SGOTM 11 - One Short Straw

[babybluepants]

The trickiest bit here seems to be whether to build an extra settler, where to send it and the galley logistics involved. Maybe whatever the warrior finds north of Izzy in the next few turns gives us a slightly better idea of her dye settling schedule?

If there are trades to someone, a counter goes up by the number of trades each turn.
If there are no trades, the counter goes down by (OUR_CITIES/4) + 1 each turn until it reaches zero.
The bonus diplo is this counter divided by 50, to a maximum of 2.

Just for reference - is the factor of 50 a constant, and only scales with game speed? Difficulty level?

About Paper, IMO the bigger benefit than selling maps is actually getting maps in return. We still have two resources in the wind, including the elusive Fur. Knowing what hoops we have to jump through to get the Fur is imperative for our long-term plans.

Yes. I really think we're better off with Paper sooner rather than later. We're now at a stage where we need to plan some longer term diplo already, and that's almost impossible without knowing those resource locations.

Re: Delhi / Bombay

It is really hard to keep up with Delhi's growth. We should whip the aqueduct into HG, which should gives us a few extra turns to catch up with workers in the short term. We do need 2 workers committed there, though.

I think it's agreed that Bombay is a necessary evil in the short term, as we need the workers and settlers. Ideally, we could build a settler elsewhere - Rice seems like a possible candidate. But, that city is quite low on hammers for the necessary infrastructure and the extra WB, especially with no whip for a while.

 

[Silu]

Just for reference - is the factor of 50 a constant, and only scales with game speed? Difficulty level?

Does not scale. Not by difficulty, not by game speed. In theory it is different for each leader but it is set as 50 for every leader in the game.

 

[babybluepants]

That's kinda silly. There's a tiny bit of difference between 50t on Quick and Marathon.

 

[Silu]

Yeah... Not among the dumbest things-not-scaled obviously, with glaringly obvious stuff like forced trades / forced peace and war rolls not being scaled with speed either

 

[mystyfly]

I'd rather trade our remaining Fish away than shuffle trades. We want to supply every AI (WE considerations aside) with resources for the +2 diplo, and better to start fast. We might end up having to get voted as NSR purely with Theo bonuses, every point of diplo counts.

I was advising to cancel that corn deal with just as we are currently trading 2 other resources as well.

About Paper, IMO the bigger benefit than selling maps is actually getting maps in return. We still have two resources in the wind, including the elusive Fur. Knowing what hoops we have to jump through to get the Fur is imperative for our long-term plans. Still I agree MC is a strong choice for now and MC->Paper looks enticing.

Of course the most important thing is getting the maps. I like bbps idea of nearly finishing paper then tech MC until we get the philo bulb.

 

[LowtherCastle]

so much for the 99.44%

Wise guy.

You're not gonig to believe this, but I actually did screenshots of close-ups of the fogged culture tiles in the save and a test game for both Mehmed and Joao, pasted them into Excel and Joao's was a perfect match, Mehmed's was much lighter...go figure.

Mehmed's better for us anyway, I think, so no biggie.

 

[babybluepants]

You're not gonig to believe this, but I actually did screenshots of close-ups of the fogged culture tiles in the save and a test game for both Mehmed and Joao, pasted them into Excel and Joao's was a perfect match, Mehmed's was much lighter...go figure.

Oh, I do believe that. Psycho...

 

[LowtherCastle]

6. Trade for monarchy with Saladin.

Seems expensive to me. Do we need it now?​

2. Do we bulb philosophy?

Yes.​

5. Overall diplo - theocracy will win us lots of votes but it will kick us out of pacifism. I think this emphasizes the need for the NE in 2fish eventually, as we will want to stay in theocracy towards the end of the game to cultivate the necessary votes (I think). This isn't really a pressing issue but it's more something to keep in mind for now.

We've saved chops in Two Fish for NE. We just need to time Literature with having the available workers, like after Delhi has 9 cottages, or thereabouts. ​

3. Continue growing Delhi (how is up for debate though)
...

7. Worker distribution. I count the following workers right now: Delhi 1, Bombay 2, Oasis 1, Marble 2, Ivory 1. The ivory, marble (at least one), and oasis workers are pretty much locked into their respective areas. 2fish doesn't need a worker for a long time, so that just leaves the question of dividing the workers between Bombay and Delhi. Once Bombay chops its settler, it can borrow the corn from Delhi so Delhi will slow down its growth a bit (it can work a scientist for the few turns it doesn't have a cottage available, or maybe it should whip?). So I think Delhi 1, Bombay 2 will be fine for now.

No need to poprush Delhi or lend corn, just grow grow grow. Mine the hill next, using that worker plus the southern Bombay one (just move him with no improvements in between ). The mine will be done on time. Then both workers cottage till their fingers bleed. If Delhi is going to hit the happiness cap, then we can poprush the forge or aque, whatever makes most sense. And if we're going to do that, hopefully we could time it with Toku at +7 plus OrgRel, just before bulbing Philo, etc.​

I am assuming that the Bombay settler is going to settle sugar. And I think we all agreed that we're going to need a worker for sugar. Which worker are we going to send? The two candidates are the extra Bombay worker, the marble worker, or have Delhi build another worker (ew).

The marble->sugar wkr is already wired, unless you figure out something better. The galley picks up the settler at Stone Mountain NW. Next turn goes NW-N and picks up one of the workers quarrying the marble.​

8. Other cities...Also, what if any other cities are we considering in the short term? The more I look at the gold, the less inclined I am to settle it. It'll put us in close contact with Saladin, possibly provoking a war (against a protective leader no less). While we may be able to grab cities from him, I'm not sure it's optimal. Also, the crab/gold site just doesn't look like a very good spot. I'd rather go settle the three northern gold to take the fish and just sell the resources for money instead, and settle the crab via the mainland.

I'd immediately start building the gold settler after the suagr settler in Bombay. The northern Bombay wkr could chop once more then mine the gh or farm the fp -- have to figure out which makes more sense timed with building the granary.​

Also, I have one additional slightly crazy thought - what about a filler city 3W of Delhi so that it can work some of Delhi's cottages? That will allow Delhi to focus more on production when necessary.

A good idea. I had a similar thought, except I like the coastal tile 1NW of the deer, because with lh it gets an extra bushel in all four lakes and can be +8f. This city would give us a lot of votes in the end. It can only work 2 cottages instead of four, but it could also work the silver, allowing Delhi to grow faster occasionally.​

 

[mystyfly]

No need to poprush Delhi or lend corn, just grow grow grow. Mine the hill next, using that worker plus the southern Bombay one (just move him with no improvements in between ). The mine will be done on time. Then both workers cottage till their fingers bleed. If Delhi is going to hit the happiness cap, then we can poprush the forge or aque, whatever makes most sense. And if we're going to do that, hopefully we could time it with Toku at +7 plus OrgRel, just before bulbing Philo, etc.

What's all the talk about OR? As long as we don't decide to adopt a religion (like buddhism which hasn't even spread to us until now) and spread it we don't need to adopt any religious civic available in the near future; OR has high upkeep costs and doesn't give us +ves with any AI. Did I miss anything??

I'd immediately start building the gold settler after the suagr settler in Bombay. The northern Bombay wkr could chop once more then mine the gh or farm the fp -- have to figure out which makes more sense timed with building the granary.

I thought most of us were against the gold city. It gives us only the resource itself, and we can get that through trade anyway, we want trades going with nearly every AI anyway. I'd rather have bombay FINALLY grow past pop2...

A good idea. I had a similar thought, except I like the coastal tile 1NW of the deer, because with lh it gets an extra bushel in all four lakes and can be +8f. This city would give us a lot of votes in the end. It can only work 2 cottages instead of four, but it could also work the silver, allowing Delhi to grow faster occasionally.

Good point about working the silver. We just should put the slider to 0% while borrowing the silver to another city to maximize our gain in beakers with the academy.

 

[Mutineer]

yes, you do miss the fact that we need more production.
We should addopt conf and adopt Org. I do not understand why we did not do that long time ago!

 

[LowtherCastle]

3. Do we want to consider adopting OR once our WBs make it past Toku's borders? This may imperil our Izzy relations though, so I'm not sure.

9. Giving in to demands. Who are we going to give in to demands from? Tentatively, I'd like to put Toku up as our competition for the UN as it looks like he'll be big, backwards, and disliked. So that would mean we should give in to demands from Izzy (I want your dyes!), Zara (hopefully peace vassal), and Mehmed (?). I don't know what we should do if we get demands from Justinian. Also, what will our philosophy be on giving away monopoly techs from a demand? We won't be able to consult with the team when these situations come up so I think we should set a general policy on them in line with our overall diplo goal (butter up everyone but Toku?). Also, unless Izzy sends a WB west, she won't make contact with the western continent which is really good for us since it simplifies her diplo demands.

AI demands and ORgRel/COnf are both very important topics for discussion. I'd say no to revolting to Confucianism at present. It may be a bolt out of the blue, but after considerable deliberation, I seriously think that:

our Number One Priority is to spread Confucianism to Tokyo and get Toku up to +7 with us before we bulb Philosophy, if inhumanly possible.​

So, in contrast to your proposal blush, I would top-prioritize not alienating Toku. My view is that closed borders between Sal and Toku is critical to preventing Sal from spamming his religion to Toku and Justy, which is critical to our UN vote. We desperately need to keep Toku at Pleased or above so we can spread Confucianism (maybe later Buddhism) to him and Justy.

On T147 we'll gain +1 for OBs with Toku, getting us to +6. When wel get to +7, with +1 from resource trades, depends on how soon we can trade with him and how many deals we can make. It's my understanding that we get credit for each separate trade, including when we gift him a resource. Four trades would be ideal: 50/4=13t.

Toku will be pleased with Sal at +3, which would occur after 30t of same religion, if I'm not mistaken. Hinduism could spread to Tokyo any turn and Toku could become Hindu any turn thereafter.

Thoughts?​

xpost with Mutineer

 

[LowtherCastle]

yes, you do miss the fact that we need more production.
We should addopt conf and adopt Org. I do not understand why we did not do that long time ago!

OrgRel+Conf on T125 would have yielded +14h in Delhi up to now. Other cities were either building units, didn't have 4hpt production or didn't have COnf.

Currently, it'd give us +2hpt in Delhi, +3hpt when the next mine is done.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I thought most of us were against the gold city. It gives us only the resource itself, and we can get that through trade anyway, we want trades going with nearly every AI anyway. I'd rather have bombay FINALLY grow past pop2...

I feel your pain. The thing with Bombay is that it's the only workhorse we have if we FINALLY let Delhi grow past pop(-47).

In the test game I posted, Delhi successfully grows, builds, and works all 9 cottages in rapid order. Then . . . it loans the corn to Bombay, which has just finished its granary and grows in rapid order. Until Bombay has a granary and the corn to work, it's a starving beggar at a soup kitchen.

As for Gold City (on goldhill w/fish), I haven't made my argument for it yet. I don't consider it panicky high priority, but I think we should make a try for it. We want the flexibility, before Astro, of DoWing Sal and inviting Toku in, thus losing our trade connection to Justy, as I understand it. Furthermore, (to make a long story short), I don't think we're going to want to do all that much warring, because we'll be hammer-poor and running Pacifism. Gold City, on the hill, with walls and defenders, could be a low-maintenance way to collect GG pts, if we're at war with Sal and he repeatedly attacks it. That tile shouldn't come under cultural pressure from Mecca (7500) for 100t or more, and the fish probably won't ever have cutlural pressure. IT could get up to pop10 for 10 additinal votes. Not bad at all.

 

[mystyfly]

As for Gold City (on goldhill w/fish), I haven't made my argument for it yet. I don't consider it panicky high priority, but I think we should make a try for it. We want the flexibility, before Astro, of DoWing Sal and inviting Toku in, thus losing our trade connection to Justy, as I understand it. Furthermore, (to make a long story short), I don't think we're going to want to do all that much warring, because we'll be hammer-poor and running Pacifism. Gold City, on the hill, with walls and defenders, could be a low-maintenance way to collect GG pts, if we're at war with Sal and he repeatedly attacks it. That tile shouldn't come under cultural pressure from Mecca (7500) for 100t or more, and the fish probably won't ever have cutlural pressure. IT could get up to pop10 for 10 additinal votes. Not bad at all.

I like that point about a defensive war with farming GG points. But what about DOWing sal? I'm quite sure we must use both DOWs for silk/fur; if we only need one DOw for those resources, we're going to DOW izzy/mehmed for guaranteed dyes. That should get us the GGs we want, especially if DOWing mehmed and capturing the GW... Now I feel it would've been a good idea to build it for the +100% GG points in own territory (or +50%, not sure).

RE Gold city, you suggested settler > settler in bombay iirc, this, imo looks like quite high priority. To grow without corn or farmed FP growth (to pop3 for now) takes too long however so I'd have to say I agree that settler > settler is better compared to growing first

I agree though that growing delhi is much higher priority than growing bombay, as it is not THAT good with horses, copper, 1 FP and desert stone.


So in short, next turnset will be mostly about infra and growth with bombay being the exception as a settler pump and 2fish working pop-4 scientists from the next turn on (2fish, cow, pig). Galley transporting a worker to ivory, then settler + worker to sugar island, did I get that correctly?

Other discussion points for the next turnset are civics and techs.

RE civics, I think we should not revolt to anything else. Thanks LC for showing how useless OR + conf is for us atm, I was too lazy to do the math . As long as there is no library in 2fish we need to stay in caste anyway.

RE techs, atm it's MC vs paper; as teching paper means we can't bulb philo we must either part-tech paper or tech MC first. Partteching paper means we'll get instant access to maps as soon as the GS pops, teching MC first means we can start on the forge in delhi earlier (but not before HG finishes so this may have no influence).

Where are we moving the missionary now? Just, toku or mehmed?

Anything else?

 

[Mutineer]

OrgRel+Conf on T125 would have yielded +14h in Delhi up to now. Other cities were either building units, didn't have 4hpt production or didn't have COnf.

Currently, it'd give us +2hpt in Delhi, +3hpt when the next mine is done.

you forgot that every time you chop or whip into the building Org bonus come to play.

 

[LowtherCastle]

OrgRel+Conf on T125 would have yielded +14h in Delhi up to now. Other cities were either building units, didn't have 4hpt production or didn't have COnf.

Currently, it'd give us +2hpt in Delhi, +3hpt when the next mine is done.

you forgot that every time you chop or whip into the building Org bonus come to play.

​

Had to run another test...

What I realized:
2. I haven't been testing with OrgRel, so this should go somewhat better with that and we want it asap, as in, after our wb gets past Toku, which is hopefully very soon.
5. For the next turnset: My hunch is that we want to have five turns of slavery+OrgRel timed just before the Philo GS pops. At this point, the HG will be completing, and the extra pop will come in handy with bldgs like the Two Fish lib and granaries, etc. Needs to be tested after my turnset.

We've saved chops in Two Fish for NE. We just need to time Literature with having the available workers, like after Delhi has 9 cottages, or thereabouts.

If Delhi is going to hit the happiness cap, then we can poprush the forge or aque, whatever makes most sense. And if we're going to do that, hopefully we could time it with Toku at +7 plus OrgRel, just before bulbing Philo, etc.

You are absolutely right, Mutineer, that we want to time OrgRel with poprushes and chops into buildings. Not doing so is generally a since we are religious. And like mysty said, we'll want to also have the Two Fish library done or immediately poprushed when we switch into Slavery+OrgRel+Conf, so that we can at least run 2 sci for those 4-5 turns. Here's a list of things:

Delhi: poprush forge/aque; chop HG
Two Fish: poprush lib; chop NE
Rice: chop granary
All cities: poprush/chop unis
etc.

 

[shyuhe]

Ok, the only other thing we need to sort out is tech choice before I can put pen to paper for a plan here. I know people have been throwing around ideas of metal casting, paper, and aesthetics. Where do people stand on that? I still think metal casting is the best here, primarily to increase the odds of a GE. Paper will come soon enough after that. I think we can tech aesthetics while we're building universities or something...

 

[mystyfly]

@shyuhe: It looks that it's either paper or MC. BBP came up with the idea of part-teching paper and then switch to MC before it finishes so we can still bulb philo. This means that forges won't be available for some time for delhi, but our capital is for now busy building the HG anyway but we'd get the opportunity to trade for and sell maps ASAP.

If we want to make sure delhi can start on the forge ASAP we'll tech MC > paper.

@LTC: I think you wrote *somewhere* that we can use the pop gain from the HG for whipping; use the whip after HG is finished. I'm thinking about efficiency, it doesn't matter whether we whip first or finish HG first regarding the food required to regrow, but if we used the whip before the HG was done, wouldn't we then be having smaller cities compared to HG-first during a few turns? I just want to make sure we don't fail to work some tiles due to unoptimal MM...
My teacher said I occasionally use too long sentences in essays, I guess they're right

 

[LowtherCastle]

I haven't tested the difference between forge-HG and HG-forge. In my tests I used COnfu for an extra happiness, but now we'll have the gold. BUilding forge-HG, gives us +25% hpt (plus any chops...) into the HG, in addition to the happies. HG-forge, gets the GE ggpts started sooner and the extra 1pop sooner. I don't know which is better.

Then there're our wbs. If the eastern wb finds out next turn, 1N, that were not likely to circumnavigate before Optics no matter what, then maybe we're not in a hurry for maps. If there's a chance for circumnav, then maps sooner gets our wbs moving faster sooner and home sooner. They might be able to come sooner anyway, with maps. Maybe that alone is good enough reason to do Paper(partial)-MC. THen again, I don't even know from testing that MC-Paper isn't done before Philo anyway. My testing was invalid for research pace.

 

[LowtherCastle]

@Silu, 3 questions:

1. You talked about OBs between AIs, but what about with us? DO you know if Toku will close borders immediately when he drops to Cautious, or do we have a turn or more grace period? Because we might be on thin ice, with him dropping to Cautious any turn now. Izzy has already dropped from +4 to +2 for trade relations.
2. We keep talking about making someone a (peaceful) vassal. I thought AIs' attitudes toward us became the average of their attitude toward us plus their attitude toward our vassal. Is that true for the UN vote?
3. Toku's "favorite religion" is Buddhism. How does that factor in if all his cities have both COnf and Buddh and he's currently in Conf? Will automatically switch or what?