SGOTM 11 - One Short Straw

[Silu]

Oh yeah... no cutting corners for coastal exploration.

 

[shyuhe]

I'm impressed by the effort you guys are putting in However I am more like silu on that issue... So I'm glad we're about to carry on playing soon, I see we're now up to 9.2 posts per turn

At least we're not as bad as Fifth Element - they're at 310 posts with 0 turns played

 

[Mutineer]

I am not of the same opinion as Mutineer on the topic of our scouting so far

There is one principle I use, which I found to be extremely important.

I never move starting warrior/scout far away before I found second city settling cite.

And I always want to do it before I finished evident tech.
In most game it is clear what first worker tech you need, but after I want max room for flexibility. I do not lock myself in thinking I will do BW, because there are many opportunity that could be missed by researching expensive BW very early.

And to be forced into BW with out alternatives is extremely upsetting for me.

 

[LowtherCastle]

There is one principle I use, which I found to be extremely important.

I never move starting warrior/scout far away before I found second city settling cite.

And I always want to do it before I finished evident tech.
In most game it is clear what first worker tech you need, but after I want max room for flexibility. I do not lock myself in thinking I will do BW, because there are many opportunity that could be missed by researching expensive BW very early.

And to be forced into BW with out alternatives is extremely upsetting for me.

I've never heard your principle before and I find it to be very interesting. Thanks for describing it. I think my scouting is less disciplined than that which may hurt me on occasion.

I tend to avoid researching BW altogether, preferring to beeline alpha and get it for free. In this game, though, there are a number of reasons to consider early BW, not even including us only meeting one AI so far.

0. We start with mining.
1. Most important, BW is strong for REX, especially with our food all coming from agri alone, and we already decided we want to REX.
2. We have a lot of forests (imo, a 30h chop very early is as powerful or more than a 45h chop after a late Math).
3. Much of the map so far has not hills but plenty of food (=poprushing).
4. Because of the cultural victory choice, I assume there will be copper somewhere and it would be nice to know where it is before settling our next city. (I was surprised you left this out of your analysis, since with TW-BW, we settle just before we find out where any copper might be, something that is really upsetting to me...) Copper tends to be a super powerful tile, aside from opening up axemen.
5. If we know we want BW before alpha, then in my mind it's generally better to research it asap.
6. We are religious so we get slavery for free.
7. The sooner we start poprushing, the sooner we kickstart our production and the more times we poprush.
8. ???

From T3 on, we could have made a smaller arc around to Zara, but I still don't think TW would suit our goals better, as long as we know where we want to settle by ~T40. We want to settle optimally, not just squat on some stone to quickly build Stonehenge or something. To me the essence of containing Zara is plunking down our settlements before he gets a chance to, because we don't want to DoW him. We can deal with the complications later (including slower research for the Oracle). It's easy for me to envision other teams complaining (after the SG is over) about how they let Zara expand to much while OSS quickly built two cities. We shall see, but I'm convinced that Zara has been placed nearby to tempt us to DoW him. I can only think of two real temptations: 1) worker theft and 2) land/resource grab (= stone/marble/copper and dye/silk/ivory). Let's do everything we can to make sure we won't regret not building two cities. Mutineer, if I'm not mistaken you were the one who said:

Right now only 3 things clear to me.

1) WE need to scout as mach as fast as possible.

2) We need to Rex, probably be ready to sneak cities near AI capitals. Rex for more voites, Rex for resources.

3) WE can mach more easier to claim resources from AI culturally on our own continent, leaving DOw available for claiming resources form other continent. IN addition we could hope on some AI declare on as on our own continent.

​

So I believe that you're upset about this, but I'm not sure I really understand why. BW-TW, in my eyes, is what gives us maximum flexibility for this particular game. I don't feel forced to go there by anything other than our priorities.

XPOST EDIT: I deleted a bunch of stuff out of this post because it was so long. In between Ras commented on some worker stuff I deleted. Sorry about that...

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

I tend to avoid researching BW altogether, preferring to beeline alpha and get it for free.

Just poping in because I feel this is very wrong in many case... you don't get BW for free, you get WFYABTA points for free I would say (unless you play WAY WAY WAY below the level you are challenged and you just want to grab some free beakers at the beginning of the game, while AIs are still competitive)...

But this is a minor comment, I enjoy very much the on going discussion, I feel I will learn a lot about workers micro and such (I confess being too lazy to manage roading while moving workers on my games )

Ras

edit: @Shyuhe: as u see, I am working to catch up 5th element

 

[LowtherCastle]

I can't envision WFYABTA being a problem in this game. Our tech tree is short. We're going to fly through it with lightbulbs. Plus, if we go UN, we'll be getting AIs up to Friendly, so again WFYABTA won't matter. I think we'll be lucky if the AIs research any techs before us after the Calendar/Currency/Philosophy cluster.

It's interesting. I've gotten so used to getting chosen AIs up to Friendly, I can't remember the last time I had to worry about WFYABTA. But I don't play space race. This game will be a bit harder though, not being able to get common war points so easily.

 

[LowtherCastle]

(I confess being too lazy to manage roading while moving workers on my games )

I just realized that I never even asked you guys what our goal for this SG is.

Serious question: Are we playing only for fun or also going for Gold?​

We don't stand a chance at Gold if we goof around with our workers. That much I know...

 

[shyuhe]

Diplo shouldn't be too bad as long as we're not heathens. +2 peace, +2 resource trade, +4 fair trade. We just have to avoid diplo demerits or rack them up with civs that have easy favorite civics. And remember - you can adopt a religious civic without a state religion. We just have to have a state religion at the very end of the game. And any changes in diplo status on the turn that a diplo vote comes up does NOT affect voting since the AI votes have already been placed.

I'm a bit surprised that you trade for BW in your games LC. You're probably playing on levels way too low for your skill

 

[shyuhe]

edit: @Shyuhe: as u see, I am working to catch up 5th element

Aren't you up in our SG?

 

[LowtherCastle]

I'm a bit surprised that you trade for BW in your games LC. You're probably playing on levels way too low for your skill

On my highest level games, I either beeline alpha or beeline Machinery and trade for alpha or I'm doomed. What do you do? Beeling alpha on lower level games is pointless unless you want to trade alpha for hunting...

 

[shyuhe]

I just realized that I never even asked you guys what our goal for this SG is.

Serious question: Are we playing only for fun or also going for Gold?​

We don't stand a chance at Gold if we goof around with our workers. That much I know...

I'd like to try for the best we can while having some sense of fun. If our past track record is any indication, we'll be scrambling to finish our game in time anyways In all seriousness, I'd like to try for at least a podium finish if not better.

 

[mushroomshirt]

OK - save is in. Not sure who is up next...

Download Link HERE

Turn 15: keep researching BW
Turn 16: scouting warrior uncovers stone!
Turn 17: zzzz
Turn 18: zzzz
Turn 19: Fast worker built, start warrior. Begin irrigation of corn
Turn 20: zzzz
Turn 21: zzzz
Turn 22: zzzz
Turn 23: zzzz
Turn 24: zzzz
Turn 25: finally see borders of Zara’s capital!
Turn 26: finish farm – that’s it for me!

here's a screenshot:


Still some scouting to do around our 1st city site to block Zara - but it looks like there will be lots of rivers. Not so much for the second blocking city... that one will SUCK.

 

[Mutineer]

I very mach want to see from that forested hill on top of Zara.

 

[mushroomshirt]

I very mach want to see from that forested hill on top of Zara.

I thought about moving the scout up that way but decided to move him S to check out the potential city site. In retrospect I probably should have left that warrior move to the next player so we could discuss.

 

[shyuhe]

We're at turn 26 - Zara's capital has pumped out 26 * 4 = 104 culture so far. So we have plenty of time to scout his capital before his borders pop. I think it's better to scout the river area in the next 2 turns so that we can see how many settlers we will want since that affects our more immediate decision making. The river is nice but the lack of food is meh.

Perhaps there's marble somewhere nearby as well - that would make culture quite competitive depending on where our four magical resources are.

So I say warrior SE -- SW while worker goes to farm the northern corn. We'll also be size 2 then, and can decide if we need to rush out a settler or not based on what we see near that river.

Silu - UP
Mutineer (on deck)

Also, is that coast to the NE? So can we completely stuff Zara with 2 cities?

edit: Also some micro for the next player - the worker should move 1NE and chop 1 turn (cancel before ending turn). Then move north to farm. It's a free turn of chopping. Or is it better to put a turn of chop into the forest 1N of its current spot since it's green?

 

[mushroomshirt]

Also, is that coast to the NE? So can we completely stuff Zara with 2 cities?

Yes and yes (at least I think so) but the northern city will be complete crap. Is it worth it?

 

[shyuhe]

Probably not - we'd have to block him in before he can send out his first settler which is difficult (unless he stupidly decided to build a wonder or something).

Given the number of cow and incense resources, I'm inclined to think we may be in semi-isolation with Zara here, which will mean we may want to be more aggressive with land blocking him.

 

[Mutineer]

we can not chop yet, so no micro yet

What I wander about are we bgoing to block him or he blocking as?
We probably should try to sneak warrior pass him, that why I was to check north first, as it's look coastal.

 

[mystyfly]

As I see it we can probably put one good city directly between us and zara with all the grass and river tiles - I'm sure we'll find some resource there.

Desert to the north means zara will not too soon start settling there. IMO we must NOW decide whether we want the oracle and to be safe build it very soon. I don't like any CS or machinery gambits, imo we should just take CoL or MC off it and thus build it ASAP. We don't need 2 cities to get all the land from zara... However we might be able to put 2 cities there depending on what lies in the fog.

Oh and barbs shouldn't be much of a problem if we settle between our and zara's capitals. Speaking of barbs, we might want to leave a bit of fog unbusted for barb city(ies) to spawn for free XP unlocking HE (and some cash and maybe a worker or three ).

 

[mdy]

Looking at the map Zara can only be contained to a very small area with 2 cities if they are placed in what look like very suboptimal positions, and this would still mean conceding the river area to the east to Zara. It may be better to block him by settling to the North and West and conceed the East to him . The land there looks pretty poor with the exception of the river area-and any city we put there would overlap with the capital on one side and come under severe cultural pressure from Zara on the other, we are probably better off letting him get these sites as they will just be a drain on our resources. Letting him expand a little would also have the advantage of reducing the odds that he will declare war on us. We could do this with a floodplains/stone city as timing would not be critical with this site we would have the option of settling this second or third and settling some other sites first. This would also probably be better from a fogbusting point of view.

If the area to the East is not that critical I believe it would be more efficient to move the warrior to the forested plains hill to spy on Zara's capital, and then to scout along the coast. The area to the East ant to the South could be scouted by our second/third warrior.