SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

[BLubmuz]

Good job , Irgy

The question is: can our settler beat Zara's one?

If he moves 1 tile/turn yes, i think... stupid AI.

I guess next TS will need to be played until we know if we beat Zara to the wheat, then completed.

 

[unclethrill]

Great Job Irgy!


So I'm up. Got it! Hope I can play in the next 10 or 15 days. LOL

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Here is the test save.

Thanks, Mitchum!


Unclethrill's Turnset

You're up, Unclethrill!! Your target is to complete the Pyramids on T135, the last turn of your turnset.

Unclethrill, you actually have a lot more to take care of in your turnset.

Well, it's mostly figuring out how to best leverage our Workers, which means playing through several test games with different Worker Goals in mind each time.


Our Workers

Spoiler :

Our Workers will need to:
1. Get 1 to 2 more Flood Plains Cottages up in Bedrock

Spoiler :

I think that we'll need two, as we'll probably be at Size 3 within your turnset, but the timing for when they are completed can be played with

2. Pre-Chop for The Pyramids and later fully chop it
3. Hopefully not be forced to perform too many Worker actions that aren't going to be immediately useful for our empire.

Spoiler :

That may mean sending 1 Worker off early to start on a Road network towards Wheat City, while the other two build flood Plains Cottages and then pre-Chop some Forests, only having the last 2 Workers come to join them at the last minute. Or maybe only 1 Worker will pre-chop while 3 others will come in to join him at the last minute. Or even none will come in until the last minute to pre-chop, if we plan to only need exactly 4 Forests.

4. Have very precise timing for the Forest chops

Spoiler :

two of the Forest chops will be from Hills Forest squares, meaning that we'll want to know if we're going to chop them on Turn 133, Turn 134, or when, and then get the Workers into position ahead of time at the precise time, so that they don't end up having to "end their Turns" until Math is researched

Granaries

Spoiler :

The timing shouldn't be too tough to figure out for when to whip in Riverdale.

We'll want to try a couple of scenarios in Delhi to see which is best:
a) Working the GRiv Irr or
b) Working the PHRiv Mine

My gut instinct tells me that a) will work out better, having used b) in my testing and finding that I had to whip the Granary 1 turn sooner than I wanted to whip it if I still wanted to whip for 2 population points.

I think that we will want to whip for 2 population points, as when I whipped for 1, we grew a bit too soon and I had 1 unhappy person for 1 turn before The Pyramids were completed (and thus before I could make that unhappiness go away due to Representation).

Wheat City

Spoiler :

Likely, we'll start this City off with a Granary, but when will we plan to switch to building a Settler? Should we aim to send a Worker up towards there to chop out a Settler during Mitchum's turnset? If so, will building Roads up that way during Unclethrill's turnset help in this endeavour?

Will we have enough Worker actions (I do not think that we will, but we can play around with different Worker movement scenarios) to be able to complete a Road to Wheat City during Unclethrill's turnset?

Riverdale

Spoiler :

After figuring out when will be best to whip the Granary, we'll soon want to chop and whip the Library. That chopping won't happen until Mitchum's turnset, but planning Worker 2's actions may help out in making this chopping of Forests occur soon into Mitchum's turnset.

Civics

Spoiler :

After whipping the Granaries, we'll probably once again switch out of Slavery. Should we switch into Caste System? No, it's probably too soon to do so. Should we stay in Slavery for whipping Riverdale's Library? No, we won't have the Forests chopped until after Math, and without those Forest chops, Riverdale will be too small to be whipped. Should we plan to whip the Granary in Bedrock? No, I don't think that we'll be at Size 4 there, which would be the required Size for whipping the Granary there, within Unclethrill's turnset. So, we'll probably simply switch out of Slavery once both of Delhi's and Riverdale's Granaries are whipped.

 

[unclethrill]

Here is my first attempt at the PPP for my TS

Settle Wheat City ASAP.

Do lots of stuff with the workers we have

Whip some buildings

Build the 'Mids!


Is that enough details? If so, I'll just go ahead and play. If not, then I guess I will run some tests and flesh it out a bit more.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

UT, sometimes you kill me.

Are we at least agreed on where you are rushing Settler 5 to settle? Are we cool with the location 1N of the Oasis? A few people have said yes, but no one's said "no, I want the PHFor location" yet. Now's your chance to speak up.

Otherwise, there's one detail that you can already add to your PPP to help flush it out a bit more.

 

[Irgy]

1N of the oasis is full of win.

From my experience in the test games, wheat city is under a lot of culture pressure after Zara settles not too far away, so we may want to consider some culture buildings there sooner rather than later, maybe even before the granary. Either that or sneak out a missionary from somewhere.

Zara did indeed move his settler one square at a time, so our settler will get there a turn earlier than it needs to, assuming he's going for the same spot as in the test game (which he might not be). I'd assume we will beat him there, and only pause if he settles in an odd spot instead.

By the way, the square worker2 is on is pre-cottaged, I maybe should have marked that with a sign.

 

[Irgy]

Oh, and I found the autolog directory, but no autolog. I assume I haven't set my Buffy up correctly

 

[Mitchum]

From my experience in the test games, wheat city is under a lot of culture pressure after Zara settles not too far away, so we may want to consider some culture buildings there sooner rather than later, maybe even before the granary. Either that or sneak out a missionary from somewhere.

In my turnset (after Unclethrill's), I will likely be running Caste System to quickly crank out a Great Scientist at high odds. When doing this, I can run a Great Artist in Wheat City (we need a better name for this) for 4 turns to get a relatively quick border pop.

After a granary in Wheat City, which could be partially chopped post-Math, building a library there wouldn't be a bad idea. It will provide +2 culture/turn plus it is required to build a university (we'll need 6 of these built in short order if we want to get a quick Oxford University in the capital).

Finally, we may want to squeeze a Confucian missionary into either Riverdale or Delhi's build queue so that we can spread Confucianism to Wheat City (and Silverado and Bedrock).

Zara's cities start at +2 culture/turn (creative), so we don't want to get too far behind in the culture battle as Irgy suggests.

 

[Irgy]

Zara's cities start at +2 culture/turn (creative)

+3 culture/turn with stonehenge. He's going to put some serious pressure on very quickly. Don't expect to work any tiles to the east of where we settle for a while.

Of course, he might settle somewhere else entirely in the real game. I'm not 100% sure he didn't settle on the desert tile that's actually not supposed to be there at all in the test game.

 

[Mitchum]

+3 culture/turn with stonehenge. He's going to put some serious pressure on very quickly. Don't expect to work any tiles to the east of where we settle for a while.

Of course, he might settle somewhere else entirely in the real game. I'm not 100% sure he didn't settle on the desert tile that's actually not supposed to be there at all in the test game.

Yes, I forgot about Stonehenge. What a silly World Wonder for a Creative civ to waste hammers on...

I would have assumed that you would have used World Builder to remove that "bad" desert tile in your testing just to ensure no barbs spawned there. I've removed that tile in our latest test game, so we should get a fair idea where Zara will settle in the real game. However, I had to remove many tiles to force Zara to settler the proper location for Gondar, so the test game location of his third city is no guarantee of where he'll settle in the real game.

As long as we get our first border pop shortly after he gets his (15 culture), we may be able to catch up by the time his borders pop again (150 culture = 50 turns at 3 cpt). This will prevent us from losing too much land. Although, if the tiles he gains are desert tiles, who cares, right?

On a related topic, I read a post from Duckweed that as soon as we "share" > 7 tiles with an AI, we will start getting negative diplo modifiers for "our close borders spark tensions." We need to keep Zara on good terms for the next 50 turns or so, otherwise a single archer could take Riverdale from us with no warning. Maybe we should move warrior 8 from Bedrock to Riverdale just to be a bit safer.

 

[unclethrill]

Here is attempt run 1. Still needs lots of tweaking.

T120

Hit enter on warrior 6

T121

Space bar Warrior 1 and 6
Worker 2 prechop W+W of Riverdale
Research to 100%

T122

Settle 1 N of Oasis. Name City: Wheaties (It's the breakfast of champions). Work Oasis. Start Granary
Move worker 4 to FP WSW of Bedrock and start Cottage.
Send Warrior 3 towards Coast West of wheat to see where Zara settles

T123


Worker 1, 3 to help with Cottage
Whip Granary in Delhi for 1 pop with 15 hammer overflow into a Settler.

T125
Worker 2 to PH 3E1N of Delhi
Worker 4 and 3 Head towards Delhi to prechop

T126

Start Prechopping

T128
Whip Granary in River
Switch out of Slavery and OR

T129

Worker 4 to build part of road to Wheaties GLH 1SW of Cows

T130

Worker 4, 1, 2 start Road
Research to 0%
Finish Confusion Temple in Riverdale. Start Lib

T131

Settler done in Delhi. Sent to west coast
Workers to road cow

T132

Cow Road finished. Road desert.

At some point I lost Prophet in Delhi so started again.
Research 100%

T133

Send all workers to prechop locations

T134

4 chops into mids.

T135

Still 12 turns from Mids. Sent all 4 worker to one forest and chopped.

T136

Mids still 6 turns away.





I need more than 4 forests to fully chop the mids. I just realized that I didn't finish the road to hookup the stone . I'll run this again tomorrow to see if I can fix that issue.

Any suggestions welcome!

 

[Irgy]

Ok, I ran a test game through to the 'mids, and I'm quite happy with it (subject to a few modifications which I'll pretend I got right the first time). Here's hopefully enough to guide unclethrill's test game.

120: Cancel action for workers 1,3,4, in preparation for moving them.
121: Research up to 100% this turn. Whip 2xgranaries in Dehli and Riverdale. Put Dehli's worker back onto the cottage rather than the hill the governer puts it on. Worker 2 builds a cottage. Workers 1,3,4 move 2W to cottage the far floodplains.
122: Dehli puts overflow into 'mids. Wheaton settled, works oasis and builds a granary. I had riverdale just finish building the temple the slow way, as it didn't take many turns. Riverdale worked nothing but cottages for me.
123: Dehli switches to a temple for a turn. Note: I honestly think the two pop whip into the temple is such good value that we really ought to do it. It saves us a forest chop, Dehli grows back fast, it pays for its own happiness, so all we really lose is a few turns of working hammer tiles, which is more than made up for by the hammers.
One worker is done with the cottage (I'll call it '4'). Move worker 4 2E to put a turn into the cottage.
124: Back to the 'mids. Make sure Dehli's new citizen is working the farm for growth in exactly 2 turns. Worker 4 heads to Dehli. Worker 4 will eventually chop the grass forest hill that's marked for chopping. It can pre-chop some of the grass forest marked for chopping in the meantime. Workers 1&3 move to finish the other flood plains cottage.

After this, Dehli grows, prioritising the corn and copper obviously, then the cottage, then food, then hammers. The research slider needs some fiddling, but I found it was just barely possible to have Math discovered on turn 132. It looks like it won't be, but then it works out somehow.

Worker 2 finishes the cottage, and has 2 spare turns (which I spent building a road on the square it's on) before it needs to go to the marked plains forest hill for chopping.

Workers 1&3 should have time to build a cottage on a grass river square before they move to finish chopping the 'mids.

The turn before Math is discovered, switch to the temple and whip. Then, the turn when Math is discovered (hopefully 132), you should be able to chop 4 forests and finish the 'mids that turn (I think), or at worst on the next turn with no further chop required (I'm not sure because in my test game I delayed all the chops to the next turn, and chopped one more forest than I actually needed to).

 

[Irgy]

Wow, cross posted with your plan I'm curious to compare the two now!

 

[Irgy]

Ok, some comments:
* I though I had the road to stone completely built for you already? Are you working from Mitchum's turn 120 test game?
* Don't switch out of OR, it's helping us build the pyramids faster. Every little bit helps. It only costs 1 gold per turn, the extra pyramid hammers are worth a lot more than that I think.
* Whipping the granary in Dehli for 2 pop on turn 121 seems much better value to me. Dehli grows back quickly, and the overflow gives us some of the hammers you appeared to be lacking in the 'mids.
* You mentioned a prophet in Dehli. I don't think it's a good idea to work any specialists in Dehli before the pyramids. After the pyramids we're getting an extra 3 beakers (3.75 in fact) from every specialist. Before then, Dehli is far too busy growing and building to be able to afford to work specialists. I worked a few scientists to get Math out sooner in some test games where I'd had to whip the Wheaties settler, but we shouldn't need to do that at all.
* EDIT 1 more I forgot to mention - don't put overflow into a settler, we really want the mids sooner rather than later. Settlers can wait. In my opinion anyway.

 

[Mitchum]

Unclethrill, I looked through your PPP and agree with Irgy's comments, so no need to repeat them.

Ok, I ran a test game through to the 'mids, and I'm quite happy with it (subject to a few modifications which I'll pretend I got right the first time).
...

123: Dehli switches to a temple for a turn. Note: I honestly think the two pop whip into the temple is such good value that we really ought to do it. It saves us a forest chop, Dehli grows back fast, it pays for its own happiness, so all we really lose is a few turns of working hammer tiles, which is more than made up for by the hammers.

I'm not sure that I agree with this approach. We'll want Delhi as large as possible so that we can work two priests as soon as the 'Mids are done and 4+ scientists after we get our second great person (hopefully a GPro). If we whip 2 pops, it will take some time to grow large enough to do this.

Are you sure it's not possible to complete the 'Mids with 4 chops without the extra 2 pop whip into the temple?

After this, Dehli grows, prioritising the corn and copper obviously, then the cottage, then food, then hammers. The research slider needs some fiddling, but I found it was just barely possible to have Math discovered on turn 132. It looks like it won't be, but then it works out somehow.

Don't forget the Dhoomstriker said that he grew too fast into unhappiness. It may make sense to work the PH mine rather than the GLH mine.

OK, we learn Math on T132 (I assume you mean IBT T131 and T132). In a perfect world, we would chop four forests on T132 and complete the 'Mids on T133. If this isn't possible, I'd delay completing the 4 chops until the turn that the chops actually complete the Pyramids. That way, we don't waste any forests if an AI completes the 'Mids between T132 and the turn we can finish them.

Workers 1&3 should have time to build a cottage on a grass river square before they move to finish chopping the 'mids.

Is there an available grass river square in Delhi? I thought they all had forests on them? Maybe you're suggesting that we start building a cottage on a forested tile, but I'm not sure.

It looks like we're getting close to a solid plan that gets us the Pyramids before T135.

 

[Irgy]

I'm not sure that I agree with this approach. We'll want Delhi as large as possible so that we can work two priests as soon as the 'Mids are done and 4+ scientists after we get our second great person (hopefully a GPro). If we whip 2 pops, it will take some time to grow large enough to do this.

...

Don't forget the Dhoomstriker said that he grew too fast into unhappiness It may make sense to work the PH mine rather than the GLH mine.

With 2 corn, Dehli grows very quickly. It's better to work more food and whip it away than work more hammers. We might get better value doing the whip earlier too, I left it until the turn before Math so as to get the best chance of finishing the pyramids, but doing it earlier at lower population might be superior.

Of course this is my opinion, and I'm getting it out there so people consider it, ultimately the test games will tell us whether it's better or not. I didn't find I had any problems with Dehli reaching happy cap, so I'm not sure why Dhoomstriker did.

It's clear to me we want to consider mainly just two things in comparing these test games:
* The turn the Pyramids are built.
* The population and food stores of Dehli on turn 135.
I'd content that the game which does those two things the best is within a few small optimisations of being the best choice.

Are you sure it's not possible to complete the 'Mids with 4 chops without the extra 2 pop whip into the temple?

I'm sure it is, but what turn? To be complete on turn 133 I'm not sure it's possible to do with 4 chops even using the whipping, so I'd be fairly sure it's not without. I'm also not convinced we want to use only 4 chops. There's 5 marked, there's time to do all 5, the only reason I say 4 was purely that the 5th one I did was entirely overflow. Although 4 has the benefit that we can do them all in one turn.

OK, we learn Math on T132 (I assume you mean IBT T131 and T132). In a perfect world, we would chop four forests on T132 and complete the 'Mids on T133. If this isn't possible, I'd delay completing the 4 chops until the turn that the chops actually complete the Pyramids. That way, we don't waste any forests if an AI completes the 'Mids between T132 and the turn we can finish them.

Yes, I meant we have Math on T132. Of course I agree leave as many chops as possible until the last turn.

Is there an available grass river square in Delhi? I thought they all had forests on them? Maybe you're suggesting that we start building a cottage on a forested tile, but I'm not sure.

Sorry, the grass river I'm referring to is in Bedrock's BFC, 1SW of the stone. It won't be worked for a while yet, but as far as I could tell sending the workers anywhere more useful just wastes turns getting them there and back again.

 

[unclethrill]

So in your test games, how many turns are you putting into the mids?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

It's clear to me we want to consider mainly just two things in comparing these test games:
* The turn the Pyramids are built.
* The population and food stores of Dehli on turn 135.

I'm unable to run test games (for probably just under 2 weeks), but I'd like to see someone playing through Mitchum's turnset worth of turns, even just quickly playing, to get a feel for what size Delhi can be at when we'll want to switch into Caste System.

We do have the advantage that Delhi doesn't need to work the Silver, while other teams have to choose between the Silver and a Specialist.

However, if we're whipping multiple buildings and then building a Settler right after building The Pyramids, we'll likely lose out.

Whipping only works in your benefit if:
a) You don't have squares that are much better than 3 (Food + Hammers to work)
OR
b) You can quickly grow the lost population back such that the time lost working the squares that the whipped citizens were working is "made up for" by the Hammers received

Delhi is not a scenario a) type of City, so we have to check out things through the looking-glasses of scenario b). However, scenario b) will not work in our favour if we build a Settler shortly after whipping a building (such as whipping a Temple, completing The Pyramids on the next turn, and then halting growth to build a Settler).


On final test idea that I'll throw out there is to SKIP the Granary and to build ANOTHER Settler immediately. Then build The Pyramids. No whipping, no Granary, but we'll still be large-sized. Building a Settler before and after the Pyramids, getting a Great Prophet using just 1 Priest after Representation... it's an idea worth testing anyway.

 

[unclethrill]

I have to fix my computer tonight. Hopefully I can get a test in on one of my other ones.

 

[Mitchum]

On final test idea that I'll throw out there is to SKIP the Granary and to build ANOTHER Settler immediately. Then build The Pyramids. No whipping, no Granary, but we'll still be large-sized. Building a Settler before and after the Pyramids, getting a Great Prophet using just 1 Priest after Representation... it's an idea worth testing anyway.

We revolted to Slavery and Organized Religion on the last turn of Irgy's turnset, so I'm thinking getting a granary in Delhi is the right thing to do since we're set up for it and it's what we've been testing all along. With that said, it's not too late to shift gears.

Related to this, I suggest that we do NOT change civics or religions on the last turn of a turnset, because it eliminates an element of flexibility. I understand why it was done: so that the chop at Riverside would get the OR bonus. But it may have been a good idea not to move worker 2 on T120 either. Then we would have had full flexibility to do anything we wanted. Just a thought.