SGOTM 11 - One Short Straw

[Silu]

Aww man Oh well, hope you'll still share some drive-by wisdom with us here

 

[LowtherCastle]

I have carefully compared building settler or worker next in Delhi. They're very similar. The main differences:

Settler:
* exploring wb to the west done several turns sooner, if we settle RIce before Marble, or Marble a bit more developed
* plus 2/3 of a worker in Bombay

Worker:
* 2-Fish significantly more developed, if we're willing to sacrifice a chop into the granary
* +30b and 20g roughly
* Mids done T117 (one turn sooner)
* plus ~50h overflow in Delhi
* MM significantly easier

 

[shyuhe]

Hi folks,

It appears I haven't the time to keep up with this I will just side out and be your first lurker for this game . I am very sorry to do this, but I see no other way. I had great fun playing with OSS the last two games. I hope things will change before civ5 is out. Special apologies to the new comers, LC and Mut. I am sure you guys will have fun and be competitive (prolly more without than with me ).

Cheers,
Raskolnikov

No problem. Best wishes and you're welcome to chime in whenever Don't forget, LC is technically a lurker

 

[Mutineer]

We need to build mids about 1300BC, after that date probability to loose it become big.

I will do experiment with building settler, then whipping 2 -3 workers in short order trowing overflow to mids. I do not understand reluctance even to check this idea.

 

[LowtherCastle]

We need to build mids about 1300BC, after that date probability to loose it become big.

I will do experiment with building settler, then whipping 2 -3 workers in short order trowing overflow to mids. I do not understand reluctance even to check this idea.

I did try it, but it didn't work for me, because it takes too long to fill the granary the first time. Poprushing workers wasn't much better than poprushing settlers. But I was also REXing and trying to get the GS. I didn't go all out for ONLY Mids, cuz I don't think we want to play that way.

 

[Mutineer]

OK, here is result.

Mids build 1025 BC, way to late. But general development is good.

 

[Mutineer]

My micro was not the best.

we should, we can not reseach anything pass sailing at rex anyway, we do not have gold.
After mids are build we can revolt representation/castle and push out GS, getting 6 reseach, not 3.

I do not see that we need any more cities right now.

 

[Mutineer]

about city position, I really dislike your putting floodplain city , instead of north marble.

North marble can use BW and we might change FP city position depends what exploration discover.

 

[LowtherCastle]

about city position, I really dislike your putting floodplain city , instead of north marble.

Either way is fine by me, but I definitely want 6 cities asap. (and I don't think that's a problem either)

 

[shyuhe]

I think we want to settle all 6 cities reasonably quickly, without sacrificing the pyramids. The 2-fish and triple clam are both strong sites long-term so it'd be nice to get them started sooner. Rice/FP is good and needed for western exploration, and wheat/coast is needed for northern/eastern exploration. So I think we do want all of these cities reasonably soonish.

 

[mdy]

We need to build mids about 1300BC, after that date probability to loose it become big.

There is absolutely zero evidence for this. In my tests it was never built before 575B.C. Even in LC's test it was not built until 850B.C., and the probability of it being built this early is very small, we should be fine with building it just after 1000B.C.

In the plan I posted the worker mined a hill instead of being devoted entirely to forest chops. If we chopped 2 forests instead of building a mine we could get the Pyramids on T128 instead of T132.

This should be more than early enough, especially as it seems there are no wonder hpgs in the game.

 

[shyuhe]

Since we have to get either one of culture/diplo, I wouldn't be surprised if the map makers reduced the number of wonder hogging AI on the map to increase the viability of a wonder based culture strategy. Otherwise it wouldn't make sense since everybody would go diplo.

 

[Mutineer]

We do not know yet do we have wanders hogs or not, not enough information.

if some industrial AI starting with mids.. really on all difficulty level wanders start to pop when AI discover BW, from forests chops.

Now that we know that zara did not had Mining, his starting tech, we could suspect that this could be applied to other AI.

So, BZ will be later, so mass wanders build start later. We seems to observe that, as SH and GW were build very near to each other.

So, the faster we build Mids = the better.

Mids give as too mach to risk loosing it.

 

[babybluepants]

Yeah, I think that's a fair assumption. Like we said, Pyramids dates do vary a bit. Still, I don't think we need to break our backs going for it by 1000 BC. A bit after that would be totally reasonable.

It appears I haven't the time to keep up with this I will just side out and be your first lurker for this game .

Noooo... We could keep you in a pure entertainer role, maybe?

In addition to CoL+Oracle, they might have built a library in Delhi and Stonehenge in Bombay. That would be 2+3+8+2(monuments)=15cpt.

Where did the 3 come from? I think that's only 14cpt, which wouldn't give them enough. Unless they have a third city already.

Edit: x-post w/ Mut.

 

[Silu]

I agree about the risk/reward thing about 'Mids. Losing them will lose us thousands of beakers, say, 10k, for argument's sake. If there's even a 1% chance of losing them then it's better to lose, say, 80 beakers now than have a 1% risk of losing 10k. Scouting can wait for a few turns (really, it doesn't affect things THAT much, even though it seems people have some traumas about that from the last SGOTM ), techs can wait, extra cities that are not important for landgrab (cue Wheat) can wait. At least a bit.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Mids 1175bc. The only real difference between this and Shyuhe's preference (worker/overflow in Delhi) is that 2-Fish only has 1 worker instead of 2. Consequently its development is somewhat slower. I have no problem with this, if we want to play it safe with the mids. If you compare this save to the worker save I attached above (post #542), you'll see they're comparable. We still get all 6 cities by 1000bc.

----------------

To summarize my three test saves:

All build six cities by ~1000bc
All build the Pyramids 1175-1050bc
All get an exploring wb out T110-112

----------------

 

[mdy]

Mids 1175bc.

The problem with a Mids this early is that we won't have generated a GS for the Academy yet. An engineer at this point is very sub optimal compared to a scientist, surely it would be worthwhile to delay the Pyramids a bit in order to avoid this risk.

 

[LowtherCastle]

FOrget to mention that detail. The GE is 8% odds.

 

[Mutineer]

I do not care about academy, not right now. Mids sci from specialists will be distributed everywhere for a time, not concentrated in capital. We will get academy in capital soon enough even if next gp will not happened to be GS.

Our slider research will go down as we expand.

This argument is like we do not want 10000 RP because it could cost as 100.
No mids = happiness limit at 5 + religion
Mids happiness limit 8 + religion
No mids 3 RP/specialists
Mids 6 RP specialists.

So no mids we will have 2-3 less specialist in 5 cities (We have enogth food) and 3 less reseach /specialists


so in 100 turns we will loose

(assuming 3 specialists - no mids, 5 mids, in 5 cities)

15*3 + 10*6 ~100 rp/turn

10000 RP in 100 turns with that setup (very reasonable assumption)

The same apply to cottagess = more happiness= more cottagess.

 

[mdy]

This argument is like we do not want 10000 RP because it could cost as 100.
No mids = happiness limit at 5 + religion
Mids happiness limit 8 + religion
No mids 3 RP/specialists
Mids 6 RP specialists.

This is a false argument as it assumes it is a choice between a guaranteed early academy and getting the pyramids. In reality the choice is between an academy and a slightly later pyramids, and an earlier pyramids and a later GP, with the risk of it being an Engineer. As the chances of the AI building the Pyramids before T118 (about the earliest we can build the Pyramids without risking an engineer) are effectively zero the early academy looks like a much better bet.

The costs of us losing an early academy are higher than you estimate. The slider should not fall too low, and having 2-3 strong science cities doesn't mean building an academy in 1 can't give us a big boost. Further more if we got an engineer we would have to build an academy with a later GS which we couldn't then use to bulb which would in turn delay our universities/Oxford, delaying research further etc.