SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

[Irgy]

EDIT: This is referring to Dhoomstriker's long post two posts before this one, not the one above where he talks about micro of what to build first. Although that post also implies a vote against the PPP I posted above.

I'll take that as an implied vote against the PPP as it stands then?

I honestly cannot see a single concrete scenario where we
* Reveal something with the warrior.
* Change our minds about where to settle as a result.

Please provide one, as otherwise I don't think we need to wait 24 hours between moving the warrior and settling. I don't even think we need to move the warrior before settling, if nothing we see will change our minds anyway.

Maybe moving NW, but no-one wants to move the warrior NW anyway. Plus we're probably just going to settle on horses and lose metal in the BFC settling 1NW anyway. I'm strongly against spending a turn to settle 1E, to me it has all the risks and drawbacks of SE without the benefit of a faster worker build, but more importantly the warrior won't tell us anything positive about 1E (or 1SE) by moving SW. Or moving any other direction for that matter. So if we don't want to settle 1E or 1SE based on what we've seen already, we're going to settle in place.

 

[Irgy]

Stonehenge is an option, since it turns into Gold or could be completed later on if we want to, rather than spending partial Hammers into a Warrior and then having them start to disappear 1 per turn after 10 turns of not building the Warrior have passed.

I was under the impression that the penalty for not building something for 10 turns applied to buildings just as much as units? I've never checked this though.

Also, it's 10 turns on normal speed, surely it would be 15 turns on Epic? I also haven't checked that of course.

Easy for someone to confirm, but I'm at work at the moment.

Another point; losing 1 beaker for a few turns will either delay Polytheism (and/or Agriculture after) by a turn or it won't. If it doesn't, then I don't really see what the big deal is.

 

[BLubmuz]

24 hours had not passed. You are not the UP player!
6 Minutes after the UP player posted a PPP, you decided that you somehow had the power to approve it. There was no official vote on the PPP. You were simply a non-UP player listing out what you saw were options. Other players listed out different options to select from, too. What makes your message more valid than anyone else's? Nothing.

If you'd done a better job and gathered all of the options that we'd discussed, I'd have been more willing to let this situation slide. But the fact is that you ignored several options and then later claimed it was an official vote on a PPP. We were waiting for Irgy to post a PPP, not you.

24 hours were passed when i posted that.
6 minutes after Irgy's post were enough to give him a green light, since his PPP was:
- move the warrior SW (majority was already formed)
- stop and post a screenie.
He's the UP player, i'm the captain, majority was decided. What else do we need?

I'll comment tomorrow your other complaints (too much, to my taste).

 

[BLubmuz]

EDIT: This is referring to Dhoomstriker's long post two posts before this one, not the one above where he talks about micro of what to build first. Although that post also implies a vote against the PPP I posted above.

I'll take that as an implied vote against the PPP as it stands then?

I honestly cannot see a single concrete scenario where we
* Reveal something with the warrior.
* Change our minds about where to settle as a result.

Please provide one, as otherwise I don't think we need to wait 24 hours between moving the warrior and settling. I don't even think we need to move the warrior before settling, if nothing we see will change our minds anyway.

Maybe moving NW, but no-one wants to move the warrior NW anyway. Plus we're probably just going to settle on horses and lose metal in the BFC settling 1NW anyway. I'm strongly against spending a turn to settle 1E, to me it has all the risks and drawbacks of SE without the benefit of a faster worker build, but more importantly the warrior won't tell us anything positive about 1E (or 1SE) by moving SW. Or moving any other direction for that matter. So if we don't want to settle 1E or 1SE based on what we've seen already, we're going to settle in place.

Sure. In fact i suggest to settle first, since this is decided, then post a screenie and wait to move the warrior.
Too late now to search my post, sorry.

 

[Mitchum]

Another point; losing 1 beaker for a few turns will either delay Polytheism (and/or Agriculture after) by a turn or it won't. If it doesn't, then I don't really see what the big deal is.

Dhoomstrikers comment was related to the number of turns NOT spent working the corn. If this was related to not getting the commerce, a better options would be as Irgy suggested:

T0 - Start warrior. Citizen to corn. Research Poly (I read somewhere that you lose beakers if you wait until T1 to select your first tech, but I can't confirm this).
T11 - Grow to 2. Citizen on corn and plains hill.
T15 - Warrior complete. Start worker. Both citizens on corn tiles.

This gets the warrior completed on the same turn (important to aid with early scouting, plus we need at least 4 of them), allows us to grow to 2 pops 4 turns sooner (netting us 4 extra commerce by having an extra citizen for 4 extra turns), and puts 4 extra food in the basket. This is the type of MM that I knew could be done but I didn't bother with the first time I ran this test due to laziness...

 

[Mitchum]

I'll comment tomorrow your other complaints (too much, to my taste).

Don't take Dhoomstriker's comments too personally. Sleep on it, as you said. It's clear from this thread and our test game that Dhoomstriker wants the team to set rules and guidelines for all of us to agree and follow. It's better to do it now than mid-game when things have happend and people get more defensive about actions they've already taken. As we all know, not having clear rules now could lead to either more heated arguing or a disasterous turn set later in the game.

 

[Irgy]

T0 - Start warrior. Citizen to corn. Research Poly (I read somewhere that you lose beakers if you wait until T1 to select your first tech, but I can't confirm this).
T11 - Grow to 2. Citizen on corn and plains hill.
T15 - Warrior complete. Start worker. Both citizens on corn tiles.

So, by growing first and not finishing the warrior, we spend 11 turns not building a worker, but get 5 of those turns back by building it in 18 turns instead of 23. That leaves the worker 6 turns delayed compared to worker first, but for at least 5 of if not all of those turns we wouldn't have agriculture anyway.

By growing first we produce a little more during the early turns, which almost (although not quite) makes up for the loss of delaying the tile improvements. So on the whole this option isn't as bad as I first thought.

The question then is whether finishing the warrior is worth the 4 turns it takes. I'd suggest at least working more hammer tiles to get the warrior a turn sooner at the possible cost of roughly 1 point of commerce, as long as that 1 point of commerce won't cost us a turn on Polytheism.

Although I actually expect that if we get Polytheism at all we'd still get it 5 or 6 turns later, as the AI must either research it first (and therefore *always* beat us to it) or research something else first and give us quite a big window to get it.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I was under the impression that the penalty for not building something for 10 turns applied to buildings just as much as units? I've never checked this though.

Also, it's 10 turns on normal speed, surely it would be 15 turns on Epic? I also haven't checked that of course.

Easy for someone to confirm, but I'm at work at the moment.

After the following amount of turns not building a build item that was previously started:
Units = 10 turns
Buildings = 60 turns
the Hammers invested in that build item start to decay one Hammer per turn that you aren't building that item.

Wonders = Hammers never expire or else the value is so high that I've never seen it happen... well over 60 turns, for sure.

I am almost pretty certain that the decay values do not change based on game speeds. Consider that Hammer values are already scaled for game speeds. Thus, things like how many base Food, Hammers, and Commerce you get per turn per square worked by a citizen is unchanged. Therefore, it is not too much of a stretch to believe that decay will also be unchanged. As you say, it should be easy enough to confirm, but I'm pretty sure that the decay numbers remain constant across game speeds.

Another point; losing 1 beaker for a few turns will either delay Polytheism (and/or Agriculture after) by a turn or it won't. If it doesn't, then I don't really see what the big deal is.

No, that's not a big deal, but we have no need for a second Warrior so early. Why delay our Worker further just so that we can "find a use" for the 11 or so Hammers that we get while growing to Size 2? The earlier complaint was that we delayed getting out our Worker by growing, so why not delay it as little as possible?

I am not certain of the timing, but let's say that the Worker comes out 5 turns sooner than we learn Agriculture this way. Well, if we miss Hinduism, then it might be less than 5 turns of delay after completing Agriculture. Plus, that Worker can at least start Mining the Plains Hills square if it comes out extra early.

If we had unlimited war declaration targets and could eliminate AIs, then sure, we could complete that Warrior and go steal a Worker. But, since we won't be doing so, there's no point in delaying our Worker just to get a Warrior.


Note that I HAD previously mentioned the alternative of going first for Stonehenge or a building in place of the Warrior if it turned out that the Warrior took a long time to complete, but since no one else did further test games after Mitchum's, this situation never really came up.


It seems that while the team is not really willing to run test games, the team is mostly convinced by screenshots and test game results instead of experience-based explanations.

 

[unclethrill]

We definitely don't want to finish the worker 5 turns before he can do anything. There is a chance that he could mine something while we wait to finish agri but we have no clue if there is a hill available since ... We haven't even decided where to settle (at least according to some).

Maybe we are missing the point here. I have to agree that we have plenty of time to play the game. I think that if we can continue this discussion for the next month or three and map out the MM for say the first 300 turns, we should be able to blast right through the TSs then.



On a separate note, I vote YES for the PPP posted as is. I know this is kinda like voting Democrat in Alabama but hey, its not the first time my vote was wasted.

 

[unclethrill]

It seems that while the team is not really willing to run test games, the team is mostly convinced by screenshots and test game results instead of experience-based explanations.

I don't think that anyone is dismissing your experience or the benefit of it. The problem is that your explanations and posts are so long and at least to me convoluted so much that what ever the point was at the beginning it doesn't even seem to be there by the end.
I have read every post from everyone and yet I don't recall a post about SH. I don't doubt that it was actually made. I'm sure it was there somewhere but likely so buried in a long post that we all lost track of it.
I'm not trying to be a jerk but at least for me after the first 5 or 6 paragraphs, I feel like I'm listening to Charlie Brown's teacher. I think we would all be better served and it would be easier for us to understand the explanations if you were more focused on a single point in your posts and split the different ideas into different posts if they are not very closely related.

 

[Mitchum]

The question then is whether finishing the warrior is worth the 4 turns it takes. I'd suggest at least working more hammer tiles to get the warrior a turn sooner at the possible cost of roughly 1 point of commerce, as long as that 1 point of commerce won't cost us a turn on Polytheism.

If I recall correctly, on T14, I was two hammers shy of finishing the warrior. So, you would have to work the plains hill and a grassland forest for 2 turns, getting the warrior out on T14 rather than T15. This would sacrifice two commerce (and 2 food) but save one turn on the warrior. Or, if we have another 2 hammer tile in our BFC, we would only need to work that tile for 1 turn, only sacrificing 1 commerce.

Regarding Polytheism, I had beakers to spare, so the loss of 2 commerce would not delay our research by any turns. Someone would have to continue the test all the way to Agriculture to see if that tech is delayed at all. But, I doubt it since growing to 2 pops on T11 rather than T15 is already 4 commerce better than the test game I ran, which grew to 2 pops on T15, not T11. Clear?

I still think finishing the warrior is the right thing to do. The more AI we meet early, the better bonus we'll get on Agriculture, right? And the more we'll know regarding city location #2, #3, etc.

 

[Mitchum]

I'm not trying to be a jerk but at least for me after the first 5 or 6 paragraphs, I feel like I'm listening to Charlie Brown's teacher.

Whah, whah, whah, whah, whah, whah... And yes, you are being a jerk...

 

[Dhoomstriker]

As far as the warrior move goes, everyone except me has voted SW, so I'll give up and go with that for the sake of consensus. I'm not that fussed anyway. So:

First move PPP
1. Move the warrior SW.
2. Save, post a screenshot.

The above message was posted more than 24 hours ago and although I raised possible different Warrior moves based on different settling locations, no one else spoke up to change their vote from moving SW. Everyone has had a FAIR chance to change their decision after having read your PPP, i.e. more than 6 minutes, and no one has changed their decision--at least I did not read such a change--if I missed someone's message, then I'm sorry.

Irgy's PPP was a single-unit-move-PPP and a screenie

So, let's see what we've got screenshot-wise after moving that Warrior.


Meanwhile, I'll practice save the game and play around with settling in place and building a Warrior vs building a building, to see when we get a Worker out in each scenario compared to when we get Agriculture out, so that we're not just guessing on which initial build option is better.

 

[Mitchum]

No, that's not a big deal, but we have no need for a second Warrior so early. Why delay our Worker further just so that we can "find a use" for the 11 or so Hammers that we get while growing to Size 2? The earlier complaint was that we delayed getting out our Worker by growing, so why not delay it as little as possible?

You don't think having another early scout / fog buster would be useful? I'm of the opinion that the more we know about our surroundings and the sooner we find out about them, the better we are. The 11 fail gold from SH doesn't excite me as much as another early pair of eyes.

Note that I HAD previously mentioned the alternative of going first for Stonehenge or a building in place of the Warrior if it turned out that the Warrior took a long time to complete, but since no one else did further test games after Mitchum's, this situation never really came up.

TEST!!! Did somewhat say TEST? I'm all over it. Just tell me what info you need.

I assume all we want to compare warrior -> woker to SH -> worker (start on T11). See when the worker comes out, when we learn Agriculture, and how many idle worker turns there are, if any. Did I miss anything?

Crosspost with Dhoomstriker. I'll run the test too. Not because I don't trust you. I just like running tests. It's a learing opportunity that doesn't come up often when I play XOTM games...

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Meanwhile, I'll practice save the game and play around with settling in place and building a Warrior vs building a building, to see when we get a Worker out in each scenario compared to when we get Agriculture out, so that we're not just guessing on which initial build option is better.

Test i. Results from building a Building or Wonder instead of a Warrior first
T0, 4000 BC
Warrior SW. Sees nothing interesting.
Settler sits down in place. Start work on Stonehenge. Set Research to Polytheism. City works N Grassland Corn River square.
City will grow to Size 2 in 11 turns. Stonehenge is being built at 1 Hammer per turn, meaning that it will take 180 turns. A Warrior would take 22 turns.
EDIT: Polytheism in 18 turns.

T1, 3975 BC
Fortify the Warrior so as not to worry about him.

T11, 3725 BC
City is Size 2. Work the N Grassland Corn River and the SW Grassland Corn River. Switch build to Worker.
Polytheism in 7 turns. Worker in 18 turns.

T14, 3650 BC
Someone else founded Buddhism.

T18, 3550 BC
Polytheism learned and Hinudism founded. Could be different in the real game.
Remain in No State Religion, as we don't need the extra Happiness and if we meet the Buddhist AI, we'd rather not be immediately hated.
Set research to Agriculture.
Worker in 11 turns. Agriculture in 12 turns.

T29, 3275 BC
Fast Worker is built. Set build to Warrior (22 turns). Growth in 9 turns. We could also start on Settler (30 turns initially but less as we irrigate the Corns over time).
Fast Worker moves to PH. Fast Worker builds a Mine and then stops building the Mine before the end of the turn (what I will call "builds a partial Mine" in the future).

T30, 3250 BC
Agriculture is researched. Set research to Masonry. Fast Worker to N Grassland Corn River and irrigates on the same turn (gotta love Fast Workers!).
Corn will be irrigated in 8 turns. City will grow in 8 turns. Warrior will be done in 21 turns.

SUMMARY OF THE RESULTS
Growing to Size 2 ASAP (working the Corn only) and then immediately starting on the Worker got us the Worker at the ideal time.

Polytheism was researched and Agriculture was 1 turn away.

That 1 turn was not wasted, as I was able to Mine the Plains Hills square.

If we miss Hinduism by 1 turn, then we'll get Agriculture on the turn that the Worker comes out.

If we miss Hinduism by more than 1 turn, we'll have Agriculture ready before the Worker comes out.

So, I see no reason to complete the Warrior first, as doing so unnecessarily delays the Worker.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Test ii. Results from building a Warrior first and growing to Size 3 (THREE) to coincide with the completion of the Warrior
T0, 4000 BC
Warrior SW. Sees nothing interesting.
Settler sits down in place. Start work on a Warrior. Set Research to Polytheism. City works N Grassland Corn River square.
City will grow to Size 2 in 11 turns. Warrior in 22 turns. Polytheism in 18 turns.

T1, 3975 BC
Fortify the Warrior so as not to worry about him.

T11, 3725 BC
City is Size 2. Work the N Grassland Corn River and the SW Grassland Corn River.
Growth in 9 turns. Warrior in 11 turns. Polytheism in 7 turns.

T14, 3650 BC
Someone else founded Buddhism.

T18, 3550 BC
Polytheism learned and Hinudism founded. Could be different in the real game.
Remain in No State Religion.
Set research to Agriculture.
Growth in 2 turns. Warrior in 4 turns. Agriculture in 12 turns.

T20, 3500 BC
City Size 3. Work the N Grassland Corn River, the SW Grassland Corn River, and the E + E Grassland Hills Forest River (no Commerce due to the Forest).
Warrior comes 1 turn faster.
Growth in 13. Warrior in 1. Agriculture in 10.

Spoiler Micromanagement comment :

The Worker will come later than Agriculture, so we'd rather get an extra Hammer into the Worker than we care about getting Science at this point, since we want that Worker out ASAP. Thus, we work as high of a Hammer output square as possible, for its overflow. Arguably, you could work the Plains Hills River square for the same Hammers and 1 more Commerce, but then we'd want to switch to a square that gives us 3 (Food + Hammers) on the next turn, to get the Worker ASAP, so let's make our lives easier and pick the Grassland Hills Forest River square now.

T21, 3475 BC
Warrior is complete. Start build on Worker.
Fortify the Warrior so as not to worry about him for this test.
Worker in 15 turns. Agriculture in 9 turns.

T30, 3250 BC
Agriculure learned. Set research to Masonry.
Worker in 6 turns. Masonry in 11 turns.

T34, 3150 BC
The Incans came and met us. They are the Buddhist founders.

T36, 3100 BC
Worker built. Set build to Settler

Spoiler Micromanagement comment :

There is no point in growing further before making Settlers, as all of our squares are unimproved and at best give us 3 (Food + Hammers + Commerce) for additional squares.

Worker moves to N Grassland Corn River and irrigates. Irrigation complete in 8 turns.
Settler in 25 turns. Masonry in 5 turns.

SUMMARY
I don't think that this path is an improvement on building a Worker ASAP at Size 2. We delay the Worker considerably and all we gain is the chance to work a square for 1 extra Hammer per turn. Why only 1 extra Hammer? Well, each extra citizen costs 2 Food, so 3 (Food + Hammers) - 2 (Food cost from being at Size 3) = 1 extra Resource per turn. Getting the Worker out faster will get us gaining THREE Food per turn (from the Irrigated Corn) that much faster, which will quickly outweigh the benefit of growing to Size 3 before starting on the Warrior.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

TEST!!! Did somewhat say TEST? I'm all over it.

I assume all we want to compare warrior -> woker to SH -> worker (start on T11). See when the worker comes out, when we learn Agriculture, and how many idle worker turns there are, if any. Did I miss anything?

Mitchum already ran the other two scenarios of:
iii. Warrior ASAP, complete Warrior at the same time as growing to Size 2 -> Worker
iv. Warrior -> Grow to Size 2 ASAP -> Complete Warrior ASAP -> Worker

Just tell me what info you need.

We should now have enough info to compare the 4 tests. I'd like to hear what Mitchum says is the best way to go, since he ran tests iii. and iv. already and apparently is going to run the same two tests that I ran, so he'll be best equipped to comment on the best one.

I am leaning towards the "i. Stonehenge/Building-placeholder -> Grow to Size 2 ASAP -> Switch to a Worker" scenario being the best, but I admit that I did not run his previous two tests, so he's probably the best equipped to comment.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

The problem is that your explanations and posts are so long and at least to me convoluted so much that what ever the point was at the beginning it doesn't even seem to be there by the end.

Since this comment, I have been trying to do what you asked. Are things any better? Honest feedback is appreciated.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

You don't think having another early scout / fog buster would be useful? I'm of the opinion that the more we know about our surroundings and the sooner we find out about them, the better we are. The 11 fail gold from SH doesn't excite me as much as another early pair of eyes.

Well, we will be patiently awaiting your analysis of the test games to find out. But, since from my Test i., it appears that we get the Worker just in time by building Stonehenge or a Building first, spending any more time building the Warrior delays our Worker unnecessarily.

I agree that another scouting unit can be useful, but I question if it is a good tradeoff if it means what my test appears to show: that getting that early scouting unit delays the Worker's completion until well after Agriculture is learned.

 

[Mitchum]

As we know, there are tradeoffs with every decision we make in this game. I’ve been focusing a lot on the tradeoffs between the religious beeline and a focused REX strategy. Something Dhoomstriker said made me realize that I wasn’t accounting for all of the benefits associated with the religious beeline. I wanted to spell them out for the team here. Most of these were probably obvious to some of you back when Dhoomstriker first proposed this path, but I had been so focused on the impact of delaying BW, Writing, etc. that I hadn’t really considered all of the benefits of the early religion beeline strategy. Here is a quick list of some of the benefits:

1. We will hopefully be the founder of 5 religions. The benefits of this are obvious and have been mentioned multiple times by many of us. This will make the diplo situation a lot easier to manage as we can better control which religions spread to which AI. We will be able to influence who are our friends and who are our common enemies. This is HUGE in a diplo game.

2. We will pretty much be beelining Monotheism (with Agriculture thrown in for growth). Not only does the first to reach this tech found Judaism, it opens up the Organized Religion civic. I don’t know about you, but I typically trade for this and get it rather late in my games. The benefits of OR are two fold. First, we get a 25% bonus on all infrastructure we build in our cities. Second, we can build missionaries without a monastery (an expensive building early on). All of us know this, but I’ve never had it so early that EVERY building in my empire is OR-enhanced. It’s very likely that the discounted early infrastructure bonus will offset some of the disadvantage of getting BW so late. Of course, this assumes that the diplo situation allows us to run a state religion and that we are able to effectively spread it to all of our cities..

3. Being Spiritual means that temples are half the cost (and OR-enhanced to boot). This will be a great way to increase our happiness limit early in the game. And we’ll have a lot of temples that we could build due to all of the religions we’ll have. Larger cities means more tiles worked which leads to a more productive empire. This is yet another advantage that will enable us to “catch up” to the focused early REX strategy.

4. We will be using our early religions founded in new cities to expand our borders rather than having to wait for a culture-producing building to be completed. Other teams may have to build monuments, which are one of the buildings I hate to build unless I absolutely have to. If we don’t use holy cities to pop borders, we can do it via OR-enabled missionaries, which spreads our religion and pops our borders at the same time.

5. Theology enables the Theocracy civic. We don't know how this game will unfold, but it's possible that there may be an opportunity for an early war. Theocracy will be helpful in this regard.

6. Early Code of Laws enables Caste System. 3 or 4 scientist specialists coupled with the 100% bonus for being Philosophical would allow us to pump out that first and second great person several turns earlier, allowing us to build an earlier Academy, bulb a needed tech, etc. Or, we can hire an artist in a brand new city to speed up it's border pop if there is a key resource just outside the BFC. This allows us to settle cities in the best long-term spot, not in a location that puts a resource in the inner circle because we need it now and can't wait several turn to build a monument and then wait for the borders to pop.

I’m getting more and more behind the religion beeline strategy. I didn’t give it a fair chance early on as I was too focused on what we were giving up, not on what we were getting in the tradeoff. This is definitely outside my norm, but it’s growing on me every day. I just hope I don’t go for the religion beeline in all of my future games… I’m a fighter, not a lover!!