stronghold if it were nearby, so it's likely on the opposite side of the world from us--far enough to make it painful to grab that area (which is best guarded by a city) due to its Distance Corruption level. Arguably, if there were 3-4 Barb cities guarding the Fur, it would be harder to take, but also it would be too big of a prize for the teams that got to it first (and other teams would whine and complain at the end of the game if that situation were true), so I'm going with 1 Barb city in a relatively isolated (on an island or connected to one of the bigger landmasses by a Peak-blockaded) area.

 

[BLubmuz]

What are others thoughts regarding early religion chasing vs. early REX strategy?

I can't think at the present, my neurons (all 2) are on strike.
Until that settler move is decided.