SGOTM 12 - One Short Straw

[ZPV]

Ok,
The main factors involved in whether the AI will accept a ceasefire are war success (not an issue at the start) and power.
There are also some finicky bits around war plans and financial trouble, which also shouldn't affect us at the start.
We can effectively triple our power by threatening one of their cities with a warrior (so long as our cities aren't threatened).

The basic threshhold appears to be that we must have 89% of their power (more for a DoP instead of a CF)

 

[LowtherCastle]

Yes. That nuke gives a huge amount of power, which sufficiently cows the AIs to give peace for free. As I speak, I'm also looking through the code for the cost of suing for peace (and when the AI will give it for free)

I made a save without the nuke and it works right.

Problem is, it doesn't have the -2 for having nuked them. I haven't figured out how to get that into the wb save without using nukes. I did figure out how to add -2 for past events though. I guess I could just do that.

Settling in place, I get Alpha in 1960BC. Not bad. Everyone DoPs with either AH or Writing in that test. But because both Roosy and Gandhi only started with -3, they go to Cautious and next turn will trade. We need to get the -2 in their to see whatwill happen.

 

[babybluepants]

Looks like you forgot me in the roster, bbp

No, just waited for check in.

Problem is, it doesn't have the -2 for having nuked them. I haven't figured out how to get that into the wb save without using nukes. I did figure out how to add -2 for past events though. I guess I could just do that.

So, you actually nuked them. How? I would think the war success is what does it, in that case. I've been wondering about how Erkon did this.

Alpha beeline sounds really appealing here...

Not sure about the Trade Mission Economy. I would think 4-5 GS to start (academy and bulbing into renaissance era) is the obvious play. Need to think about it more, though.

 

[bcool]

Interestingly, you don't need open borders to do a trade mission. Great merchants are not restricted by closed borders. However, I believe the value of the trade mission isn't as high as it could be since it is influenced by the trade route value you have with the target city.

 

[ZPV]

I don't think you can put nuke attitude modifiers in WB saves - I suspect Erkon will do it by physically nuking our enemies, and then creating the locked saves, or else possibly by using debug mode before locking the saves.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Interestingly, you don't need open borders to do a trade mission. Great merchants are not restricted by closed borders. However, I believe the value of the trade mission isn't as high as it could be since it is influenced by the trade route value you have with the target city.

I don't think OBs has any effect on the trade mission.

Here's a good, simple description that I found.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I don't think you can put nuke attitude modifiers in WB saves - I suspect Erkon will do it by physically nuking our enemies, and then creating the locked saves, or else possibly by using debug mode before locking the saves.

But then wouldn't that give us war success and make it simple to DoP, just as bbp suggested above? Because that's what I did in that test save. I wb'd nukes, launched them. I left that one nuke for fun, but deleting it should delte the power effect too, I believe.

 

[ZPV]

If he does it the way you did, then yes.
I was speculating that the modifiers can be directly edited in debug mode, in which case we won't get any war success from it.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Anyway, here's the updated test save. It should give us what I ***think*** we're going to get on Friday. SIP, I still got Alpha, got DoPs from whomever I wanted. BUt of course, can't trade or get open borders. Now, I can trade alpha to G and Roosy and then get OBs the next turn. Interestingly, that -3 cautious with Roosy only last one turn. I go the OBs, then next turn he dropped to -4, so the winodw of opportunity for Alpha to earn teh +2 it gave me looks to be really tight. SIlu or ZPV could figure that out better, since we know all the AIs from T0 and the tech values drop rapidly.

SIP doesn't give us much exploration though. I think for the DoP etc to be of value, we need to find the AIs.

 

[babybluepants]

I go the OBs, then next turn he dropped to -4, so the winodw of opportunity for Alpha to earn teh +2 it gave me looks to be really tight.

See page 40 of the SG11 thread for the formula. It's FairTradeValue / (TurnsKnown x 10). Runs off pretty quickly. I was calculating T39 for +2, but it sounds like you get a bit longer. I'm probably just using a slightly wrong FairTrade multiplier.

 

[Silu]

I'll be cheering for you guys; I mostly "signed up" to possibly provide some code consultation in case such was needed but it looks like ZPV is well on the ball with that already.

So, good luck!

P.S. With the custom mod for this SG, the modifiers can certainly be applied via other means than actually dropping nukes. Keep this in mind for other similar mechanical things as well, some of the usual assumptions may not hold this time

 

[babybluepants]

Forgot to gift Gandhi Alpha, and he demanded it 5t later for a semi-permanent +2. The +1 fair trade will last for twice as long as +2 (even longer if they meet further AIs in the meantime), so waiting for a demand is an option.

I was able to buy peace with Wtg from 4 AI and Fish from the two others, when getting Alpha in 1800's BC.

 

[mystyfly]

OK guys looks like you're all about beelining alpha, fine by me, but let's return to the more imminent turnsets. I gave my opinion of the first few techs and builds for 1-2 turnsets... remember we're on a kinda tight scedule as we have to win by space...

 

[LowtherCastle]

OK guys looks like you're all about beelining alpha, fine by me, but let's return to the more imminent turnsets. I gave my opinion of the first few techs and builds for 1-2 turnsets... remember we're on a kinda tight scedule as we have to win by space...

Still too many unknowns. Do we want to settle in place (SIP) or settle elsewhere?

• If SIP, do we beeline alpha? My testing so far shows this to be kind of pointless, because we might be unable to take advantage of it for tech trades and the DoP doesn't get us trade routes either, because we sacrificed exploration.
• If SIP, do we go for the CS slingshot at all costs?
• If settle on plains tile, do we research BW and then what?

All of these unknowns make for different starting tech paths. Plus, we haven't seen the real save yet. This will tell us some important things such as whether the AIs have multiple advanced techs etc. These can further impact our decision about where to settle.

 

[mystyfly]

Good points. I was under the impression however that we'd beeline alpha anyway for DoPs, regardless of settling. As I said btw I'm for settling NNE (we should reach a consensus on that first anyway IMO). I don't see us getting a CS sling with reasonnabely low risk with 3 IND AIs, I'd rather not do that yet again. All we know is that WE have fallout to clear before we're productive, and the AIs land might be all clear so they'd have quite some head start.

Which plains tile are you talking about?

 

[LowtherCastle]

Good points. I was under the impression however that we'd beeline alpha anyway for DoPs, regardless of settling. As I said btw I'm for settling NNE (we should reach a consensus on that first anyway IMO). I don't see us getting a CS sling with reasonnabely low risk with 3 IND AIs, I'd rather not do that yet again. All we know is that WE have fallout to clear before we're productive, and the AIs land might be all clear so they'd have quite some head start.

Which plains tile are you talking about?

I would agree that later than 1000bc is too risky. Fallout notwithstanding, with 2 golds we've got to at least consider the Oracle, because it's so easy to get. I'm testing to see what it takes to push that back to something normal, if at all possible. The scenarios I've described so far work fine with either Currency or CoL.

As far as the amount of AI fallout and production levels, we'll work hard to learn that in the early game before we even get to Myst-Medit/Poly-Phood. It's usually pretty easy to make some general estimates. Here's one interesting example of how we can do that:

Monitoring AIs early tech research and civ growth

We know only Gandhi starts with Mysticism. We can watch it and se how many more learn it. Once we get Medit/Poly we can do the same with Phood. We also note which AIs founded Buddhism and Hinduism. Gandhi will take at least one of them. Roosy grabs the other in my tests. In any case, it'll be easy to determine how many AIs have Phood at that point, so we'll know what we're looking at. If we want to really play it safe, we could even set our EPs to the industrial AIs from the get-go, and then if one of them grabs Hinduism, we set them all on him, so we can monitor his production levels. EDIT: Here's another good one. I'm at T47 of a CS-sling test run and I'm at pop4 30bpt. I check Masonry and notice that no one has researched it yet. From now on I can monitor it to see if anyone has marble or stone.

 

[mystyfly]

I agree that we could get there fairly quickly and I just consider(ed) it very risky; didn't quite think about all the info we could get from the AIs by checking the graphs and stuff, you might not believe it but I don't normally do that in solo games

Build management in moscow could be quite difficult if we move our cap, need lots of workers, perferably some settlers, defensive units as well as the oracle, glh and mids...

I think most important point for discussion is where to settle. It's nice if you can get some nice test dates for the CS sling but I'm not sure how much they're actually worth with such an unknown AI situation. Do you think about bulbing math again?

PS looks like you didn't post (or remove) the link...?

 

[LowtherCastle]

SIP

CS-slingshot 1040bc. Researched Math+CoL by hand. No GS.
2 cities, second city is building a lh for GLH.

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@mysty: I didn't mean to upload the example form the last post. Just giving another example.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I think a useful comparison for testing would be just how much can we REX if we skip the CS-slingshot. With this terrain, I'm not sure how much a difference it makes at this point.

 

[bcool]

Just to keep us thinking of all the options...

What do you guys think of getting feudalism with the oracle?
It is significantly easier to get than civil service, and opens up serfdom & vassalage , gives us a 20% discount on research civil service, and potentially gives us longbows (with archery)

From my test games there is a real risk we will see axemen/archers/chariots from the AI relatively early. Beelining alphabet just to make peace even if it doesn't give us any significant trades might be a necessary play especially if we don't uncover any horses/metal nearby.