SGOTM 13 - One Short Straw

[Dhoomstriker]

Would we have to send the Work Boat 1SE of here in order to open up a path to Vicky for future Foreign Trade Routes? Or would we instead have had to have cleared a path around to the SW side of her City, since it looks like this northern part of her Cultural borders will not give her Coastal access and thus is useless for us to reveal (other than to know if she has any further Resources there)?


Chances are that she'll settle the Silvers + Crab before we could get there, but with her having a decent capital and this Silver City being decent, she would make for a reasonable war target.


However, I think that people are going to push for capturing The Great Lighthouse as our first war target, right?

Even if we do not need to research many more techs by the time that we are prepared to go conquesting, the extra Gold from having The Great Lighthouse could allow us to keep a lot more Cities, giving us more production power (by razing less Cities and thus Chopping/whipping more in captured Cities). It might also allow the possibility for Domination instead of purely Conquest.


Anyway, it sounds like things are going well!

 

[LowtherCastle]

We are already connected to a trade network with Vicky. It's enough for us to see culture connected to her capital. We just need open borders. We're also connected to a trade network with Cathy, as of T86.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

We are already connected to a trade network with Vicky. It's enough for us to see culture connected to her capital. We just need open borders. We're also connected to a trade network with Cathy, as of T86.

Sounds good. Feel free to explore/not explore wherever you see fit to do so.


Let's hope that Vicky goes for Writing next (or Iron Working or something that we can trade for, instead of a Priesthood beeline).

Let's hope that Cathy DOES NOT go for Writing next... the longer that she does not Open Borders, the better off we will be. My favourite Archipelago game was an XOTM game as Napoleon where an AI that was isolated pre-Astronomy built The Great Lighthouse and only had 2 Cities. It was a great disappointment to have missed building the Wonder in that game, but it was a great relief to find out that the AI who had built it got zero early-game benefit from it (beyond the Great Merchant GPP).

 

[Dhoomstriker]

2silver+crabs+magicalfish+fish!!!

Haha, very nice! Chances are that Vicky will settle on one of the Silvers and thereby mess up your dot map.

Cathy researches BW. Revolts to slavery.

Now that I think about it, you've got to love how AIs will not wait until they get a second early-game Civic to save on Anarchy... once they learn Bronze Working, BAM, it's directly into Slavery.

VIcky builds City #2 somewhere

Not on the Super-Silver City site, though. You'd have seen her Settler had she went there, am I right?

Cathy has fish+clams+cows. Will trade cows for corn or gold.

Well, we need the +2 Health from our Corn and we need the Happiness from our Gold, so I guess that she is out of luck.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I played to T96, starting to research Writing. Turnset write-up is here.

Good chance we'll circumnavigate soon. AIs not REXing very fast. Willem has Iron Working. Lots of fish on this map.

I don't think VIcky settled the silver yet, no.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Good chance we'll circumnavigate soon. AIs not REXing very fast.

Both items are very good news.

Willem has Iron Working.

Well, that's not too bad since we'll want Iron Working in trade (even if means that some AIs get Metals connected) for a faster Astronomy and so that we'll be able to work our Copper without settling directly on top of it.

We can't really expect to be only facing Archers when we attack and if any AI gets as far as Feudalism, I'd rather face Swordsmen and Axemen than I would a stack of pure Longbowmen.

Lots of fish on this map.

Well, I guess that makes it all that much harder to trade our Seafood Resources for any other Resources.

Our second Fur will probably be one of the first Resources (except for maybe Fish to Willem) that we'll be able to trade away without using up our only copy of it.



Are you planning on updating the test game or did you upload the real game in the hopes that I would update the test game?

 

[shyuhe]

Nice, circumnavigation will definitely speed things up if we can pick it up.

Is it at all worth considering an axe rush on Vicky? If we can get circumnavigation, she's not super far from us. Although swords may actually be better than axes since she'll likely have archers and (hopefully) not many axes. Just a thought as an alternative to the pyramids.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Nice, circumnavigation will definitely speed things up if we can pick it up.

Well, we'd be able to net each Seafood an average of 1 turn sooner, making our delay of getting a Work Boat to Marble City slightly less painful.


Another thought... I have no idea of how to figure out Flask overflow until after I spend one turn of research on the next tech.

If it is possible to figure out using the "subtract Culture and Espionage" trick to figure out overflow Flasks, great, then we can do so. If not, then since we know that we're going to run 0% Science on the first turn of learning Writing, then the game could feasibly be advanced one more turn by LC, just to see exactly how many Flasks we will have, so that a test game can duplicate the result and we can figure out how best to research our way towards the completion of Writing.


I don't mind updating the test game, but I'll assume that LC will do it unless he asks me to do so.

 

[babybluepants]

Great work, LC!

Man, playing this map with GLH would be too much fun.

Is that Viking borders SE of Utrecht?

We see 66 tiles by my count, so 18 more for circumnav. It def seems very possible now. We should beeline it, as the +1 movement helps even just with WBs and ferrying settlers/workers.

None of the AIs have copper yet. We should keep an eye on it. Doubt Vicky is reachable by axe. It's still pretty far, even with +1 movement. Wish we knew where Cathy is. She only has one size 4 city with GLH. Seems quite gimped. Perhaps only 5-6 axes could do the job? But we'd need to have intel well ahead of time.

Edit: xpost w Dhoom

 

[babybluepants]

Does Vicky's home island have only crap grass? It seems resource and forest poor to me from what's visible. She's taking forever to expand for an IMP leader. There's no land connect to the marble island (W of her) and the sheep/incense island (E), correct?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

So, what could cause your Power and Score to dramatically rise over the course of one turn? That's what the Plastic Ducks seem to have done from Turn 109, 1275 BC to Turn 110, 1250 BC.

Specifically, their Score went from 156 to 199 and their Power spiked up, too. It doesn't look like their Culture changed at all over the course of that turn.

Could they have beelined Alphabet and started trading? If their AIs' tech levels are anything like they are in our game, then it's not necessarily all that strong of a move.

 

[babybluepants]

Hard to say... Oracle Currency via Alpha and trade for something small with a soldier rating (such as AH)? Wouldn't get culture yet if it was this turn. The score spike equals 16 (wonder) + 24 (tech) + loose points for land or something. The power spike is 1k short of IW, so not trading for that. Nothing off the top of my head fits perfectly.

 

[LowtherCastle]

They could have traded for IW and poprushed their power down. More likely, in my mind, is that they slingshotted Machinery = 12 power (MC+Mach) and poprushed down to 9 power. And to do that they probably beelined Sailing and settled gold early... That's the worst-case scenario anyway.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

slingshotted Machinery = 12 power (MC+Mach) and poprushed down to 9 power. And to do that they probably beelined Sailing and settled gold early... That's the worst-case scenario anyway.

And so what? That's not much of a worst case scenario, unless you honestly think that it's worth rushing with Crossbowmen.

They're still going to have to wait on researching Iron Working or Alphabet... even if they decide to settle on the Copper, Crossbowmen require Iron.

Earlier Metal Casting for us gets us an early Forge in Paris while allowing us to direct our manual research elsewhere.

Chances are that they're going to be stuck with a 2-Great-Scientist approach. Yes, they might then later in the game get an extra Golden Age, but we'll be aiming to get our Great People efficiently.


If nothing else, it gives us more confidence in our Oracle date.

 

[babybluepants]

Wheel + Mining + Sailing + BW = 16k
2 Warriors + 2 Galleys (assumption) = 8k
Population = 4-6k (8-13 Pop)
Total = 28-30k
Missing = 5-7k

Hard to imagine them having MC+Machinery (12k) or IW (10k). That would mean they don't have more than 1 warrior, 1 galley and 7 Pop (seems impossible - they must have 4-5 cities already). Could be Alphabet & AH, with 10-11 Pop.

Also, poprushing power down by 3k means 5-6 Pop. That also brings the score down, and they got a substantial spike in 1t.

 

[babybluepants]

What's the plan now? Are you just continuing to Oracle, LC?

 

[LowtherCastle]

What's the plan now? Are you just continuing to Oracle, LC?

I could do that today or turn things over to someone else if there's going to be discussion.

 

[Mitchum]

I could do that today or turn things over to someone else if there's going to be discussion.

I think you should play it, LC, since you've done a large part of the testing. If I understand the situation, Dhoomstriker is going to check to see if there is a way to optimize the science slider to get Writing ASAP. Other than that, I don't think any other discussion has to occur.... right?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I think you should play it, LC, since you've done a large part of the testing. If I understand the situation, Dhoomstriker is going to check to see if there is a way to optimize the science slider to get Writing ASAP. Other than that, I don't think any other discussion has to occur.... right?

Which I'm not going to do unless I:
1. See an updated test game
OR
2. Get asked to update the test game and do it myself

Then, I'll need to see one of the following happen:
A) Get told that using the "subtract the Culture and Espionage values" will actually be able to tell you how many overflow Flasks you have... I'm still a newb at this technique so I don't want to guess wrong and mess it up
OR
B) If you can't figure out how many overflow Flasks we have using that tactic, then I'll wait for LC to play 1 more turn with Writing at a 0% Science Slider rate and then tell me how many Flasks we have after playing that 1 turn


There's probably not too much optimization that I feasibly could do, but I'll take a look anyway if the above happens. Otherwise, we can just "fudge it" by running Binary Science and then non-Binary-Science on the last turn of researching Writing. I'd also be happy with this option, which would mean that LC does not have to wait for me in order to play forwards.


One minor additional advantage to fulfilling the above requirements for me to look at any possible Science Slider optimizaiton is that I would also volunteer to play out the updated test game just to ensure that we aren't missing anything important from the PPP spreadsheet... it's happened a few times now that we've missed something here or there in the spreadsheet or have even had outdated items still sticking around in there, both of which I would check for if the above conditions get fulfilled.

 

[babybluepants]

I'm ok with you playing on today, LC. I think we should just finish the Oracle. The only thing we might do differently is consider an axe rush on Vicky, though I suspect we won't be pursuing that and we can't settle copper pre-Oracle anyway. Right?

We're aiming for circumnavigation asap with the explorers? Meeting Vikings and locating Moscow would be good, too. What would it take to get another WB out soonish? It's probably too much, assuming our WBs can meet around T+10 and then go fill in the blanks at 3 movement points.