SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

[havr]

We can also build the UN in a city on the Budha-continent and give it to a Buddhist.
So, we will have two possible gift cities with Diplo wonders:
AP in Riverdale for Zara.
UN in X for Y.
X and Y need to be filled in the future.

 

[Mitchum]

We can also build the UN in a city on the Budha-continent and give it to a Buddhist.
So, we will have two possible gift cities with Diplo wonders:
AP in Riverdale for Zara.
UN in X for Y.
X and Y need to be filled in the future.

I'm not sure I understand how this would work. Is the thought to gift the UN to a Buddhist, convert everyone else to Confucianism, and win that way? Because if we give the UN to a Buddhist and leave everyone in that religion, we'll have trouble winning all of their votes.

The goal is to have an AI that is hated by everyone be our opponent. Separation by religion is one of the easiest ways to do this... but not the only way.

I don't think we want to give away the AP if we build it ourselves. The only time this would have happened is if the UN and AP just happened to be in the same city.

 

[unclethrill]

Unclethrill's Math-based Pyramids

Great! Thank you!

A few questions, if you wouldn't mind...

Spoiler :

Am I right in thinking that you completed the 3 chops after Math was learned?

Yes.

Which Warrior are you talking about moving? Warrior 7 that was fortified in Delhi?

The one that was built in Delhi

Do you happen to know on approximately what turn the Barb City was spawned? I ask because I wonder if such a Barb City can spawn after Delhi's borders expand once more at the 750 Culture mark.

I can only load back as far T120 and it is there and Delhi's culture is at 956.

I will certainly to my best to keep that eastern Warrior alive as long as possible during my turnset, in order to discourage Zara from settling in the area as much as possible.

Hope that helps answer a couple of the questions at least. I'm gonna try another and hopefully not make as many mistakes.

 

[havr]

I'm not sure I understand how this would work. Is the thought to gift the UN to a Buddhist, convert everyone else to Confucianism, and win that way? Because if we give the UN to a Buddhist and leave everyone in that religion, we'll have trouble winning all of their votes.

The goal is to have an AI that is hated by everyone be our opponent. Separation by religion is one of the easiest ways to do this... but not the only way.

I don't think we want to give away the AP if we build it ourselves. The only time this would have happened is if the UN and AP just happened to be in the same city.

Yes you are right. I wasn't thinking when I wrote my post...

So, we don't want to build it at Riverdale to not give away everything.

We can build it in Stonyville, but it will probably cost us every forest near it (it has very few forests). Stony is near FP so it will have health issues.

Another option is to build it at Cow/Wheat town (City 5). This city has plenty of forests to chop. In any case, this is not for the upcoming TS, but we have to remember to slot it in the future.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Apostolic Palace in Stone City

Spoiler :

So, we don't want to build it at Riverdale to not give away everything.

We can build it in Stonyville, but it will probably cost us every forest near it (it has very few forests). Stony is near FP so it will have health issues.

Another option is to build it at Cow/Wheat town (City 5). This city has plenty of forests to chop. In any case, this is not for the upcoming TS, but we have to remember to slot it in the future.

I wasn't volunteering our Forests for Stone City, just our Marble, Grassland Hills Forest--although we'll get the Hammers from the Forest that gets chopped by Mining this square, and whatever other productions squares we can leverage in that City (such as eventually the Cows, once we know Animal Husbandry).

Basically, slowly growing the Apostolic Palace the hard way, but starting early on, shortly after grabbing the tech (Theology). All we'd need is a Confucian Missionary and some luck, and we'd:
a) Settle Stone City
b) Lightbulb Theology for Christianity in Stone City
c) Attempt to spread Confucianism in Stone City... I might have to build the Missionary on my turnset if we want him to "sit" there for 6 turns before the Settler sits down.

 

[Mitchum]

c) Attempt to spread Confucianism in Stone City... I might have to build the Missionary on my turnset if we want him to "sit" there for 6 turns before the Settler sits down.[/SPOILER]

I don't think we need to have Confucianism in Stone City on T0. It can build a granary or something first, right? I think we're going to have a lot of time to build the AP. Once we have Christianity, I can't see an AI trying to beeline the tech, but maybe they do for the AP...

In any event, Stone City is going to be generating 1H per turn for a LONG time, so we can wait on starting the AP without adding too any turns to the completion date. If we're getting 10H/turn once the city is developed (should be more with stone, cows, GL mine and marble), 1 turn near the end is equivalent to 10 turns when the city is at 1 or 2 pops. So delaying 30 turns only adds 3 turns to our completion date.

Finally, Stone City will not be getting the OR bonus until it gets 4 hammers/turn, right? So why the rush to spread Confucianism there? I think Delhi has more important things to build right away. Plus, a missionary would be more useful in Silverado since it is generating 4H/turn and could benefit from OR right away.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Confucian Missionaries

Spoiler :

So why the rush to spread Confucianism there?

The REASON why was not for the Org Rel bonus, but because having your State Religion in a City is a pre-requisite for building the Apostolic Palace.

However, your arguments about:
a) building a Granary first
b) not being able to take advantage of Organized Religion until we whip or chop a Forest (or grow large enough to be able to work some Hammer-heavy squares)

mean that I do not need to rush to get a Confucian Missionary there, but if we can put one in the City when it reaches Size 2 (a greater chance of successful spread than when the City is at Size 1), then we can hopefully whip the Granary at that point and then start on the Apostolic Palace.

Plus, a missionary would be more useful in Silverado since it is generating 4H/turn and could benefit from OR right away.

That is true, and Silverado would make for a great Missionary-pumping City.

 

[unclethrill]

I like the idea of putting the Apostolic Palace in Stone City

 

[havr]

On second thought I still think we should build it in Riverdale.
Also, Stonyville has a good production abilities. Why waste them for many turns on building the AP? Better build it in Riverdale - we are giving it up anyway.
Now, it doesn't matter to give it and UN together - The UN requires mass media which obsoletes the AP. We surely won't give Riverdale before the UN, right?

Other thoughts:
Letting the AP be confus can be a bit dangerous. Once we switch to No Religion or Budha we lose control and Zara will gain it. We may be large enough to stop him from passing annoying resolutions ("declare war on the infidels") but we may not.

I think we prefer the AP to belong to a religion that will be state-less. Christianity sounds like a good option, but we will have to switch to it for very long to build the AP in Stonyville without choping.

 

[unclethrill]

On second thought I still think we should build it in Riverdale.
Also, Stonyville has a good production abilities. Why waste them for many turns on building the AP? Better build it in Riverdale - we are giving it up anyway.
Now, it doesn't matter to give it and UN together - The UN requires mass media which obsoletes the AP. We surely won't give Riverdale before the UN, right?

Other thoughts:
Letting the AP be confus can be a bit dangerous. Once we switch to No Religion or Budha we lose control and Zara will gain it. We may be large enough to stop him from passing annoying resolutions ("declare war on the infidels") but we may not.

I think we prefer the AP to belong to a religion that will be state-less. Christianity sounds like a good option, but we will have to switch to it for very long to build the AP in Stonyville without choping.

You can build all but one turn in any religion and then switch on the turn it will be finished to the religion of choice.

 

[BLubmuz]

Sorry guys, things are busy here.
I hope to contribute more next week.

 

[Mitchum]

Thanks for the details. Is there a reason why you pop rushed the Mids. In general, it is more inefficient to pop-rush wonders. I assume that you could have finished it the next turn with 2 or 3 more chops...

Do you think having Pottery before Math would have sped up research on Math and given your workers something to do rather than build roads or improve tiles we don't need right away?

Sounds like you had problems with barbs. I did to in one of my tests too, but they were spearmen, not warriors. Any thoughs on what we can do in our game to help this situation?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

More Info on the Apostolic Palace--The misleading "obsolete" terminology and how Religion influences this Wonder

Spoiler :

Now, it doesn't matter to give it and UN together - The UN requires mass media which obsoletes the AP. We surely won't give Riverdale before the UN, right?

Other thoughts:
Letting the AP be confus can be a bit dangerous. Once we switch to No Religion or Budha we lose control and Zara will gain it. We may be large enough to stop him from passing annoying resolutions ("declare war on the infidels") but we may not.

The Apostolic Palace doesn't "obsolete" so much as it "temporarily stops working" while it is "under the ownership of a player that knows Mass Media."

In one BOTM I used this fact to my advantage: Gandhi had built The Apostolic Palace and yet yet learned Mass Media, making the Apostolic Palace voting temporarily stop working.

I captured the Apostolic Palace. Since I had intentionally avoided the Mass Media tech, the Apostolic Palace's voting resumed.


I just performed another test: In this test, we built the Apostolic Palace and The United Nations (thus knowing Mass Media). Apostolic Palace voting stopped when we learned Mass Media. Then, I gifted the City away to Zara. Suddenly, the Apostolic Palace voting started up again.


In our game, we want to avoid losing to an Apostolic Palace vote to do something silly, such as your example of being forced to declare war on an AI that we have decided not to attack as one of our two war-declaration targets. Giving away the Apostolic Palace is basically asking for this kind of trouble. Hence, if we are going to invest the Hammers ourselves, instead of letting an AI do it for us

Spoiler :

and Zara seems to be too weak to build it for us--the AIs only ever seem to build The Great Wall or Stonehenge with only 1 City--I don't foresee them building the AP with only 1 City

, then we should plan to keep this Wonder for ourselves and thus not put it in a City which we would like to have the option of giving away:
Riverdale.


Buiding the Apostolic Palace and your State Religion

I think we prefer the AP to belong to a religion that will be state-less. Christianity sounds like a good option, but we will have to switch to it for very long to build the AP in Stonyville without choping.

As Unclethrill mentioned, you can build the Apostolic Palace in one religion and then switch to a different religion.

Until the Apostolic Palace is complete, you MUST have your current State Religion in the City in which it is being built. If you switch religions and your new State Religion isn't in the City that you were building the Apostolic Palace, then you will quickly find that you are unable to continue building the Wonder in that City. You won't lose the Hammers, but you won't be able to put more Hammers into the Wonder until one of:
a) you switch to a State Religion that exists in that City
b) you spread your current State Religion to that City

Hence why I suggested that we eventually try to spread all of our religions into Stony City, for two reasons:
1) we have the freedom to switch to a different State Regligion without having to stop production of the Apostolic Palace
2) we have the freedom to pick which State Religion to be running on the turn that we complete the Apostolic Palace. Only the State Religion used by your empire on this turn matters--it doesn't matter what other State Religions you were running while building the Apostolic Palace, only the religion at the time of completing the Wonder matters for deciding which Religion the Apostolic Palace's bonus will apply to

 

[unclethrill]

Thanks for the details. Is there a reason why you pop rushed the Mids. In general, it is more inefficient to pop-rush wonders. I assume that you could have finished it the next turn with 2 or 3 more chops...

I had the opportunity to save 2-3 forests so I did. It is an option we might want to think about. It would save the forests for health and other builds.

Do you think having Pottere before Math would have sped up research on Math and given your workers something to do rather than build roads or improve tiles we don't need right away?

Between forest chop, roads and a couple improvements, including the quarry, they were pretty busy.

Sounds like you had problems with barbs. I did to in one of my tests too, but they were spearmen, not warriors. Any thoughs on what we can do in our game to help this situation?

It wasn't so much that I had trouble with the barbs. I spent a lot of time reloading autosaves to avoid killing the barb in the desert. He and his partner eventually suicided in Zara's land and Zara then settled the wheat anyway.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

More Efficient Pop-rushing for Wonders

Spoiler :

Is there a reason why you pop rushed the Mids. In general, it is more inefficient to pop-rush wonders. I assume that you could have finished it the next turn with 2 or 3 more chops...

I had the opportunity to save 2-3 forests so I did. It is an option we might want to think about. It would save the forests for health and other builds.

Sure, we can certainly consider whipping for a Wonder. The best way to do so, would be to pick a unit or building that costs just barely more than 1 whipped population and which can be whipped for 2 population points, in order to give us a lot of overflow Hammers.

Whipping into a Wonder gives you 30 Hammers per population point whipped. By whipping 2 population points, you will get 60 Hammers invested into the Wonder.

Whipping a unit, such as an Axeman, will give you 45 Hammers per population point whipped. By whipping 2 population points, you can complete Axeman and have somewhere between 39 and 44 Hammers overflow into the Wonder, plus you get a free Axeman out of the deal.

For example, whipping the following items will use up 2 population points, get you the item, and will get you the approximate equivalent of whipping 1.5 people directly into the Wonder in overflow:
a) A Temple when using Organized Religion that has 18 or less Hammers invested into it, after bonuses are applied (aka 8 or less base Hammers)
b) An Axeman that has 6 or less Hammers invested into it

So, for the cost of 4 population points, with the whipping executed over the course of 4 turns, you can get:
2 Temples and/or Axemen plus 3 population points' worth of whipping into the Wonder. A worthwhile endeavour, if you ask me.

The "trick" is to ensure that on the first turn you build the item, you don't exceed the number of Hammers required in order to complete it. On the next turn, try not to put too many Hammers into the item again, in order to have a MAXIMUM total number of Hammers input on this turn so as to have exactly double or less the cost of the item (52 * 2 = 104 Hammers max for an Axeman), and I believe that the number is very similar if not identical for an Organized Religous Temple build.

Where to put Wheat City (if we don't lose it to Zara)

Spoiler :

He and his partner eventually suicided in Zara's land and Zara then settled the wheat anyway.

Speaking of the Wheat, here is something new that I thought of, which can change our settling location:
Settling 1N of the Oasis (aka 1E of the PHFor that we were talking about settling on) will turn that Desert square upon which we settle into an "irrigation path." The same thing happened in one of our BOTM games and I confirmed it... we can thus irrigate the Wheat to the north, gaining 1 extra Food per turn from the Wheat square, after we have learned Civil Service, which is a tech that shouldn't be too far off with an additional Great Prophet.

We will save a Forest this way, will trade a Grassland square for a PFor square, and will let Fish + Incense City have one of its Grassland Cottages back.

In exchange, we can get a City that will grow quicker and larger overall. This City would then actually be able to use 2 PH Mine squares, making it a very reasonable production-based City.

 

[unclethrill]

Hey BLubz, we have 40 more posts in the first 90 turns than we had in the whole previous game. I'm pretty sure that means we're a smarter team this time!!

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Hey BLubz, we have 40 more posts in the first 90 turns than we had in the whole previous game. I'm pretty sure that means we're a smarter team this time!!

You know what they say... the first 100 turns make or break your game! Errr... maybe we should make that the first 150 turns, since we're playing on Epic, haha!

It's something about the make-up of this team... I had less than 100 messages when I started with you guys and now I'm at more than 6 times that number.

 

[unclethrill]

You know what they say... the first 100 turns make or break your game! Errr... maybe we should make that the first 150 turns, since we're playing on Epic, haha!

It's something about the make-up of this team... I had less than 100 messages when I started with you guys and now I'm at more than 6 times that number.

Fifth Element is a talkative bunch!!

 

[Irgy]

The "trick" is to ensure that on the first turn you build the item, you don't exceed the number of Hammers required in order to complete it. On the next turn, try not to put too many Hammers into the item again, in order to have a MAXIMUM total number of Hammers input on this turn so as to have exactly double or less the cost of the item (52 * 2 = 104 Hammers max for an Axeman), and I believe that the number is very similar if not identical for an Organized Religous Temple build.

The hammers above the double-the-cost amount aren't wasted though, they get converted to gold, which isn't such a bad thing at all. I'd say it's worthwhile working the good tiles for as many hammers as that happens to give, you and accepting that some turn into gold. Whereas, in contrast, the first turn of building it you absolutely need to stay under the limit because otherwise you only whip 1 pop and the whole thing doesn't work, so in that case it's necessary to switch to strictly less efficient tiles.

Re Barbs:
If we move the warrior near the wheat (forgotten the number, sorry) back west, then we can set up the fogbusts so that at least if a barb does spawn, they'll spawn in the desert and possibly head towards Zara. To do this, it needs to be 1W of the forest hill it was previously sitting on. Sorry for the vague directions, my main point is that we shouldn't leave a strip of barb-spawning land to the north of the capital, we should move across so that all the barb-spawning land is northeast.

I think we still need to put an axe in the build queue somewhere though just in case. Can't build axes until The Wheel is in though.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Whipping Wonders... where is this Gold that you speak of supposed to come from?

Spoiler :

The hammers above the double-the-cost amount aren't wasted though, they get converted to gold, which isn't such a bad thing at all.

Hey Irgy,

I'm confused. What do you mean that Hammers are converted to Gold?

The only time that Hammers from a Wonder get converted to Gold is when we fail to be the first to buid a Wonder.

Yet, by the very fact that we complete whatever we are building at the "end" of our turn, before the next AI plays, we will automatically build a Wonder that we whip (unless we were dumb enough to whip a Wonder after it was built--that can happen--be sure to check the Event Log to avoid such a situation, as it takes 1 turn for the Wonder to get "cleared" from your build queue).

Anyway, just like any other project, excess Hammers OVERFLOW. There is no Hammer to Gold conversion for the extra Hammers. If you can somehow demonstrate that there is some sort of "free Gold from the heavens," it will be news to me!

I'd say it's worthwhile working the good tiles for as many hammers as that happens to give, you and accepting that some turn into gold. Whereas, in contrast, the first turn of building it you absolutely need to stay under the limit because otherwise you only whip 1 pop and the whole thing doesn't work, so in that case it's necessary to switch to strictly less efficient tiles.

Perhaps. Or perhaps you had need of working other squares already--maybe you have switched to working more Cottages than Mines. Maybe you are trying to get another Great Person and are running Specialists. These last few turns before completing the Wonder would be the turns to do so, since you temporarily want to trade some production for more production from whipping.

Most particularly it would be good to switch from Mines to Grassland Cottages, anyway, because you want to REGROW the City after whipping it, right? So, a situation usually presents itself where you gain by using this trick.

The point is that you'll do your whipping when the Wonder is almost complete. It's inefficient to whip early on in the Wonder project and then have less population points to work your Mines. The point in time that you do it will be near the end of completion, such as for 6+ turns near the end of building the Wonder, such that you'll complete it sooner by getting more Hammers by whipping than you would by purely working your Mines for that entire time--you can probably count on this 4 turns of whipping 4 population points to equal... what did I say... 39 to 44 Hammers * 2 = about 80 Hammers = at least 6 turns of production if you are working several Mines... plus you get to "use up" some of your potentially excess population points if you are nearing a Hapiness or Healthiness cap.


Obviously, if you don't think that you need to whip, it may not be advantageous to do so, as you may only save a few turns if you are working many Mines. But if you have switched over to working Grassland Cottages, then the "production" from those Grassland Cottages comes directly from whipping, so you'll be in a great position to leverage this whipping, as it will save you far more than 6 turns of production in that lower-Hammer-output situation.

Re Barbs:

Spoiler :

If we move the warrior near the wheat (forgotten the number, sorry) back west, then we can set up the fogbusts so that at least if a barb does spawn, they'll spawn in the desert and possibly head towards Zara. To do this, it needs to be 1W of the forest hill it was previously sitting on. Sorry for the vague directions, my main point is that we shouldn't leave a strip of barb-spawning land to the north of the capital, we should move across so that all the barb-spawning land is northeast.

Okay, I can work this advice into my turnset.

I think we still need to put an axe in the build queue somewhere though just in case. Can't build axes until The Wheel is in though.

Exactly! We've got to give those lazy Warriors some wheelbarrows, so that they'll be able to carry around their heavy Axes. Wheelbarrows... or a cart to go with their donkeys.