SGOTM 11 - One Short Straw

[Mutineer]

we do need to settle what we can. It's all are food rich cities and with rep specialists quickly not only pay of but speed as up.
Diplomatic victory is expensive beakers wise.

We can tank our economy completely for the moment, give as a chance to trade for some stuff..

Saying that, it does make HG even more powerful as we settle more and more cities, so we should not delay it for too long..

There really not any harry to develop cities at the moment, expansion is name of the game!

 

[babybluepants]

Currently I'm planning two more settlers in the next 5t with no poprushing in Delhi. That's 3 settlers total for 4 cities. How about if we prioritize our upcoming cities?

Can you clarify this? Which 3 settlers? We have the ivory one, and just chopped the marble one, according to the previous plan, right? Those two are still my priorities for settling. The dye spot is too much of a short-term sacrifice, IMHO. We may also find another necessary site any moment now in the west.

I agree with mysty and shyuhe that we really need to grow Delhi and Bombay asap. The latter is our second city, and it's currently slow-building workers at size 2, without a granary. That just doesn't seem very efficient to me. We also need to start planning our mid-term research (to Education). The gpp are not really happening right now, and I'm seeing suggestions of settler whipping from Two Fish.

 

[mdy]

I'm also in favour of just founding the ivory and marble cities for now, and letting our cities grow. Once we have 2 grass mines we will be able to build a settler every 7 turns, 6 if we also have an iron mine - This is much more efficient than building them by the whip there.

 

[babybluepants]

What iron mine?

 

[mdy]

What iron mine?

The one we can build 1SE 1S of Delhi.

 

[babybluepants]

The one we can build 1SE 1S of Delhi.

Well, obviously...

I do think we need those grass hill mines up soon. I'd grow Delhi to size 8 asap, and have it working a couple of scientists, tbh. Even with those, it should slow-build settlers in 8-9t, or HG in 12-13t, if I'm not mistaken.

 

[Mutineer]

I disagree, I believe Due spot is essential, or do you forget that we need Dye for win?

What if Issy will never declare and we need 2 dows for something else? We still do not know location of 2 resources.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Can you clarify this? Which 3 settlers? We have the ivory one, and just chopped the marble one, according to the previous plan, right? Those two are still my priorities for settling. The dye spot is too much of a short-term sacrifice, IMHO. We may also find another necessary site any moment now in the west.

The plan I wrote up had only two settlers, as you describe, and also had a heavy emphasis on 1) growing Delhi and Bombay, 2) REXing Two Fish asap into a GP farm, and 3) getting out a western wb asap. We're straddling about four horses at once here, which is the right (and fun!) way to win the gold in my experience. Because there were so many unknowns at the time, my plan also envisioned stopping mid-turnset to discuss any needs for more settlers. That's where we're at now.

The third settler I referred to above comes from Delhi overflow next turn + 1 chop + building the third settler for 4t. It is true that Delhi would not be growing for these four turns, but that's the nature of our emphasis on exploration--we discover stuff!!! Surprise!!! Are we going to adapt to our discoveries or not? This doesn't really slow down anything else in the plan other than to postpone Marble City by 4 turns, if we decide for that variant. I prefer that variant simply because it frees up the galley to go west sooner and for perhaps a far more important reason: We want to switch be able to switch back to Confucianism asap, but this will mean risking our OBs with Izzy. Hence, we want to get our Dyes settler through her land asap. Note that this is also adapting to our new situation: We now can adopt OrgRel, which will speed up aque and HG, for starters, but only after we can switch back to Conf. Building the third settler, on the other hand, is unaffected by our No State Religion right now. This SG is kind of complex and dynamic, but very interesting.

I think we should look at it like this: We are still leveraging our CS-slingshot. As is always the case, that slingshot postponed REX and exploration, but now we're slingshotting past those who didn't get CS with our ability to megaREX as needed. Maybe we were lucky the dyes weren't on the western side of Izzy's landmass or lucky we didn't epxlore that side, but we go with what we know. I wouldn't be surprised if the fogged desert hill to the north of Sal has gold and we'll be in a hurry to settle that too. We cross that bridge when we get to it.

Meanwhile, the dyes are a VC prerequisite. I simply see no reason to gamble here. We grab them if we can. If we're too late, we can still do what mdy suggested and plant a city on Izzy's landmass that she'll sooner or later want to grab. We don't even know whether there will be culture-free tiles for that later on. We don't really know anything other than that the mapmaker stuck an extra dye up there in the jungle, on the coast, for our wandering wb to see...was it a devious plot to wreck our economy or a reward for our early capabilities? Only time will tell.

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Now. That said, we have to bear in mind that we're still exploring, both east and west. Even next turn, before we've commited ourselves to anything we're now discussing, we may find out something new. Then we'l have to re-adjust our plans again.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Guys, have you noticed that Izzy has stone and Sal has two marbles, one of which he traded to Justy? I wonder if the mapmakers was messing with our wonder-building attempts...

 

[shyuhe]

Hm, 4 turns of delayed growth doesn't sound so bad actually. So I'm fine with sending a settler out for the dye soonish. My city order is:

1. ivory
2. marble
3. dye
4. sugar?

I'm not in too much of a hurry for #4 though, as I don't want to hamper Delhi with any more settler builds after the one for dye and Bombay needs to grow before it can contribute to the settler production.

I wouldn't be surprised if the mapmakers are trying to mess with our wonder attempts. Saladin and Justinian are both VERY likely to build the oracle due to their personalities. It sounds like it was a good (and safe) play to take the CS oracle via bulbing math instead of risking losing it to one of those nuts Also, is it possible that Izzy is not very well developed because she attempted (and failed) to build the pyramids?

 

[mystyfly]

There are at least 3 sources of dyes, I expect even more. C'mon this doesn't justify a cut-off city being culturepressed, adding very few to our civ but costing a lot. There are many ways we could get those dyes should we really be desperate for them later. If we find a great site nearby it might make me change my mind but I don't expect it, this deep in jungle...

 

[babybluepants]

I disagree, I believe Due spot is essential, or do you forget that we need Dye for win?

What if Issy will never declare and we need 2 dows for something else? We still do not know location of 2 resources.

No, I didn't forget. It's a matter of perceived priorities. Mine are: we can't afford to just keep whipping settlers out of Delhi at this stage; ivory and marble take precedence, as they are better cities and need growth / development pre-Educ. It follows that we won't be able to send a settler that way for a long time. I would, in fact, like to settle it, but not until later - once we have other affairs in order.

@LC,
4t delayed growth doesn't sound so bad, even though it's a forest chop we could perhaps use it better on HG. I'm for adjusting plans according to what we find (such as ivory earlier this week). I just feel we're reacting a bit too much right now. There's no clear mid-term research and development plan to follow. We started this game with some vague idea of the ultimate research goals we might wanna achieve - such as a list of GS bulbs, Lib / Radio and t300 win (you were the one proposing this approach), but haven't re-evaluated that since. I'm completely unclear right now on whether we're aiming for 1 AD Education or 500 AD Education or 1000 AD Education, for instance. It's difficult to evaluate current city development without some clarification of these types of goals (infra needed pre-Uni, gpp needed by certain date, etc). As it is now, we could just as well keep whipping another 10 settlers and grab all the good sites we find.

The discussion on dye so far has been confusing and circuitous. If the aim of settling dye is to induce a DOW from Isabella, we could probably just settle some crap city in her north later, as mdy said, with less of a sacrifice to our current growth and development. That was the point I was trying to make yesterday. If you think that we have 'till t150 to settle dye, there will unclaimed tiles 'till well into AD's. And, we could just trade for the damn thing.

 

[mystyfly]

I agree if we just want to settle to piss bella off, we can do that later. IMO we should still build the HG, delhi can grow while building an aqueduct and if we manage the HG we're all happy and if we don't manage we'll get LOTS of gold since we're building with stone and buero bonus. Settlers can be built by bombay once it's size 4 or at least 3.

We can chop forests outside (delhi) bfc. I'd rather have 2 or 3 of them into the settler while building the aqueduct, getting maximum growth in delhi. At size 6 or so we could finish the settler.

 

[mdy]

While I do agree that we do need to adapt our plans as we explore, this does not automatically mean that we have to change them. I see little point in building a city that Izzy will inevitably take when we can let her build it and take it from them when she DOW's us. provoking her into doing this should be very easy as long as we leave a gap between her power and ours, a reason to direct espionage to see Izzys demographics perhaps?

Maybe it would be worthwhile trading iron working to her for hunting next turn to speed Izzys development, and hence the time when she would attack us.

One other point: In most maps there are more sources of dyes tan this, we may well find another which is more convenient for us.

I'm completely unclear right now on whether we're aiming for 1 AD Education

We should expect to discover education well before 1 A.D. I can get it on the test save before then even with putting 0 micromanagement into cities (except ensuring all GP's are scientists) and ordering all our workers to go too sleep.

 

[mystyfly]

While I do agree that we do need to adapt our plans as we explore, this does not automatically mean that we have to change them. I see little point in building a city that Izzy will inevitably take when we can let her build it and take it from them when she DOW's us. provoking her into doing this should be very easy as long as we leave a gap between her power and ours, a reason to direct espionage to see Izzys demographics perhaps?

One other point: In most maps there are more sources of dyes tan this, we may well find another which is more convenient for us.

Normal rules don't apply to these hand-made maps, especially for those very important resources. While this may be true in normal games certainly not here.

 

[babybluepants]

Maybe it would be worthwhile trading iron working to her for hunting next turn to speed Izzys development, and hence the time when she would attack us.

Wouldn't gifting her IW for Hunting give us a long-term trade relations bonus, thus, at least marginally, reducing chances of a future DOW?

Edit: I wouldn't necessarily expect more dyes. It's a heavily edited map, after all.

 

[mdy]

Wouldn't gifting her IW for Hunting give us a long-term trade relations bonus, thus, at least marginally, reducing chances of a future DOW?

I think this only depends on whether she is annoyed/cautious/pleased, and on who is her worst enemy. Given that she goes down to -8 for a different religion, the ivory city will imping on her cultural borders, she will inevitably make some demands that we can turn down, and we can also get a few more negatives by demanding from her getting her to furious would not be a problem. If we get a +4 from this trade it would allow us to keep open borders for longer after adopting Confunicism, possibly allowing us to adopt it and get the benefits of O.R. earlier.

 

[mystyfly]

Well, given our many demands to our production capacity, we can't afford a war anytime soon and I don't like gifting IW anyway, if we'd get anything nice in exchange, why not... War with bella means we must build a few more galleys, units (maces soon) and we lose trade routes... until astronomy this might really slow us down. I don't think speeding up bellas possible war preparations against us AT THIS MOMENT is too early.

 

[shyuhe]

So it sounds like there's a rather large divide in opinion regarding what to do about the dyes. Just to move the discussion along, I'll try to summarize the points people have raised regarding the risk/payoff:

what we gain by chopping for a dye settler
-----------------------------------------
1. Vastly increase our chances that we will get dye without having to declare on Izzy, saving our dow's for the two other resources.
2. Also increases the odds of provoking Izzy to declare, which would allow us to pick up cities to increase our population without burning a dow.
3. And of course, it gives us the city itself (although I'm not sure how much it'll be worth at this stage since it needs a worker to be useful).

what we lose by chopping for a dye settler
-----------------------------------------
1. We lose a BFC forest
2. It makes us have to pay for a fairly expensive city
3. Stalls growth in Delhi for 4 turns
4. We don't get the city itself until much much later
5. We may have to eventually burn a dow on Izzy to get the dyes

So what it appears to boil down to is essentially a risk/benefit analysis of how easily we'll be able to get the dye if we don't settle it soonish vs. how much it will hurt the overall development of our empire.

 

[LowtherCastle]

There's no clear mid-term research and development plan to follow. We started this game with some vague idea of the ultimate research goals we might wanna achieve - such as a list of GS bulbs, Lib / Radio and t300 win (you were the one proposing this approach), but haven't re-evaluated that since. I'm completely unclear right now on whether we're aiming for 1 AD Education or 500 AD Education or 1000 AD Education, for instance. It's difficult to evaluate current city development without some clarification of these types of goals (infra needed pre-Uni, gpp needed by certain date, etc). As it is now, we could just as well keep whipping another 10 settlers and grab all the good sites we find.

We don't need Educ before we have 6 cities with libraries ready to build unis. We don't need Oxford before Delhi is well developed with a number of cottages. Being well developed also requires enough happy faces (including dyes... ). Our homeland is full of healthies, but not so many happies. The +3 from Rep just cracks the surface of Delhi's needs. Add a forge, ivory, incense and sugar, and we're getting close. Add dyes and a theater and we're getting really happy.

Nothing has changed, in my mind, in terms of those long-term goals, even if they haven't been the center of our discussion.

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As I see it, our mid-term research and development plan is:

1) Develop as many villages in Delhi as possible
2) Develop our six Oxford-uni cities
3) Develop and use Two Fish and Marble as GP farms
4) Develop ancillary cities and build commerce for 100% research. as much as possible
5) Trade techs and maps for as much gold as possible
6) Maybe partially build stone, marble, or copper wonders for the failed gold.

plus

7) Continue exploring to circumnavigate, meet the last AI, find the silk and furs, improve our relations, identify our DoW targets, create false wars for DoW plusmods, etc.
8) Continue expanding as much as our economy will allow, to increase our base research capability and increase our UN votes.