SGOTM 11 - One Short Straw

[mushroomshirt]

For what it's worth I kind of like the plains hill. My thought is that we are likely to get more river tiles in our fat cross which means better cottaging / more food. We know we will be giving up three plains and one grassland (probably no sources of FW) for what's behind door number 2 (probably FW grasslands / flood plains).

I don't have a strong opinion tho...

 

[mystyfly]

Crap. So much to read . And I thought I was only away for one day or so Sorry for the messy post.

1. We should go for UN, unless somebody has a very convincing reason why culture will be faster/safer. The fastest way to the UN (assuming we pick up two vassals to vote for us) will be a straight bulb down the radio line capped by liberalism for radio (mass media is cheaper), although I'll have to do test maps to see how reliable that is on emperor. I think it's reasonably doable since we're philosophical.

however I'd leave away some double-bulbs, not sure we can rely on so many GPs.

2. There were some very obvious hints dropped about this, but the solution to the no free religion requirement at the end of the game is espionage. This goes well with the UN as well, since we can change AI civics to butter them up as well. We should not need that much espionage for this, as the chance civic mission is one of the cheaper missions out there. And presumably we will not have to change the civics of our two vassals since we can always bribe them.

7. If we disconnect iron, warriors will not obsolete until we obtain either military science or rifling.

Good point. But we should build a few anyway for

3) Ai more likely to stay in his religion if he is a founder of one religion and does not have many others. That is make nicely with AI hating each others and slowing down tech rate.

But we want a fast game, a high tech rate. If we manage to get AIs convert to the same religion it's good for us.

I don't want to wonder hog too much - do we want to consider the oracle at all? We start with mysticism and with fast workers, we can chop forests very quickly.

I'm inclined to settle in place, as with double irrigated corn, we can crank out settlers like there's no tomorrow.

I'm also for SIP. Oracle sounds good just like that but what exactly do we want from it? MC for early forges and engineers? Nah. CoL/Theo for a religion, AP or CHs? Nah. I'm not sure oracle is such a great idea, it's probably better to rex like hell but that depends on the AIs. Does anyone have some wonder build times on epic/emp?

Seems everyone considers UN much faster than culture. I wouldn't say it's necessarily faster, but, without knowing anything about the map, it's certainly much safer. It doesn't require a full commitment to a strategy until fairly late. IMHO, the speed of a culture victory depends too much on map setup for us to evaluate before some exploration. We'd need:
............

I agree with you generally, culture might be fast but is risky. Also, the resource thingie makes culture less appealing. What you missed in your List of Things we Need and imo is most important, are many religions. Another risk factor.

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Some other thoughts by me: I'm not sure we really want to wage that many wars (but I also find worker stealing too risky) if it is not necessary to get the resources. We can get the votes for the UN by befriending AIs. However if there is an AI with, say 2 or 3 of the resources we need (I assume we won't have them in our land) then vassalling is ofc a good idea, we can demand them in tribute. However we shouldn't focus too many resources on wars as it slows down our victory date, and this is what counts (not our normalized score).

I'm also for some good scouting but I think building scouts is kinda too much of a good thing . Optics is high priority with some spy/missionary/explorer-filled caravels and a scouting WB is important too but a scout...

If we SIP, our starting actions should be clear, agri/worker first. Let's just hope our warrior won't meet any bears...

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Oh yeah btw, signing in

edit: One More Thing (tm):

# Not having your state religion in all your cities counts as a missed condition.
# Not having fur, dye, ivory and silk available to all your cities counts as a missed condition.

We'll have to pay attention to fulfilling these especially with newly-captured cities!

 

[shyuhe]

Ok, did a quick test:

Settle in place working irrigated corn to get a worker out, on turn 35:

Settle on hill working grass forest until border pop then swap to corn, on turn 35:

Sorry I didn't realize that in the second version, Delhi started working the spice tile. So it should have 2 fewer beakers invested in BW than it does - it will still finish BW on turn 36 though. So we basically sacrifice one pop point for one turn of research. The pop point sounds better to me, as we can whip sooner when we hit pop 4. Also, the second route completes a second warrior before turn 35.

 

[shyuhe]

Oracle for MC allows us to try the engineering gambit - this would save a lot of headaches later in the game. I think there are enough forests in our starting area that we can chop out a forge in the non-oracle city. Of course it does give GP pollution in the long-term, so maybe it's not so ideal after all?

 

[Silu]

I don't think small-scale GP pollution is a problem as we have a perfectly good use for at least 4 unwanted GPs + GA launchers

 

[babybluepants]

Given the variant (the 4 extra GP part), I don't think I care as much about GP pollution as I usually might, especially once we're past the first few.

The Pyramids gambit is the only reason to Oracle MC, IMHO. We could also delay talking about the Oracle until a bit later, when we know more and can run some real tests for dates.

Your test shows what seemed pretty obvious - the PH is faster for early production/expansion. That doesn't really tell us whether the move is good or not longer term, since we can't know what other tiles we'll get by moving. If it's all brown, as in mushroomshirt's test save - no good. I kinda expect a couple of FP's for some reason - just seems like one of those starts... There's an element of risk involved.

I agree with you generally, culture might be fast but is risky. Also, the resource thingie makes culture less appealing. What you missed in your List of Things we Need and imo is most important, are many religions. Another risk factor.

Sure, except I think that "many religions" = 3, 2 of which are almost a given (Confu & Tao). Another early-religion spread is reasonable to expect. Honestly, without marble/stone, there's almost no point getting religions beyond Bud/Conf/Tao.

To clarify, I'm not proposing we do culture - just keep an open mind about overall strategy until we have more of an idea about the map. The opening should be fairly self-evident, barring a decision to pursue some kind of Oracle gambit.

I think building scouts is kinda too much of a good thing

I was chuckling when I wrote that. Now I kinda wanna build one just for kicks... You guys shouldn't let me play an early TS.

 

[shyuhe]

Your test shows what seemed pretty obvious - the PH is faster for early production/expansion. That doesn't really tell us whether the move is good or not longer term, since we can't know what other tiles we'll get by moving. If it's all brown, as in mushroomshirt's test save - no good. I kinda expect a couple of FP's for some reason - just seems like one of those starts... There's an element of risk involved.

If it's really bad, we can spend the extra turn moving back, although I think I'd be fine with a generic riverside capital having two irrigated corn and at least 6-8 forests. That will suffice for our immediate needs and we can always look for better spots for city #2 and 3.

I was chuckling when I wrote that. Now I kinda wanna build one just for kicks... You guys shouldn't let me play an early TS.

Scouts require hunting. Don't you dare build a scout

 

[mushroomshirt]

If it's all brown, as in mushroomshirt's test save - no good. I kinda expect a couple of FP's for some reason - just seems like one of those starts... There's an element of risk involved.

I wouldn't put too much stock in the terrain of the test save outside of the starting position. I regenerated the map until I fould starting terrain that looked pretty close, but I had to do some engineering to get it to look the way it is supposed to.

I too think we are likely to pick up something better than the 3plains / 1grass tile that we give up by moving to the PH. And of course we get the nice production bonus for a PH city.

 

[Mutineer]

it is valid experiment, and yes, settling on plain hill produce faster worker. But on other hand, I see very high probability it is cooper hill.

But if we moving on hill, then moving back become very bad idea. we will have to settle on hill or wander more.

So, if we are moving on hill, may I suggest to move warrior north-east, and then on other hill next turn? If other hill not surrendered by forest that reveal more land for as to see before we decide.

 

[babybluepants]

fyi, the save's up now.

 

[shyuhe]

But if we moving on hill, then moving back become very bad idea. we will have to settle on hill or wander more.

So, if we are moving on hill, may I suggest to move warrior north-east, and then on other hill next turn? If other hill not surrendered by forest that reveal more land for as to see before we decide.

I don't see why we can't move back to the starting place if the hill looks bad. It'll give a good lay of the land and I think that may well be worth the 2 turns we'd lose (or we can just settle on the hill). I think the benefits outweigh the risks here.

Scouting to the NE will not affect our settlement decision since those tiles aren't in the BFC in either scenario. So I'd prefer to move the warrior NW, W, or SW.

 

[babybluepants]

But if we moving on hill, then moving back become very bad idea. we will have to settle on hill or wander more.

Tend to agree... Also, I seriously doubt we'll see anything that justifies a move back anyway.

I think shyuhe's test proves that despite of what we may see, PH is most likely the better spot. If the hill was copper, what might suck is that we lose the ability to build warriors for some time. I wouldn't care too much about lost production from copper - it's only +1hpt compared to a regular PH and the extra 1hpt we get from settling accumulates enough to even out with a potential mine over the early-mid game, IMO.

I'm more concerned about the one grass tile being copper. That might force us into a sub-optimal second city placement, since we'll need barb defence before the second border pop.

Edit: I'd also be inclined to scout to the west, but I have no strong opinion there. Don't see why we would ever move the settler in the N-NE direction, since it wastes a lot of turns.

 

[Silu]

I think shyuhe's test proves that despite of what we may see, PH is most likely the better spot. If the hill was copper, what might suck is that we lose the ability to build warriors for some time. I wouldn't care too much about lost production from copper - it's only +1hpt compared to a regular PH and the extra 1hpt we get from settling accumulates enough to even out with a potential mine over the early-mid game, IMO.

Copper on the hill doesn't even matter. It's only -1 and insta-enables antibarb Axe production without a mine (it's on a river so mine is enough, I don't think we want to avoid mining it just to do Warriors). Losing warrior prod doesn't happen before Hunting, and even then who cares since we can just build warriors in a city not connected to our trade network.

Speaking of which, you can build Warriors until you research one of Rifling, Military Science or Railroad. We must be pretty damn daft to not have 4 Warriors safely tucked away by then.

 

[shyuhe]

I think we're still waiting to hear from 2 members of our team about checking in

As for the rest of us, I count a majority of us as in favor of moving the settler on the hill on turn 0. Any suggestions on where to move the warrior?

 

[babybluepants]

Well, Ras came back for long enough to apologize for being away.

I think the city location seems settled. Agri/worker first is pretty obvious, too (frankly, Agri/BW, worker-corn-corn is pretty obvious). I think we should move to the PH, have a brief discussion about what we see, and then quickly just play through Agri. That'll give us more info for a test map.

Warrior: I'd probably go SW, then loop SW to SE. TBH, I think we can just pick any direction and go scout, though.

 

[mdy]

Checking in.

I'm away at the moment, and won't be access the save till Tuesday. I probably won't be able to post again till then either.

A couple of comments:

Diplo can normally be done a lot quicker than culture unless we get unlucky with how the alliances between AI's work out. I remember in one previous SGOTM one victory condition was much quicker than ther other so there is no guarantee that the map has beeen set up in such a way as to make cultueral competitive, though the 2 DOW limit could be a problem. The only real adavtage I can see to cultural is that it reduces the risk that a civ will switch to free religion just before vistory.


Our wars are probably best delayed until we have Feudalism so we can vassalise the AI. We may also need to decalre war on someone in order to save another AI, so we will need to keep some flexibility into the mid game.

I would probably settle in place as the plains hill will probably have a resource.

As we have gold we should be able to get something decent with the Oracle. Maybe CS?

If we are planning to generate 16 GP's (I'm assuming we will want one for an academy) we will need to run a specialist heavy economy, so the pyramids could be worthwhile. They would also help with getting an engineer for the UN which can be tricky.

 

[babybluepants]

As we have gold we should be able to get something decent with the Oracle. Maybe CS?

You mean, if we have gold?

 

[shyuhe]

So I think I have:

in place:
Mutineer
mdy

plains hill
me
bbp
mushroom
Silu

leaving Ras and mysty to vote.

@mdy - Are you looking at a different map? I don't see any gold anywhere. We can war pre-feudalism since the restriction is dow's against a civ, not 2 dow's period. I wouldn't do the pyramids unless we have stone. Even then, it'd depend on the availability of food specials.

 

[mushroomshirt]

I think the city location seems settled. Agri/worker first is pretty obvious, too (frankly, Agri/BW, worker-corn-corn is pretty obvious). I think we should move to the PH, have a brief discussion about what we see, and then quickly just play through Agri.

Actually (assuming the majority is for PH 1st city) I wouldn't mind if someone played through BW or through irrigating the second corn (whichever comes first). I'm not sure anything we find will change what we do up to that point. The person with the first go can always stop and ask questions if anything comes up that could conceivably change the plan.

 

[Mutineer]

I would suggest only agriculture. Thin we found may change our research plan. Yes, Bronze is often good tech to research, BUT NOT ALWAYS!