SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

[BLubmuz]

Even the "closest" (and presumably lowest-Maintenance) City 3 site, Option f), STILL costs us 5 Commerce per turn. Without any Commerce squares workable from that city (we can't work the adjacent Lake without the Fishing Tech), that city would actually net our empire:
2 Food, 2 Hammers, 1 - 5 = -4 Commerce

While settling a city i usually think in long-term, not in few turns of benefit.
I think the pros for that city are only... it's a city, after all.

IMO the city along the river south is far superior: just farm 1-2 tiles, cottage the rest, mine, windmill when we can. Have you counted the riverside tiles?

But we're not forced to settle those cities.
Both spots are not of the kind "oh my, i have to send a settler there, i cannot lose this one".

So, as i already said, we can let Zara take both.
Since we have only one happy resource, i think that a priority can be the incense.
So, we need to put a city over there, poor enough, decent enough, but grabbing a much needed resource.

Thus my proposal is:
Let's forget to block Zara, there's nothing worth any effort East.
Let's settle the marble/stone in the spot you proposed, next will be the incense.
Then we'll start settle the West. Let's hope to not find the Indians

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Let's see what havr's First Partial Turnset reveals before committing to City 3's Location--we have the luxury of not needing to settle Settler 3 immediately

Spoiler :

One more important consideration:

What if our Warrior 5 reveals something nice on that hidden Grassland River? Say, a Gem? That fact would certainly have the potential to sway us to voting back to settling towards the east.


At the same time, while it is important to get a Legendary City 2 site down for a Cultural game, it is not MORE important to get it down ASAP than it is to get Writing ASAP for The Oracle and Confucianism.


So, Legendary City 2 can afford to be delayed by a few turns.


Thus, I propose that we proceed with my 3-turn PPP as written. Of course, if you have minor suggested alterations to make to it, speak away. We do have one "decision point" on Turn 74 about where to move Warrior 3, but hopefully, havr will pause the game at that point if the Barb Warrior is not visible and thus the decision is not clear.

Reasons why to use go ahead with my PPP, regardless of how we vote on which Victory Condition to choose:
a) The Settler will only have moved slightly north and will still be able to easily go either east or west.
b) The juicier or suckier that the east looks, the more in agreement we will be on where to send Settler 3. We'll need these couple of extra turns of exploration from Warrior 5 in order to proplery decide.
c) If we do want to settle east, there might be a race to do so. Getting our Settler 3 in position (going north, which is faster than going straight east, anyway) is still an important thing to do. Sending him west just to wait around until The Oracle is almost complete won't help our Cultural game any. So, sending Settler 3 along the path that my PPP lays out will keep us fully flexible, while keeping us in the best possible position for beating Zara to an eastern location, while not overly delaying a western location.

Does that solution meet everybody's needs for now?

 

[BLubmuz]

One more important consideration:
(...)
Does that solution meet everybody's needs for now?

I can bet there's nothing valuable, otherwise Zara would have quickly sent a settler.
But this is a bet, not certainity.

I think we can risk the injured warrior, for 2 reasons:
- if there's another barb around, fortified in the forest or not, he's dead.
- if there're no barbs around he's safe and he can move.

Don't forget he's in a corner of Zara's land, which should be fogbusted.

Anyway, move there the warrior now inside our territory takes too long, far more than 3 turns.
Let's risk.

Now, some count:
we got 2 cities (woo-oh)
we have to settle 2 legendary, 3 support, 1 for incense and 1 for the seafood north.

This makes 9.
We plan to found 5 religions. can we have 5 cathedrals in each LC?

For the ones not-awaked-yet, LC = Legendary City.

A question: in FR we do gain culture for any religion present in the city. This is huge with 5 religions, compared to stay in any religious civic. But probably we'll switch between pacifism and OR, to maximize Cathedrals builds and GPersons, so this can be just a minor point.

 

[havr]

Took a quick look to see if anything happened and saw that Dhoom posted a **very** detailed 3 turn PPP.

If you all agree I can execute it today, although I would feel a little like a mechanical robot. Nevermind, that what happens when you are in a team with a control-freak.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

All of the info that you could EVER want to know about Barbs and Barb Cities, and then some

Spoiler :

Okay, I've been doing some reading about how Barbs work. It's a very enlightening read. Bookmark it if you don't have time to read it now.

Something interesting from that thread has come to light: we might get a Barb City to spawn in a location that we are spawn-busting against Barb units from appearing.

It appears that Barb Cities are placed based on unfogged squares and do not account for the "5 square diametre" of units fog-busting for them.

Sooooo, in regards to these points:

Turn 73
1. Click on the name of the Warrior in the far north-west. Name him "Warrior 1," but ask if you don't know how to do so. Wake him up. Send him 1 square east onto the Grassland Forest
2. Click on Warrior 2 in the far south-west. Wake him up. Send him 1 square east onto the Grassland Forest

I think that they'll have to be changed to:
1. Click on the name of the Warrior in the far north-west. Name him "Warrior 1," but ask if you don't know how to do so. Wake him up. Press the Spacebar to end his turn
2. Click on Warrior 2 in the far south-west. Wake him up. Press the Spacebar to end his turn


The current location of Warriors 1 and 2, along with our cultural borders, prevents any Barb Cities from spawning in the west. Just BARELY do we avoid a Barb City spawning near the Stone, thanks to the fact that there isn't a 3x3 diametre location that is completed unfogged there.

However, Coastal Barb cities don't need a 3x3 diametre location of LAND--the Coast squares can just as easily count. All that is needed is a "centre square" to be Land for the City to be founded on, and the surrounding 9 squares to be all unfogged by all non-Barb players. Thus, if we move either Warrior 1 or Warrior 2 1E, then we immediately risk a Barb City spawning on the western coast to the west of either Warrior (or even both of them).


Although we'll take a small risk of a Barb unit spawning just west of the Stone by not moving these Warriors to the east, there are actually only 2 squares where that could happen. This number only increases to 3 to 4 squares once we move Warrior 3 away if the Barb Warrior also goes east.


We'll get Warrior 6 in place soon, in order to "take the heat" off of most of those squares, and all of them once we feel we're close enough to Writing to be able to afford the 1 Gold Per Turn Unit Supply Cost involved.


I don't think that we can risk having a Barb City spawning now (a minimum of 3 Barb Archers appearing, with some of them eventually wandering around, according to the Barb thread), is not going to help our game at all.

 

[Mitchum]

He did beat me to The Oracle in at least one test game, but it was probably a game where I was more focused on watching where Louis would settle. Still, it SEEMED like an early date, but I don't have the autosaves anymore to check.

It only took him about 7 turns to build The Oracle, if I recall my "World-builder gazing" correctly. I'm pretty sure that he's an Industrious Leader, though, partially explaining the reason why. Still, that doesn't mean that Louis or another Industrious Leader is not in our game.

I noticed some strange things in my game. I watched Louis in WB and he would start the Oracle for a turn or two and then switch to a worker or settler. Maybe the AI guages what a safe date would be and they decide whether they can hold off of finishing a wonder, tech, etc.

Regarding Louis in our test game specifically, I felt "bad" about bull-dozing his cities, so when I placed his settler where I wanted his city settled on T73 such that it would match where Zara's capital is, I gave him marble, cows, corn, etc. I also put improvements on many tiles, including several mines. I wanted to ensure that he would settle in place. I guess I gave him too strong a capital...

I think T92 is a safe date for the Oracle. If we can shave a few turns off Writing by holding off on settling city 3, we will be able to pul in our date to T90 or so with one extra chop, making it that much safer.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Reply to havr about helping him on his first PPP

Spoiler :

although I would feel a little like a mechanical robot.

To be fair, we've all played together before, either in a practice game or, in Irgy's case, with BLubz in a different team-based game on the forums (a Diplomacy game, if I have my facts straight). You're the untried element.

You've also expressed your concerns over being able to absorb all of the thread's info multiple times.


Finally, I wasn't even going to write a PPP for you, but you specifically asked for help in sifting through the info to get the team's desired moves. I started to quote a bunch of messages, but it got really messy and hard to follow. So, to make things EASIER for you, I just went ahead and wrote the info down as a PPP, capturing as much of the relevant info as I possibly could.


I'd rather not have to do so going forward. I'd rather rely on you to do so. Call it a "freebie," after which you'll be more on your own to succeed or screw up.


I've been trying to edit and update the two PPP messages as much as possible, in order to keep them up-to-date. That will become your job after this mini-turnset is executed. Again, call it a freebie.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Free Religion generally isn't used for a Cultural Game

Spoiler :

A question: in FR we do gain culture for any religion present in the city. This is huge with 5 religions, compared to stay in any religious civic. But probably we'll switch between pacifism and OR, to maximize Cathedrals builds and GPersons, so this can be just a minor point.

I am almost positive that I discussed this issue before, either in this thread or in our Practice Game, but I probably would have saved that info for this thread. Searching this thread for key words is not an easy task, but it is certainly far easier to do than searching the whole internet!

Regardless, Free Religion's bonus culture is so tiny compared to your total cultural output that I'd rather get the extra Hammers or Great People Points for even a couple of turns in place of the extra culture that you'd see.


The ONLY time that I might consider running Free Religion in a Cultural game (other than for Diplomacy reasons if we're getting attacked left, right, and centre) is at the end of the game when I had built all of my buildings and I felt that I couldn't squeeze out another Great Person, no matter how hard I juggled the specialists, AND if our Civ was Spiritual (which it is, in this case), I MIGHT do it. But, normally you are pushing really hard for an extra Great Person or two at the end, so Pacificism will trump Free Religion even in that case.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Possible Reason why Zara only has only 1 City

Spoiler :

I can bet there's nothing valuable, otherwise Zara would have quickly sent a settler.
But this is a bet, not certainity.

You're free to bet. If he's building Stonehenge or The Great Wall, then he certainly has a reason not to build a Settler.

Moving Warriors 4 and 5

Spoiler :

- if there's another barb around, fortified in the forest or not, he's dead.

Currently, the injured Warrior is spawn-busting the south, in conjunction with Zara's southern borders. We are very unlikely to see a Barb unit appear near him while he is healing... unless... we move Warrior 4 north. Then, a Barb unit is free to spawn to the south on the next turn, and very well might, since you killed off the Barb unit that was previously spawn-busting there.

- if there're no barbs around he's safe and he can move.

We can't know what's to the west of Zara's borders. A Barb unit could easily have moved there and have stayed outside of Zara's borders, just like the Barb Warrior to our north is staying out of our borders. There is no guaranteed safety. If you move our wounded Warrior, treat him as dead.

Anyway, move there the warrior now inside our territory takes too long, far more than 3 turns.

Actually, it takes exactly 3 turns, counting the current turn (Turn 73). During that time period, we can't get Settler 3 any closer or further to either the east or the west.

Thus, we gain nothing in terms of new knowledge that can help Settler 3 in deciding where to go. All that we do is throw Warrior 4 away.

IF, on the other hand, you wanted to move Warrior 4 to the south or south-east, to see what's there, then I would say that you ARE revealing new info. THEN it might be worth risking his death. But not for info that we'll get in the same amount of time (at least as far as Settler 3 in concerned about the amount time).

Clarifying City Locations in the north

Spoiler :

1 for incense and 1 for the seafood north.

Aren't they one and the same city? Fish + 2 Incense?

How Many Cathedrals do we Really Need? (Only applies to a Cultural game)

Spoiler :

We plan to found 5 religions. can we have 5 cathedrals in each LC?

Maybe we won't need that many Cathedrals. That's why you might have 6 to 7 cities. 3 Cities to build Temples while the Legendary Cities focus on building Cathedrals. The two of the higher-production Legendary Cities can also then build temples for the 2nd Cathedral of each religion, with the 7th city builds the 6th Temple of said religion, leaving the weaker-production Legendary City to focus solely on Cathedral building, instead of having to sneak Temples in between.

Only later do we have to decide if we need the 3rd Cathedral of each religion, and exactly how many of said 3rd Cathedrals we will need.

 

[Mitchum]

I can bet there's nothing valuable, otherwise Zara would have quickly sent a settler.
But this is a bet, not certainity.

Well, Zara hasn't settled a second city at all. For all we know, one could be headed for the double gold, double gems site just around the 3 peaks...

I agree with Dhoomstriker. If we don't plan on settling city 3 right away to help speed up Writing, there is no harm is moving settler 3 north and waiting to find out what havr uncovers in the fog.

I think we can risk the injured warrior, for 2 reasons:
- if there's another barb around, fortified in the forest or not, he's dead.
- if there're no barbs around he's safe and he can move.

I think you've missed the reason why fighting the barb warrior is a bad idea. Even if we were guaranteed to win the fight without a scratch, I would vote NOT to do so. If we win, another barb WILL spawn on the next turn. It has a 50/50 chance of being an archer and it will most probably be close to us since there are already barbs alive around the rest of the world preventing it from spawing there. Having a barb archer is WAY worse than having a whimpy warrior running around.

If you're talking about exploring with the wounded warrior to the east, there is a chance that there is a barb around. If we do move him, I suggest that he stay in place for several turns to see what's around first. What info do we need from him in the next 5 turns that will change what we do with settler 3? Are you thinking that he could find sea food or other resources to the south?

We plan to found 5 religions. can we have 5 cathedrals in each LC?

Jesusin, a top cultural player, says that it's difficult to fully leverage 4 religions fully. Sure, it's possible. Maybe moreso in this game since we'll have to play longer than a typical cultural game due to requiring Astronomy (likely) and not being able to bomb 4 artists at the end of the game.

A question: in FR we do gain culture for any religion present in the city. This is huge with 5 religions, compared to stay in any religious civic. But probably we'll switch between pacifism and OR, to maximize Cathedrals builds and GPersons, so this can be just a minor point.

Free Religion gives happiness, not culture. Happiness will NOT be a problem with the culture slider at > 80%.

EDIT: The reference guide says that Free Religion give +10% science. Is it actually +10% culture? Too lazy to open game and check...

 

[Mitchum]

Took a quick look to see if anything happened and saw that Dhoom posted a **very** detailed 3 turn PPP.

If you all agree I can execute it today, although I would feel a little like a mechanical robot. Nevermind, that what happens when you are in a team with a control-freak.

I feel comfortable with you executing the PPP today with the small change that Dhoomstriker mentioned about leaving warriors 1 and 2 in the west in their current locations (unfortified and hitting space each turn).

I think Dhoomstriker is letting us in on how a top player thinks about every decision made during the course of a game. Does he go into too much detail? Maybe he does at times. However, I would rather have more information than less. When you're talking to someone, you can gauge their understanding by constant affirmative feedback from the listener. When you're typing something in a thread like this, you can't assume that the others understand what you're typing. So even though it may SEEM like he's scolding or talking down to us, I don't think that is the case. He's just trying to be ultra clear on what he is trying to say to avoid any misunderstanding.s One 1,000 word post (okay, maybe 10,000 words ) is better than a 100 word post and then several back-and-forth posts between all of us to clear up what the intent of that 100 words was.

As Dhoomstriker said, other than Unclethrill and BLubmuz (and possibly Irgy), none of us really know each other that well. I hope that we all can take Dhoomstriker's comments as a learning experience and not an insult. I have to tell you that I've learned quite a bit from all of you already. Take the good in other's comments and let the perceived bad roll of your back. These perceived bad comments will surely diminish once we're all comfortable with each other's playing style.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Debate on How Many Religions are Enough for a Cultural Game

Spoiler :

Jesusin, a top cultural player, says that it's difficult to fully leverage 4 religions fully. Sure, it's possible. Maybe moreso in this game since we'll have to play longer than a typical cultural game due to requiring Astronomy (likely) and not being able to bomb 4 artists at the end of the game.

Well, it IS hard to leverage 4 religions fully. That said, it's not too hard to get 1 to 2 Cathedrals out of each religion that you have. The more religions that you have given those conditions, the better.

I'd rather partially-leverage 5 religions (by building 1 to 2 Cathedrals per religion) than be forced to fully-leverage 3 religions (by building 3 Cathedrals per religion).

Free Religion provides culture from each Religion in a City but regardless, is STILL not worth running in a Cultural game

Spoiler :

Free Religion gives happiness, not culture. Happiness will NOT be a problem with the culture slider at > 80%.

To be fair, Free Religion allows you to accumulate Culture from every religion in a city. Unless you happen to have a Holy City in one of your Legendary Cities, that's only 1 extra Culture per religion, minus 1 religion (since you'd get the culture from your State Religion's religion already).

Still, the cultural bonus is not worth the tradeoff of Hammers (from Organized Religion) or Great People Points (from Pacificism). So, you'd only realistically need to run Free Religion in a cultural game if you really had diplomatic issues with running one of your existing religions as your State Religion.

 

[BLubmuz]

since you killed off the Barb unit that was previously spawn-busting there.

I survived to him. My goal was to explore and i can't do it without exiting our borders

Actually, it takes exactly 3 turns, counting the current turn (Turn 73). During that time period, we can't get Settler 3 any closer or further to either the east or the west.

OK, let's move our hero SE. That should be safe and useful.

Aren't they one and the same city? Fish + 2 Incense?

Fish+incense*2 is one.
3 clams up N is another one. Shares marble+cows with LC2.

Maybe we won't need that many Cathedrals. That's why you might have 6 to 7 cities. 3 Cities to build Temples while the Legendary Cities focus on building Cathedrals. The two of the higher-production Legendary Cities can also then build temples for the 2nd Cathedral of each religion, with the 7th city builds the 6th Temple of said religion, leaving the weaker-production Legendary City to focus solely on Cathedral building, instead of having to sneak Temples in between.

Only later do we have to decide if we need the 3rd Cathedral of each religion, and exactly how many of said 3rd Cathedrals we will need.

Cathedrals are culture multipliers, right? If you have nothing to multiply the result is still 0.
Of course we'll have something to multiply, and our cheap temples will give +1 culture, so they're not a waste.

Free Religion gives happiness, not culture. Happiness will NOT be a problem with the culture slider at > 80%.

The basics!
I would not say it's better, just it DOES gives culture.

 

[BLubmuz]

Well, it IS hard to leverage 4 religions fully. That said, it's not too hard to get 1 to 2 Cathedrals out of each religion that you have. The more religions that you have given those conditions, the better.

I'd rather partially-leverage 5 religions (by building 1 to 2 Cathedrals per religion) than be forced to fully-leverage 3 religions (by building 3 Cathedrals per religion).

Not clear. Why not build all the possible cathedrals?

We do not care about great research. The few we need can be sustained by our specialists under Representation. The Economy would not be a problem.
Just whip a CH in the barb city by the furs.
I think that when all our cities have:
- Library
- Market or Grocer
- CH
we're in great shape.

 

[Mitchum]

Cathedrals are culture multipliers, right? If you have nothing to multiply the result is still 0.
Of course we'll have something to multiply, and our cheap temples will give +1 culture, so they're not a waste.

Yes, cathedrals are multipliers. Cathedrals are expensive to build, even if you have the resource required to speed it up... especially in a hammer-poor city. The point is that we want them built early so that when we do crank up the culture slider, all of the commerce from the matured cottages gets multiplied right away. If the cathedrals aren't done yet when you crank the slider up, you won't get the benefit of them until they are done. I would say that > 95% of the culture will be generated in LC2 and LC3 AFTER we crank up the slider (some from the slider and some from culture bombs). Anything created before then will typically be negligible and could have just as easily been generated in 1 or 2 turns at the end game. Unless, that is, we intend to build a lot of wonders in LC2 and LC3 (not likely since they are a bit weak on hammers and have a lot of cathedrals and temples to build).

The basics!
I would not say it's better, just it DOES gives culture.

Are you mad at me for asking a question that you feel I should already know?

 

[BLubmuz]

I think Dhoomstriker is letting us in on how a top player thinks about every decision made during the course of a game. Does he go into too much detail? Maybe he does at times.

Yes, i think so.
Havr stated to be a Monarch player, so he can't be treated like a newbie.
He's probably new to BUFFY and to the SGotM games, and he lacks those 2-3 weeks we spent discussing rules and playing our practice game.

Sometimes i see Dhoom like a mix of my wife, my daughter and my sister in law packed together in their worst moments.

Sure we have to refer to you as a "he", Dhoom?

Also, my wife is a teacher, to make her worst.

 

[Mitchum]

Not clear. Why not build all the possible cathedrals?

We do not care about great research. The few we need can be sustained by our specialists under Representation. The Economy would not be a problem.
Just whip a CH in the barb city by the furs.
I think that when all our cities have:
- Library
- Market or Grocer
- CH
we're in great shape.

Most of the top cultural victories I've seen (or my best cultural games) eek out every single hammer just to finish all of the temples, cathedrals, missionaries, wonders, minimal army, etc. Dhoomstriker is more the expert here, but I don't think we'll be able to build all of those buildings in every city and still have a good cultural finish date.

Add to this the fact that we'll likely have to build an army and navy to get the fur and we'll even be more hammer limited in this game with respect to a cultural victory.

 

[BLubmuz]

Are you mad at me for asking a question that you feel I should already know?

probably my wife contaged me. But i'm not seriously mad.

When i am i post something like this:

Spoiler :

aaaaAAAAAAAAArrrGHHHHHhhhhhhhh​

so, don't worry.

 

[Mitchum]

Yes, i think so.
Havr stated to be a Monarch player, so he can't be trated like a newbie.
He's probably new to BUFFY and to the SGotM games, and he lacks those 2-3 weeks we spent discussing rules and playing our practice game.

Sometimes i see Dhoom like a mix of my wife, my daughter and my sister in law packed together in their worst moments.

Sure we have to refer to you as a "he", Dhoom?

Also, my wife is a teacher, to make her worst.

OK, can we be a bit more constructive here? It appears that you are sarcastically throwing an insult Dhoomstriker's way. What specifically should he do differently? Should his posts be shorter? Should he put an "Executive Summary" or "Conclusion" in his posts so that those not interested in the details can just read that (I personally like the details so would not want them to disappear)? Should he not try to teach us how forests grow or how to avoid barbs?

If you could be a bit more specific (and constructive), I think Dhoomstriker will find ways to impart his knowledge and experience without being like your wife.

 

[Mitchum]

Can others please give havr the approval to play the next few turns per Dhoom's very detailed PPP? I'd like to see what's in the fog so that we can get this game moving again!