SGOTM 12 - Barley Demons

[Compromise]

We don't have a roster...until now!

Adlain: Just played
Ruff: Up
Compromise: On deck

Other positions available upon mere mention of interest

Don't worry about spawn busting; no barbs on this one.

For dotmap purposes, Paris' borders should pop again on T50 (2cpt x 50T = 100c)

 

[Compromise]

Had a chance to glance at the save a little.

Minor criticism: I probably would've started with the Cows SE of St Pete since clearing them will let either city work them and raise the health limit of both cities. Not sure if we want to switch at this point though.

Regarding research: Nice work on the binary to BW. Sadly, if we don't do this, we lose about a beaker per turn, so I'd aim for 0%, 3x100% on the way to the wheel.

What to research after Wheel though? For this, I think we need a plan.

I wouldn't mind an early assault on Paris. DeGaulle has Nationhood, so he'll be dangerous once he can draft anything but warriors. And Paris' culture will soon overtake the pigs at that great production site E of Paris.

It'll be a commitment to pull it off though. Lots of fallout to wade through on the way to Paris.

Lots more exploring to do. Warriors 1 & 2 can continue west-ish. There's still a possibility of a northern approach to Paris. Then we still have up north and south of our starting peninsula. (Though south looks like it might be a peninsular outcropping.)

For dotmapping, my first favorite sites are SilverCowIvory on the coast up north; a production site E of Paris (on the coast preferably, but that won't be possible with French culture soon, and maybe a site that grabs Fish, Pigs and Rice (+12F=GP farm?) down on the southern coast.

Strategically, what are our options? Overall goal is a fast space race and a peaceful world.

We have Horses and Copper, two gold mines, and a decent production city (or two).

There aren't a whole lot of rivers around, but there is a fair amount of grasslands and coast.

We have cheap settlers, libraries, theaters and colosseums (colossea?) .

Do we want to go for a specialist- or cottage-based economy?

1) We could send a stack over and take Paris (though we don't want to kill DeGaulle completely). Having a strong military presence will probably not hurt us in this game. With two AIs already having BW, it seems too late for a horse-archer rush, but maybe not.

2) We could aim for some kind of Oracle-slingshot. Feudalism (longbows and Serfdom)? Metalcasting (Forges=SilverGoldHappiness/Engineer specialists, Copper-enhanced Colossus)? Code of Laws (Caste System, on path to GreatLibrary/Education/Liberalism/etc)

Ah so much to consider...

 

[Compromise]

So I was sitting around thinking of war and peace and such. So I lightheartedly ran the test game forward a few times to see what the AI would do.

AI archer spam: In looking at a test game, I noticed that the AI packed its cities with many archers, like 4-6 archers in the capital; similar numbers in the second-founded city. Not so good for a "rush" from us.

Later, the AI cities have fewer archers, but a good mixture of troops. No pushovers, these emperor AIs.

Units for peace: I gave myself 6 axes and the AIs were willing to make a no-exchange peace treaty. I'm sure this number rises as the AI's power rises.

Cities for peace: Seeing that the AIs want Novgorod for peace, I decided to try something: I made an icefield far from the AI and plopped some settlers on it. Every single AI is willing to make peace for a complete icewaste city far from their capital. Gandhi was even willing to accept a second one (but not a third).

I even gave the AI 10 Maces, let them walk into our undefended capital. The ice city was still super-appealing and got me peace.

Culturally trapped cities: I even tried founding a city inside a ring of my cities, then gifting away the city inside the ring. "No cultural flipping" is on for this game, so we could never get the city back by flip, but I thought it would be funny to give the AI a city which would be surrounded forever by tiles with our culture.

Alas, it was not to be. Even being Creative, with Libraries built, all the AI had to do was build an Obelisk and it grabbed the first ring of culture from me. At least on the "new city" side. Crazy.

Bottom Line: If we want early war, we'll have to prepare for it. If we want peace, we can found a junk city and gift it to the AI for peace.

Another possible early research path is towards Construction for Elephants and Catapults.

 

[Adlain]

I would prefere to spam militery than gift foux citys cheese style - just does not sit well with me.
if we were to go cheese city gift for peace, pick gandhi - he is willing to trade already with us and i think he will def give us the most bang for buck.

 

[Compromise]

Good point about Gandhi. He has a religion and is a friendly chap. He might be worth becheesefriending.

I think the best use of the city gift technique is for peaceful expansion. We plop a settler out in some backwater desert or tundra area. Then if an AI shows up with a SoD we're not prepared to defend against, we settle-n-gift and they go away.

Edit: We probably want the AIs in war mode as long as possible anyway. Better to have them building units than infrastructure.

 

[Adlain]

Any News on the Dot Mapping/ Turn Playing Ruff ???

 

[ruff_hi]

oops, No. Let me d/l save and take a look now.

 

[ruff_hi]

Suggested dot mapping ... concentrating on tech ...

Spoiler :

• I've concentrated on keeping the cities off rivers (extra commerce from the river side cottages) thinking that we can make up for the health in other ways
• I've also concentrated on fewer, larger cities instead of more, smaller cities - trying to give each city at lease 2 food sources
• red dot is our prime military pump, it has reasonable food and good hammer tiles
• blue dot - first of our commerce cities that also has reasonable hammers
• yellow, green and dark blue are all commerce centric cities

Forts?
Here are three suggested fort set ups (A, B and C) so that we have boat access to France's water ways from our Eastern cities. A gives up a plains and a desert tile while B and C both give up grasslands. Who knows, maybe that desert tile will have oil .



Binary Research
The game was at 90% when I d/l'ed it - that is giving away at least a beaker per turn. We should concentrate on binary research during the early game.



0% gives us 0 beakers and 17g
90% gives us 15.3 (15) beakers and 1.7 (1)g
100% gives us 17 beakers and 0g

Those rounding decimals are rounded down and we lose them.

 

[Compromise]

I must confess to hating the fact that fractional research isn't carried over from turn to turn. 1cpt is probably too much for us to ignore at this stage in the game.

The dot map is impressive at using every tile in our known world.

I will offer this competing vision:



Here's my rationale:

H: Gives access to 2 happiness resources (Silver and Ivory) with a single border expansion, 5T with our Creative-ity.

P: Production site with 6(!) hills and food to work them. Pigs will be under Paris' culture very soon, so we may want to liberate some French citizens....

GP: GP Farm. Great food.

More thoughts on strategies soon, though I'm tired tonight.

 

[Compromise]

I'm going to throw out a smorgasbord of options for strategies here.

End game:
First, start with the end game. We're aiming for a fast spaceship finish. I think that means lots of land working lots of cottages.

A tech partner or two would help, as would trade-route partners, especially on other continents. Gandhi is our obvious best hope of an AI to try to befriend.

If we want unlimited, non-WFYABTA tech trading with Gandhi, we need to overcome a -5 diplo penalty (for declaring on and for nuking him). Is this reasonably possible?

Corporations:
It's a long game. I presume we'll want to get Sid's Sushi and Mining, Inc. Right?

AI Lands:
I didn't do a whole lot of post-game analysis on SGOTM11, but I did see some comments about how even the best teams' dates could have been improved by declaring on Zara early on since his capital was a nice site and would've been better used by the human player.

AI Expansion: Based on running the test game out to about 325BC, the AI certainly spams cities. All the AIs had 5 or 6 cities by then, and continued to train settlers to expand.

Benefits (to us) of the AIs being at war with us: Maybe the AI will put more emphasis into building units than expanding if we're at war with them. But judging from their behavior when I run the test game out, they still seem to expand mightily if we're not right next to them.

Negative Consequences (to us) of the AIs being at war with us: While they are building up mutual struggle bonuses, the AIs are going to be developing a big diplo bonus with each other. That just doesn't seem good to me.

Also, we can't begin to repair relations until we start peace.

Work Improved Tiles: After this initial burst of worker production, I think we should aim to get both cities up to full happiness and working improved tiles asap. Moscow (Size 6: Cow, Rice, PlainsCopper, 2xGHmine, 1x(Farm/PHmine) and StPete (Size=5: Cow, Fish, Clam, 2xPHGoldMine) up asap.

Early Wonders:
There seems to be a fair bit of coast here. Both Great Lighthouse and a copper-sped Colossus could be useful, though getting open borders to make best use of the GL might be touch.

Oracle, of course.

Slingshots At full sizes and with the best tiles improved, we have a decent production capital (~17hpt) and commerce city (~37bpt inc 20% bonus for prereq tech). This means we might be able to pull of some Oracle-slingshots. Here are some we could consider and the main benefits I see with each:

Feudalism: Longbows (for defense), Vassalage (unit experience), and Serfdom (for faster fallout cleanup)

Metalcasting: Forges, Colossus

Code of Laws: Courthouses

Construction: Catapults and War Elephants

Attempting to be greedy...
Machinery: Must hand-research Metalcasting (~19T). Gives Crossbows if we have Iron somewhere

Civil Service: Dare we try it?

Boldest gambit: Here's the boldest gambit I can think of: Go for broke with the Oracle Slingshot and try for Civil Service. Use a Scientist to pop Philosophy. Extort Nationalism from DeGaulle for peace.

 

[ruff_hi]

GP: GP Farm. Great food.

The other option for a GP farm is 1E of the mountain near the pigs. That site would pick up 2 bananas and pigs.

Oh - attached is the save that I dot mapped up. Also deleted some obsolete signs and added fort options.

 

[Compromise]

Good point about the other GP farm location. Paris might make a good GP farm some day too....

Also, perhaps the PigRiceFish site that you noted (and that I called "GP") would be better as a Globe whip-abuse site since it could produce ships too.

I think right now, we should tentatively start planning a strategy.

Does anyone have opinions on whether we should aim for a) REX, b) City acquisition by war, c) Oracle-light (Metalcasting, Monarchy, or Code of Laws), or d) Oracle-deep (Feudalism, Machinery, Construction or Civil Service)?

Having an overall plan will help us plan our expansion.

 

[ruff_hi]

Also, perhaps the PigRiceFish site that you noted (and that I called "GP") would be better as a Globe whip-abuse site since it could produce ships too.

The site 1E of the mountain (pigs, double nana) is on the coast - trust me, I fog gazed it.

I think right now, we should tentatively start planning a strategy.

What level is this game at? Anything under Prince and we should def give CS sling a shot.

I think the plan is to explore both north and South more to see how quickly we need to fill up our city locations. If we do look like we are under pressure, then we should plant the further city locations first, preferably ones that will raise our happy cap.

 

[Compromise]

It's emperor difficulty. If we want to go deep with the Oracle, we need to be working gold mines asap and little else.

 

[ruff_hi]

It's emperor difficulty.

Oh. In that case, I say we forget it ... we should concentrate on getting our fair share of cities settled and growing.

 

[Adlain]

If we go for a slingshot, Fudlism gets my vote - Longbows have a long shelf life and anything to make clearing fallour quicker is good in my book.

My Main vote is for the REX, if we can block of a decent chunk of land we could build up a decent army and get peace though some strong arm diplomacy (Beat down, get peace) Razing all captured citys if our own land is good enough to sustain us thus doubly hurting the AI (Less city for them, peace for us, Tech advantage easyer to obtain).

 

[ruff_hi]

Feudalism is a good tech - +50% workers would be useful.

Not sure on razing cities due to the diplo hit.

 

[Compromise]

While I think it would be fun to try for the CS slingshot, I agree that Feudalism would be a good tech to get.

The other nice aspect of the Feudalism slingshot is that we want Monarchy anyway. We can aim for Construction while we build the Oracle. If we miss the wonder, we get cash toward Construction. Win-win.

Now to optimize our cities' growth....

How do you guys feel about the dotmaps?

 

[Compromise]

Some opinions...

Dotmaps:
I've reviewed Ruff's and my dotmaps.

I think that Ruff's red dot should move 1NE. This has the following advantages: 1) it brings silver into the second (instead of third) culture ring, 2) it is on our side of the isthmus so that resources are connected by coast instantly by Sailing rather than needing roads. It also gains Ivory and is one fort away from a canal-crossing route.

I also think that I like Cyan dot 1SW of where Ruff has it. That production site just seems too sweet to pass up to me.

Doing both of these wastes a plains elephant, a grassland, and a lake. Only the non-river grassland is lost if we only move red dot. I think the early game benefits are worth this tradeoff.

Slavery:
I suggest revolting to Slavery right after both current workers finish (6T).

Techs:
If we're not going to build roads or chariots in the immediate future, we should consider Writing next. We get half-price libraries. Then we can go back, get Wheel and Pottery, and on to Priesthood, Monarchy.

Expansion path:
I suggest we get our starting cities, especially St. Pete, up to full size as quickly as possible. Then, I think we should settle Silver/Ivory followed by the Production site. By that point, we may be ready to gear up for battle.

 

[ruff_hi]

Dotmaps:
I've reviewed Ruff's and my dotmaps.

I think that Ruff's red dot should move 1NE. This has the following advantages: 1) it brings silver into the second (instead of third) culture ring, 2) it is on our side of the isthmus so that resources are connected by coast instantly by Sailing rather than needing roads. It also gains Ivory and is one fort away from a canal-crossing route.

Yeah - that move looks like a good option.

I also think that I like Cyan dot 1SW of where Ruff has it. That production site just seems too sweet to pass up to me.

Counting hills - the current light blue (cyan) has 6 and your move has 6 ... or am I mis-counting / mis-reading them? The moved cyan is also off the coast, so no boats, no GLH trade, etc.

Edit: My mistake, I read the plains forest river side as a hill. So the 1SW has 6 while the dot mapped has 5. Note that the improved plains ivory is a 3H, 1F, 1C tile - not to shabby. I also hit end-o-turn while I was looking so the turn rolled on me. BUFFY records stuff like that so I guess I have the save to play a few. Do we have a plan for the next 5-ish turns?