SGOTM 11 - Team Newbie

[AlanH]

lurker's comment: Jason score is a fixed percentage of Firaxis during the game. Winners in this competition will be the team with the earliest Domination date, so Jason score is only relevant if you are planning a run for the *lowest* Jason score award of the wooden spoons.

 

[archphoenix]

@Taxpayer'sMoney
it's because of different culture groups we are in causing a misunderstand, IMO, since PaperBeetle has carefully designed a spreadsheet, it's a sufficient supplement for saying "I suggest you double check the spreadsheet every turn."
the culture is so differece in different country.for example, in our country, "where are you going" is a commonly greeting words and in America maybe only a police will ask you like this.
by the way, I am sure that you can download save and see anything but make a real move, for example, you can F4 to trade with china to see that they will not trade you bronze even with you full 6gpts,they only want to trade you alphabet with 3 gpts.but never click the "make the deal", you are fine.
@PaperBeetle
thanks for 3900BC start description, I understand.
thanks for Jason score description, I have studied the page before and still confused,but since we engage a fast domination, don't care score.

 

[PaperBeetle]

Jason score is a fixed percentage of Firaxis during the game. Winners in this competition will be the team with the earliest Domination date, so Jason score is only relevant if you are planning a run for the *lowest* Jason score award of the wooden spoons.

Come now, let's not underestimate the importance of Firaxis score: domination victory is almost defined as reaching a particular per-turn Firaxis score, so attempting to maximise it is not a bad place to start. But mainly we're just discussing this because it amuses us to play with your graphs.

So...
Firaxis score is calculated as follows:
Base score per turn = tiles + content citizens (incl. specialists) + 2*happy citizens. I believe this is calculated at the very start of the turn, i.e right after the last interturn.
Firaxis score = difficulty (emp = 5) * sum of base scores per turn / turns played (not including 4000bc)

Now, I had another look at that 'high scoring' Smurkz line, and modelled the Firaxis score progression for a standard move-once-grow-naturally start. They've done nothing unusual, except submit a very early first save!

 

[Taxpayer'sMoney]

Now, I had another look at that 'high scoring' Smurkz line, and modelled the Firaxis score progression for a standard move-once-grow-naturally start. They've done nothing unusual, except submit a very early first game!

This man is a genius. Good stuff PaperBeetle, keep it coming.

Meanwhile over on the maintenance thread:

If you are not the current player on your team, you can download the save to look, but don't touch. You can open adviser or city screens, view the map, load it up in CivAssist, do whatever you want to see the *current* situation. But you must make no unit moves, no diplo deals, no espionage missions, no city builds, no war declarations - in other words, no irreversible changes of any kind that would provide more information than is available at the point when the save was created.

Do we need to talk strategy, or do we all know what we're doing?

 

[Bucephalus]

Do we need to talk strategy, or do we all know what we're doing?

If there is one thing I've learned of SG's, it is that it's good to talk. That way, we are sure everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet.

 

[archphoenix]

I throw some opinions, to see whether half of them make mistake.
and want to learn more.
1.landform hypothesize, we have only one tile to the bigland, that is just the narrow channel.
2.we should block the channel with the upper scout, make it safe to expand on our own peninsula.and the scout near capital will explore south east to make sure.
3.since we are far away from AIs, we will focus on expend, worker and setter should be consider first, maybe ganary also.
4.I have no idea whether 2nd city should build, worker or ganary or else?
5.I have no idea whether we should found a city below lake (2w to the capital), which share moo with capital each 2 turns per 4 turns.
6.I have no idea how to move the first brave scout?or just not important?
7.as wardancer said, we should buy techs using gpts, does it then comfort to shutdown our research and save the golds?
I am listening...

 

[Taxpayer'sMoney]

@Archphoenix: I'm sure you're better informed than me, but for what it's worth I agree with most of your points. I'm all for blocking the landmass with our scout, and concentrating on expansion.

I do think it's worth going for maths though, if we can. This means putting some work into the research, rather than min research. Soon we'll have the gems hooked up which will help with happiness and we'll have a third city which will also help reduce the number of turns to research stuff. The AI doesn't often go for maths, so it might be a good trading tech, although there's a long way to go yet.

 

[PaperBeetle]

Yes there is plenty of medium-term strategy that we need to decide on.

- Top of my list of unknowns is what government do we think we should use. I imagine we will war too much for Republic, but maybe we want to use Feudalism rather than Monarchy?
- What kind of military should we build? Many axes to be upgraded to swords, or concentrate on archers for now. Related to this is the decision whether to grow the capital up to do a 30/30 combo, or leave it putting just an extra axe in at each cycle. Growing it will mean skipping about 1 settler.
- Where shall we put towns? The aqueduct town will go down soon, but after that we haven't yet made any plans. I totally agree with archphoenix's west coast town. Also, the aqueduct town may have to stick around if we are going to be feudal - I assume there is no fresh water source in the southeast (I'll check that thing about stranded irrigation not being fresh).
Let's get dotmapping! It's my second favourite civ activity after spreadsheeting!

I haven't seen the latest map yet; is it a complete dead end to our northwest? I was assuming that we had more than two continents, and that they would all be linked up by these lands bridges.

 

[Wardancer]

Got the save - I'll keep you guys posted.

 

[PaperBeetle]

- What kind of military should we build? Many axes to be upgraded to swords, or concentrate on archers for now. Related to this is the decision whether to grow the capital up to do a 30/30 combo, or leave it putting just an extra axe in at each cycle. Growing it will mean skipping about 1 settler.
- Where shall we put towns? The aqueduct town will go down soon, but after that we haven't yet made any plans. I totally agree with archphoenix's west coast town.

On sharing the moo:
The capital can keep doing axe+settler every six turns, while sharing the moo 1 turn in 6. Then when the goat is mined, this improves to sharing the moo 2 turns in 6.
Running at the larger size, the capital cannot share the moo unless it drops the axe from the cycle. So archer+settler every six turns. Then it can share 2/6, but it also needs 2 more mined grasses.
If we stick with the small combo factory, and want these axes to be veteran, we should do the barracks now, in place of the two axes currently penciled in for this turnset.

 

[Wardancer]

Sorry for the hold up with the turns. My issue is that we need to decide, before my turnset as it affects the build order, whether we will run the combo factory at 2.6-4.6 or 4.6-6.6.

At the moment I am leaning towards running at the larger size. This gives an extra archer every 6 turns at the cost of having one fewer settler and having to run an increased lux rate.

At least initially I also don't like sharing the moo as it seems to really mess up the numbers and takes a lot of worker turns and really only gives us one extra pop over the QSC period.

I am hoping to pull together some numbers to show the impact of the three strats but its taking me a bit of time to work through them. My spreadsheeting skills aren't quite up those of PaperBeetle.

 

[archphoenix]

since we need troops later, I perfer big city, only 4-6pop can utilize the full 30s,
1+1(moo)+3(goat)+2(bg)+1(grass) 4pop=8s
and the coast fresh water city is not too eager, maybe late.

 

[Taxpayer'sMoney]

Well I don't understand what you mean by 2.6-4.6. I'm in favour of the option that helps us research the quickest. If there's no impact on research, then I'd go for the (veteran) axe combo rather than the archer combo.

 

[archphoenix]

turn 0:
pop4: food6+4f shield8 star warrior,accumulate 0;
next inner turn:
pop5:food0, shield10 new pop auto work forest.

so turn 1:
pop5:food0+3f, warrior finished, start archer.
shield10.accumulate 0;

turn 2:
pop5:food3+3f,
shield10.accumulate 10;

turn 3:
pop5:food6+4f, archer finished, start settler.
move pop5 from forest to (mined) grass.
shield 9,accumulate 0;

turn 4:
pop6:food0+3f,
shield 11, accumulate 11;

turn 5:
pop6:food3+3f,
shield 11, accumulate 22;

turn 6:
pop6:food6+4f, settler finished, so turn6=turn0;

edit :
at pop6 the commerce can slightly improve.
from forest+forest+grass
to gem+grass+grass.that is, each 6 turn slightly add 4commerce.

 

[PaperBeetle]

Well I don't understand what you mean by 2.6-4.6. I'm in favour of the option that helps us research the quickest. If there's no impact on research, then I'd go for the (veteran) axe combo rather than the archer combo.

Well really there's three options; (1) axe combo with cow sharing, (2) archer combo with cow sharing, and (3) axe+archer combo without cow sharing. All units will be veteran.
Now I don't like (2) because it is inefficient and requires lots of micro and worker comitment. I like (1) becasue we could use a worker pump, so another town with a food bonus would be handy, but as Wardancer says, getting the moo 1 turn in 3 isn't a huge improvement. So I probably lean slightly towards (3) becasue it fits together so well, as detailed by archphoenix, and because I think we need the best quality units we can build if we are going to try the chokepoint war. And if we somehow get hold of a strategic resource, (3) would change to a sword or horsemen combo.
All three would have similar research capablities; we mostly work 1-commerce tiles, so extra citizens just pay for their own luxury tax.

 

[Taxpayer'sMoney]

Wohooo! Option 3 all the way.

 

[PaperBeetle]

edit :
at pop6 the commerce can slightly improve.
from forest+forest+grass
to gem+grass+grass.that is, each 6 turn slightly add 4commerce.

... with a mined grass. Good spot! My original plan left the grass with just a road.
Or by having two mined grasses on hand, we can share the cow 1/6! Ah, micro heaven.

 

[AlanH]

Come now, let's not underestimate the importance of Firaxis score: domination victory is almost defined as reaching a particular per-turn Firaxis score, so attempting to maximise it is not a bad place to start.

Sure. But that's no reason to try to understand Jason score formulae.

 

[Wardancer]

Ok I have played through half of my turns and have just discovered Alphabet. I thought I would throw it open to the team as to what to do next.

Background
The other AI's have all the other first tier techs but little else.
None have writing
Four out of the seven have Mysti
We do not know how many have iron working, maths or horseback riding.

I suggest we follow one of the following 3 options:

i) Research writing
This requires 240 beakers (24 turns at our current level of commerce). None of the other civs we have met to date have discovered writing yet but, in my opinion, it is unlikely we would get it at a monopoly.

That said, the AI's do not appear to be as keen to trade with each other as we initially thought and I think that it is likely that there will be some stragglers who would not have it so it may have some trade potential.

Further, writing would give us a shot at Philosophy (relatively cheap and not popular with the AI with the chance of a free tech) and would also allow us to establish embassies which are critical to setting off the AI's against each other - crucial to our plan.

ii) Research masonry then maths
Masonry will take us 9 turns at our current level of commerce and maths will take an additional 240 beakers after that (24 turns at our current commerce rate).

The advantage of this combo is that the AI is generally quite slow to maths so we may have a shot at a monopoly tech and would be likely to get some trade value out of it.

Maths also gives us catapults which will be critical to defending the choke and getting armies and further gives us a shot a currency which is another tech the AI will generally not favour.

The disadvantages are that firstly we may be held up a long time getting writing which is critical to our plan and secondly that there is a lot of dead research time spent researching masonry which the AI already have and so could be traded.

iii) Purchase Mysticism
Three of the AI's don't yet have mysticism. We are able to purchase mysti cism from the other AI's for 8gpt + 3gold (equating to 163g).

We could then potentially trade this to the AI's that do not yet have it for bronze, wheel and masonry. However, there is no guarantee of this and I have been stung attempting this sort of trade in the past.

If the trade was to work we could get approximately 300 commerce worth of trade for 160 gold and would even have the option of getting out of paying (with rep intact) by declaring war on an ally of our creditor.

The strat is certainly high risk but there is a decent potential upside and is worth giving due consideration to.

Discuss.

 

[Wardancer]

One further point of interest is that the AI are playing quite slowly. Out of the civs that we have met we are currently first in terms of number of citizens, we have 5.

Given that we are 35 turns into the game I think that this puts the AI behind where we would expect them (even though they have no food bonuses in their capitals). One possibility is that the two local alliance blocks have already gone to war. Although, my scouts in the area have not seen any evidence of this.