SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

[BLubmuz]

I read his post differently. I thought he was still voting for leaving the warrior in the queue. He said: "This will mainly satisfy our human curiosity, which can be put on hold for game purposes." He also said: "i vote to let the warrior queued"

there's an "if" before this. Since you're our main tester, can you remove that "if"?

 

[BLubmuz]

OK. I guess I misread his post. In my first test game, I finished warrior 2 first and then started worker 1 and I settled Silver City on T55, which was the SAME turn as my test where I did not finish the warrior... Let me try to re-create this now to confirm. Give me 15 minutes. Don't play yet...

Thiose Xposts will kill me

Those, merda

 

[unclethrill]

Vote for finish warrior.
I'm still not sure which is the best decision. I was focused on grow to 4, which is a mistake.

The pros for warrior first is earlier knowledge of a possible city #3 site and full investigation on city #2 site. This will mainly satisfy our human curiosity, which can be put on hold for game purposes. But i'm curious.

The cons are those 2H+4C 1 turn earlier and maybe the settler out 1 turn earlier.

If anyone can guarantee that we have the first settler built 1 turn earlier, i vote to let the warrior queued. I already verified we won't lose hammers on it.

If not, let's finish the warrior.

Tata
I can't consider him a full team member, until now. 2 measly, lapidary posts are not enough. If i see nothing from him in the next days, i'll ask Alan to cancel him from our team. I would set a deadline and i think May 9th is fair enough.
In case he's busy in RL he did not informed us, so for what i can see, he's MIA.

The Captain vote
There's no need to confirm that vote. Once i vote and the deadline is matched, my additional vote is automatically casted.

I read his post differently. I thought he was still voting for leaving the warrior in the queue. He said: "This will mainly satisfy our human curiosity, which can be put on hold for game purposes." He also said: "i vote to let the warrior queued"

He also said "If anyone can guarantee that we have the first settler built 1 turn earlier, i vote to let the warrior queued. I already verified we won't lose hammers on it.
If not, let's finish the warrior."

I really hate to push this off for another day but I can see the confusion. I read the first line to be his vote but if it is read as a title (though not in the title line) then I see your point.

As of right now I am putting my TS on hold until BLubmuz clarifies his vote.

Please just state A or B so it is perfectly clear.

A) Finish warrior
B) Start Worker as soon as we grow to 3.

 

[unclethrill]

OK. I guess I misread his post. In my first test game, I finished warrior 2 first and then started worker 1 and I settled Silver City on T55, which was the SAME turn as my test where I did not finish the warrior... Let me try to re-create this now to confirm. Give me 15 minutes. Don't play yet...

Thiose Xposts will kill me

Those, merda

Me too obviously.

I will wait on Mitchum's test and then play based on his results using either Not so final or final appropriately.

 

[BLubmuz]

I think we need to narrow in on what which victory condition we are targeting. All of this back and forth between diplo and cultural will start causing some sub-optimal decisions soon. We should be focused on our intended victory condition like a laser, no?

For example, if we’re going diplo, we need to start thinking about how we will get a Great Engineer soon. In my last diplo game, I got my GE late even though I was focused on it from the beginning. In addition, it came at ~75%, so it could have failed very easily. If going diplo, we should be thinking about our GE-generating city so that we can build an aqueduct, Hanging Gardens, forge and hire an engineer to start generating some GE gpp as soon as possible. This isn’t a big deal if we’re going cultural. Instead, we would be focusing on finding legendary city locations, a GP farm and a production city to build all of our missionaries.

I would like to take a straw poll to see where people stand right now.

POLL

A. Focus on diplo victory.
B. Focus on cultural victory.
C. Keep options open until the religion beeline is completed and/or we’ve scouted north and east to get a better lay of the land.​

I vote for option A: Focus on a diplo victory now with the following additions:

1. Re-write our high-level strategy now with this victory condition in mind
2. Put together a great person plan, including when we want them, where they will likely be generated, what flavor we want, and our intended use for each (e.g. build academy, bulb tech X, settle, etc.)
3. Put together our intended tech path after the religion beeline. We’ll be at about T106 with only 3 worker techs (Agriculture, Mining and BW). How can we close this gap so that our cities can begin to be more productive?
4. Others?

I think we can discuss this in parallel with unclethrill’s turn set. The earlier we start discussing and agreeing on this, the faster our future turn sets will go. If we don’t do this, we’ll be doing tons of testing and talking between each turn set, thus delaying our entire game.

No stone in sight (in can be on any fogged tile or in another continent). MC faraway. Land not explored.

I vote for C. Then i will rely on Dhoom's evaluation of the situation.
I just hope we can meet some more AI.
The map is surely a factor, Dhoom affirm that any AI can be good, even Tokugawa or Monty.
I also would like to know when is the latest moment in game where we can/must make a choice. The more knowledge we have, the more success we can have.

I have an idea : What about a nice temple in Dehli before the Oracle?

 

[unclethrill]

No stone in sight (in can be on any fogged tile or in another continent). MC faraway. Land not explored.

I vote for C. Then i will rely on Dhoom's evaluation of the situation.
I just hope we can meet some more AI.
The map is surely a factor, Dhoom affirm that any AI can be good, even Tokugawa or Monty.
I also would like to know when is the latest moment in game where we can/must make a choice. The more knowledge we have, the more success we can have.

I have an idea : What about a nice temple in Dehli before the Oracle?

I actually think that I agree.
Cancel my former vote for now.

Dhoom, how much farther do we have before we are in a position where we need to make a decision that would be different based on the VC we choose?

 

[unclethrill]

I have an idea : What about a nice temple in Dehli before the Oracle?

What would we gain?

 

[BLubmuz]

What would we gain?

basically 1C/turn to have a priest hired.
Mainly the GP popped very soon.

Then, we need to define a city where to build a library and hire in short time 2 Scientists.

Since idea calls idea , take this other one: We build the temple and the Oracle in Bombay.
We build the library in Dehli, which is not polluted by anything and is a city we already have which can afford to hire 2 or even 3 specialists in a decently close future.

The reward is huge: around turn 110-120 we can have 5 religions, one for each city founded, hopefully. Far better than Stonehenge to expand borders.

And since we'll adopt OR only when we need to build something in a given city and switch to "no religion" once the building is finished, if we go for culture this will help a lot.

Please tell me if i need to be restricted.

 

[Mitchum]

T18 – Hit space bar with warrior until lion appears.
T20 – Grow to 3. Put new citizen on 1F 2H tile. Continue building warrior 2.
T21 – Warrior 2 completed. Start worker 1.
T22 – Warrior 1 kills lion (1.2/2 strength). Move warrior 1N
T23 – Move warrior 1 to forest 1E of marble.
T24 – Warrior 1 fortified in forest 1E of marble.
T25 – Warrior 2 is 1 SW of deer, thus completing his Silver City exploration. He also exposed all tiles to the SE of the deer that could have affected our settling location (due to it all being water squares in our test game, which may not be the case in the real game).
T26 – Warrior moves north through our cultural borders toward then west to fog bust the southern half of the peninsula. He will stick to the trees in fear of bears (although in real life I’d be worried to be alone in the woods at night all by myself )
T30 – Agriculture to Masonry (11)
T32 – Warrior 2 kills lion while on forested hill. Heals in place.
T35 – Borders in capital expand.
T36 – Worker 1 to settler 2 (25 turns). Farm northern corn.
T41 – Masonry to Monotheism (20 turns)
T42 – Both fog busters in place prior to turn 50. Both are fortified in forests (1E of marble and 1W of pigs).
T43 – Farm on northern corn done. Settler in 12 turns.
T44 – Start farming second corn.
T47 – Fortified warrior by marble kills bear, who attacked us at 9.3% odds.
T50 – First barb warrior seen to the north of our capital. T50 as Dhoomstriker suspected. With our fog busters already in place, we should be barb free from the west.
T51 – Both corns farmed (1 turn behind worker first, as expected). Settler in 3 turns.
T52 – Partial farm 2 south of capital
T53 – Start silver mine.
T54 – Settler 2 done. Start warrior 3 (7 turns). Citizens on 2 corns and 2F 1H tile.
T55 – Silver City settled 2W of silver mine. Same turn as worker first option.

The major advantage I see with this option is not scouting, but keeping barbs under control. All of this talk about gaining 11 basic units would be flushed away if we have to throw a bunch of warriors at a barb archer party on the peninsula...

 

[Mitchum]

basically 1C/turn to have a priest hired.
Mainly the GP popped very soon.

Then, we need to define a city where to build a library and hire in short time 2 Scientists.

Since idea calls idea , take this other one: We build the temple and the Oracle in Bombay.
We build the library in Dehli, which is not polluted by anything and is a city we already have which can afford to hire 2 or even 3 specialists in a decently close future.

The reward is huge: around turn 110-120 we can have 5 religions, one for each city founded, hopefully. Far better than Stonehenge to expand borders.

And since we'll adopt OR only when we need to build something in a given city and switch to "no religion" once the building is finished, if we go for culture this will help a lot.

Please tell me if i need to be restricted.

I like the way you're thinking. This plan is beyond unclethrill's turnset, so should not impact our decision on whether or not he should play tonight. This would need to be tested to ensure that we have enough forests to chop the Oracle and when we could complete it. These tests would best be run after unclethill's turnset so that we have a clear picture of Silver City's BFC, yes?

 

[Mitchum]

I'd like to propose that we name our cities something more descriptive than Bombay (or Delhi). That way, when we refer to a city's name in our posts at a later date when we have 5+ cities, it will be easier for everyone to know which city we're talking about based only on the name alone. Does this make sense?

If so, I propose we call the silver city Silver City. Delhi can remain the same as it will have the only Indian city name, unless someone wants to rename it to something else (e.g. BLubmuzville, FEopolis, etc.)

 

[unclethrill]

T18 – Hit space bar with warrior until lion appears.
T20 – Grow to 3. Put new citizen on 1F 2H tile. Continue building warrior 2.
T21 – Warrior 2 completed. Start worker 1.
T22 – Warrior 1 kills lion (1.2/2 strength). Move warrior 1N
T23 – Move warrior 1 to forest 1E of marble.
T24 – Warrior 1 fortified in forest 1E of marble.
T25 – Warrior 2 is 1 SW of deer, thus completing his Silver City exploration. He also exposed all tiles to the SE of the deer that could have affected our settling location (due to it all being water squares in our test game, which may not be the case in the real game).
T26 – Warrior moves north through our cultural borders toward then west to fog bust the southern half of the peninsula. He will stick to the trees in fear of bears (although in real life I’d be worried to be alone in the woods at night all by myself )
T30 – Agriculture to Masonry (11)
T32 – Warrior 2 kills lion while on forested hill. Heals in place.
T35 – Borders in capital expand.
T36 – Worker 1 to settler 2 (25 turns). Farm northern corn.
T41 – Masonry to Monotheism (20 turns)
T42 – Both fog busters in place prior to turn 50. Both are fortified in forests (1E of marble and 1W of pigs).
T43 – Farm on northern corn done. Settler in 12 turns.
T44 – Start farming second corn.
T47 – Fortified warrior by marble kills bear, who attacked us at 9.3% odds.
T50 – First barb warrior seen to the north of our capital. T50 as Dhoomstriker suspected. With our fog busters already in place, we should be barb free from the west.
T51 – Both corns farmed (1 turn behind worker first, as expected). Settler in 3 turns.
T52 – Partial farm 2 south of capital
T53 – Start silver mine.
T54 – Settler 2 done. Start warrior 3 (7 turns). Citizens on 2 corns and 2F 1H tile.
T55 – Silver City settled 2W of silver mine. Same turn as worker first option.

The major advantage I see with this option is not scouting, but keeping barbs under control. All of this talk about gaining 11 basic units would be flushed away if we have to throw a bunch of warriors at a barb archer party on the peninsula...

Okay so based on this, we will finish the warrior since there is no gain on when the settler is finished and this is what BLubmuz votes for.

I will play the Not-So-Final PPP with the warrior completing before we start the worker in the next 30 minutes.

 

[Mitchum]

Okay so based on this, we will finish the warrior since there is no gain on when the settler is finished and this is what BLubmuz votes for.

I will play the Not-So-Final PPP with the warrior completing before we start the worker in the next 30 minutes.

Are we all in agreement that warrior 1 stays north to fog bust and warrior 2 scouts Silver City location and then heads west to fog bust as well? This delays exploration, but improves safety 500%... As I said in an earlier post, we'll have 3 additional warriors soon enough to help explore...

a. Warrior 1 – Stay on the peninsula and fog bust the northern half (either on the marble or 1 tile E)
b. Warrior 2 (T36) – Explore Silver City location and then fog bust southern half of the peninsula
c. Warrior 3 (T59) – Start looking for a decent spot NE for city #3 (settler will done in 11 turns…)
d. Warrior 4 (T61 from Silver City) – Start looking for a decent spot E for city #3.
e. Warrior 5 (T67 from Silver City) – Head east to help fog bust (assumes warriors on peninsula are in place and fog busting with no issues)

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Okay so in the cross post with BLubmuz due to a real life disaster (at least from my wife's perspective), he appears to have changed (kept original) his vote to warrior first. So since 24 hours have past and the votes are now 4 for finish warrior and 2 for change to worker, warrior finish wins.

No offense, but BLubz sounds like he is on the fence. He also doesn't understand the tradeoff, as was clear from his message. I would gladly summarize the tradeoff so that he can make an informed decision, but if you've started already, then I guess I'll be too late with my reply?!

EDIT: If you give me about another hour, I can try and summarize all of the relevant facts. I'd rather that we be informed as much as possible when we make our decisions, and it is clear that with all of the info in this thread, it is hard for any one person to be expected to keep all of the relevant info in their head. I'll try to make it clear, though.

 

[Mitchum]

No offense, but BLubz sounds like he is on the fence. He also doesn't understand the tradeoff, as was clear from his message. I would gladly summarize the tradeoff so that he can make an informed decision, but if you've started already, then I guess I'll be too late with my reply?!

I was wondering when you would show up...

It seems that Blubmuz' decision was based on whether or not founding Silver City would be delayed by completing the warrior first. As I had mentioned over 100 posts ago, I was able to found city #2 on the same turn regardless of whether or not we complete the warrior before starting the worker. I've posted the details for both options, so anyone should be able to duplicate what I did.

Me thinks BLubmuz is off the fence...

 

[Mitchum]

In any event, I think you should clearly indicate the tradeoffs. I also think that Unclethrill should hold off until you've done this and BLubmuz (and anyone else on line) has read this post and commented. Can this whole process be completed in >2 hours?

Edit: I just read your edit from your post 2 above. It looks like we said the same thing.

Edit 2: With all of us online and reading posts real time, putting information in edits is dangerous business. I suggest creating a new post unless you can see that no other FE players are on line... The cost of a new post is cheap, no?

 

[havr]

4. Fail gold allowed me to crank up the science slider, which brought in Writing by several turns.

Well, you cannot really assume that in the "real" game you will get it. It may come too late (after you finish the Oracle late), or too early (and you get only little on no gold)...

 

[Mitchum]

Well, you cannot really assume that in the "real" game you will get it. It may come too late (after you finish the Oracle late), or too early (and you get only little on no gold)...

Agreed. It will need to be decided real time during the game. I was just bringing up the fact that this is a viable strategy to keep the science slider high. Worst case, Writing slides 1 or 2 turns, which should be fine since I learned Writing 2 turns before completing the Oracle. Plus, we need to evaluate BLubmuz' suggestion of building the Oracle in Silver City, which will change the timing and should give us even more leeway on when we finish Writing.

 

[BLubmuz]

I like the way you're thinking. This plan is beyond unclethrill's turnset, so should not impact our decision on whether or not he should play tonight. This would need to be tested to ensure that we have enough forests to chop the Oracle and when we could complete it. These tests would best be run after unclethill's turnset so that we have a clear picture of Silver City's BFC, yes?

Thank you.
And thanks for the test, too.
To make the temple useful, Silver city must work the corn to grow fast to 3. We must balance this with the need of Dehli to grow and to build settlers quickly.
Thus, we need to sacrifice something to let Silver city (why not just Silver?) grow to 3.
The problem is that ideally Silver needs a 4F tile to hire a specialist and to work the silver. The corn is 6F and it can be worked alternatively by Silver and Dehli. Lot of MM, but it can worth the effort.

I'd like to propose that we name our cities something more descriptive than Bombay (or Delhi). That way, when we refer to a city's name in our posts at a later date when we have 5+ cities, it will be easier for everyone to know which city we're talking about based only on the name alone. Does this make sense?

If so, I propose we call the silver city Silver City. Delhi can remain the same as it will have the only Indian city name, unless someone wants to rename it to something else (e.g. BLubmuzville, FEopolis, etc.)

Let Dehli being Dehli, i agree on the meaningful names. Silver can be OK. Silver city is too long. (did i told you i'm lazy?)

Are we all in agreement that warrior 1 stays north to fog bust and warrior 2 scouts Silver City location and then heads west to fog bust as well? This delays exploration, but improves safety 500%... As I said in an earlier post, we'll have 3 additional warriors soon enough to help explore...

Seems a good plan. I just hope he won't face some bear to get it ruined.

 

[BLubmuz]

No offense, but BLubz sounds like he is on the fence. He also doesn't understand the tradeoff, as was clear from his message. I would gladly summarize the tradeoff so that he can make an informed decision, but if you've started already, then I guess I'll be too late with my reply?!

EDIT: If you give me about another hour, I can try and summarize all of the relevant facts. I'd rather that we be informed as much as possible when we make our decisions, and it is clear that with all of the info in this thread, it is hard for any one person to be expected to keep all of the relevant info in their head. I'll try to make it clear, though.

I was wondering too...
No need you summarize the trade off, i't clear to me. And it put me on your side when i tested yesterday night. But those tests were affected by a mistake, have Dehli grow 4 before start the first settler.
Now, i gave my reasons. A good game cannot be played only with hammers/food/commerce in mind.
As Mitch said, to place a fogbuster strategically can largerly repaid us of that lost. What if a barb warrior (i won't even think to a barb archer) enters our borders and pillages the corn? 8 worker turns lost, at best.