SGOTM 12 - Plastic Ducks

[kossin]

Problem 1: AIs don't trade with their WE (that's us)
Problem 2: we don't have Alphabet and can't get it from 1
Problem 3: we need to gift techs to bring AIs to Cautious before they will trade with us
Problem 4: we only have Mathematics and CoL for trading (not enough and opens Philo bulb)
Problem 5: a bunch of AIs might not even have Writing yet

Soooo...

1-We need Alphabet to buy Peace
2-Or/and we need something to boost relations with Gandhi to trade

We should definitely buy Peace with Stalin: his Power will mean endless dogpiles

 

[kossin]

Thinking aloud here...

1) Do we need Pottery?
Not yet.

2) Do we need Bronze Working?
Sure it would be useful to see the metal's location.

3) Iron Working?
Only if we have absolutely 0 Bronze

4) Construction?
Not right now, but catapults will be very handy to break DG's face. And also opens up War Elephants via HBR... cheaper than getting Construction+Machinery... unless we only go for Macemen without siege support.

5) Alphabet?
Required for buying Peace - either we research it ourselves or give something to Gandhi to bring him up to Cautious and then trade with him

6) Currency?
Nice but not necessary right now since we have a very good chance at GLH. Possibly next tech though.

7) Calendar?
We have a lot of Calendar resources available - definitely a priority but not this early.

Will add more after I'm done updating the test game.

 

[kossin]

Updated Test Game!

Hammers/Food/improvements are 100%

I'm not sure about beakers but I'm guessing ~15 behind.

As usual, I have no control over AIs so techs/builds are not accurate.

 

[Duckweed]

Do we know where the Chinese archer has gone ?

@ Peace : Is there any reason not to buy peace with everybody but De Gaulle/Stalin ?

The archer occupied the PH after our warrior yielded and the french settler also arrived, it must be thrown to west, where it came from. So next player should be very careful of the warrior move, especially the one near English border.

Buying peace is costly due to the sacrificing warriors Erkon introduced. Digging ourselves out the diplomatic hell is more costly since AIs have known us from T0. The longer they have known us, the more they need for the fair trade. On t0, 10g is enough to buy +4 fair trade. To turn 100, Currency and big techs could net us +2 fair trade. By T150, it needs renaissance tech to pull +4 fair trade.

So the 1st issue next is how do we handle diplomacy and get Alpha?

 

[kossin]

Agreed.

Metal Casting seems like a decent option.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

6) Currency?
Nice but not necessary right now since we have a very good chance at GLH. Possibly next tech though.

7) Calendar?
We have a lot of Calendar resources available - definitely a priority but not this early.

Will add more after I'm done updating the test game.

6) Currency is also an excellent trade bait
(Seeing your last post, Metal Casting also is a fine trade bait.)

7) In the current BOTM, I went for an early Calendar and... I'm not sure if it's because of this tech, but I've had immense trouble bulbing relevant techs (scientist --> Compass/Optics isn't appealing). I think the guilt was also upon Iron Working.
Yeah, I still have trouble putting up a decent strategy into practice after the classical age

 

[kossin]

Problem with Currency is it's behind Mathematics/Alphabet. For any AI that does not have Writing we can't trade it to them. It is much less likely so with Metal Casting.

Anyway, we need 2 techs:
Tech 1: get +2 bonus with Gandhi (I checked, Metal Casting does this - anything else?)
Tech 2: get Alphabet from Gandhi (Currency should be enough with 1 turn of 0%/overflow beakers - or Mathematics with 1 turn of 100% maybe). I'm not including CoL to keep Gandhi away from Liberalism for as long as possible.

Metal Casting is a safe bet because you only need Pottery+BW to trade it... which the AI prioritizes. However it means we need to start Colossus earlier.

Moreover, it'd put us 1 tech away from Machinery for Macemen which will have very good odds against Archers for a long time to come.

 

[dingding]

Back! Good play, Duck!

If kossin doesn't feel too tired, I'd like to take the set.
After a long journey, I need a rest so I can run long tests this WE.

But I need a good night sleep before giving any comment

 

[kossin]

Oh, feel right at home dingding and take it up!

 

[kossin]

Techs that will bring Gandhi (+2) fair trade -> Cautious
-Metal Casting (702)
-Currency (624)
-CoL (546)
-Construction (546)
-Calendar (546)

(+1):
-Mathematics (390)
-HBR (390)

So there is a wide variety of combinations to get Gandhi to Cautious AND get Alphabet.

1) Gift Mathematics and HBR (path to War Elephants), trade Currency for Alphabet.
390+390+624

2) Gift Currency and trade Mathematics for Alphabet with ~1.5 turn of research in it.
624+390+~120

3) Gift Metal Casting, trade Currency for Alphabet

etc...

I'm liking option #2 right now, provided Gandhi isn't putting research in Mathematics already.

We can't wait for the "Years of Peace" - according to XML it's 60 turns for +1 (checked in a game and it appears to hold there).

 

[Duckweed]

Which turn did you run the test? The price increases with turn elapse, ONLY Currency and MC in your list is capable of bringing +2 on ~T90 and after.

IMO, research Currency next and gift it to Gandhi immediately (DO NOT TAKE ANY CASH) is a safe bet. then trade MATH for Pottery and BW. (Edit: After we sign OB with Gandhi, we should be able to keep him at cautious, but this will put extra risk on our future plan) Tech MC (for Colossus)->Machinery next for Macemans, which is better to let other AIs know how to sign peace!

Where's your opinion of 4th city, I am for the 2Deer/Marble/Fur site.

Edit: Another way is to research BW->Pottery->MC->Machinery all by ourselves. I worry about the teching of Gandhi if we feed him so many techs, he could screw our liberalism plan and also a dangerous opponent for TGL and MUSIC. On the other side, trading with Gandhi will also gift him the "You have traded with our worst enemy" with other AIs.

 

[kossin]

Good point. Let me do some testing and I'll get you an answer soonish.

You mean this site?


Another option would be directly on the marble. It's a weak tile (1F2H3C) anyway and saves us worker turns, less maintenance. Moreover it means we can look for a better city spot as we'd only settle there when we need the Marble.

Do you have a mind to build ToA?

4th city spot south is possible but we'll need to send about 4 workers ahead and then replace them to clear the next spot.

 

[Duckweed]

Yes, 4th city on Marble.

Not sure about ToA now, we certainly can give it a try when capital is spare. We don't need to worry about the GP type in this game. All GPs should be settled early on and GPriest surely is good.

 

[kossin]

->Currency is fine with me right away.

->I like the idea to grab Macemen for peace, given we won't likely have that many foreign traderoutes. I got Machinery ~1AD but we'll need Construction as well to bombard culture/walls. We can always do plan B and buy Peace via Alphabet trade in case of need.

->2 deer, marble +fur can be a cheap worker pump for a while I guess while we set up some workers to pre-clean the south end and islands (very lucrative!). There's no way we can set up a 4th city as early as this one unless it is very far away.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

That's a very interesting discussion. I'm still amazed by post n°351.

I like the marble/macemen plan a lot.

Question : settling the 3rd and 4th cities in the north will mean losing the gems sites and possibly the stone to De Gaulle, right ?
Is that of any importance (I thought Pyramids would be cool)? When would we be ready to conquer, approximately ?


ps : I think we will have knowledge of the copper locations before we're ready to settle the 4th city. Is that right ?

 

[kossin]

Stone, gems: consider him a temporary locator paying the rent for us

 

[kossin]

I've re-thought about my 1AD test... don't like the way this is going too much to be honest.

By 1AD we'll have 5~6 cities, all low pop with 0 or 1 infrastructure. Yes, we can build Macemen but from 2 cities only, which should in fact be busy pumping workers/settlers/galleys/workboats.

So.... I propose we grab Literature right after Currency and work on economy (TGL+NE+?ToA?) to allow secondary cities some time to be able to contribute to war effort. This also means we can grab Music when we need to, depending on what Gandhi does. It also allows Moscow to grow while building the Wonders and goes hand in hand with settling the Marble next. Finally, it opens HE but we'll need a 10xp unit for that of course.

I like having earlier TGL as it will contribute for longer this way... GPP management was the weakest point in our past SGOTM imo, we need better planning this time around and we have a good production capital, despite the lack of trees.

EDIT: I've tried it... it delays Machinery (if we decide to go that route, imo there's a good case to be made about War Elephants and Catapults too) somewhat but the economy is much better and cities are better prepared.

 

[Duckweed]

Well, this game is a slow start due to the fallout mess, that's a stronger reason to capture mature cities from AIs. GP production is a much less important factor in the early stage of game for space race. We can produce tone of GPs when Sushi is founded. After 4 cities, all we need is to set up 4 island cities, It's better to capture other cities from AIs than settle those fallout mess ourselves.

 

[kossin]

Yes true, but a direct Machinery beeline doesn't give enough time for settled cities to be able to contribute.

EDIT: Besides, we'll need to clean out the fallout ourselves anyway - the AI doesn't do it. That's misinformation. All the long land to our south we must settle ourselves and clean up.

 

[Duckweed]

My emphasis is to capture and use AIs' mature cities as soon as possible, which is better than settling new cities surrounding ourselves. Think about this as a later rush, which we know is the best way possible and that's the only way to improve in our play in SGOTM11. We can only focus on one thing a time, IMO the military route is superior, we could take out 2~3 AIs before 1000AD. Another reason behind is that we must buildup military since we are their target for a long time and there's no easy way to please them.