SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

[Irgy]

Had another go at it, still far from optimal, but a lot more focused. Could get The Pyramids in Riverdale by at least turn 128 with some tweaking. In this test I chopped every single forest in the BFC, but we could save 1 with a whip (yes I know it's inefficient but the population have nothing better to do there) and at least 1 if not 2 more by remembering to switch the state religeon back to Confucianism once the borders have popped in the christian/stone city . I skipped pottery to get math sooner this time (last time I did it without math, but I knew it was a bad idea). I built nothing but an oblisk before switching to The Pyramids, most of it without stone - in fact I expect to be pretty much ready to chop and finish it as soon as the stone is in. We can experiment though with what else could be built there before starting The Pyramids.

I built a worker in the capital at the start, to avoid the happiness problems (like you suggested), although whipping the library may be an even better idea. If we have OR running when we whip, then switch out of the religeon on the next turn, we still get the OR bonus on the whip right? We wouldn't get the OR bonus on the overflow either way, so we could switch the turn we whip and only miss one turn of culture in Riverdale that way.

 

[Irgy]

@ Irgy

Nice twist. I like the Pyramids in Riverdale, even if we end up giving them to Zara with a turn or two left in the game. It will start a clean gene pool for our Great Engineer.

What was your tech path? Were your chops pre-Math or post-Math?

How many turns total were you building the Pyramids?

Where and on what turn did you settle Stone? Was Christianity founded there? If so, what turn?

Tech path was Wheel->Meditation->(bulbed Theology)->Math->Pottery
All chops finished post-Math, but much of the rest of the building was pre-math.
I expect the settling turn for stone will be the same either way. Mine was less than optimal, but basically timed to co-incide with founding Christianity (I held the settler back a turn even to make sure of it).

On the whole I don't expect it's that much difference where we build them, the capital will start later but put more hammers in, while riverdale can start earlier because it doesn't really have that much else better to do otherwise anyway.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

The Pyramids in our Gifting City

Spoiler :

What should be tested is whether or not we'll automatically revert to the default-Government-Civic (Despotism) if we are in a different Government Civic and give away The Pyramids.

It is my understanding that if you lose The Pyramids, your Government Civic gets "reset" to Despotism. Presumably, this situation is designed for conquest and may be something that I imagined reading, but it's worth checking out.

Depending upon who our opponents are, it might be nice to be able to run Universal Suffrage without requiring Democracy, but we won't be able to do so if we gift away The Pyramids.

Those are just a couple of minor snags, but it's worth knowing up front what the tradeoffs of putting The Pyramids in Riverdale will be.

Organized Religion Bonus

Spoiler :

If we have OR running when we whip, then switch out of the religeon on the next turn, we still get the OR bonus on the whip right? We wouldn't get the OR bonus on the overflow either way, so we could switch the turn we whip and only miss one turn of culture in Riverdale that way.

I was playing with the plan of staying in Org Religion even through the overflow time, since those Hammers can add up nicely on the next turn if we build a Temple. But, if you switch to a Worker, then they won't matter as much.

I am not positive what happens if you switch out of Organized Religion after whipping, as to whether or not you get the bonus Hammers. But I do know that if you chop and switch out of Organized Religion in BTS, you won't get the Org Religious bonus for the Hammers. In Vanilla and Warlords, since a chop is counted immediately into the item in your build queue, the Org Rel bonus IS immediately applied in those versions for a Forest chop, but not in BTS, since the Forest chop can be assigned to a different unit or building by switching what is at the start of the queue. As I said, I don't know about the whipping scenario, but feel free to test it out and report back to us the answer. The simplest way would be to see how many overflow Hammers you get if you:
a) whip and then switch out of Org Religion on the same turn
b) whip and stay in Org Religion

If the number of overflow Hammers is the same, then you can definitely choose to switch out of Org Religion on the turn that you whip, but I warn you that you'll miss out a lot on your overflow Hammers for the next turn, so its generally not advisable to do so. Still, for a case where there are very few overflow Hammers, it would be nice to know the answer to your question.

 

[havr]

Excellent test. I have a few questions:

On what turn did you settle Stonyville? I recall Dhoomstriker saying that if you found a religion on the same turn a city is settled, the religion will go in this brand new city. I have done this in all of my testing and it has worked every time.

I did not settle them at the same turn. I had everything timed correctly: settler in place and GPro ready to bulb. But then I found out I forgot to research Meditation.
To keep a long story short, we can settle Stonyville AND get Theology together at T115.

What is the health situation in Delhi? I found that chopping so many forests caused problems for me.

Health was still OK. +8 health while 7 was required (Delhi was at size 7). AND this was without connecting to the Corn. The caveat was that maybe a forest has grown near Delhi and I didn't know it, but it shouldn't have changed too much...

You got Alphabet on T136, what trades were you able to make with Zara? Could you get Math? IW? Or only basic techs? What did you have to give up in exchange?

I could do the following trades on fast-track (i.e. "what will you offer me in exchange?" I am usually too lazy to try to optimize too much... [you probably figured out this trait in me already]):

Writing <-> Pottery
wait turn so that writing will digested by Zara,
Alpha <-> Sailing, Hunting and AH.
IW <-> CoL.

Were all chops into the Pyramids after having stone hooked up?

Yes.

One thing to note is that my second GP was a GPro. But, I couldn't bulb Civil Service because we still lack Monarchy!!! I don't think we have enough time to get it before our second GP...

 

[Irgy]

So, I did the experiment, and discovered something of an exploit. It worked basically the way I expected, but even better.

* First time, I stayed in OR the turn I whipped the library, 2 population whipped and 33 hammers the next turn (from overflow and production).
* Second time, I whipped first, then switched out of OR. The next turn, do you think I had less hammers? The same hammers? Wrong! I had more hammers, 36 in fact!

Spoiler for long explanation of game mechanics:

Spoiler :

So what's happened? Well, firstly, when you whip, the hammers appear immediately as hammers already invested in something. So, you can't lose the OR bonus by switching out of OR (or changing religion in this case) after you whip, because they're already there. Secondly, when hammers overflow from a building with a bonus, the game prevents you from abusing this to get lots of hammers in something without a bonus. It does this by reducing the overflow to its equivalent in raw hammers - so for OR for instance, it multiplies the overflow by 0.8, and that's the raw hammer overflow you end up with.

So far just confirming how I already thought it to work. According to the logic above, you should get the same hammers either with OR or without, because the game is set up to deal with that situation. So what happened here to give me more hammers? Well, the extra hammers over 135 in the library were produced with the OR bonus, and switching out didn't change that. If we're still in OR when the turn ends, these hammers overflow, and the game correctly multiplies them by 0.8. However, if we switch our of OR, the extra hammers in the library from the whip are still there, but the game no longer multiplies the overflow by 0.8. This works out the same for the hammers produced that turn, but it means we get all of the OR powered library overflow hammers as raw hammers. This is where the 3 extra hammers come from.

In short, not just does the game not stop the OR bonus applying to the whipped hammers, it fails to subtract it back off the overflow. There would presumably be similar tricks with disconnecting stone/marble on wonders too. It only works with whipping and cash-rushing though, because those two put the hammers in the building immediately rather than chops which add the hammers to your normal production

My only concern though is that if this is considered exploit it might not be allowed. Which is actually a nuisance, because it's what we want to do anyway even without the free hammers.

I haven't got time now, but it would be nice for someone else to confirm that this really works the way it seems to. It's pretty quick to check from the test game.

 

[havr]

Did you find yourself using Fishing for Work Boats or was it a waste to research it this early, based on your build orders? I.e. Do you think that we can delay researching it until after Alphabet?

I actually didn't give it too much thought... I followed a tech-path you suggested in one of the previous posts, stupidly assuming that Fishing is needed for Alpha (now that I think of it I don't know why I thought that).

I also didn't focus on exploration, so I didn't even try to use Fishing... I mainly tested for Alpha and 'Mids.

In any case, Silverado finished the worker in T102, but fishing came in at T105. I guess we can build some GW there for failure gold for 3 turns, and then build a WB.

Were you able to have Workers nearby to Road an Quarry the Stone quickly?

I built the roads to Stonyville in advance and once Stony was settled all three workers were at the stone to quarry (if I remember two were already there and the third arrived a turn later). That gave me quarry at light speed. I could have built the road to the quarry in advance but forgot to do it... at the moment I had nearly all forest near Delhi prechopped, so I then just moved and chopped completing the 'Mids in 3 or 4 turns.

To summarize: we can probably save a turn or two even from my date. (I did some mistakes like forgeting to road the stone before...)

BUT it should be noted I was able to get such speed by compromising on Stony location. I settled 1W of the stones. 1 NW will do too, but further than that will require border expansion...

Do you mean that you started to research Alphabet for 6 turns and then switched back to researching Meditation? If not, then how will you get Meditation faster?

Yes. When I got the GPro I said to myself "Oops..."

When you say that the Settler was ready, do you mean it was in place on the PHFor near the Wheat on Turn 135 or that you finished building it in Delhi on Turn 135?

Finished at T135. But I did not optimize Delhi builds. I built CH for pop growth (after chopping Library and Temple), and then continued to finish it. We can get settler faster.

In addition to the Forest chops, for approximately how many turns were you building The Pyramids? 5? 20? 30?

11 turns total, 4 without stone, and 3-4 of them were for chopping.

Did you switch to Representation immediately after building The Pyramids?

If yes, had you been running those 2 Scientist Specialists before getting Representation or did you wait until you got Representation before hiring them?

No. Forgot. (I usually forget to switch to Rep after building 'Mids...)
Don't remember the answer to the second question...

The only way to 100% guarantee that we get Christianity in Stonyville is to settle Stonyville on the turn where we Lightbulb Christianity with the Great Prophet (settle first, then Lightbulb). That's the tricky part about the timing--our Resarch, Great Person production, and Settler all have to be in-sync with each other.

I managed to sync them quite easily, except for the researching of Medition that I forgot...

Also, how many Workers did you have at the time of chopping The Pyramids?

3

 

[havr]

This testing should cover the next 3 turnsets, so getting it right should help us more quickly play 45 to 50 turns.

Well, we said the same thing for 3 TS already, and still every TS takes about a week.

 

[havr]

It will start a clean gene pool for our Great Engineer.

I think this is good and bad. More bad than good.

Good:
We get a GE for sure, probably as GP #3.

Bad:
This is probably going to be the only GP out of Riverdale. On the otherhand the GPP will help Delhi build a GP always. Now it is true that we can't be sure the get a GE in Delhi because of the pollution. But the game is long and the UN is far. We will, with high probability, get it sometime.

(BTW, I did notice that Engineer points are fewer but have an higher weight in the %)

And if we get a second GE by accident - no problem. A GE is always useful.

*) One final note: To make really, absolutely sure we will get a GE in Riverdale, we will have to fire all scientists in Delhi (and everywhere). With a single specialist anywhere we Riverdale will probably lose the battle.

This kind of takes the point out of the 'Mids doesn't it?

 

[BLubmuz]

Dhoom, even if we go for Diplo, i don't even consider to gift Riverdale to Zara, because:

1) Zara will be our best friend and religion mate, thus he will not be hated by the AIs
2) You can't be sure we can manage to be the first civ for population

to find and create an hated AI we must:
option A:
a) find the Buddhist founder
b) convert all our opponents to Confu or to the religion we'll decide to adopt (but i think Confu can work if it auto-spreads to Zara)
c) start an holy war against the Buddhist
d) build the UN in one of his/her cities (of course with the help of a GE)

option B:
the Buddhist founder is a small civ, the big dog population-wise is without religion
a) let's give him/her another religion
b) be care he/she only has this religion

In any of those scenarios, Zara has a part. He will be our best ally, period.

Please try to imagine an Imperialistic leader with a lot of land to expand. On Emperor.

I've seen interesting reports from tests, mainly the Pyramids in Riverdale.
I think i will sacrifice some research to build the wheat city.

 

[Irgy]

Dhoom, even if we go for Diplo, i don't even consider to gift Riverdale to Zara, because:

1) Zara will be our best friend and religion mate, thus he will not be hated by the AIs
2) You can't be sure we can manage to be the first civ for population

Zara's our ally now, but when we're trying to get the diplomatic vote, we're going to be Buddhist, and he's almost certainly not. That makes him the worst enemy of the rest of the world, and not our ally at all.

If we can't get to first in population, we can fix it. We have two war declarations, even if we use both for required resources, we still have a fair bit of leeway for improving our population count.

We can also detour into Biology and maybe as far as Medicine for Sushi if getting the population high is difficult. I still expect doing will be quicker than cultural.

 

[Irgy]

I think this is good and bad. More bad than good.

Good:
We get a GE for sure, probably as GP #3.

Bad:
This is probably going to be the only GP out of Riverdale. On the otherhand the GPP will help Delhi build a GP always. Now it is true that we can't be sure the get a GE in Delhi because of the pollution. But the game is long and the UN is far. We will, with high probability, get it sometime.

(BTW, I did notice that Engineer points are fewer but have an higher weight in the %)

And if we get a second GE by accident - no problem. A GE is always useful.

*) One final note: To make really, absolutely sure we will get a GE in Riverdale, we will have to fire all scientists in Delhi (and everywhere). With a single specialist anywhere we Riverdale will probably lose the battle.

This kind of takes the point out of the 'Mids doesn't it?

An alternative is to get the G.E. much later out of Riverdale, including running an engineer and maybe even building the hanging gardens. That way we wouldn't have to stop producing gpp everywhere else. There's no hurry to produce the G.E. from Riverdale, it could come at the end of the game, in which case the gpp from the pyramids aren't wasted at all. I'm not sure whether this option is really viable though.

 

[havr]

AP and weak Zara

There is something else we should note regarding Zara's weakness.

Our original plan was to give Zara Theology so that he will build the AP. Dhoom already said that AP in the hands of the Buddhists is a problem.

Now, Zara is very weak and I don't think he will build the AP even if we give Theology to him. We must consider alternatives.

Obviously, we can make contact with another Civ (like Zara did). Maybe we should seek it quickly and spread conf. to it before it becomes Buddhist.

 

[Irgy]

Imagine how far behind he'll be if he does waste time building the AP though

I thought the theory was that the other AIs won't bother to go for Theology if we've got the religion already? It's not that likely there's another AI with a favourite civic of theocracy, unless the map makers set it up that way to help us keep them out of free religion.

 

[havr]

Well, basically you are right. But eventually someone will discover Theology. The question is whether Zara will build the AP before that other civ will discover Theology and build the AP. Well, in theory he should. But in theory Zara should have founded Riverdale before us!!! Zara is too pathetic in this game to count on for such a key move. He might even build the Hagia Sophia if we give him Theology

 

[havr]

Maybe we should just build the AP in Riverdale. It will help culture war (not too much, only +4), and make sure that the AP is either ours or Zara's (after gifting). It is our gifting city anyway, we can build a useless wonder...

 

[Mitchum]

@ Havr

Thanks for the answers!!

One thing to note is that my second GP was a GPro. But, I couldn't bulb Civil Service because we still lack Monarchy!!! I don't think we have enough time to get it before our second GP...

Actually, the problem was that you didn't know Math yet. Once you know Math, Civil Service will be available for the GPro to bulb.

 

[Mitchum]

So, I did the experiment, and discovered something of an exploit. It worked basically the way I expected, but even better.

* First time, I stayed in OR the turn I whipped the library, 2 population whipped and 33 hammers the next turn (from overflow and production).
* Second time, I whipped first, then switched out of OR. The next turn, do you think I had less hammers? The same hammers? Wrong! I had more hammers, 36 in fact!

Nice work. I don't think this is an exploit that can be banned. It would force you to stay in a civic that you may or may not want to change out of and you should not be prevented from doing so. Plus, this is not listed as a banned exploit for GOTM games IIRC, so it should be fine. If they want to fix this, it will have to be with a patch, I think.

By the way, I've read in past SGOTM games the teams sometimes go out of their way to capitalize on exploits that are known but not banned. Murky Waters used one last game where if you were building culture on the turn your borders popped, you got the culture AND the hammers the next turn. I don't remember the details, but they did it in several cities when the borders expanded.

If you want to switch out of OR the turn after the whip, we should do so. The three hammers wouldn't be worth swithing out of OR if, for example, you were going to build a temple next since you'd then miss out on the OR bonus for the next several turns, which could easily add up to more than the 3 hammers gained.

 

[Mitchum]

BTW, I did notice that Engineer points are fewer but have an higher weight in the %

I've never heard of this. Are you sure?

An alternative is to get the G.E. much later out of Riverdale, including running an engineer and maybe even building the hanging gardens. That way we wouldn't have to stop producing gpp everywhere else. There's no hurry to produce the G.E. from Riverdale, it could come at the end of the game, in which case the gpp from the pyramids aren't wasted at all. I'm not sure whether this option is really viable though.

In fact, we DON'T want a GE too early since he'll be sitting around for 200 turns, eating 1 gold/turn. It would be better if he came later in the game. The biggest issue is that with the Pyramids and an engineer (requires a forge), it will take quite a while for this city to catch up if we do push for a lot of early GP in other cities. Even with the Hanging Gardens, it could take a long time. One trick would be to hire 1 scientist to speed up the Great Person but only give small odds that it's a GS. This could backfire though.

Regarding the Hanging Gardens, Riverdale doesn't have too much prouction. With all of the forests chopped, how long would it take to build them?

 

[Mitchum]

Obviously, we can make contact with another Civ (like Zara did). Maybe we should seek it quickly and spread conf. to it before it becomes Buddhist.

I think we want the entire world to be Buddhist except Zara. This is why we're founding all of the religions ourselved. We want Buddhism to spread to us so that we can spread it to all of our cities (not required though) and switch to Buddhism. If we are the largest civ, we can gift the UN city to Zara. Then, the whole world will be united under Buddhism against Zara. We'll get everyone's votes except for Zara's, who will be small and weak.

Note, we need our state religion in all of our cities. If we don't have time to spread Buddhism to every city, we can switch back to Confucianism on the turn after we win the vote as Irgy suggested. This will allow us to fulfill the requirement that our state religion be present in all of our cities.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Apostolic Palace and weak Zara

Spoiler :

There is something else we should note regarding Zara's weakness.

Our original plan was to give Zara Theology so that he will build the AP. Dhoom already said that AP in the hands of the Buddhists is a problem.

Now, Zara is very weak and I don't think he will build the AP even if we give Theology to him. We must consider alternatives.

Obviously, we can make contact with another Civ (like Zara did). Maybe we should seek it quickly and spread conf. to it before it becomes Buddhist.

Very good point, Havr! We can't really rely on Zara to build the Apostolic Palace.

So, can or should it be built in Riverdale? It's a neat idea to do so. However, should we really hand over the keys to both vaults to Zara in the end? "Dear Zara, here are both the Apostolic Palace and The United Nations as part of the deal giving you Riverdale. Please be nice to us and let us win the game."


The idea of letting an AI build the Apostolic Palace for us was because of the high Hammer cost. The downside to letting an AI build it is that said AI will spread the religion that it is built in throughout all of its Cities.

If that religion is Buddhism, then our plan is for most of the world to have that religion, so lots of Apostolic Palace voting will occur with a bunch of AIs that like each other, perhaps giving away the game.

If that religion isn't Buddhism, then that AI will likely not switch out of said religion, so we'll have essentially created a "Holy City" for that one AI.

So, it looks like we're on the hook for building the Apostolic Palace ourselves.


Delhi is going to be busy with The Pyramids and probably soon after, The Hanging Gardens. However, we could dedicate Delhi to building only buildings and Wonders, if we farm off the Settler-building to somewhere else, leaving Delhi to go after the Apostolic Palace shortly thereafter.


Delhi would be a decent place, since it has several Mines and the population to use them. However, building The Apostolic Palace there could tie up Delhi for a long, long time.

Perhaps Stone City would be the best place to put it, if we can manage to settle the City to include the Marble and Cow for the required additional production. I believe that we'll need a Confucian Missionary there after Christianity is founded, as, if I recall correctly, you have to have your current State Religion in a City in order to build The Apostolic Palace.

We'd then switch to Christianity for 5 turns in order to complete the Apostolic Palace, because the less AIs that have its religion, the better. Either that, or we'll spread Judaism and/or Hinduism from one or both of our other two Holy Cities, in addition to having already spread Confucianism in Stone City, and then have the choice of which Religion to use for the Apostolic Palace around the time that it will be complete.

The ideal religion to use would be one that isn't well-spread, so we can check the F7 screen at the time of completing the Apostolic Palace to see which religion has the least influence in the world and pick that religion.


Pros of building the Apostolic Palace in Stone City:
1. We won't have to give away the Apostolic Palace when we gift The United Nations
2. We had nothing slated to build in Stone City anyway
3. The Wonder isn't great for Cultural-to-Hammers output (it's a terrible Wonder for that, actually), so the loss of potential culture in Riverdale is actually a gain (Riverdale could make a lot more culture building by building other buildings with the same amount of Hammers)
4. "Slow and steady wins the race": this City is a slow-grower, so it's not ideal for building Settlers and Workers, but is ideal for building a big-Hammer-project where it can slowly grow in population-size over time
5. It leaves Delhi free to build more important things, like the odd Settler, Monastaries, and more Wonders

Cons of building the Apostolic Palace in Stone City:
1. Stone City would HAVE to be settled to include the Cow and Marble, otherwise we won't have enough production in that City
2. We won't get an AI's Hammers used for building the Wonder for us
3. We'll have to delay building a lot of that Religion's buildings until we get Buddhism for ourselves and spread it manually. Why? Well, every time that you build a Temple or a Monastary of a religion, that religion has a greater chance than on a normal turn of spreading to a religionless City somewhere in the world. So if we start spamming Temples and Missionaries immediate before or after completing the Apostolic Palace, we might soon see a bunch of AIs with that religion, too, which would create us a lot of headaches. So, basically, we'll build the Apostolic Palace for denial-purposes, but will not really get to use its Hammer benefits for a long time, until the world other than Zara, including us, is able to switch to Buddhism.



So, I'm going to suggest that we keep Theology (and Code of Laws--so that no one uses Code of Laws to steal Philosophy from us) to ourselves. We'll aim to put the Apostolic Palace in Stone City. The sooner that we get a Confucian Missionary to spread Confucianism in Stone City, the sooner that we can get started on the Wonder, so that we will have a big head-start over an AI that self-techs Christianity.