SGOTM 13 - One Short Straw

[Mitchum]

More bad news for the gift plan:

Looking at past saves Ragnar is cautious with -1 visible, and cautious at 0 modifiers, indicating he has a hidden modifier of -2 overall, so we would need the maximum +4 fair trade bonus for the gift plan to work.

The way I read it, if we had a hidden modifier of -2, Ragnar would have been Annoyed with us at -1 (-1 - 2 = -3 => Annoyed). To know the hidden modifier, we have to know at which point he went from Annoyed to Cautious, right?

 

[shyuhe]

I found a screenshot where Ragnar was annoyed at -1 (post 1463). So that means the hidden modifier (including the 1 point from scoreboard position) fluctuates between -2 and -3. We are currently in the upper half of the board and Ragnar is in the bottom half so we're getting the -3 hidden modifier right now (-2 base plus -1 because we're "leading"). That means right now, we're at +1-3 or effectively -2. So no, we cannot reach pleased by giving Ragnar +4 in fair trade. So let's go with the war declaration plan.

edit: Ignore the above. I did my math wrong: it fluctuates between -1 and -2 right now (because of the score board position modifier). So If we get the full +4 in trade, Ragnar will be pleased. If we get +3 AND put Ragnar in the upper half of the score board, he should also be pleased.

We should NOT give Ragnar gold though - we don't have enough cash to push Ragnar from +3 to +4. We should just give him a more expensive tech.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

We should NOT give Ragnar gold though - we don't have enough cash to push Ragnar from +3 to +4. We should just give him a more expensive tech.

My test game said that the value is at most 60 Gold (and very likely less). I wasn't very accurate with this calculation since I wasn't really certain that mdy would be willing to make tedious increments of 1 Gold per turn. If he is, then it can certainly be smaller than this amount, since I was being really lazy and went in increments of 20 Gold per turn. Hey, it was a test game, not the real thing!


With us asking for 50 of it back, that's at most a cost of 10 Gold to avoid a war, and less if mdy goes up by increments of 1 Gold after a certain point (say, after 20 Gold).


How is "10 Gold" = "too much"?


Isn't a far greater cost getting Ragnar up to Hereditary Rule in no time at all?
Multiple implications exist by giving him Mysticism:
1. He re-enters the trading game shortly after self-teching a couple of cheap Religious techs, which he will almost certainly beeline as his next tech selection, due to their relatively cheapness making the "cost" of Hereditary Rule (plus these now-cheap "on the way techs") be a really small relative cost compared to the gain that Ragnar would get--and these points factor into the AI tech decisions--cost versus gain
2. He gets his Favourite Civic and will switch to it immediately, meaning that his Cities will grow quickly and he'll be able to expand faster
3. That will be yet one more AI at risk of learning Feudalism
4. It will also be yet one more AI at risk of trading around Feudalism (since he'll be back in the trading game)
5. THREE AIs have Hereditary Rule as their Favourite Civic. If you tried out my latest test games with Cathy, you'd see that Cathy was able to BRIBE both Ragnar and Bismarck into war with us. This situation will start happening a lot if we let too many of the Hereditary-Rule-loving AIs get into that Civic and start a love-fest with each other. I don't know about you, but I'd rather fight the AIs one-at-a-time, on our terms. Every AI that declares war on us prematurely will have a premature unit-build-up period, which means that we'll face far more City defenders

That's a HECK of a lot of cost and it comes just from giving Ragnar Mysticism, since having Mysticism puts him "within teching sight" of Hereditary Rule. For now, "Hereditary Rule" is as much of a mystery to Ragnar as is "Future Tech 1." But, let him be 3 techs away from it by learning Mysticism (a tech for which he has a "0" listed as a chance for self-teching), and he'll all but certainly beeline Hereditary Rule, thus setting off the chain of points that I listed above.


If we need Gold, then we can get it from Cathy, which mdy already plans to do--more than double the amount of Gold that we're talking about.

We should just give him a more expensive tech.

Which tech? Currency, which is a tech that enables AI-AI Gold trading and has a low enough Monopoly threshold to be traded around quickly? Metal Casting, which gives him 3-movement-point Triremes?

What's the big deal about giving away less than 60 Gold in exchange for being able to get 50 Gold back? I don't see what the hesitation is here.

Since mdy already plans to get Cathy's Gold, we'll have more than enough Gold for our needs, and we're at most losing 10 Gold here.

 

[shyuhe]

I don't think Ragnar is going to go all the way up to +3 from an alphabet gift.

 

[Mitchum]

I don't think Ragnar is going to go all the way up to +3 from an alphabet gift.

I wouldn't have thought so either, but Dhoom was able to do so with a test game. Giving Ragnar Alphabet will change nothing in the tech trading game. We have nothing to lose if we try it, right?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

The "if" in this plan means you were willing to accept the possibility of two triemes being tied up before now. If this wasn't a problem then, why is it one now. In my plans I always assumed we would commit 2 triemes down there.

Not really at all.

The plan was to sail away with 1 Trireme and ONLY IF Ragnar returned on the following turn would we have considered needing 2 Triremes to block him.

In the small chance that we really needed 2 Triremes stationed there (which is a thought that I don't think most of us really believed--it was more of an exception case), then we would have had more flexibility, such as baiting him to attack or being able to risk making an attack while having the wounded unit be defended by the fully-healthy unit.

In the current situation, we don't have such flexibility--attacking with a Trireme might encourage a Galley to attack a wounded Trireme--and even if it wouldn't happen, the chance of a loss would break our block.


Plus, the difference was that Ragnar would have only had ONE DIRECTION to go in... around the south of his island... now, he'd be able to go in multiple directions, one of which may be to loop past Willem's land and to our NW. We don't know if there is a connection there, but there is a risk of one.

It is quite a different level of risk due to the fact that Ragnar can't be trapped behind a single Coast square.

This isn't going to happen. Jao looks like he is so far away the chances of him getting a force to us anytime soon look low, and even if he did it wouldn't matter because we would have plenty of early warning from the warrior/workers which are going to be dropped of on the horses island soon,

We honestly don't know where Joao is located. He could come from our NW. He could come from the north of Iron Island.

All that we know is that we saw his Work Boat arrive from the east of our area sometime late in the game. That Work Boat could have been exploring for 100 turns and have looped-around 3 times... we can't know and thus part of the issue with Joao is that we will have a hard time blocking what we can't see/don't know where to block.

and a single galley will be able to block Jao's entire stack.

Were you doing some testing that you didn't tell us about? This time is the first that I have heard of this possibility.

I can shift the Stone warrior to the north which would give us warning of a barb galley

If you have extra Warriors, and it's probably not a bad idea to make some (thus leaving the Iron unconnected for now), could we put a second Warrior of Fur Island (on the east side of that island), so that the Crab and our area north of Paris will be 100% spawn-busted?

By positioning our trieme on the pigs fish we will be able to intercept any barb galley before it can reach any of our fish with a trieme (except crabs if we net it), regardless of the direction it comes from, and without taking any risks with Jao.

Barb Galleys can be stopped from pillaging Seafood Resources, yes, but what stops Joao's Galley(s) from sailing next to one of our islands (such as Iron Island from the east or the north or Gold island from the NW) and landing troops? Blocking our Seafood from being pillaged is not the same thing as intercepting incoming Galley-loaded troops.

Ragnar won't have anything to trade with us, and WE NEED that gold to keep our research going, we can't afford to give away several hundred gold.

If we truly desperately needed 10 Gold, then I think that we'd be seeing screenshots of the F4 Resources and F4 Techs screens in this thread for every single turn, so that we could figure out the optimal times to try and get it. I don't see any evidence that supports this level of concern for Gold in our turnset.

How is Cathy's 140 Gold, now that we've put that option on the table, not more than this cost of 10 Gold?

As I said, if you really want to earn your SGOTM paycheck, pay Ragnar in increments of 1 Gold and we might only have to pay him 59, or 58, or 52, or whatever.

we can't afford to give away several hundred gold.

Okay, so don't give away several hundred Gold. Giving away 60 Gold or less in 10-Gold increments does not equal "several hundred."

Giving away 60 gold or less in 1-Gold increments, somewhere after, say, 20 or 30 Gold, would save you more, but I am not going to ask you to perform that level of micro. You'll have to volunteer to do it yourself. But 10-Gold increments I think that we can all accept as being a reasonable thing to do, particularly since I gave you interface-based shortcut instructions about how to do so efficiently using the Up Arrow button.

Bottom Line: I think we are fine with the trieme block plan,

It is currently out backup plan, no one said that it is off of the table, but everyone else seems to believe that it is not the primary plan.

and can't see any reason to needlessly strengthen Ragnar and jepodise our research position.

I agree that we do not need to needlessly strengthen Ragnar, and I say that if we gift Alphabet + increments of Gold, then we will fulfill this goal, since these things will not help to strengthen him (except for the case of being worried about intercontinental Spies). If we also gift Mysticism, then I think that we will be needlessly strengthening Ragnar, which is why I am suggesting small increments of Gold that should total 60 Gold or less.

I think that I'll go and try and get you a test game where you can practice, which should allow you to gift Alphabet and increments of Gold (although Ragnar will have different other techs and all other aspects of the test game will likely be wrong) and then we can see exactly how much Gold we will need to gift to him. Sound fair?

 

[shyuhe]

Joao is very close to Izzy. He's had shared religions with her for a while now which means they can't be too far apart.

@mdy - how about we gift alphabet and see how it shifts Ragnar's disposition? If it only goes up +2, we can go with the war declaration plan. If it goes up +3, then I think the gold bribe plan is better.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Don't take my word for it. Try it yourself.

Spoiler :

Hint: After gifting Alpha to Ragnar, it's actually less than a 60 Gold gift and even less than 50 Gold. Try somewhere between 30 Gold and 50 Gold.

Spoiler :

The answer: I actually only had to gift Alphabet and then 41 Gold for +4 Fair and Forthright Trading relations. After Demanding 50 Gold, we'll actually be up by 9 Gold.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

By the way, I am now officially out of web space.

Does anyone care if I start pillaging (i.e. deleting) test game spreadsheets and saved games from earlier in the thread?

Mitchum's spreadsheet+screenshot seems to do a good job of summarizing this info for any other teams that want to look at it afterwards... I find it hard to believe that people will really want to download and review all of these files, but maybe I am wrong. Thoughts?

 

[mdy]

How accurate can your test game be? As you don't know how much gold it would take us to get him to pleased exactly, there must be some uncertainties.

Other than this the other major worry with this plan, is that the tech Ragnar is most likely to be researching at the moment is alphabet. If we got a +2, or even an invisible weak +3 how much gold would should suggest we give him before giving up on this plan?

Addiitionally gifting Ragnar alphabet, would make it easier for him to stop being "the dumbest" AI you keep on going on about.

Gifting him alphabet needlessly strengthens Ragnar, for a chance to deal with an incredibly small risk.

 

[shyuhe]

I would prefer to try the alphabet gift but I'm willing to defer to the active player (mdy) on this issue if that's what we need to do to move the game along.

However, if we're going to declare war on Ragnar anyways, I would make an attempt to demand 50 gold from Ragnar before declaring on the off chance that we pass the power threshold. Ragnar will hate us after we declare anyways so we might as well try to get the most we can from him before we sever our relations with him.

 

[babybluepants]

Well, I think everyone but mdy is for the Alpha gift. If we were going with majority, rather than active player (which I hate to do), I think we should gift it and see what happens to diplo bonuses. In any case, the game should be advanced today, IMHO. We're spending too much time on this decision.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

How accurate can your test game be? As you don't know how much gold it would take us to get him to pleased exactly, there must be some uncertainties.

Fairly accurate, but I could be off by a few turns' worth of Resource-gifting. Note that yes, Resource gifting (all those turns of gifting the Fish plus the Clam) DO count in the equation. Each turn of a Resource gift is worth somewhere in the realm of less than 2 Gold. I don't have an exact number since I didn't try to calculate such an exact number and just tried to get really close to the right amount of Resource-gifted turns. If anything, I erred on the side of gifting a couple of turns less in the test game (I wasn't sure on the exact dates but I knew "by when" we had already started the Resource gifts, therefore I at worst case under-gifted, meaning that the real game might even save us some Gold gifting value compared to the test game).

Other than this the other major worry with this plan, is that the tech Ragnar is most likely to be researching at the moment is alphabet. If we got a +2, or even an invisible weak +3 how much gold would should suggest we give him before giving up on this plan?

I admit that this factor is one that we cannot control. However, Ragnar has a "0" tech preference for Alphabet, while he has:
Construction = 20 (which we see that he researched)
Horseback Riding = 80 (a very high value--probably his currently highest value and also one of the highest number available on the entire chart)
Metal Casting = 70 (another very high value)
Aesthetics = I don't have a calculation for this tech, but I'm pretty sure that it will be greater than 0, due to the Statue of Zeus Wonder

Anyway, the chances of him self-teching Alphabet are extremely low enough to be worth this risk.

Also, consider the following: if he IS already researching Alphabet, then he'll learn it soon enough. Gifting it to him would then only speed up his research by at most a few turns. So, we don't really have anything to LOSE by gifting Alphabet: it will either
a) give us +3
b) or else it will give us less and we'll have to figure out what we want to do about the situation, where we haven't really sped-up Ragnar's research by that much

Addiitionally gifting Ragnar alphabet, would make it easier for him to stop being "the dumbest" AI you keep on going on about.

While marginally true, the total number of techs known are counted. Giving him Mysticism opens up his "oracle-like ability" to see that a tech like Monarchy exists.
His base value for Monarchy = 30, but it gets increased (by a factor that I don't yet know how to calculate) by it also unlocking his favourite civic

In other words, Alphabet = 1 tech
Mysticism = 1 immediate tech + 2-quickly-researched cheap techs, plus him possibily learning Monarchy before Isabella learns too many other techs, putting them dangerously close to the "close enough to being equal to each other to get rid of the dumbest player assignment"

Gifting him alphabet needlessly strengthens Ragnar, for a chance to deal with an incredibly small risk.

Alphabet unlocks Spies.

I don't know about you, but I'd rather that he spent his Hammers in a Spy than another Swordsman.

Alphabet also is a pre-req for Currency, but Ragnar's Currency value, like his Alphabet value, also equals zero. So, we won't be really encouraging him to go after Currency, either.


Alphabet = Mysticism = The Wheel = Ecology in terms of being counted as 1 tech... the big difference between Alphabet and Mysticism in this case is that Ragnar learning Mysticism allows him to "see" the existence of Monarchy, which will almost certainly encourage him to learn at least 2 other cheap techs, meaning that Mysticism = 3 techs (1 immediately-received tech and 2 almost immediately-researched techs). That's the difference that I'm harping about.


He is still backwards enough that +1 tech (Alphabet) won't put him significantly close enough to the 2nd-last place player in the tech game (Isabella).


Given these facts, gifting Alphabet has a very low risk of hurting our game but has a very high chance of success (Ragnar has some of the HIGHEST values in the chart for other techs that he is likely researching right now--him going for Alphabet is EXTREMELY unlikely).

 

[Dhoomstriker]

If we got... an invisible weak +3 how much gold would should suggest we give him before giving up on this plan?

I would say:
Gift Alphabet.
-> If we get +2, pause play, report that fact, and we'll have a discussion + vote on how to proceed.
-> If we get +3, then gift in increments of 10 Gold or smaller until we get a total of +4 Fair and Forthright trading or until we have gifted 41 Gold, whichever comes first.

-> If we have gifted Alphabet and then gifted as much as 41 Gold but are still at +3, pause play, report that fact, and we'll have a discussion + vote on how to proceed.
-> If we get +4, then check to see if Ragnar is Pleased.

-> If Ragnar is not Pleased, then pause play, report that fact, and we'll have a discussion + vote on how to proceed.
-> If Ragnar is Pleased, then ask him for a gift of up to 50 Gold (ask for exactly 50 Gold if he will offer us that much, otherwise ask for all of his remaining gold if he offers us a value that is less than 50 Gold--I don't see why he would offer us less than 50 Gold--I'm just trying to give you an algorithm that covers every possibility).

-> If Ragnar refuses (I see 0% chance if he is Pleased with us, but we're talking about all possible cases here), then pause play, report that fact, and we'll have a discussion + vote on how to proceed.
-> If Ragnar accepts, then the Emergency Situation is officially declared to be over. At that point, it would be greatly appreciated if you could then give us a summary of your intended plans for the next few turns, such as what you plan to do with the Triremes, what you plan to do on the tech scene (i.e. will we plan to trade Code of Laws to Cathy for her Gold after several turns?, etc), and whatever other plans that you have in mind (such as starting the Golden Age on time or not, etc).

 

[babybluepants]

How sure are you of the sum he's willing to give? I prefer not being refused on amount, when the primary goal is to delay war.

I'd still give Mysticism instead of cash...

 

[Dhoomstriker]

How sure are you of the sum he's willing to give?

I actually think that the real number that we can Demand is closer to 70 Gold, but I calculated what should be an overly-safe value as being 50 Gold.


My real concern is that I hope that we do not end up unnecessarily rushing through other decisions once this Ragnar issue is revolved, be it resolved via Enforced Peace or via War.

Enforced Peace does give our Galley more flexibility... we could probably justify doing something like: dropping 1 Worker off on the SE Horse Island to Chop a Forest there, then immediately dropping the other off somewhere else to Chop a different Forest, then returning that first Worker to Iron Island, then picking up the second Worker and sending it to another Forest to Chop.

There are lots of little details like this one where we might see gains if we look for them.

 

[shyuhe]

We have under a month to go with lots of conquering still to do so I don't think we'll be able to micro to our heart's content.

 

[mdy]

I'm clearly not going to win this argument, so I have played another couple of turns according to the gift alphabet plan.

We gifted Ragnar alphabet+40 gold on T166, which made Ragnar pleased, and we demanded 50 gold back which worked. Interestingly Ragnar's galleys have gone round his island towards Ragnar instead of heading back to the capital, so after all this discussion he may have been going afetr William after all.

It's T 169 and both gems and dyes have become available for trade from William. We now have a workboat for crabs, so I'm thinking of netting it and trading it to William for gems.

Everything else is exactly as expected.

Save is uploaded for anyone who want to take a look. I propose to play out till T172 later today when I have more time. At this point we will have to decide how we are going to trade for calendar.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Interestingly Ragnar's galleys have gone round his island towards Ragnar instead of heading back to the capital, so after all this discussion he may have been going afetr William after all.

If that really is the case (that he's going for one of the AIs), then I suppose that it is nice that we did not proactively declare war on him.

It's T 169 and both gems and dyes have become available for trade from William. We now have a workboat for crabs, so I'm thinking of netting it and trading it to William for gems.

Sure--we might as well take the Gems (+2 Happiness in Forge Cities versus +1 Happiness for the Dye Resource). Additional Health (the Crab) will be of no value to us once we start whipping away our population points. Let's hope that Willem actually WANTS our Crab. If not, then we may need to juggle one of our other Resource Trades (i.e. give Crab to someone else and then give whatever we were giving to that other AI to Willem).

In fact, after we've whipped, we'll probably consider switching one of the other Resource Trades where we are receiving a Health Resource and replacing it with a Happiness Resource--assuming that the AIs have not traded-around all of their remaining Happiness Resources to each other by that point in time.

Everything else is exactly as expected.

Outside of the Great Person Plan, I'm not really sure what to expect. I guess that it will be fun to check the saved game in order to find out?!

I propose to play out till T172 later today when I have more time.

What's your timezone? Or, perhaps a better question would be "relative to a certain time that a message was posted (i.e. your last message or your next message), when are you planning on playing?"

At this point we will have to decide how we are going to trade for calendar.

I have yet to look at the saved game, but presumably, Cathy still has her roughly 140 Gold (which is likely if no AI has learned Currency yet). Presumably, getting this Gold and getting Calendar at the cost of Code of Laws and Philosophy, respectively, are worth angering other AIs that treat Cathy as their Worst Enemy. This way, we still leave tech-trading options for future techs with Willem--where Willem is the AI that is most likely to offer us a trade. I don't know what techs we'd get in the future--Construction looks awfully unlikely--but maybe Aesthetics? That is, if Willem doesn't go for Optics or something (having gotten Compass and already having started on Machinery).

Did we bother to stop research on Machinery with 1 turn remaining in the tech?

 

[shyuhe]

Took a look at the save and things look good.

Assuming no one else picks up calendar next turn, let's trade code of laws for monarchy + 70 gold with Cathy. Then T+2, we trade philosophy for calendar + her remaining gold. T+2 we complete compass, T+3 we complete machinery and bulb optics, T+4 (or 5 see below) we pop a second GS and double bulb astro, T+5 we finish CS and revolt?

Aesthetics will not be useful in the time frame we're looking at -- it's literature that's actually worth something. Construction would be nice to get in trade but it's highly unlikely given the AI tech pace.

Also, since we only need one more GS, isn't it better to pop him from gold to make sure it's 100% a GS instead of from pigs-fish?

As for military targets, we will want to hit Cathy first since code of laws opens up civil service and her building maces = bad.