SGOTM 12 - One Short Straw

[babybluepants]

Nicely spotted.

He's basically where we expected him to be. America must be further W-NW.

 

[Mitchum]

Should we send our missionary south and then NW to start exploring Gandhi and Roosevelt? I don't want him to get trapped on the penninsula due to Mao's aggressive REX.

Speaking of Mao, he's been rexing north of where we can see, so there must be quite a bit of nice land up that way.

 

[bcool]

LC nice catch with Gandhi. There is so much to do on every turn I forgot your trick with the cultural view. I hope messing up the island settling schedule isn't too big of a deal. Gives us another turn in Moscow to finish a forge or market perhaps.

I don't think there is any risk that Gandhi will beat us to liberalism even with generous tech trades. I think wtih currency we will be able to get iron working, masonry, polytheism and a bit of gold with just Calendar I don't think we would be able to get all 3 tech. It is a bit more efficient to trade him currency.

Can we figure out how much we need to give Rosey for open borders? I think Rosey is the bigger tech threat. He will be tech trading with Gandhi and he has the GLH. So I'm just wondering how much open borders with him is worth. I guess we plan to tech trade with him too?

Options for Moscow (after forge or Market? or 2nd spy?)
1) mostly Settlers/Military units/workers
2) steal Theology and build the HS (and settlers/military units/workers)
3) build the Parthenon with a bit more delay (to insure GS next perhaps in Siberia?) and settlers/military units/workers before
4) steal Philosophy build monastery and a few confu missionaries? and settlers/military units/workers before that

Instead of the the Great Library in Pigs we could whip out 3 WE or 3 macemen very quickly...

Other random thoughts
Go for Music and Use Great Artist to spark a golden age so we can do lots of revolts. Maybe a short revolt into caste system and pacifism and revolt to a religion
And a revolt back to slavery (saves 3 turns of research and production, an early golden age might be worth it?) Double during Golden Age and pacifism with lots of GS running could really give us a big boost.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Man, I've got a ton of ideas going here. What to focus on so I don't lose anyone's attention?

Big Picture
I think I've got an idea for combining everything. Best of all worlds. The question is Machinery next or not? Well, assuming we capture Marseilles first, maces need ~11t to walk from Moscow to Paris. Machinery in ~13t, then 1mace/2t gives us our 4th mace in ~21t. That 4th mace arrives at the Arc de Triomphe on T139.

Using galleys from Galley City, via the fort(19wkr-turns or 14t w/HS, total) at Galley City-1E, they only need 4t. So if we research aesth(5t)-lit(4t)-machinery(13t)=T129, our 4th mace is done on T137, at Paris on T141. About the same.

Moscow
forge(3t)-set1(1t)-set(3t)-revolt to COnf-market(4t)-Hagia Sophia(7t+2chops)=T126 works just fine

Then Fish builds Colossus-galley2 and Pigs, the GLib. Siberia poprushes lib, then settlers at pop5, yielding the eastern deer to Silver City, as needed.

Then we need to do the GS spam workout that bbp was talking about yesterday.

Something like that.

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xpost with bcool

 

[bcool]

Do we even want to settle Silver City before State Property?

We will get a borders pop soon enough to mine and get the Silver resource...

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I'm happy enough with the Hagia Sophia in Moscow, and stealing Theology.

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2 pop rushing Macemen in Pigs after the Great Library isn't out of the question, not great with I assume the NE planned city, but then we could hit De Gaulle on two fronts.

 

[babybluepants]

I like Silver City. With something like 2 deer and a grass farm or two, it can certainly build basic infra and work the silver. That's a small contribution, maybe, but from a city with minimal pre-SP maintenance.

Siberia poprushes lib, then settlers at pop5, yielding the eastern deer to Silver City, as needed.

Building settlers from a city with no hammers is kinda wasting IMP, I think. Why I keep bringing the issue up. Siberia will likely be working two furs, as well, for break-even tiles. It doesn't seem ideal to me. Fish is ideal for settler spamming, IMHO. At pop 6, it can work fish/cow/ivory/ivory/GH/GH for 3f15h, or 25hpt towards settler. Edit: actually 28hpt with forge. By comparison, Siberia is only rice/deerF/deer/fur/fur for 7f5h, or 14hpt. We'd obviously wanna whip them Pop4-Pop2 or Pop5-Pop3 there instead, but that gives up working 10c worth of furs for the most part. I'd intuitively think it's better to focus on getting a GS from there in the mid term.

Other random thoughts
Go for Music and Use Great Artist to spark a golden age so we can do lots of revolts. Maybe a short revolt into caste system and pacifism and revolt to a religion
And a revolt back to slavery (saves 3 turns of research and production, an early golden age might be worth it?) Double during Golden Age and pacifism with lots of GS running could really give us a big boost.

Music > Golden Age around Education is my default play in this kind of situation. Here it might not be so hot. Aren't we a bit better off saving our GAs for an MoM-powered endgame?

Can we figure out how much we need to give Rosey for open borders? I think Rosey is the bigger tech threat. He will be tech trading with Gandhi and he has the GLH. So I'm just wondering how much open borders with him is worth. I guess we plan to tech trade with him too?

I think I posted already that it's probably in the Calendar+Currency range. Hopefully, that's not just short. It's also related to turns, so we should do it right away, if we intend to ever do it. I was actually hoping to do it at the start of your set, but it got lost in the other complexities of the TS discussion.

 

[babybluepants]

I would propose settling either Bananas or Corn/Copper/Clam next. We need to quickly develop a shipyard in the SE to relieve Fish, IMHO. The proposed fish/clam island won't contribute much beyond TR income for some time.

Aest-Lit-Mach with the galley hop sounds great, except where do we get these galleys from?

 

[LowtherCastle]

I hope messing up the island settling schedule isn't too big of a deal. Gives us another turn in Moscow to finish a forge or market perhaps.

It's zero of a big deal. Remember, it was a concept plan. It now works perfectly with Moscow: forge(T110)-set1(T111)-set2(T114). But note that when postponing the workers 1t, they still should stagger on to the galley or we waste a wkr turn scrubbing the ivory, for example:
RiceWkrScrubHill(T108)-ScrubIvory(T109)-BoardGalley(T110)
BananaWkrRoad(T108)-BoardGalley(T109)-Galley2SE+WkrDisembark(T110)

I don't think there is any risk that Gandhi will beat us to liberalism even with generous tech trades. I think wtih currency we will be able to get iron working, masonry, polytheism and a bit of gold with just Calendar I don't think we would be able to get all 3 tech. It is a bit more efficient to trade him currency.

Can we figure out how much we need to give Rosey for open borders? I think Rosey is the bigger tech threat. He will be tech trading with Gandhi and he has the GLH. So I'm just wondering how much open borders with him is worth. I guess we plan to tech trade with him too?

Agree with all of this. Edited: (Not sure this is such a good idea after all.) What about researching Masonry Poly this turn? Then we could hopefully get Masonry+Mono+IW for Currency. Stalin, Mao, and dG all don't have Mono yet. Poly costs us ~77g to research, so if we get that back trading Mono, we break even. How long has dG had 50g for trade? Just this turn?

Go for Music and Use Great Artist to spark a golden age so we can do lots of revolts. Maybe a short revolt into caste system and pacifism and revolt to a religion
And a revolt back to slavery (saves 3 turns of research and production, an early golden age might be worth it?) Double during Golden Age and pacifism with lots of GS running could really give us a big boost.

My experience is that an early GA for free revolts gives a low return on investment compared to saving it for later. I think it's better to plan things carefully. For example, switching to COnf while the two settlers are traveling.

 

[LowtherCastle]

@bbp:
1. I agree on Fish being a better settler pump. I was thinking for the shorter term, because I see a relatively urgent need for 4 more settlers (2 offshore, silver, bananas). I need to study what sequence would be optimum. You may be right about bananas before fish/clams.
2. I agree on Roosy. Note that he also doesn't have Poly, so we can give that to him also in 2t.
3. I was thinking 2 galleys would be enough. The existing one and one more from Fish, after Colossus. It would be a two-front attack, with axes/chariots at Orleans 2SE, threatening Orleans, so it wouldn't empty its units to protect Paris... Another bit of help would be that Pigs could 2PopRax-2PopAxe as part of the GLib build. (I've got a long list of ideas that integrate into this plan...)

EDIT:
1. Great idea on 2popping settlers in SIberia, I hadn't thought of that. From pop6-pop4 would be perfect for a couple of settlers. Grows back in 3t.
2. Bananas would be good for a shipyard. My gut feeling is that right now we don't have enough workers to spread around to all these cities. Fish/clams only needs a worker to scrub the settling site, then it's standalone. The other island needs a worker for some more turns, but luckily the corn and copper don't need scrubbing. Bananas, on the other hand needs a lot of worker turns to develop. So maybe it's better to settle it a close third. Then it gets the Fish/Clams worker back and any other workers we've stolen in the meantime. But I still haven't done a workout.
3. Also good idea on the GS in Siberia. Have you done a GS workout yet?
.

 

[babybluepants]

I think we need that second spy to even just confirm that 4 maces are enough (attack when he can't get more than 3 units in there kind of thing).

Not exactly crazy about barracks in our TGL/NE city.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I think we need that second spy to even just confirm that 4 maces are enough (attack when he can't get more than 3 units in there kind of thing).

Not exactly crazy about barracks in our TGL/NE city.

Well, I was looking for things we can pre-build and poprush for max overflow. The library should have max 29/90h for a max overflow 2pop into the GLib. The overflow from a granary 2pop could be just under 20h, perfect for a 18/50h 2pop on a rax with max overflow into the GLib. But we could put that into the lh instead and get it up close to 29/60h for a 2pop. Then we could work a 4/35h axe prebuild. Another possibility is a 9/40h spy. The thing is, these have to be prebuilds or they don't help.

 

[babybluepants]

I wouldn't mind whipping a galley from there, maybe.

I'll have to test play this, for sure, before I can really comment.

 

[Mitchum]

bcool, it looks like you didn't use my last test save, which had removed the trade routes with Gandhi. Here is a new save. Changes made include:

• Removed trade routes with Gandhi (they won't go away until you hit end turn)
• Removed Polytheism and Masonry since we don't know them yet
• Changed city name to Galley City
• Named workers and units to match the game
• Named stolen workers 8, 9 and 10
• Changed name of city to GP Farm

In the real game, can you:

• Name the stolen workers to match the test game and to avoid confusion with MM details
• Change name to GP Farm so that it is clear what city we're referring to in our posts.

Thanks!

Also, it's strange that we have to pick a technology and a build item for GP Farm when we open the real save. I would have expected those to be done already when you started the turn (pick tech) and settled GP Farm (pick build item)...

 

[bcool]

Yes I apologize I didn't know if you had used the editted map in your test game or editted the map again. My test game had a few flaws and had already declared war on De Gaulle.
Anyways I will change the real game names to match.

I have the option minimize pop ups selected so that explains the whole (pick tech and pick build confusion)

but bizarrely we have the trade route discount for espionage if you look at the real game.

 

[bcool]

I like the prebuilds of lighthouse and spy in Pigs to set up the Great Library, that will be beyond my turn set though (although I might have to plan for them)

Okay I will try to lay out a plan for next 3 turns and hopefully play tonight.

If not I won't be able to play until Friday night...

 

[Mitchum]

No worries. I used your latest test save to create mine, so all of your map changes are included.

It looks like a few units have already moved in the test game that have not moved in the real game as well. No big deal if we want to actually make those moves. I assume you plan to do so since you're playing the next turnset. If you want to change them, then we'll have to go back to the previous turn and I'll have to make my changes again.

 

[Mitchum]

but bizarrely we have the trade route discount for espionage if you look at the real game.

I guess it's because we have a trade route with Galley City in the real game, which explains the trade route discount.

 

[Mitchum]

Okay I will try to lay out a plan for next 3 turns and hopefully play tonight.

If not I won't be able to play until Friday night...

A lot of new ideas have been thrown out there, like researching Poly next and trading for Masonry, Monotheism and IW next turn (which I happen to like). Hopefully there is nothing too controvercial. Can you wait at least 2 hours after posting your PPP before you play to give everyone a chance to review it? It seems that most of us are active around this time, so hopefully everyone has a chance to comment before you play.

 

[bcool]

Agree with all of this. Edited: (Not sure this is such a good idea after all.) What about researching Masonry Poly this turn? Then we could hopefully get Masonry+Mono+IW for Currency. Stalin, Mao, and dG all don't have Mono yet. Poly costs us ~77g to research, so if we get that back trading Mono, we break even. How long has dG had 50g for trade? Just this turn?

You have to have Masonry as well as Poly to learn Mono, so...

dG has had around 50g for 2 or 3 turns.

 

[bcool]

Hopefully I'll have a plan by 6 pm (45 minutes) then I'll play around 9 pm (in 3 hours 45 min)