SGOTM 11 - Who Dat?

[pnp_dredd]

Can't be 4, 6, 8, 9, 9, 9 because the least land area is 6000.

I'll play some more turns in a few hours, and record demographics and keep and eye on espionage.

 

[pnp_dredd]

Turnset summary:

Moved warrior SW, settler SE to plains hill.
Settled on the plains hill after revealing silver in the BFC. Warrior heading NW then clockwise.
Teched ag, built fast worker.
Turn 3 met Zara's scout from the East.
Turn 6 spotted another Ethiopian scout to the North
Turn 8 Zara gained 6 points.
Turn 10 Zara gained another 6 points. Two population increases?
Turn 13 Buddhism was founded in a distant land
Turn 14 end at 3650 bc

Notes:
1 turn from ag, 5 turns till fast worker.
Our warrior has begun scouting Zara's bountiful lands to the East (see screenshot). Aksum (Ethiopian capital) is 9 squares from Delhi.
All of Zara's espionage points are going to us, so he still hasn't found anyone else.

Screenshots:
Demographics from turn 4:

The big picture:

http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/2921/turn14.jpg

(again a 1280 pixel wide image so I won't paste it)


Link to download the save for next player: http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm11/Who_Dat__SG011_BC3650_01.CivBeyondSwordSave

 

[Fluroscent]

Looks like 1N of the northern cows could be a good spot to settle. It will block the between with one pop and the next capital pop. Also has two good tiles before border pops.
Do we want to fight Zara's culture for the cow tile, and settle the grass river delta? If we can work the cows, that site will be a great commerce site. But I think it will be hard to not lose the culture battle there. And there is stone, which allows Pyramids, which could be a case for settling more food rich sites and only cottaging the capital.

Tech: AH needed if we have cows in the 2nd city, so we may want to trade for pottery instead. BW first though? Chopping settlers/workers may be needed to get the landgrab in time.

Scouting: Let's backtrack the warrior and scout the north and west (particularly, to see if the stone can be got by a decent city). Anything further east and south seems unlikely to make a difference at this point.

 

[beestar]

(posted at the same time as Fluro, so we said similar things)

What do you guys think about the land revealed so far?

- Stone looks fairly close, but I'd like to know if there are any food resources in that area before committing to it.
- There's one city site east of us that looks nice for cottages, but there's only one food resource (cow) and we'd be fighting Zara's culture for a long time. My (weak) opinion is that we just give up that site to Zara.
- I think I see coast in Aksum's BFC - Is that the SE coast of our continent already?

Zara looks really tempting to attack being so close, but first we'll need to know the strategic resource situation, and we'll need to know what other neighbours we have (this is a vote for scouting north and west). Also, I think he's one of the nicer neighbours - can someone look up his diplo stats?

---

P.S. How does a bunch of primitive Indians have a life expectancy of 90? We haven't invented Medicine, or Biology!

P.P.S. The SGOTM team charts are sort of funny. You can see where Unusual Suspects got their first warrior eaten by a lion (or maybe they got killed choking Zara, who knows). Phoenix Rising is clearly the only one who settled on the first turn.

 

[pnp_dredd]

One problem with attacking Zara is that we can't finish him off: we need to leave him one city. Perhaps we could deliberately place a crappy city, gift it to him, adn then declare. But that's a lot of resources (settler+military) which could otherwise just go towards rexing.

The river-cow site would be a great spot if we were heading for culture: nearly every square is riverside and there's 3 hills for production. Settle that city and found a religion there. Build one early wonder there and we'd be pressuring Zara's culture. That would be a great second legendary city.

But we're not heading for culture, so it's a less great spot.

We'll need to consider whether to prioritise choking Zara or pursuing other goals (stone). Another option for the warrior is to scout around north of Zara's lands looking for a couple of strong choke points.

It feels like there may be a lot of land to expand into to the north, and if we can pin Zara against a (putative) SE coastline then we'll have plenty of room.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I argue against rushing/choking Zara. We don't want a weak little civ that someone else might up and decide to kill with us flailing around (possibly burning our only other DoW) just to keep him alive.

My initial thought is to settle northeast and start walling territory to the north and northwest off, but more scouting/meeting other AI will change it.

Zara has coast to his north. 1N 2W or just 2W (if it doesn't lose seafood) of the cows ----> stonehenge there + another city to the north probably seals him off from settling west at all. We will have to ASAP the settler though...probably go pop 2 working the corns while teching BW. Even then I'm not sure we can beat an expansion minded AI to a site right next to their capitol without luck.

We could skip SH entirely and pursue oracle in that city instead, but that does give an element of risk in terms of culture rape: we start the culture later, Zara might build a wonder or two, and he'll likely have swallowed the cows for longer making them harder to recover. SH we'd just have to chop chop chop to get.

I'm not entirely opposed to saying screw it, leaving it for him, and just walling NE ASAP instead. We need more scouting done.

 

[beestar]

If we only have 2 cities at the time Oracle is constructed, we could get Code of Laws and force Confucianism to be founded in the second city. This might be enough culture to resist Zara (wherever that second city is). The other advantage of Oracling CoL is that you get a free missionary which can be used to easily convert an AI that is in NSR.

If we Oracle Currency, will the other AIs have enough free gold to make it worthwhile?

By the way, if we surround Zara too much, will he be more inclined to declare on us? ('close borders spark tension' we can handle, but is there another calculation?) It's great to get lots of land, but but I'd rather keep Zara friendly with us. So I'm also in favour of blocking NE rather than grabbing the eastern cows site.

TMIT, well spotted on the coast to Aksum's north. I'd like to know if Zara really is boxed into the SE corner of the continent - that seems unnatural to be so close yet boxed in. Perhaps he's just on a land bridge that actually connects to large areas of the land to the east. Not a priority for immediate scouting, but I would like to confirm what's east of Zara later.

BTW, Fluro, you're up ...

 

[Fluroscent]

Challenge series is done, so I am ready to play here. However, I think we should take it slow and figure out optimum builds and worker moves before going much further. Even choosing our next tech should be reconsidered. BW may be a good choice, but is it the best choice?

Anyone up for producing a testgame with the knowledge we now possess?

I don't like trying for the cows+grass delta. Getting SH there seems at best a gamble, and it is not a great site anyway, unless going for culture which was surely a concious dilemma created by the mapmakers. Where else would a second legendary site go?

About what to Oracle. If we can use the holy city to 1. culture block 2. convert Zara and share religion, and if there are no other neighbours then a CoL sling is surely best.

However, if there is another AI or two, and one of them founds a religion (or if Zara does), I think it could be nicer to try to get them all in the same block before founding other religions. By the way, if we are looking at being isolated with Zara, we should figure out how quickly we can get him friendly so we can trade.

 

[beestar]

Yes, I agree. Often I can spread Confucianism to a No State Religion neighbour, but those who have founded a religion already will not convert. If we have early religion founders to our west, it's better to adopt their religion than to try to compete by spreading Confucianism.

I still want to conquer the holy city of that religion though


P.S. I won't have time to make a test game this weekend - perhaps someone else?

 

[orb]

If we take a faith then we will come up against "heathen religion" modifiers later on, but "We care for our brothers of the faith" will give us some strong +ve modifiers. - So I think our best path will be to adopt whatever religion Zara takes (when possible) and let our expansionist friend get very friendly with us while we focus on the tech race. - So a route to Writing and the Sci specialists should be our priority and will tie in with our Db GT person advantage.

Does anyone know what other diplo stimuli Zara (or the other AI for that matter) go for?

i.e./ Could an early gold or tech gift get us the "You gave us tribute" +ve as an example. - I've looked for a table of what each AI will respond to but not found anything useful, but it might help us if we can tailor our approach to each AI as we meet them so that we already have the necessary Diplo points for a winning vote.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Zara is heavy as a zealot and starts with an inherent +2 towards the player (IIRC only one other AI does that!). He can plot war at pleased, but with just religion + fair trade he's @ friendly.

Nobody treats fair trade/tributes/requests differently IIRC, they just have varying frequencies or in cathy/sury -2 for refusal. Some value religion (izzy, sury, zara, justinian, even washington!) highly for a max +diplo factor, while others barely care (Stalin, mao, genghis khan) but like similar civics more.

BW is the safe tech choice here, we could also go wheel.

 

[Fluroscent]

My experiences with Zara has not revealed much about his tendencies, other than his rapid expansion and easy to befriend status. Nice to know that he values religion highly, which makes sharing a religion asap a priority, especially if getting him to friendly is the only trade option early on. I have yet to see him found a religion in my 3-4 games involving him, so how much chance is there of him grabbing an early religion? (Obviously it depends on what other AIs are around, but will he typically beat the Elizabeth/Willem/Roosevelt types?)

I think it is worth testing starts with either BW or Wheel first, to see how it fits with worker tasks, how quickly we can settle to block and how quickly we can generate the first GS.
Early moves are of critical importance, and even a single wasted worker turn can cost turns in the end.
We should also consider straight AH-Writing. Then BW and whip library. This path should let us grow into unhappiness, whip 3 pop and work 2 scientists immediately after. I'd like to see how much faster a GS can be got that way.

 

[beestar]

Guys, the document you're looking for is this one: PDF: Civ4 BtS reference sheet

It's got all the leader tendencies and how much +diplo you can get for shared religion, etc. I used it in SGOTM10 to write the rival AI leader list.

I started a leader traits post in the beginning of the thread with the basic info, but I don't have time to look up the details like who will declare at Pleased, how much you get for shared civics, etc. If another team member can do this I'll copy it into the post.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

If Zara grabs religion, it is frequently Christianity. He favors theo as a favorite civic and tends to go there somewhat early. If bottled up the odds of him doing this are moderate-to-high IMO, because usually it's his city spam that makes him powerful but also keeps him away from the early religion.

I still say we bottle him up if we can do it though.

 

[pnp_dredd]

Tech options discussion. Much of this is obvious, some might be arguable and I will have missed something.

There are three paths to Writing and an early Academy, and there are the side-path options of masonry and BW.

BW (280 ): Earliest chopping/whipping. Reveals bronze and allows Axes for barb defense. This is the path to fastest REX.
Masonry (186 ): Pyramids. A worthy goal, and could probably time 'mids to finish as we start getting libraries, for a nice research boost. Strong with if we oracle COL, although this would significantly limit early REXing. A fairly cheap tech.

Paths to writing:
wheel-pottery (326 ): early cottages/granaries/libraries. This path boosts REX, plus we can hook up silver and eventually stone.
AH (234 ): reveals horses, can pasture cows. Fastest way to libraries and earliest Academy.
poly-priesthood (373 ): chance to found Hinduism, guarantees Oracle. However workers may end up without useful tasks.

There is synergy in BW-wheel-pottery-writing. This path is best for early production, allows fast growth with granaries, and early cottage development to support more cities. But it does mean later oracle/mids. Switching to wheel-BW would give us 1 extra happy faster (silver) but later slavery - this is a micro decision mainly based on optimal worker moves and Delhi's pop growth.

The other option which allows doubling up is earliest pyramids/oracle for rep/caste. We would need roads to hook up stone. Chopping will give us the earliest wonder dates. Perhaps poly-BW-wheel-priesthood-writing-masonry? We may as well found a religion if we're taking this path. Early wheel gives our workers something to do before pottery.

The fastest Academy is AH-writing (then perhaps BW-wheel then options). This will give the earliest Academy but at the expense of rex and later wonder dates.

 

[pnp_dredd]

Zara's personality:

Creative, Organized
fav. civic: Theocracy
fav. religion: Christianity

favors: growth, religion
builds wonders: sometimes
trains units: often
aggression level: medium
espionage level: normal
tech trading: moderate, 30%
relation factor: 6
peace probability (%): 10/50/90/100
attack courage: high
will raze city: almost never
refuses to talk delay: medium
warmonger respect: 1

base: 2, share war: +1 (max. +3)
favourite civic: +1 (max. +4)
same religion: +1 (max. +7)
different religion: –2
close cultural borders: max. –2
worse/better rank difference: –1/+2
technology: furious
strategic bonus: annoyed
happiness bonus: furious
health bonus: furious
maps: annoyed
open borders: annoyed
declare war: annoyed, declare war on X: pleased
stop trading: cautious, stop trading with X: cautious
adopt civic: annoyed, convert religion: pleased
defensive pact: pleased
permanent alliance: pleased
vassal state: cautious

 

[Fluroscent]

Just thinking here - We may want to grab all the early tech options before Writing actually. Wheel/Pottery/AH/BW/PH+Masonry(if we plan to hook stone that early). That way, once we have writing, we can shut off the slider until the academy is built for minimum beaker waste.
Alphabet is unlikely to be a prime target, unless there are several more AI on the landmass (a bit too early to tell, but seems unlikely), so those techs are going to have to be self-researched anyway.
Nothing else cheap is desirable early (hunting should be avoided like the plague).

I think we should also consider oracle Monarchy then. It is a bit cheaper than CoL, but if we have BW+Pottery, we can cottage the whole river quickly and setup a monsterous research rate once we reach CS.

 

[Fluroscent]

Made a quick testgame, with little detail beyond the BFC and Zara's location.

I tested going BW-AH, and seeing how fast a settler could be built with two worker schemes: Farm-Mine-Farm, and Farm-Farm-Mine.

Basic build: finish worker, build warriors, switch to settler at size 3. Always work best tiles (use the river bonus, and silver mine when completed).

Farm-Mine-Farm results:

Settler completed on T48, 9 overflow, 3 stored
One Warrior built, 11 into next, no decay.
BW in, AH in, 39 into next tech.
Farm x2, Mine x1, 1 chop, 1 turn into another.

Farm-Farm-Mine results (at turn 48):

Settler completed on T46. 22 accumulated at T28.
Two warriors built. No overflow.
BW in, AH at 214/234
Farm x2, Mine x1, 1 chop.

Comparison:

The FMF approach gains one workerturn, 59.
The FFM approach gains two turns earlier settler, one turn earlier 2nd warrior, 2, 19.

Direct Writing path:

Will lose 5-6 worker turns+however many it takes for the 2nd city to be founded (assuming we found by cows, either one).
If we tech Wheel first, we cannot possibly connect anything of value before the worker is needed elsewhere, but we can build some of the road, and likely save 1-2 turns moving the settler.

Discussion:

I think we should stick to BW-AH, but if end up not settling by cows, then AH could be delayed in favor of wheel-pottery. Copper location may also change things.
I am a bit unsure of the best worker actions. If we can block Zara's westward expansion with one city by the cows+oasis, then we are not pressed for expansion, and can benefit from the tech boost. But otherwise, it is probably best to go for the max REX approach.

Testgame at T14 attached, someone feel free to grab it and run tests, and maybe edit the surrounding landscape to match (and please do so if you have the time, the map editor hurts my head , and I want to play all the XOTMs too). We can probably benefit from more tests later, where we will want more detail.

If noone disagrees with BW first, I can play until finishing the first farm, which should make us know more about the AI situation etc.

 

[WithTea]

I would say yes to a high value city sw of the cow near Zara. directly inside the four corners is difficult to culture steal even as Zara. As much as I like that though I'd rather hook up that stone sooner, which would probably leave that very nice cottage city to Zara. Zara's a good friend to have, and will stick with us though tough times if we are the same religion. Even if he founds one himself, if we're first and stay with him, he'll back us and keep our religion. He'll simply spread his to all of his cities for the $ bonus.

 

[beestar]

I put the tech tree into the Google Docs to get some idea of how much beakers we need to generate (answer: 68,810 total beakers along the minimum tech path). This produced a number of thoughts

How to reduce this? The total of 68,810 can really only be reduced by tech trading (and to a much lesser degree by getting all prerequisites for each tech).

Liberalism is off the tech path, so is it still worth spending 9360 beakers (Philo, Education, Liberalism) to get a free tech - perhaps Astro for 4680 beakers? My gut instinct says yes, because we can use Philo for Pacifism, and Education for Oxford. There are actually quite a few techs after that: the chain of (Astronomy, Scientific Method , Physics, Electricity, Radio, Mass Media) costs 52,000 beakers. So it's good to have Education.

Civics: if we beeline straight to Mass Media, we may never tech to State Property, Free Market, or Mercantilism. Similarly, Pacifism (Philo) is off the tech path but I think we'll probably end up going for Philo anyway for trade reasons. Representation is well off the tech path, requiring both Nationalism and Constitution. But we'll be running tons of specialists to pop our required 4 great people, so we would like the Representation beaker bonus. To me this is a strong argument for getting Pyramids.

Great People: What's the tradeoff between beakers and generating Great People? Music is off our path and costs 1404 beakers but would net us a free GA. Similar calculations for Economics (3276 beakers). Physics is on the path and we definitely want to nab the free Great Scientist. But I don't think Fascism or Communism are worth going for at all.

Bulbing Great Scientist bulbs are worth about 2250 - 2400 beakers. The most difficult part of our tech tree is highly bulbable but costs a lot of bulbs:
Astro, 2.1 bulbs
Scientific Method, 2.5 bulbs
Physics, 4.2 bulbs
Electricity, 4.7 bulbs
Obviously we can't rely solely on bulbs and will have to have a fairly powerful science engine at that part of the game.

Military. On the beeline tech path, we don't tech Gunpowder or Nationalism to Military Tradition. Our most powerful unit would be macemen and longbows, which is concerning, but in practice we'd be able to pick up some military techs by trading. And since we're working diplo, hopefully we'd have a lot of friendly allies. Note: the first GG would make a great cheap great person.


My conclusion: we need to be running a fair quantity of specialists throughout the whole game, since a lot of the free GPs are off our path, and if we accidentally generate "too many" GScis, we can always use them to bulb along the Astro-Physics-SciMeth-Electricity line. To me this says Representation, but Constitution is also off the beeline. Therefore: Pyramids. Can we get Oracle and Pyramids?