SGOTM 13 - One Short Straw

[Dhoomstriker]

Lacking feedback, here are my decisions on the issues that I have been hoping for feedback on:

Alright, the sooner that we head to the west with our Galley, the sooner that it can come back and thus be able to possibly play "chicken" with a Barb Galley.

As of right now, I don't know where the Barb Galley is. If we were to send the Galley 3 squares eastward out of Stone City (i.e. SE, NE, NE), then we'd be able to lure the Barb Galley from 4 of the 6 possible locations that it could exist, we'd be unable to affect its movement form 1 of the 6 possible locations that it could be in, and we'd almost certainly instantly die from 1 of the 6 locations that it could be in. I am not willing to take that risk and potentially lose our Galley.

So, the only place that I could safely move is SE, NE, Skip Turn, which would only potenitally lure the Barb Galley from 1 of the 6 places that it could currently be.

Thus, I think that it's a fool's errand to try and lure the Barb Galley without knowing exactly where it is. So, I'm just going to go west. Since this movement is supported by the approved PPP, I feel comfortable playing ahead with this choice.


As for Ragnar, I won't gift him the Clam for now.


Until further notice, I'll aim to lure the Barb Galley that is in the west towards Isabella. We can always change this strategy after a few turns' worth of play. It will get lured for at least the first turn of running away, anyway, so at least for a turn, nothing would change.


So, onwards I will go.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Okay, I have advanced the turn.

A couple of interesting things happened:
The eastern Barb Galley reappeared, back in the same location that we spotted it initially.

Our Galley is currently in Paris and will continue on with the plan to send Warrior 3 (which will be completed next turn) to Fur Island, followed by shuttling Settler 5 to Stone City.

If needed, we will just have to whip Trireme 1 instead of Settler 5 (which, unfortunately, negates the need for sending Settler 5 to Stone City via the Galley, but that's the situation that we may have to deal with).


The other interesting thing is that Catherine picked up Hinduism and converted to it. So, now she's Isabella's Worst Enemy. In 5 turns, I will have to remember to do something about that Marble + Cow deal. If we renew the deal, we should be immune from Isabella getting pissy at us for actively trading a "Cancellable Deal" (Trademarked by Dhoom), since we won't have a Cancellable Deal if we immediately cancel it and renew it, but I'm not 100% certain on this point.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

It is Turn 111 and the Barb Galley has disappeared once again. It's "danger point" is if it appears 1NW of the GPig or 1W of the GPig, both of which are squares that we have visibility on. Thus, if we can't see the Barb Galley, it's not in range of immediately beelining our Seafood.

Of course, it could randomly move to one of those squares on the following turn, but the threat will not become an immediate threat until it moves onto one of those squares.


I finessed a move that I hadn't thought of previously: sending Paris' Warrior onto our Galley, which saves us a turn in getting the Galley back to the east. We had 8/9 for Happiness in Paris, so it didn't affect us negatively to do so and now we have a replacement Warrior built in Paris.

Since I don't use the unit naming functionality, you probably wouldn't have even known had I not told you.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

There has been no change on the Resource Trading front. That page still looks identical on Turn 111.

In terms of Espionage, Vicky has a ton on us, since she has no one else to spend it on... more than double what we have spent on her.

We're close to seeing what Willem is researching, as we have roughly twice as many Espionage Points as he has. We're 13 Espionage Points away from knowing what he has, but the amount required keeps going up. So, I'd say in 4 to 5 turns we should be seeing his current Research selection.


Warrior 3 has landed on the Plains Forest (the only Forest) on Fur Island. He'll head NW from there next turn to his spawn-busting location. So far, he hasn't revealed any Barb Galleys lurking in the nearby area (thank goodness for small favours).


Nothing seems out of the ordinary right now, so I'll be ending the turn.

Note that, to be safe, this turn is the turn where I will put 16 Hammers into the Settler. We can put in a maximum of 36 Hammers (18 + 18) but we will make 19 if I work a Grassland Hills Mine, and 19 + 19 = 38 gives us too many Hammers. Thus, we'll make 16 + 19 = 35, one Hammer short of Perfection (now you know the exact value of that guy with the cool avatar that delurked for a second--36 Hammers ).

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Alright, it's time for a few more screenshots to help brighten up the thread.

Isabella just finished founding Judaism. In the same screenshot, you can see how I have effectively been luring the western Barb Galley ever closer to Isabella's lands. Muhahahahahaha.

For the second turn in a row, we have not seen the eastern Barb Galley show head or tail. Our Worker 2 has just moved up to the Desert square near there, giving us additional visbility and we still don't see it. It's possibly 1N of the GPig, which is not a great spot for it to be, but it's not in the danger zone yet.

True to my word, we made 16 Hammers in Paris last turn and we will make 19 Hammers in Paris this turn. Now all that I need to do is remember to actually whip the Settler next turn!

Oh yeah, we seem to have gotten Animal Husbandry with a few extra Flasks compared to the test game (I'm not 100% certain, but I feel that way). I admit that I didn't record down the exact Flask values from the test game, but so that I can do so later, I'll write down the current Flask value in the real game, which is: 195/234 Flasks.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

It is Turn 113 and Willem came asking us for Open Borders. I turned him down.

Of note is the fact that I did not see a Barb Galley appear in the east! So, we seem to have temporarily been relieved of this danger... had it been hiding out 1N of the GPig, we would have spotted it, as we currently have all of the squares around that Coast square revealed.

Now I just need to go and immediately whip Paris' Settler 5 before I forget and we should be all good.

 

[shyuhe]

It looks like everything is going ok so far. I have to say, I am somewhat surprised at the slow rate of growth of the AI on this map. I guess it's the whole island thing...

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Do you notice anything interesting in the following screenshot?

Well, for one thing, I don't know how to get rid of those blue arrows, so they kind of look misleading, don't they?

Yes, yes, I remembered to whip Settler 5. But no, I actually was referring to that red circle.

YES! We made it home with our Work Boat explorer! High fives all around!


Our Warrior 3 is now in place on Fur Island and has yet to spot a Barb Galley.

I have to say, I am somewhat surprised at the slow rate of growth of the AI on this map. I guess it's the whole island thing...

Yeah, compared to our test game, the AIs are definitely lagging in terms of the number of Cities. I remember that Cathy had 7 Cities in our test game at some point (although I don't recall if that was on Turn 120 or earlier).

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Ragnar just shot up on the Score list to 3rd place, by getting +20 Score. He also has a source of Ivory that appears on the RESOURCES screen. Of course, he is unwilling to trade it to us. Hopefully, he won't get any bright ideas about trading it to anyone else.

On that note, I'll need to remember to renegotiate the Marble deal with Cathy next turn. If she's kind enough, she might give us not only a Cow but also a Fish.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

For some reason, the Gold City's Governor thought that it was a good idea to fire the Scientist Specialist there. Well, I caught that Governor's error and he has been fired (the Governor was fired, not the Scientist--the Scientist was rehired ).

 

[Dhoomstriker]

After moving our Worker 2 to the GPig square, we can ascertain that the eastern Barb Galley is no where in sight.

For now, I think that our Galley will take a "breather" and will work on healing-up in Stone City.

You can see that we're on track for our first big shot of overflow Hammers going into The Pyramids.

 

[babybluepants]

Looking good, Dhoom!

This is a slow map for sure. Presumably DS himself has to be able to complete the deed in testing, right?

No signs of Alpha yet? Willem's score is pretty damn high for the low level of expansion. I imagine he's blasting through some techs.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

The F4 -> TECHS screen still says that Technology Trading is not allowed with the 5 out of the 6 AIs that we have met.

I cancelled the Marble deal with Cathy but she wouldn't bite in terms of giving us both Cow and Fish. Since there were no other deals on the table, I renewed the "our Marble for Cathy's Cow" deal.

I founded our 5th City. "Pig Magical Fish" wouldn't fit as a City name, so I improvised. Presumably, for short, we'll refer to this City as "Pig City," but I got to have my fun.

Anyway, the point of this screenshot is that WE DID NOT GET A FOREIGN TRADE ROUTE in this City. Thus, we'll need to Open Borders with another AI. Actually, I should go and grab the F4 -> GLANCE screen... let me go and do so now. Before I grab it, I'll point out that Isabella has 3 Cities but we only are getting Trade Routes with 2 of them, so it must be that one of her Cities is not connected to her capital yet (an in-land-founded City?). Either that or I don't understand how Foreign Trade Routes work.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Okay, here's the Glance screen.

Cathy would be a poor choice to trade with, as then we'd almost certainly get Isabella breathing down our neck for having done so.

In fact, we might have to cancel deals with Isabella in the future due to Cathy's dislike, but at least Cathy is still Cautious towards Isabella even at -2 relations.

I'm guessing that we'll want to Open Borders with Ragnar, since our remaining Work Boat explorer is heading in his direction anyway.

LC suggested earlier that we wouldn't want to Open Borders with Willem because he would be the most likely to go after Code of Laws. Now that Judaism is gone and since Willem does seem to be racking up the points, I would tend to think that we'd still want to stick with this no Open Borders policy with Willem for now.

Thus, I'm thinking that the only real answer to the question is "Open Borders with Ragnar," although I supposed that "don't pick anyone" is also an option.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I just thought to take a look at the F4 -> RELATIONS screen. I'm sorry, but I haven't been monitoring it up until now. It appears that one of Willem or Isabella already has Writing, since they have Open Borders with each other. If it's Willem (which is likely due to his high Score) then Code of Laws is in even more danger.

Well, there's not much that we can do about it other than to continue on our current path towards Code of Laws and hope for the best.


We are 10 Espionage Points from seeing Willem's current research, and that value keeps slowly creeping up. Oh yeah, I did notice on the F9 -> GRAPHS area that Willem has been accumulating more than the default 4 Espionage Points although Vicky has only been accumulating the default amount. Willem has been doing so for some time now, probably from before the start of this turnset. It's also probably an AI response to having a human player spending Espionage Points on them. So, in a minor way, we're slightly slowing down Willem's Research rate.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Actually, to be honest, Vicky isn't even appearing on the F9 GRAPHS page anymore. Fortunately, I was monitoring the Espionage Points' page and I noticed this possibility, so I grabbed a screenshot earlier on the subject. Err... no, I didn't. I thought that I had, but I must have pressed the Pause key instead of the Print Screen key or something like that.

Oh well, now that Vicky has increased her Espionage Points sufficiently relative to ours, all of her Demographic Graphical data is currently unavailable... not even the turns that we'd previously earned visibility for are displayed. I suppose that this functionality is "fair" in that if you do accumulate sufficient Espionage Points, you can get historical data that you hadn't had the ability to view at the time.

Anyway, a couple of turns ago when I looked at that screen and failed to get a proper screenshot, Vicky hadn't appeared to have been spending more Espionage Points than the default amount. Then again, you could probably reverse-engineer that fact from her currently spent Espionage Points on us (assuming that she hasn't met the unknown AI), so that's not really big news.

The other graphs just showed too much up and down jumping for me to really observe any useful info out of them.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

So, an immediate decision is: should we Open Borders with an AI in order to get +1 Commerce? My recommendation is to Open Borders with Ragnar.

A decision for next turn will be: do we build a Warrior or a Lighthouse in Stone City next?


A decision for 2 turns from now will be: should we net Pig City's Magical Fish? We should have 20 turns of leeway before the Barbs' "advance radar" will detect it and we don't currently see a Barb Galley. That said, we know that a Barb Galley isn't too far away.

Reading between the lines of what DanF5771 has said about Barbarian Galleys, the Barbs would have to have visibility of the Magical Fish... but what I'm not certain is if they can "see" the Netted Seafood from within the fog of war or not. Even if they can see in the fog of war, that eastern Barb Galley did not make it close enough to reveal the Magical Fish. Thus, I think that we should be safe with netting the Magical Fish except for the case where the Barb Galley wanders into a square immediately adjacent to that Magical Fish square.

If the Barb Galley wanders that close, then we're already at risk for it "seeing" the Clam squares at Paris anyway... so, basically, only if we're already going to be in trouble will we be in trouble. If I understand the mechanics properly, that is.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I'm actually pretty tired right now so, since we have a few decisions to make while there is nothing really suspenseful that we are waiting on "one more turn" to see, I'll stop play here for tonight and will upload the saved game, in case anyone wants to take a look at the current situation.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Here is your Session Turn Log from 1375 BC to 1125 BC:

Spoiler :

Turn 105, 1375 BC: You have discovered Metal Casting!
Turn 105, 1375 BC: Stonehenge has been built in a far away land!

Turn 106, 1350 BC: The borders of Marble have expanded!

Turn 107, 1325 BC: You have constructed a Forge in Paris. Work has now begun on a Trireme.

Turn 108, 1300 BC: You have trained a Work Boat in Paris. Work has now begun on a Trireme.

Turn 109, 1275 BC: You have constructed a Library in Gold . Work has now begun on a Monument.
Turn 109, 1275 BC: Catherine converts to Hinduism!

Turn 110, 1250 BC: You have trained a Warrior in Paris. Work has now begun on a Trireme.

Turn 111, 1225 BC: Judaism has been founded in Barcelona!

Turn 112, 1200 BC: You have discovered Animal Husbandry!

Turn 113, 1175 BC: Marble has grown to size 2.
Turn 113, 1175 BC: Marble can hurry Work Boat for 1? with 20? overflow and +1? for 20 turns.
Turn 113, 1175 BC: You have trained a Settler in Paris. Work has now begun on a Trireme.
Turn 113, 1175 BC: You have constructed a Monument in Gold . Work has now begun on a Work Boat.

Turn 115, 1125 BC: Pig Mmm Fish has been founded.
Turn 115, 1125 BC: Deal Canceled: Marble to Catherine for Cow

Here is a link to the latest saved game of the REAL GAME.

Attached are the additional demographic screenshots. They'll only stay up for a short period of time. Actually, it's just a dump of all of my screenshots for the turnset. Most of them are duplicates of what was already uploaded, plus the F8 and F9 screens' info. If you don't really know how to analyze the data on those F8 and F9 screens, then you don't really need to download the .zip file.


EDIT: The screenshots file was removed (in order to make space for additional files for our game). Please send me a Private Message if you still want to see them.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

By the way, I "bought us" up to 4 extra turns' worth of delaying the completion of Trireme 1 with a bit of micro. You can see so from the Session Tun Log, as whenever Paris would complete a build item, it would be set up to start work on a Trireme next ("Work has now begun on a Trireme."). Each time that this situation occurs, the game "counts" us as building the Trireme, even though each time I switched to a different build item before the turn was out.

Also, since we have Healthiness in Paris at City Size 6, we might actually be better off Hammer-wise for The Pyramids by 2-pop-whipping a Trireme from "City Size 6 with a nearly-full Foodbox" instead of the originally-planned "City Size 5 with a nearly-full Foodbox." Doing so nets us several additional turns of working a Grassland Hills Mine square.

Of course, Trireme 1 would be delayed, but we should be able to pull it off such that it won't lose any Hammers to decay. As long as continue to not actually need Trireme 1, then this approach is more efficient overall.


The more that our empire expands, the more Seafood Resources that we end up netting, and thus the more vectors of attack on our Fishing Nets will exist for Barb Galleys.

However, there is that "20 turn leeway" before Barb Galleys get the "free visibility" of our Seafood Resources. After they have visibility of them, then they only need to come within 7 squares' of movement points and BAM, they will choose to beeline the Fishing Nets on a Pillaging mission.


So, although Seafood Resources like Marble City's western Clam are somewhat exposed, we still have 20 turns from their creation before they get revealed. For Marble City's western Clam, for example, with it being netted on Turn 113, we should be safe from luring far-away Barb Galleys until Turn 133, which aught to buy us plenty of time to get defenses into place.

Of course, nothing stops a Barb Galley from spawning extremely close and then randomly happening upon a Seafood, other than the fact that this type of occurrence has a relatively lower risk than does a Fishing Net that has existed for 20+ turns and its behaviour of acting like a "beacon to the Barbs."


Anyway, we will want to push the whipping cycle up by 1 population point at some point in time, so if we can do it earlier (i.e. before the next whip item), then it's as good a time to do so as any.


What's not currently clear is where I should consider stationing our Galley once it is healed. It is useful for playing "chicken" (i.e. luring a Barb Galley in a particular direction but not actually getting close enough to the Barb Galley to engage in a fight), but in order to do so effectively, we need a good amount of visibility, in order to safely lure said Barb Galley while not risk being attacked by said Barb Galley.


Of course, another possibility is that our Galley can act as a temporary spawn-buster for the Copper Island, which still keeps it relatively close to Stone Island for any games of "chicken" that we might feel the need to play.


I have to give DynamicSpirit some credit... Paris' Clams and Pig + Magical Fish's Magical Fish are both on the "inside" of our empire, meaning that they are less likely to attract Barb Galleys than had they been positioned differently. For example, had Magical Fish been to the east of GPig, it would have been a lot more vulnerable to attack.


As for Resource Trading, Ragnar treats both Strategic Resources and Happiness Resources as items that only his Friendly relations will get. I'm not sure which of those categories that "Ivory" falls into, but since he treats them equally the same, it doesn't matter in his case: he's very unlikely to give out that Ivory to anyone.

Probably his most likely trading partner would be someone with whom he has shared a Mutual Military Struggle. Errr, maybe not. He'll only give a base of +3 (which translates to a maximum of +4 if the war is ongoing) for a Mutual Military Struggle.

He is listed as having a maximum +4 for Shared Religion, which, I think, translates into a maximum of +5. He only has +4 with Isabella for Shared Religion right now, so I believe that I may have been wrong him Ragnar having maxed out his value with her: she probably has +1 more than him simply because she is the owner of the Holy City.

Ragnar isn't big on a Favourite Civic, giving only +3 in the XML, which probably translates to a maximum of +4. Since his Favourite Civic is Hereditary Rule, it's not that infeasible for him to get this bonus with some of the AIs.

In fact, it should be noted that Cathy SHARES a Favourite Civic with Ragnar.

Thus, particularly if Cathy picks up Buddhism and switches to the same Religion as Ragnar, then I would say that either Isabella or Cathy would be very feasible targets for Ragnar to choose to trade his second Ivory to.


Isabella will also probably start liking any AIs that get into mid-game wars, since her Favourite Civic is Theocracy and many AIs will switch into that Civic when they are planning or are involved in mid-game wars.



Willem's Favourite Civic isn't much of a concern (Free Religion). If we aren't going to grab Liberalism, are we truly going to allow an AI to scoop it up?


Similarly, Vicky's Favourite Civic is Representation. She may try to give us a run for our money on building The Pyramids, but if we complete this Wonder, then her Favourite Civic should be a non-issue in this game.