SGOTM 11 - One Short Straw

[LowtherCastle]

shyuhe, your #4 and #5 in the second group seem like they belong to different groups, entitled: what we lose if we don't chop the settler now and what we might lose if we don't settle the dyes, respectively.

 

[mdy]

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.

I disagree as she will probably attack us anyway thus avoiding the need for a DOW. If not there is always the possibility of getting dyes from another source. If we can't we should still be able to get them from Izzy by the following trick in the late game:

revolt to Izzys religion.
wait until we can revolt back to our religion. Then:
Trade for dyes with Izzy
Switch back to our religion

Because trade deals can't be cancelled for 10 turns if we time this right we should be able to guarantee dyes on the turn of victory.

 

[shyuhe]

shyuhe, your #4 and #5 in the second group seem like they belong to different groups, entitled: what we lose if we don't chop the settler now and what we might lose if we don't settle the dyes, respectively.

True, I kind of lumped the two into the same category But if we don't chop for the settler now, can we still realistically expect to settle the dyes later?

 

[shyuhe]

I disagree as she will probably attack us anyway thus avoiding the need for a DOW. If not there is always the possibility of getting dyes from another source. If we can't we should still be able to get them from Izzy by the following trick in the late game:

revolt to Izzys religion.
wait until we can revolt back to our religion. Then:
Trade for dyes with Izzy
Switch back to our religion

Because trade deals can't be cancelled for 10 turns if we time this right we should be able to guarantee dyes on the turn of victory.

Trade deals can be force canceled by war declarations. It's unlikely she'll dagger declare on us, but it's possible. It's a risk I'm willing to take but I'm not sure how others feel about it.

 

[mdy]

Trade deals can be force canceled by war declarations. It's unlikely she'll dagger declare on us, but it's possible. It's a risk I'm willing to take but I'm not sure how others feel about it.

By that stage in the game we should easily have a much higher power rating than Spain so this possibility should not arise.

 

[LowtherCastle]

More data:

    !---!----!---!
    ! ? ! ?  ! ? !      no more jungle tiles from here northward
!---!---!----!---!---!
! ? ! M ! GH ! G ! J !  seventh latitude of jungle tiles
!---!---!----!---!---!
! ? ! G ! X  ! D ! C !  sixth latitude of jungle tiles
!---!---!----!---!---!
! ? ! F ! J  ! C ! C !  fifth latitude of jungle tiles
!---!---!----!---!---!
    ! J ! JH ! C !    
    !---!----!---!


F=forestgrass
G=grass
GH=grasshill
J=junglegrass
JH=junglegrasshill
D=dyes
M=mountain
C=coast
X=8.5 tiles from Madrid, meaning Izzy will not raze if she captures it

The dyes are basically at the far northern part of the jungle. That means the city site isn't necessarily terrible. It also means it may be close to mystery AI if he's up there.

Btw, guys, notwithstanding what Silu said about the diplo screen, we now have sighted Madrid and we still don't see who Zara is getting his corn from. Meanwhile, we haven't sighted Mecca, but we do see that Sal is trading marble to Justy for clams. I continue to believe that Zara is getting corn from some AI beyond Izzy. If he's on her landmass, eventually they'll have close borders and the Buddhists and Jews will hate each other's guts. She'll DoW him long before us, unless he exceeds her power threshold, in which case she might get DOWed by him.

 

[mdy]

Meanwhile, we haven't sighted Mecca, but we do see that Sal is trading marble to Justy for clams. I continue to believe that Zara is getting corn from some AI beyond Izzy. If he's on her landmass, eventually they'll have close borders and the Buddhists and Jews will hate each other's guts. She'll DoW him long before us, unless he exceeds her power threshold, in which case she might get DOWed by him.

When we first met Izzy we immediately became her worst enemy, this suggests that the Jew is not on the same landmass, as then Izzy would have met the Jew some time ago, and he would have been the worst enemy not us due to the accumalation of negative religion points. Further evidence for this is that Judaism has spread to Toguwa, which suggests that the founder of Judaism is more likely to be to the west than the east.

How can we know that Saladin is trading marble with Justin? The trade screen isn't showing anything. Similarly how can we be sure that Zara isn't trading with Justin or even Izzy? If that clams workboat has only recently been built then the AI may just not have got around to cancelling the trade yet.

 

[LowtherCastle]

When we first met Izzy we immediately became her worst enemy, this suggests that the Jew is not on the same landmass, as then Izzy would have met the Jew some time ago, and he would have been the worst enemy not us due to the accumalation of negative religion points. Further evidence for this is that Judaism has spread to Toguwa, which suggests that the founder of Judaism is more likely to be to the west than the east.

How can we know that Saladin is trading marble with Justin? The trade screen isn't showing anything. Similarly how can we be sure that Zara isn't trading with Justin or even Izzy? If that clams workboat has only recently been built then the AI may just not have got around to cancelling the trade yet.

Izzy could have +4 peacewieght with him, possibly +1 for underdogs, so her invisible attitude would be +4. Her attitude toward us started at -4. So the other AI would have to have accumulated -8 (or -9?) from her religion to remain her worst enemy. You've got a good point on the Judaism spreading to Toku though.

The F4 screen under Glance shows that Justy and Sal have the marble for clams deal going. It also shows our deal with Justy and no other deals. Zara couldn't possibly be getting corn from Justy, because Justy didn't have any when we traded it to him. There's no rationale reason why the F4 screen wouldn't show such a deal between Izzy and Zara.

The mystery Ai doesn't have to be on Izzy's landmass to be able to trade Zara corn of course. He could be between Izzy and Toku. It's all speculation right now. We 'll probably find out soon enough because our eastern wb has crossed the equator going north.

 

[Mutineer]

Folk, you talking about as having high power rating... I do not think soo. One can not tech fast and create supper army at the same time.

I highly suspect that team that rich objectives with minimum amount of wars and most limited wars will win.
Settling city will reduce chance of as have to go into all out war.

We will see what exploration will show, but one of attractive strategies is to self research Feudalism next and vassal our vassal targets now, when it will be cheap. (A few swords now will take city).
There no doubt in my mind that we should grab this opportunity with both hands and found Dye city.

 

[babybluepants]

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.

Well... No objection to any of those. I'd add:
9) Aest - Lit - Music. When? Building NE in Two Fish will be like pulling teeth, but the sooner we get it done the better... Really not sure.

Comments:

1) Yes! Also, we need to run some scientists soon, IMHO. Our next two GP's should be 100% GS, so we'll need to pop a relatively expensive one from Delhi and still find the time to pop another at some point (for better GE odds). This all points to fast growth, but also increase to happy cap, as you pointed out. I don't think the dye will cut it. We need to benefit from some buildings by the early AD's.

2) & 3) These two contradict slightly, since pre-Oxford infra requires heavy whipping in Marble and Rice (Bombay and Ivory have lots of production even under Caste). Two Fish is already well ahead of those 2, and I'd hope to run quite a bit of Caste in the short to mid-term.

4), 6) & 7) No comment... Sure.

5) I really want to get Paper asap. We now know 5/6 AI's and are likely to discover the last one very soon. I'd be inclined to go straight for it. Can we rely on them trading maps with us? Would another spell of NSR do the job (accounting for the fact that we may need to refuse a demand at some point)? Silu?

8) I agree. I'm just objecting to the current pace slightly. I think we need to take a short break and let our top cities grow and get really productive. On these settings, there should be land available for settling as late as the AD era.

Slightly unrelated, but I didn't comment on this earlier: I don't think MoM is so hot here. It's obviously wicked awesome in some deep-research games (space race), but I'm not sure we wanna run many golden ages here, because:
1) We're Spiritual.
2) We need all the GP's we can get for the variant requirement and the Radio-line bulb-fest.

 

[babybluepants]

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.

Nice summary.

Yes, that's what it seems to boil down to. I think the issue is that we are simply not in a position right now to accurately evaluate the risk / benefit involved, so the arguments are just circling around without really addressing each other. Mine have been of the "we're not really sure, so let's maybe just stick with (what I perceive as the) original plan" variety. Not exactly a great approach, I'll admit, but the counter-arguments haven't been super convincing, either.

 

[mdy]

Also, we need to run some scientists soon, IMHO. Our next two GP's should be 100% GS, so we'll need to pop a relatively expensive one from Delhi and still find the time to pop another at some point (for better GE odds).

I agree that we need to start running scientists soon, but running them in Delhi is a big mistake. If we generate both GP's in 2 fish we have a 95% chance of getting 2 scientists. If a third GP comes from the clams soon after the probability of not getting 2 scientists is only 0.2%. This is much better than the odds in Delhi due to GE pollution from the Pyramids.

These two contradict slightly, since pre-Oxford infra requires heavy whipping in Marble and Rice (

If we put the one remaining chop in both cities into a granary we can slow build it with the marble/cows. We should also be able to put enough hammers into the library to be able to whip it after we discover education. The 100% university bonus should also allow us to whip the universites there quickly, especially under Organised religion.

It looks like we can play at least 1 more turn without committing to a settling order, maybe this would help clarify things?

 

[LowtherCastle]

Bon giorno!

Ahhh, what a restless, CIV-encumbered sleep can do for one's thought processes...

mdy, I believe the puzzle pieces have all fallen into place. My new conjecture is that Sal, who traded us Mono, was the one to found Judaism (d'oh!), in a second or third city near Toku. Thus, MysteryAI probably has NSR or is Buddhist, and is beyond Izzy, trading Zara corn. MAI also has the GW, which might not be insignificant if he is to Izzy's north, because he'd repel any remaining barbs toward the south, where our warrior/settler would be going. Depends on how big that landmass is. Anyway...

If true, this means with virtually no effort we could have a block of 3 AIs in Buddhism, with Izzy being super-easy to get to Friendly, if we want that. Then we put our missionary-spamming efforts into Toku and Justy. Religion- and wonder-rich Sal becomes our UN opponent.

I'm under the assumption that we can still gift the UN city to make someone else our opponent. Is that right, anyone know?​

This is, of course, just an idea for now, but it would make sense. Later on, we'd have to be prepared to gift Sal a city safe from Toku's conquering hoards, and we would want to be the ones to capture his shrine cities.

-----------

In short, I have gone over to the Dark Side, Mutineer. I'm fine with continuing as per our plan and leaving the dyes to them, at least for now. But there are some consequences, imo:

1. We'll need to get Buddhism. Hopefully, Ivory will pick this up, being close to Madrid. Ivory w/Moai would be a great miss-spammer later on.
2. We will need to switch to Conf before we even have Buddhism, which means:
a. our wb needs to get beyond Toku asap
b. we want to scope out Izzy's and Toku's lands asap, because they won't want to trade us their maps.
3. We need to make sure we have something to trade to Izzy when she hooks up her second dyes, or else she'll trade them to someone else. That also means we need to have Buddhism spammed to our cities by then, so we can switch from Conf. That's a challenge.

Again, all tentative, but it's a workable strategy.

 

[LowtherCastle]

A note on Delhi's cottages

The first Delhi cottage has just become a village, gaining the eventual PP bonus coin. Since towns take 60t and we're planning to be in BUreau, not Free SPeech, we should focus our efforts on getting as many villages in Delhi as possible. This means working cottage tiles that aren't villages yet whenever we do NOT have enough population to work them all.

This also means turning the city governor off, MMing whenever the pop grows, etc., so those of you who aren't comfortable playing that way can just ignore this. I'll be switching the citizen to the hamlet starting this turn.

Edited after improvement by mysty below. We want to:

1. Maintain the raw commerce at or just above a multiple of 8, and
2. Grow our cottages to villages asap.​

 

[Mutineer]

It is not good idea..., actually it is a bad idea. We already in bureaucracy, so we can use max commerce right now. This procedure could help why developing capital which grow and will become bureaucratic and even then it is not that good. So, please, do not do so..

 

[mystyfly]

This also means turning the city governor off, MMing whenever the pop grows, etc., so those of you who aren't comfortable playing that way can just ignore this. I'll be switching the citizen to the hamlet starting this turn.

Aaah I disagree! Right now, at 100% science, working the hamlet produces 59.5 -> 59 beakers while working the village gives us 63.0 -> 63 beakers, difference of 4bpt for just getting 1C more!! We get +50% on commerce and +75% on beakers so our raw commerce should be a multiple of 8 to get no loss due to rounding.

Say we get another (nonriverside) cottage built and grow another pop, THEN we can work the cottage + hamlet. But having a multiple of 8 in raw commerce is more important than keeping our villages villages

 

[mdy]

mdy, I believe the puzzle pieces have all fallen into place. My new conjecture is that Sal, who traded us Mono, was the one to found Judaism (d'oh!), in a second or third city near Toku. Thus, MysteryAI probably has NSR or is Buddhist, and is beyond Izzy, trading Zara corn. MAI also has the GW, which might not be insignificant if he is to Izzy's north, because he'd repel any remaining barbs toward the south, where our warrior/settler would be going. Depends on how big that landmass is.

Good catch! This is probably what has happened.

This means working cottage tiles that aren't villages yet whenever we do NOT have enough population to work them all.

I disagree, that cottage is going to grow to a village before printing press no matter what we do, so we are better working the cottage for the commerce bonus now.

 

[LowtherCastle]

It is not good idea..., actually it is a bad idea. We already in bureaucracy, so we can use max commerce right now. This procedure could help why developing capital which grow and will become bureaucratic and even then it is not that good. So, please, do not do so..

The goal is to maximize Delhi's beaker output when we get Oxford. People are talking about beelining Educ, so we need to kick a$$ or Oxford will be multiplying 2 villages, a hamlet and 2 cottages... We will be in Bureau to the end of the game, so that's not a factor in this equation. The question is what's the optimal balance between beakers now and beakers later. Up to Oxford, we aim to get our beakers mostly with sci. Coins are mainly to keep it at 100%. Speaking generally of course. Since Delhi has no overlapping cities to share the work, it has to build all its own villages. We want max villages at or around the time we get PP, which should be not long after we get Oxford, since we'll probably bulb it.

Currently, we have
Delhi hamlet (3c*1.5)*1.75b/c=7.785b
Delhi villlage (4c*1.5)*1.75b/c=10.5b which is 33% increase

With Oxford+PP, we have
Delhi hamlet (3c*1.5)*3b/c=13.5b
Delhi villlage (5c*1.5)*3b/c=22.5b which is 67% increase

From now, the key transition point is Oxford+PP, not Bureaucracy.

Aaah I disagree! Right now, at 100% science, working the hamlet produces 59.5 -> 59 beakers while working the village gives us 63.0 -> 63 beakers, difference of 4bpt for just getting 1C more!! We get +50% on commerce and +75% on beakers so our raw commerce should be a multiple of 8 to get no loss due to rounding.

Say we get another (nonriverside) cottage built and grow another pop, THEN we can work the cottage + hamlet. But having a multiple of 8 in raw commerce is more important than keeping our villages villages

Excellent! Surgical precision!

So we want to:
1. Maintain the raw commerce at or just above a multiple of 8, and
2. Grow our cottages to villages asap.

Thanks.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I disagree, that cottage is going to grow to a village before printing press no matter what we do, so we are better working the cottage for the commerce bonus now.

It's not about cottage #2. It's about cottage #4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. As soon as cottage #2 is a village, that citizen is free to work cottage #3, and so on. If we have 4 available citizens and 2 villages, 2 hamlets, and 2 cottages to be worked, we should be working the hamlets and cottages, constrained by mysty's multiple-of-8-raw-commerce factor.

That's my point.

 

[mystyfly]

Having x*8 + 1 or x*8 + 2 commerce doesn't make much of a difference to x*8 commerce. Thus we should try to get a few cottages built before currency finishes as it gives us another TR which is 3C atm IIRC. Having +3C means we can work at least one cottage instead of a village. Please also note how it is more efficient to lower the slider to 0% when working cottages instead of villages. Like after a key tech. Like after currency.