SGOTM 13 - Spooks

[killercane]

I think the Great Lighthouse makes great sense. It is only demigod and they look to be slow.

Why do we need pottery? Why not go straight to philo and use the MoM as a prebuild? We have a settler to use as a prebuild. This gives us a better shot at philo at the expense of having 30 more shields (~3-4 build turns at 9 spt).

 

[Abegweit]

I think the Great Lighthouse makes great sense. It is only demigod and they look to be slow.

Why do we need pottery? Why not go straight to philo and use the MoM as a prebuild? We have a settler to use as a prebuild. This gives us a better shot at philo at the expense of having 30 more shields (~3-4 build turns at 9 spt).

Well, let's check it out. Once Writing is in, then...

Philo-Pots-Maps
16-6-32 = 54 turns to Maps.
66 turns to GLH.
If we take Pots as our free tech, we save 6 turns. Surely we don't want to do that. Do we?

Pots-Philo-Maps
6-16 = 22 turns to maps
49 turns to GLH.
If we don't get a free tech, this is the same as the previous option because it makes no difference whether we research Philo or Pots first.

Pots-Maps
6-32 = 38 turns to Maps
65 turns to GLH.

My conclusion is that the first option is worst of all. It never gains over either of the other two towards either goal. On top of that, it runs the risk of losing the MoM.

 

[killercane]

Well I forgot that we need pottery for MM (since when do you get to that decision without having pottery? ). If we dont find anyone to trade with I suppose the decision is easy, pot-philo-MM. Maybe we can trade it if we find someone.

We still need many more curraghs, in an attempt to get them to ocean tiles to survive so they can cover a maximum area. Then we can ascertain whether we need TGL. TGL is worthless if we dont have sea to travel to conquer someone. If we need Navigation, we need to get Republic sooner rather than later. Still we would take MM first I suppose to get settlers off island, and then CoL-Rep.

So in other words, we need to recruit even more sailors to go on suicide missions. This game looks to be very much luck based!

 

[Paul#42]

If we bind one town to wonder build, that town will not build any settler or galley. If the Philo free tech works, we won't need MoM as prebuild because we could build GLH right away.
If we fail, MoM is a nice option so we don't end up building a granary...

No question, GLH would be nice. But focussing on shields in one town will also slow down our research. This time we won't have Aztecs and Japanese building GLH and SoZ for us right on our doorsteps...

 

[Abegweit]

A granary is actually quite useful in a high-shield low-food town. It doubles the rate at which the town grows back from building a settlers and workers. Assuming that there is no good factory site on the other island, and I doubt that there is, Osaka should get one whether or not we build the GLH.

One alternative which I rather like is to build a granary as soon as we learn Pots and start pumping out settlers and workers from this town in prep for Maps. It doesn't preclude building the GLH later either.

Ixnay on the MoM. We do not want that.

 

[killercane]

The problem that arises is we want the granary town to have the cow (capital probably). The GLight town also needs the cow. The only choices are to build the GL slower or produce settlers slower. I am inclined to build the settlers quicker and miss out on a few turns of TGL IF no one starts completing wonders in earnest and there is no chance of a cascade.

 

[Abegweit]

Post deleted.

 

[Paul#42]

The problem that arises is we want the granary town to have the cow (capital probably). The GLight town also needs the cow.

A granary town would only need the cow every second turn to get ten food. No problem there.
Unless you mean the general food scarce...

 

[killercane]

Yes, we cant give the cow back and forth if TGL town is size 5, max shields, and not growing. Unless we add in a worker when the food box is almost full.

 

[Paul#42]

Anybody already in 2008? 20 minutes left of 2007 for me...

 

[Andronicus]

Happy New Year from me
(last post till arrive in Japan in a few days for a week of skiing)

Not sure GLH of much use as can get to other island just as easily with galleys. Advantage would be in an extra movement point for our explorers and not having to finish on coast - admittedly this would make exploration much quicker once we do cross the deep blue sea

 

[Paul#42]

(last post till arrive in Japan in a few days for a week of skiing)

Skiing in Japan after you visited Bavaria?
Quite a roundtrip you are doing, enjoy it!

It looks like the game will be still in the starting sequence when you and Redbad are back...

But that's okay, I'm in no hurry . I'm just afraid that people might lose interest if we don't play on, but I guess it's just a question of synchronizing the players' attention...

So let's delay this game some time and start the real discussion when all are back.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

I took a quick look at it, will have a more in depth look later.


we have 10 turns until writing, this may become 9 turns. Then we will have to decide if we are going for Philosophy, Literature or MM. Philo could get a free tech. Literature allows us libraries, both may be tradable for MM. MM is what its actually about.
If the AI researches fast, we wont win for philo, but they may have MM ready for trade by the time we get philo or Literature. Literature would be our best research here. If they are not so fast, we may have a chance to get philo first and the AI may not even have MM for trade when we research philo or literature. In this case philo is better because it will bring in MM faster than we can trade it from the AI. It would really suck though if we fail to win the race for philo (extremely likely imo) and the AI's we meet do not have MM for trade.

Anyone feels like analysing AI research speed ? (maybe make a test map)

Either way, we will need at least 30 or so turns to get away from this island. In an ideal world, the turn we discover Map Making, we would have a prebuild for a harbor, we would upgrade a curragh or 2, and we would have settlers ready to board.

Building a settler takes 40 food, and thus costs 60 science at least (20 scientist turns, a little more because it will force us to deviate from the 4-4-2 plan) Building a settler before we have MM causes a 3 turn delay. However, the main reason we are in a hurry to get MM is to get those settlers across, so it may very well be worth it to go for some settlers during the next 30 turns.

The lighthouse certainly is nice, but we have very little production, and we also want settlers, so i don't really know if this is gonna be an option.

 

[Paul#42]

How do you rate my idea to pop-rush settlers after getting MM and finishing harbor / galleys?

It would take two turns to collect those 10 shields (with warrior sac in Kyoto) and another turn to build them.

We will probably want to jump our palace (by disbanding our capital) anyway, right?
That's also three turns delay - with full income (for what's it worth).

edit: We have taken over the lead in posts per turn (1.82) again. Way to go, folks!

 

[WackenOpenAir]

We sure will move the capital someday, but we don't yet know whereto, and we don't know when. I would guess that first we build more settlers in the designated area and let the city grow. So it won't be very soon after building the settler.

Rushbuilding saves 7 turns on a city at the cost of one citizen in another. You waste 20 food and gain 14 in return. Everything produced as a result of that food (the lost citizen that will result in a production delay in that city vs the earlier growth in the other city) doesn't help us either i think. Not only is it less, the new town will also have more corruption.

by the time we get to MM, i hope we have traded for some money so we can upgrade curraghs. We should either prebuild a harbor, or prebuild galleys. Since a harbour = multiple galleys, i think harbor is better. That leaves 2 cities for prebuilding settlers then.

 

[Paul#42]

I agree that pop rushing makes no sense if we keep that town for longer (and especially if we let it grow to >3 again). It's certainly more productive to spit out some more settlers.
Maybe indeed a granary is appropriate in at least one of those +3fpt-towns.

I doubt however that we will return too many of our curraghs in time to upgrade but we should certainly check this right before. At least both have the same price so we can decide quite spontanously.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

We can also produce them in the comming 30 turns.

Granary sounds pretty good to me

 

[killercane]

Any word on getting a move on? To recap, the plan is:

Writing->Pottery->Philo
curraghs
granary in cap?

 

[Abegweit]

Plan sounds good. We need some settlers and workers too.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Any word on getting a move on? To recap, the plan is:

Writing->Pottery->Philo
curraghs
granary in cap?

Are we so sure about pottery and philo ? I think we have virtually no chance to get the free tech.