SGOTM 13 - One Short Straw

[RRRaskolnikov]

3-pop-whipping versus 2-pop-whipping a Settler

I suppose that it becomes a balance between Hammers received and whipping Unhappiness.

For example, unless we start to incur Unit Costs for having too many units, there is nothing to say that you can't 3-pop-whip (instead of 2-pop-whip) a Settler for maximum use out of our Food and then have the Settler sit around waiting within our Cultural Borders until you have learned the required techs.

Of course, if you find that we are whipping too soon and are thus accumulating too much whipping Unhappiness, then delaying the Settler has some merit. We will temporarily no longer be getting a roughly 2-to-1 conversion ratio for our excess Food into Hammers and will instead only be getting a 1-to-1 ratio for that 1-population-point worth of whipping. Still, if Unhappiness is becoming an issue, then delaying the whipping action can make sense.

It's not all about hammers. Going with 3 pop whips hurts your science (which is the limitant factor to start the oracle) more than 2 pop whips. Actually I didn't even whipped settler number 3 in my tests to shave some research turns.

Early Library

It is certainly worth considering building a Library... say, start to build it and keep building it for as long as it is possible to remain a 3-pop-whip, switching to a Work Boat only if the Library becomes a 2-pop-whip before growing to Size 6. Then, on the turn that you grow into Unhappiness at Size 6, you could 3-pop-whip the Library.

The idea would be that you'd turn off research after learning Writing, in order to accumulate a bit of Gold, then resume research on the turn after whipping the Library.

Further, we wouldn't have to worry about delaying a Settler, since we'd be building a Library in place of a Settler, so our research rate wouldn't suffer in the short term by placing another City.

A library is unlikely to help for the oracle which was my initial idea. Though if we choose to build the wonder in a satellite city, it's maybe the best build after 4th settler. OF COURSE, we are using binary research to maximize use of commerce

Stone City Location

Hmmm, settling there means that we will only get a Magical Fish + Pig City by settling on top of the Pig Resource.

At least we could delay researching Animal Husbandry for a while, but it does make for a relatively marginal Pig City.

Ideally, I would suggest that we place the Pig and Stone Cities as follows, in order to be able to work the Pig, get access to the Stone square without a border pop, and to be able to keep Maintenance Costs on the Stone City down a bit. Further, it means that if we recently pop-whipped a Settler in the capital when we go to settle Stone City, Stone City can probably temporarily borrow a GH Mine from the capital.

Spoiler :

This approach gives us several possible options:
a) Settle the Pig City sooner, since our capital's Cultural Borders will have expanded over top of the Magical Fish, allowing for instant netting. The undesirable part about this approach is that we get 1 less Food working a Desert Hills square as our City's second improved square than we do by working a Grassland Hills square. Note that we won't be able to work the Pig as our second improved square for quite some time.
OR
b) Settle the Stone City where I suggested, but plan to initially borrow the capital's GH Mine, then work the GHStone Mine once it is completed, while building a Monument. We'll have to wait a while before we can net the Magical Fish.
OR
c) Settle the Copper City location that I indicated before we settle the Stone City. The Magical Fish can be netted immediately and we can begin work on a Monument that will be whipped. By the time that we are ready to settle Stone City, it's Magical Fish will also be nettable, since the Copper City's Cultural Borders will have expanded over top of the Stone City's Magical Fish.

I like your dotmap Allows for great micro flexibility. I was obviously not awaken this morning when settling my stone city (as LC kindly pointed out )...

The Steps for your Test Runs?

How are you recording your test run's steps? Using a spreadsheet? If so, would you mind zipping-up and uploading the relevant spreadsheet alongside the test saved game?

Even if you are recording your steps using a method other than a spreadsheet, can you kindly provide us with those steps? Not only does it help us to understand what you did, but it also means that you will later remember what you did.

I took notes this time. I haven't time to update the spreadsheet before tomorow. But I will provide one (including micro and worker actions) in my next test game save. I have an old format that we used back in a democracy team game which computes everything, I will add it (maybe you will like this tool, it is quite nice)...

Wonders

I'd say that it will go somewhere between 500 BC and 500 AD, with most games it not being built until around 1 AD or afterwards.


I would agree that these dates are a bit risky. It wouldn't hurt to have a backup plan in place (such as building The Oracle in the capital) if, for example, we find that Stonehenge is built early (which is often a good indication that The Oracle will be built early-on, too).

I think that for anyone who does not want to build The Oracle in one of our established Cities, such as the capital, they need to decide which possibility they prefer the most:
a) We lose The Oracle to an AI
OR
b) We get The Oracle and take a relatively-cheap tech like Code of Laws or Metal Casting AND our first Great Person ends up being a Great Prophet

Which possibility is worse?

I think we shouldn't take any risk here and go for the fastest build (that gets us the desired tech ). Note that we can build the Oracle and get a scientist in another city (ie there is a c) option)! Maybe we should start by discussing which tech we really wants (going step by step). (I am close to vote MC)

Ras, what did you do with WBs in your save? Did you delete the two explorers or net them?

Edit: LC, I'm kinda sold on marble for Oracle now. We really lack in base production here.

net one, built another to net another seafood, one exploring east ward and another should be exploring too (let me check)

How's do like this test? 1425 BC T103

edit: @LC: I think going for writing first is best to enable OBs. We might get 3c TRs early on!

 

[shyuhe]

I think we will need to build Oracle in Paris if we want a good build date. We can have Orleans build a library and farm a scientist there. We also need to decide what to do about the stone site since it impacts the possibility of the pyramids. If we go with the double fish + pig version, we'll get a nice GP farm that will get us the GS's we need. But getting stone will require a really crappy filler city. I'm ok with skipping the pyramids since it's unlikely that we'll get to use caste system much in this game. How do others feel?

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

@bbp: correction: I used two for nets, one exploring toward the east. Built one more for another net. (this needs to be discussed to add realistic constraints to the tests... I used the wbs quite -too much- freely )

@mdy & shyuhe : I will have a look at your variant later or tmr. I haven't much time left for civ today

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

sorry for double post...

@shyuhe: the good thing with mids is also the +3 happy. I like slavery/Rep a lot myself. I would like to include it in our plans. It will pay off anyway even if we get gold from failed wonder.

 

[shyuhe]

True, but is it worth giving up the GP farm spot? The double fish + pig spot is probably the second best city site available to us right now and it's pretty low maintenance.

 

[mdy]

I think we shouldn't take any risk here and go for the fastest build (that gets us the desired tech ). Note that we can build the Oracle and get a scientist in another city (ie there is a c) option)! Maybe we should start by discussing which tech we really wants (going step by step). (I am close to vote MC)

That's impossible. No matter when we try and build the Oracle, there will always be some risk, it's only a question of how much. The date LC posted is highly unusual, I wouldn't let it dictate our plans, especially as the evidence suggests that the AI is likely to build the Oracle unusually late on this map.

I can get a machinery slingshot at 1025BC at the moment. I would take the risk. If any team does this and it pays of they will have a massive advantage over those that don't.

If not building the Oracle in the capital means we get one more GS I think it is worth it-An extra GS would probably be worth more beakers to us than Oracling MC.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

It's not all about hammers. Going with 3 pop whips hurts your science (which is the limitant factor to start the oracle) more than 2 pop whips. Actually I didn't even whipped settler number 3 in my tests to shave some research turns.

Are you working Coast squares or Cottages? I ask because I wonder where this extra Commerce is coming from. I thought that the only Commerce squares that we'd be working in the capital for now would be the 2 Clam squares, which we will work when being at any City Size of 2 or greater.

Are Trade Routes involved? I understood that Trade Routes didn't grow in size until after Citiy Size 10, but I could very well be wrong on that point.

I would think that having smaller City Sizes would mean less Maintenance costs, although the change in value is so small for the capital as to possibly not even matter.

I took notes this time. I haven't time to update the spreadsheet before tomorow. But I will provide one (including micro and worker actions) in my next test game save. I have an old format that we used back in a democracy team game which computes everything, I will add it (maybe you will like this tool, it is quite nice)...

Sure, I'd love to see whatever you are able to come up with. For helping to decide upon an overall strategy, saved games alone can be helpful, although details of a test run are always appreciated, if someone has them.

But for helping to improve the micro, having more than a saved game is essential.

Besides, if people provide some sort of steps/details, then we might see a good idea from one person's test run that can be applied to another player's test run, in order to get the best result.

If we go with the double fish + pig version, we'll get a nice GP farm that will get us the GS's we need. But getting stone will require a really crappy filler city. I'm ok with skipping the pyramids since it's unlikely that we'll get to use caste system much in this game. How do others feel?

Well, this approach loses us 3 Hills squares on a low-production map:
1. We'd settle on top of the Desert Hills square
2. and 3. We wouldn't settle a City next to the GHStone square and the adjacent GH square

Another consideration is that we might prefer to remain in Slavery, such that a 3rd Food Resource would be better used in a different City (i.e. used to pair-up with the Stone).


Pig + Magical Fish + City Centre = 14 Food (or 13 Food if we skip the Lighthouse).

Using 4 Food to "work" the Magical Fish and the Pig, and 2 Food to work the Des Hills Mine, plus using 4 Food to hire 2 Scientists, requires 10 Food.

That leaves us with 4 (or 3) Food to grow into Coast squares and then occasionally whip, while still maintaining our Specialists.


If we were to instead get 2 Magical Fish + Pig, we'd be looking at almost certainly building the Lighthouse, so we'd have 6 + 6 + 6 + 2 (for the City Centre) = 20 Food to work with.

It costs us 6 Food to work the 2 Magical Fish + Pig, leaving us 14 Food for Specialists.

Assuming that we have the Gold, a Fur, and a whipped Monument, and assuming that all of our whipping unhappiness has worn off by the time that we are able to grow to our Happiness cap, we will have 8 Happiness to work with (one less than the capital since we won't have a Palace). That situation allows for 5 Specialists.

However, we're also looking at running Caste System instead of Slavery. So, we have not only removed the ability to gain production via whipping, but we have essentially discarded 3 Hills' worth of square-based production.

In addition, this City will require additional time to get set up. For example, if we settle as per my dot map, then we won't need a Monument and can delay the Lighthouse... we can get a Granary and then a Library and then hire 2 Specialists, growing into our Des Hills Mine and Coasts.

If we settle on the Des Hills square, though, we will need the Monument before we can access the Pig and the second Magical Fish, as well as in order to get that extra Happiness point in order to hire a 5th Specialist.

We could feasibly skip a Lighthouse but we'll probably want to build one so that we can more quickly grow to City Size 7.

Now, arguably, Lighthouses are cheap for us, so that's only 2 additional 1-pop-whips.

We could also consider hiring 2 Scientists ASAP and then wait to switch into Caste System until after we've grown to City Size 7, only then hiring the additional 3 Scientist Specialists. Doing so extends our usage of Slavery.

So, it is not an unworkable idea.


The Gold City has a lot of Food, too, so it could follow either approach (staying in Slavery and running 2 Scientists versus using Caste System for a while).


If we go back to the Magical Fish + Pig City approach, and grow to our Happiness cap before switching into Caste System, then we would have 14 - 4 = 10 Food that is usable for Specialists. Arguably, we would no longer be working the Desert Hills square, and it would take us longer to grow to City Size 7, but due to our Happiness cap, we would be able to work as many Specialists under Caste System as we could by grabbing the second Magical Fish square.


Hence, I don't think that we'll want to grab all 3 Food Resources in the same City.


Yes, we could feasibly whip a Forge for yet another +1 Happiness, but then we'd delay the setup time for even longer, just to be able to eventually run a 6th Scientist Specialist... for generating our first few Great People, I don't think that this tradeoff will be worthwhile.

Sure, in the long run (generating, say, our 5th Great Person and beyond), having a 3-Food location would make for a much better Great Person Farm, but perhaps we can capture or settle another such City in the future, relying on the single Magical Fish + Pig for generating one or two of our earlier Great People.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I can get a machinery slingshot at 1025BC at the moment. I would take the risk. If any team does this and it pays of they will have a massive advantage over those that don't.

What tech path and city path? And do you explore both east and west with wbs starting now, or not?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Oracle Date

The date LC posted is highly unusual, I wouldn't let it dictate our plans, especially as the evidence suggests that the AI is likely to build the Oracle unusually late on this map.

The date that he posted doesn't seem all that unusual to me, but I agree that the AIs in our real game, according to BBP's analysis of the Demographic data, are considerably behind the AIs in our test game.

So, it's more that second point which buys us safety. Many AIs will try to build either Stonehenge or The Great Wall with only 1 City, but it's a lot rarer to see them do the same with The Oracle... it is more likely that AIs who expand quickly will try for The Oracle. The fact that the AIs in our real game are expanding slowly does count for a lot.


Self-teching Metal Casting

I can get a machinery slingshot at 1025BC at the moment. I would take the risk. If any team does this and it pays of they will have a massive advantage over those that don't.

The tradeoff is that we will delay manual research of another tech in place of Metal Casting, such as Alphabet or Code of Laws. I think that it's a reasonable tradeoff given that:
a) I was wrong and Vicky does not know any other AIs, meaning that our only trading partner won't trade us any techs
AND
b) People keep saying that they would delay building Courthouses, even cheap ones, for a while, anyway
AND
c) It doesn't look like we'll be making a huge early rush, which means that getting Galleons will be very useful, while Oracling Machinery would give us a decisive advantage. In addition, we could continue REXing, perhaps fighting a single early war, giving us a strong production base for when it is time to pump out a massive Galleon-powered army


Oracle in the Capital?
As for the "Oracle in capital or not" debate, how many Great Scientists do we need?

Getting Iron Working in trade is often one of the first "big" techs available. After that point, and if we were to Oracle Machinery, we could immediately begin research on Compass and Optics.

Later, we'd get Math and Calendar in trade.

Finally, we'd only need 2 Great Scientists, in order to Lightbulb Astronomy. The Oracle could be built in the capital, while our two non-capital Great Person Farm Cities could generate a single Great Scientist each.


Our capital, being one of the few Cities with 5 "good" squares, makes for a much better Settler Factory than it does a Great Person Farm. This point applies even if we don't use The Oracle for Machinery.


If we were to instead use The Oracle on the much-safer Metal Casting, then we would just aim to generate a 3rd Great Scientist... perhaps using Great Person Farm A to generate Great Scientists #1 and #3, while Great Person Farm B could generate Great Scientist #2. The third Great Scientist would be used for Optics, meaning that we'd manually reserach Machinery in place of Optics (which is roughly the cost of researching Optics + Writing--not that big of a difference).


Lightbulbing Machinery?
There is also the possibility of using a Great Engineer to Lightbulb Machinery. Doing so gets tricky, though, since if your 3rd Great Person is a Great Engineer, then you'd probably be delaying research on Optics.

Still, it does allow us to run up to 3 Specialists for our first 2 Great People... which probably doesn't matter very much at all, since its the third Great Person would really benefit from having a 3rd Specialist, but this option could offer us a reasonably-balanced approach:
One City generates Great Person #1 and Great Person #2 while trying for either a Great Scientist or a Great Engineer.

Meanwhile, another City just starts early on our Great Person #3 by hiring 2 Scientist Specialists. If it is beating the first City, then it can temporarily fire the Specialists until the first City generates its next Great Person, then can go back to working 2 Scientist Specialists.

In this way, we make the bottleneck of getting our 3rd Great Person go from needing 450 GPP, since our second City will be close to 300 GPP (say, at 280 GPP) when our 2nd Great Person is born, making the third Great Person come out after only a little bit more time than our 1st Great Person took to generate, since we're then looking at 450 - 280 GPP = 170 GPP, which is just a bit higher than the cost of Great Person #1 (150 GPP).

Following this approach, the key is to get TWO Cities outside of the capital hiring Scientist Specialists ASAP. As soon as the second City hires 2 Scientist Specialists, then we only have 450 / 6 = 75 turns to wait until we get our 3 Great People, since the City that generates Great People #1 and #2 can optionally hire 3 Specialists and by definition of being the first City, the first City will have already started on GPP-generation, which is why it takes 75 turns from getting the second Great Person Farm started on hiring 2 Scientists.

Our first bottleneck in this scenario comes with Great Person #1, in that the second City (the one that will generate our 3rd Great Person) has to wait for the first City to generate Great Person #1 before the second City can "pass" the 150 GPP mark. This situation, as I alluded to above, translates into us getting the two Great People Farms going around the same time as each other... starting one of them early on is not required for this scenario, since we'll still have to wait for the second City to get started before we can start the "75 turn countdown."


If we don't try to get (or fail to get) Machinery via The Oracle, which Great Person strategy is better: Great People #1 and #3 from the same City versus Great People #1 and #2 from the same City?
Starting on a single Great Person early is required for the first scenario, since you will required 150 + 450 = 600 total GPP from a single City.

For the second scenario, the sooner that you can get to working on 2 Great People simultaneously, the better, so that both Cities can pass the "150 GPP" mark as quickly as possible.


So, which approach is "better" will probably depend upon how quickly we can get a second Great Person Farm up and running.


Possible Early Great People Farms
Gold is definitely one location.

Magical Fish + Pig looks okay, but requires us to pick up Animal Husbandry, which we won't be doing early on.

2 Clams + PH could actually work out well, in that we won't need a Monument but will just need another City to build us 2 Work Boats.

 

[mdy]

What tech path and city path? And do you explore both east and west with wbs starting now, or not?

writing-mysticism-masonry-meditation-priestood-metal casting. 2 workboats were assigned to permanent exploration duty.

Finally, we'd only need 2 Great Scientists, in order to Lightbulb Astronomy. The Oracle could be built in the capital, while our two non-capital Great Person Farm Cities could generate a single Great Scientist each.

I was hoping we could Oracle machinery, and lightbulb philosophy, optics and astronomy as well as found an academy in the capital to speed other research up. This is highly ambitious, but I recon it could be done with a 30T period of CS+pacifism, and would be the fastest way to astro+CS. It would however require us to use both the capital and the gold as GP farms.

 

[LowtherCastle]

mdy, what cities did you build?

My first try was 950BC but I got the GS in Paris before Oracle (~1100BC), so gene pool contamination isn't a serious issue, if we don't use Paris for another one. I saved the GS and could easily improve on that.

I settled Gold-Furs-Marble.

Researched: writing-hunting-mysticism-masonry-polytheism-priesthood-metal casting

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I was hoping we could Oracle machinery, and lightbulb philosophy, optics and astronomy as well as found an academy in the capital to speed other research up. This is highly ambitious

Wow, you set very high standards. I'm glad that you're not my boss!

What "other research" would there be left for an Academy to help boost? Currency and Civil Service?

You might even be better off trying to generate a Great Merchant under this scenario, skipping an Academy and Lightbulbing most of Civil Service.

but I recon it could be done with a 30T period of CS+pacifism,

If you're self-teching Metal Casting, when do you plan to fit in Meditation and Code of Laws for a Philosophy Lightbulb? You might want Alphabet and possibly even Currency before then, too... so how many turns would it take before we could start this 30-turn GPP-spam run?

We can't leave Meditation until the last minute unless we also research or trade for Monotheism... we'll need SOME way (Monasteries or Organized Religion) to spread Taoism around, in order to get the Pacifism bonus in the correct Cities. You can guarantee that the capital won't found the Religion, while you'd have to be very lucky for it to appear in the Gold City and thus couldn't rely on this luck.

Also, with self-teching Metal Casting, it's doubtful that we'll found Confucianism, so we'll have to rely on Taoism if we want Pacifism's bonus.

It would however require us to use both the capital and the gold as GP farms.

If we are waiting this long to generate the majority of our GPP, and if you are only planning on using 2 Cities to generate Great People, why does the capital need to be a contributor? Magical Fish + Pig can get us between 5 to 7 Specialists per turn.

Even a 2 Clam City could get us 4 Specialists, where 4 * 6 GPP (GPP under Pacifism) = 24 GPP / turn * 30 turns = 720 GPP...

Note that our 5th Great Person will cost us 750 GPP and earlier ones would cost less GPP.

and would be the fastest way to astro+CS

Actually, a faster way might be to use The Oracle on Astronomy.

Joking aside, that's quite an aggressive plan... if we miss The Oracle, would you still pursue this approach?


Oracling Philosophy?
Another thought: if we're going to be super-aggressive with our Great People expectations, why use Oracle on Machinery, a tech that we won't really have any use for? Instead, why not self-tech Meditation and Code of Laws and then use The Oracle on Philosophy?

We'd then have 2 free Missionaries and 2 chances for a Religion to appear in the "correct" City... if Confucianism is founded in the "correct" City, then we can use the free Missionary in the other "correct" City. If Confucianism is founded in the "wrong" City, then we can use the free Missionary in another "wrong" City, greatly increasing our chances of Pacifism being founded in one of the "correct" Cities.

 

[mdy]

If we are waiting this long to generate the majority of our GPP, and if you are only planning on using 2 Cities to generate Great People, why does the capital need to be a contributor? Magical Fish + Pig can get us between 5 to 7 Specialists per turn.

We would need to use magical fish as well if we wanted all these GP's.

Also, with self-teching Metal Casting, it's doubtful that we'll found Confucianism, so we'll have to rely on Taoism if we want Pacifism's bonus.

Avoiding confunicism would probably be a good thing as with only 1 religion we should hopefully be able to rely on natural religion spread+the free missionary to spread our religion (with a monastry as a backup). Meditation would be reserached on the way to priestood, and COL would be researched directly after metal casting, allowing philosophy to be bulbed with our first GS if we wanted it in a reasonable time.

If an acadmey was built it would have to be with the second GS, which should be in time to tech CS/Engineering/compass, and maybe construction/currency/ironworking/calendar depending on the AI's. Whether on not it is worth it depends how long it takes to generate the GS compared to the time it takes to research all the other techs which is probably very difficult to estimate at the moment.

Actually, a faster way might be to use The Oracle on Astronomy.

Joking aside, that's quite an aggressive plan... if we miss The Oracle, would you still pursue this approach?

Sadly, the chances of the AI leaving the Oracle unbuilt for that long are almost 0. If we missed the Oracle and wanted an early astro then getting a lot of GS's would be even more important to make up for the extra beakers we had to research.

Of course there would be a cost to this. The opportunities for an early war would be restricted, and we would also have to slow down our expansion as we would be in CS for a while. We probably can't tell what would be best at this stage, but I do think that we should keep open the possibility of running a very aggressive GS strategy-which means avoiding building the Oracle in the capital if at all possible.

Oracling Philosophy?
Another thought: if we're going to be super-aggressive with our Great People expectations, why use Oracle on Machinery, a tech that we won't really have any use for? Instead, why not self-tech Meditation and Code of Laws and then use The Oracle on Philosophy?

We'd then have 2 free Missionaries and 2 chances for a Religion to appear in the "correct" City... if Confucianism is founded in the "correct" City, then we can use the free Missionary in the other "correct" City. If Confucianism is founded in the "wrong" City, then we can use the free Missionary in another "wrong" City, greatly increasing our chances of Pacifism being founded in one of the "correct" Cities.

That's a very interesting suggestion. It would allow a significantly earlier academy which would make up for a lot of the beakers we lost by not Oracling machinery. It would also give us the flexibility of adopting CS/pacifism earlier or taking advantage of the one fewer GS we would need to stay in slavery for longer. We should also be able to accomplish this quicker than a machinery slingshot. I'm not sure which would be better.

I've attached the 1025BC machinery test, though the MM was fairly sloppy so we could probably shave a turn or two of this date.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

We would need to use magical fish as well if we wanted all these GP's.

Oops, yes, my mistake.

Without the second Magical Fish, it's only 5 Specialists, which, under Pacifism, is still 5 * 6 = 30 GPP / turn * 30 turns = 900 GPP... enough for, say, Great Person 2 and Great Person 4 (300 GPP + 600 GPP).

I think that we'd need 3 Great Person Farms if we were to aim to get 4 Great People during this 30 turn run, although as shown above, we'd only be missing Great Person 3 and Great Person 5, so the 3rd Great Person wouldn't require the full 30 turns or else could be done for 30 turns but with a small number of Specialists (450 GPP / 30 turns = 15 GPP / turn = achievable with only 3 Specialists).

It would allow a significantly earlier academy which would make up for a lot of the beakers we lost by not Oracling machinery.

As for Oracling Philosophy, yes, we could then almost certainly use our first Great Scientist on an Academy. Missing The Oracle would simply mean giving up the early Academy and using our first Great Scientist to Lightbulb Philosophy.

I mean, if we were just planning on Oracling Machinery because "it is more Flasks," then there is less usefulness to it. If we were instead doing it because of something that Machinery unlocks, then there'd be a stronger case for taking Machinery.

It is arguable that by trying to use the Oracle on Machinery that we'd "force" ourselves to get an early Metal Casting, which would give us early Forges and (really junky) early Workshops... although it also means that we'd probably waste the Copper by settling on it because we'd be tempted to go for an early Colossus.

However, let's say that we managed to use the Oracle on Philosophy.

Then, following your plan, we'd still aim to get 4 Great People for Lightbulbing... which means that one City could feasibly try for a Great Engineer for Machinery (we don't want to try for one in two Cities at the same time and accidentally get 2 Great Engineers).

The other City could feasibly try for a Great Merchant... say, if we wanted to whip a Market in Gold City in order to increase its Happiness cap along with the Fur... while getting a Great Merchant would not be ideal, it wouldn't hurt, either, as we'd use it on Civil Service and would then just have to manually research one of Optics or Machinery.

It is potentially possible for us to skip Caste System but still run Pacifism this way.

If we're going to commit to Caste System, though, we might as well just run 100% Scientist Specialists.


EDIT: One advantage of early Pacifism is that we can run that Civic for a long period of time, so we wouldn't necessarily have to focus our GPP production into a 30-turn period.

Since there are no plans to run Organized Religion or Theocracy, it's not like we'd be running a different Religious Civic.

Pacifism is cheaper than Paganism on paper.

I am curious about unit costs under Pacifism, though... do we pay extra Gold for EVERY Military Unit or only for Military Units above-and-beyond the "free" units... you know, above-and-beyond the "free" units that we do not have to pay Unit Cost upkeep for?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Barbs
One thing that I keep forgetting to discuss is the possibility of Barb Warriors on the islands that we want to settle on.


For example, we are 100% certain that we want City #2 by the Gold. Perhaps the best use for the Work Boat that will net the Gold's Magical Fish is to simply stay near the Gold island and spawn-bust it. How horrible would it be for a Barb Warrior to have spawned on that island on one of the the turns before our Settler is about to land?


Bigger islands, like the Stone island and the Desert + Silk island (i.e. the 2-Clam location) are possibly more dangerous, since there will still be unfogged squares after settling. "Granary first" may be ideal in many cases, but not in the case where a Barb Warrior wanders up and razes our City! :O

 

[LowtherCastle]

You can guarantee that the capital won't found the Religion, while you'd have to be very lucky for it to appear in the Gold City and thus couldn't rely on this luck.

No. The odds would be fairly high that Taoism would be founded in Gold City. The formula is:

[10 + pop + Rand(0,9)]/(1+NumRelig)/8(for capital)​

Gold would be pop5 or pop6, thus have a much higher likelihood than either Marble or Furs. Furthermore, Gold would win in case of a tie, having been settled earlier.

Barbs
One thing that I keep forgetting to discuss is the possibility of Barb Warriors on the islands that we want to settle on.

Barbs and barb cities don't spawn on islands so small. I forget what the minimum number of tiles is (klarius talked about it in SG5).

 

[babybluepants]

It needs to be somewhere in the order of 30+ tiles for barb spawn, IIRC. We could have a lot of trouble w galleys here, though. How early do they show up on Emp?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Well, I have yet to find a specific point about island size for Barb-unit-spawning in the Murky Waters' SGOTM 5 thread, but here are some Barb-related tidbits of information that I found there:

There is only maximum one barb city generated per turn. Other than that it's the (in)famous RNG.
There is a 7% (monarch) probability check to generate a barb city or not, it has nothing to do with how long it was that the last city was founded (it can succeed 1 turn later 100 turns or even never).
Then the game checks if there is a tile available to found a city by going through all tiles and checking various conditions like unowned tiles in area (110 per city on monarch), visibility to civ teams, distance to cities.

After the human barbs appear it takes several turns until they get their full strength. After that only losses are replaced. The animals are killed independently of that.
The game generates a number of needed barbs per area (unowned tiles in this area divided by 20). Then the number of existing barbs in this area is subtracted. If this number is bigger than 1 the game tries to generate 1/4 of this number +1 units. So e.g. if there are 10 units needed the game will create 3, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1 units in consecutive turns.
The units are created on random tiles with certain restrictions (distance to cities and visibility) if there are any such tiles. If no tiles are available (the whole area fogbusted) the barbs are out of luck.

By my calculations our island has only 79 tiles. Does this mean a barb city will not spawn on our island?

Yessssssss

It's not guaranteed that the human barb appearance is that late. The minimum is still 37 turns not the 43-45 we experience. It just needs better starting positions for the AI so they get their first settlers out earlier.

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We could have a lot of trouble w galleys here, though. How early do they show up on Emp?

I'm not certain, but my guess is that they can feasibly appear at the same time that human Barbs appear, since I did not see a separate entry in CIV4HandicapInfo.xml for Barb boats' initial spawning date. The number of squares on which such a boat could spawn, though, probably has the biggest impact on their spawning rate. Here is the Barb-related info from CIV4HandicapInfo.xml for Emperor-level Difficulty. Note that some values, likely those that are related to turn-numbers, will be multiplied by 1.5 for Epic Game Speed.

CIV4HandicapInfo.xml

<Type>HANDICAP_EMPEROR</Type>
<iFreeWinsVsBarbs>0</iFreeWinsVsBarbs>
<iAnimalAttackProb>90</iAnimalAttackProb>
<iUnownedTilesPerBarbarianUnit>35</iUnownedTilesPerBarbarianUnit>
<iUnownedWaterTilesPerBarbarianUnit>[B]350[/B]</iUnownedWaterTilesPerBarbarianUnit>
<iUnownedTilesPerBarbarianCity>100</iUnownedTilesPerBarbarianCity>
<iBarbarianCreationTurnsElapsed>20</iBarbarianCreationTurnsElapsed>
<iBarbarianCityCreationTurnsElapsed>25</iBarbarianCityCreationTurnsElapsed>
<iBarbarianCityCreationProb>7</iBarbarianCityCreationProb>
<iAnimalBonus>-10</iAnimalBonus>
<iBarbarianBonus>0</iBarbarianBonus>
<iAIAnimalBonus>-40</iAIAnimalBonus>
<iAIBarbarianBonus>-25</iAIBarbarianBonus>
<iBarbarianDefenders>3</iBarbarianDefenders>

Note that the following values are different in Vanilla (the other values from above set of values appear to be identical). In particular, note how Barb Galleys will spawn a lot less in Vanilla. Also, AIs get a much smaller bonus against Barb units in BTS.

<iUnownedWaterTilesPerBarbarianUnit>1400</iUnownedWaterTilesPerBarbarianUnit>
<iAIAnimalBonus>-70</iAIAnimalBonus>
<iAIBarbarianBonus>-40</iAIBarbarianBonus>

Here are some interesting quotes that I have found on the forums in regards to Barb Galleys. Although I have yet to find a message with an explanation of how to figure out when Barb Galleys start appearing on Emperor-level Difficulty, chances are that DanF5771 wrote a message about the topic somewhere on the forums, though I have yet to uncover said message.

Stopping pre-BTS galleys is easy because the triremes were (properly) available with bronze working rather than metal casting. The programmers probably just thought it would be fun to personally screw BTS players by a) moving triremes to Metal Casting, an expensive, low priority tech for early economies that isn't a logical requirement for all kinds of triremes and b) quadrupling (yes, seriously) the spawn rate as of BTS 3.17.

Those moves combined were completely asinine. High level or slow speed play makes barb galleys cost a fortune just to beat, the only way to beat them in high level BTS 3.17 or 3.19 is to either prioritize a really crappy tech to get early (MC), burn oracle on it (that's a little better), or know and abuse the CRAP out of barb spawn mechanics and the range barb galleys can detect seafood.

However, I don't think I'm alone in the opinion that players should not have to rely on hidden game rules in order to cost-effectively stop one kind of barbarian. Land barbs can't even come close to the cost that barb galleys place on players who don't know the spawn mechanics inside and out.

I agree colossus can be quite good on maps with heavy coastal sites, the problem is going MC on a lot of maps keeps low an awfully long time, or you get it too late to make a serious push at stopping barb galleys.

One bright thing is that because MC is somewhat slow, getting it quickly (like oracle) on the AI means you can opt to blockade them. If they have only coastal cities, that's pretty rough for them to break.

Use warriors and culture to block their spawns and wall them so they can't enter your borders, respectively. The proper counter to barb galleys is not naval military units (not hammer efficient at all during the time where they're a threat), but rather warriors, work boats, and cities . Sounds like a joke, but it isn't. Or maybe it is, but fireaxis took it seriously!

It depends on the landmass. A few sentry chariots go a LONG ways for barb galley busting duty. The biggest thing is that it makes the oracle MC shot so inordinately powerful. Even two gallies parked on the shore don't result in you keeping out the barb boats. Triremes, however feed off the suckers like nothing else. A fast tech up to priesthood and pottery works wonders. Of late I have found the Oracle, Colossus, and TGL make for an incredibly powerful start if you can nab all three.

Re: galleys vs. galleys, I don't mind that arrangement so much. 2.0 tends to lose against 2.2 (coastal bonus - so never attack barb galleys, always let them attack you), and even if it doesn't, that's why you have your second galley around to finish off the wounded barb galley before its next turn comes around, so it's still unpromoted.

Just for reference, the second instance I think the galley showed up c.1800 B.C. on Monarch. I tend to agree that getting a couple galley defenders out early is the key here. I guess its just an adjustment to the strategy of coastal starts. Although on the positive side, this would have decent synergy with a run at the GLh. With Metal Casting, its always a decent tech its just getting Currency and CoL at that time is much more important. I often get Metal Casting in a trade while sticking to the top half of the tech tree.

marathon, immortal, isolated start(didn't bother fog busting as I gave myself 2 missile cruisers) - till settling up everything I killed 78+ galleys(understandably, at a certain point I just got bored of counting, might be near double, but again, don't know)

given a galley with coast it's 2.2 while defending, you have 67% of winning the combat; at 100 galleys, you'll probably lose 33% of the time. Let's say some get to c1, which would improve the odds for surviving, you'd still probably need over 20 galleys. Beelining mc obviously ain't worth it either as you probably have many other higher priorities in an isolated start.

Obviously, the correct answer is to fogbust ahead with some land units; however, you might waste up to 6 and 1 gpt for supplying the units if you have no hills to sit on in order to fogbust more then 1 tile. All that because the implementation of naval combat is so poor and all you depend on is a crappy 10% defence bonus.

For most combatant ships, the best promo is going to be combat all the way.

For most noncombatant ships, flanking followed by nav (sentry if you end up with the uber promoted transport from killing wooden boats) is best.

For oil combatants vs wooden navies, combat -> blitz.

For privateers/frigats/SoL vs mass carvels - drill.

For dealing with barbs you should either spawn bust or train with any boat (even a fishing boat). If you stay exactly one move ahead of a barb galley you can train the galley into an AI with OB and let them deal with it. That being said, I often try to leave some galley spawning grounds if I'm not going to unlock the HE on land; this is only for cases where I get MC and lit in a reasonable timeframe and where my unit costs are going to be a significant amount of hammers (e.g. no avoid hunting/engineering games so I can build warriors until I need chemistry). Drill can be useful here as you get a better XP return per risk adjusted combat.

Ha...I've lost quite a few Caravels (defending - not attacking) to barb galleys too.

Yeah, spawnbusting works nicely although occasionally there a map situations that don't prevent them 100%

Combat promos definitely. I do like getting a sentry Caravel though.

Anyhow, it seems the only way to really counter the new barb galleys on deity is MC gambit. This is not always possible, so as you mentioned it seems to almost break the higher levels. As soon as you get your workboats out (which is supposed to be optimal), you are stuck re-building them and trying to get galleys out to replace the ones you're losing trying to defend.

I did some digging in the older posts. Turns out non-animal barbs spawn when the number of non-barb cities on the entire map >= 2n where n is the number of civilizations. I miss-remembered that as being restricted to the individual land masses.

turn 35 or later on normal speed. I may be off on the turn limit for the trigger, if anything it is slightly sooner; turn 32 or maybe even 25 (this seems really early).

The turn limit varies by difficulty. It's iBarbarianCreationTurnsElapsed in CIV4HandicapInfo.xml. 50 on Settler, 10 on Deity, increments of 5 for each step inbetween. Noble is 35. It is also modified by game speed.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Okay, I found the relevant message about Barb-spawning, including for Galleys, from DanF5771. Actually, it's a whole series of useful messages where some of the info overlaps Galley-spawning and other info deals with other aspects of Barbs. Rather than trying to quote what he wrote, parts of which are direct responses to questions that others asked, I suggest that you just simply read the relevant thread.


EDIT: If you are lazy or busy, just skip to this message in that thread, which encapsulates most of, but not all of, the Galley-related info.

 

[LowtherCastle]

FINAL EDIT: Barb galleys aren't likely to spawn till well after 1000BC.

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Good stuff, Dhoom. So we can deduce the following:

1. A max of 9 barb galleys will spawn. TRUNC[(84*52-933)/350]=9. This will drop to 8 when there are only 3149 unowned water tiles, 7 at 2799, etc.

2. It will take them 5t to reach full strength. T1=3; T2=2; T3=2; T4=1; T5=1

Spoiler :

The formula is:
T1
1. iNeeded = (unowned water tiles / iUnownedWaterTilesPerBarbarianUnit) - existing barbs = TRUNC[(84*52-933)/350] - 0 = 9
2. iNeeded = (9/4)+1 = 3
T2
Rinse and repeat. This gives:

T1 -- 3 barb galleys
T2 -- 3 + 2 barb galleys
T3 -- 5 + 2 barb galleys
T4 -- 7 + 1 barb galleys
T5 -- 8 + 1 barb galleys
Then replaced as needed, max 3 per turn.

EDITED
3. If bbp is correct, TotCities is currently 7+3=10, which is not greater than or equal to (3/2)*7 = 10. Hence, this condition was met on T67, when the third AI settled a second city.
4. The barbs probably have Sailing already, so barb galleys will start spawning after the next city is settled. Even if VIcky is the only AI to have researched Sailing, the barbs will know Sailing by T73 at the latest. WRONG. Barbs won't have Sailing till 1000BC-250BC most likely.
5. Barbs galleys will be an immediate threat to our exploring wbs, but will not threaten to pillage our nets for 20t, unless they happen to wander next to them.
6. Barb galleys will not spawn within 2 tiles of themselves, so once we have REXed our area, we could theoretically protect ourselves by strategically placing fogbusters just beyond their 7-tile radar or having a barb galley chase a wb around and around a 2-tile island.

Conclusions
1. Writing asap is good to hopefully get our exploring wbs into realatively safe AI waters asap.
2. We should carefully monitor the demo screen until we see another AI city built or we build Gold, whichever comes firstBarb galleys began/will begin spawning between T67-T73 and be in full force on T78 at the latest..
3. The Elba Islands will be fraught with barb danger. After the AIs have owned their coastal waters, those barb galleys might only spawn around us... ...depending on the map.
4. The faster we REX, the better.
5. The faster we defog and learn our waters the better, so our wbs will know about escape routes.
6. The MC slingshot looks a bit more attractive now. Machinery is also attractive, except it means slower REX.

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bbp, just out of curiosity, what were your calcs that convinced you that 3 AIs have built second cities? I had a bit of trouble getting all the numbers to match up, so I wasn't sure if there were 2 or 3 new cities.