SGOTM 13 - Spooks

[Redbad]

So here's my report:

550BC pre game:
don't change a thing: all looks ideally configurated

it
nothing

530BC
found Edo on yellow spot -> worker
military advisor doesn't mention any nearby barbs so I board the warrior

it
Osaka settler -> settler

510BC
spot an american settler/spear S of blue spot

land settler/warrior on blue dot anyway on the remote chance the americans won't settle immediatly. If so I'll board again and settle brown dot

it
Kyoto settler -> settler
americans don't settle but move NE

490BC
found Satsuma on blue dot -> worker
Osaka and Kyoto settlers board and sail towards green and brown

it
americans go S, possibly towards brown ?

470BC
americans seem to have aquired 2 spices (1 extra); they already had wines and furs; no extra town however so they must have connected them or (more likely) build an harbour.

it
americans reach brown dot

450BC
just cruising along

it
Tokyo harbour -> warrior
americans found baltimore on brown dot and american galleys appear W of S-island and E of home-island

430BC
intend to found a city 2NE of baltimore in order to culturely battle Abe for the inense which will be in between

it
Caesar establishes an embassy

410BC
The Romans know at least all the people we know, they too don't have literature and are the biggest civ sofar (18 cities)
portugal lost all its money (55) and spain nearly all (684 -> 7)

it
caesar asks us to get lost and allies with Henry against a people called Egypt.

390BC
found Kagoshima on 1-tile island -> harbour
portugal suddenly has 296 gold, spain trades its surplus ivory away and rome loses 515 gold

it
Abe aks our curragh to get lost and he now founds denver on red dot, maybe he has Paul's dotmap too

370BC
found Nara 2 NE of baltimore and start granary prebuild for library

it
Tokyo build warrior -> temple
another american galley E of S-island, we're getting spammed with US settling parties
Kyoto settler -> settler

350BC
portugal loses 253 gold

epilog:
I've started another settler in Kyoto but I don't know if we'll need him anytime soon with that agressive US settling.
We're losing 2 gold per turn due to our granary and harbour. We have 2 gold, so next player needs to economise.
There's still no one we know who has literature
During this turnset Abe has build 2 cities (on S-island) and the other 3 civs none.

Good luck to the next player

 

[Andronicus]

As the AI wont settle within 2 tiles of an existing town, the only spot left for America to settle is orange dot (which our warrior currently occupies)

We have the choice of settling it or letting America settle it and start building an army to take it.

Unfortunately warriors are not likely to be effective, so war must wait. I think we are better off having the extra town sooner and settling orange dot ourselves.

We should also consider having an a force ready for when we acquire lit - if America lacks it, they will likely extort unless we chose to trade it first. (extortions from anyone else dont matter as only America with its GLH can reach us)

PS Maybe America will build harbours for us in Denver and Baltimore.

edit
looking at progess page - we are no 1 in territory at our latest save, we will be doing well to keep pace with Klarius's impressive expansion!

 

[Paul#42]

Good progress, nice to have you back, Redbad!
And good pace, four towns in a turnset!!
I apologize for spreading bad mood when I had prematurely thrown away this game. This is really getting exciting finally!
Perfect settling by the Americans - now they need to grow, build settlers (we should keep one spot "open" - but blocked) and workers for us and not too much military...

I'd think we should pray to get literature in time to acquire HBR in a nice trading session and then we can go for the Yankees!

Till then we should have connected horses to a couple of towns, built some rax and start some horsies before America builds his second spear...

vet or reg horses...
We need them quickly, so maybe we'd better spare the rax and build reg horses?

 

[Redbad]

Maybe we shouldn't settle orange dot, but 1 W and 2 S of orange. That way we'll have all the landtiles in our cultural right away. Afterall many tiles are bg's.

edit: downside we'll lose the fish

 

[Paul#42]

The Yankee will likely produce at least one worker per town soon, maybe as long as there is an open spot he also builds a settler (unless there's one on a galley already)... That would delay any military builds on that island.
That's why I won't found there for another while.
On top of that it would increase corruption in our other (more productive) towns...

Do we have a settler in the pipe? Ah, I see, already boarded.
Maybe we should rather settle on the BG (temporarily) 3SE of Edo?
Or is my thinking nonsense?

Did the Yanks sent anything but spears (and settlers) yet?
At least they can build nothing but spears and archers for a while on our island...

How many reg horses would we need to kill two spears in a town with 90% confidence?
Anybody care to play around with Offa's combat tool?

 

[Andronicus]

My thoughts

I think we want lit ASAP if we are to beat the AI we know to it.

Getting the 3 starting island towns to size 4 would net us 3 scientists giving an extra 9 science per turn (currently civassist shows 21). This would bring time till lit down from 14 to 9 or 10.
A harbour in Kyoto would provide the food bonus to quickly achieve this.

HBR wont come soon unless we can achieve this.

We then require building horses on the new island since we cannot trade horses to starting island.
I vote for min 8 vet horses.

We need to get production up to at least 3spt in sev towns to warrant building a rax.

I dislike building a town in the middle of the new island not on coast, if we want another I would go for S,SW of orange dot, but that would rule out America being able to settle (as it is 2 tiles from orange dot), so we might as well settle orange dot.

Current wastage is 27% for Edo, 30% for Kagoshima, 38% for Satsuma and 40% for Nara.
To get 3 spt we need 5-6 base shields, that's achieved size 3 working 3 mined BGs - achievable for Edo and hypothetical town S,SW of orange dot (Orange dot and Edo would only have access to 3 BGs each pre expansion if we settle W,SW of orange as well).

Nara I suggest should use the granary as a lib pre build to allow it to culture steal the incense from Baltimore (and can have units sneak attack from adjacent without ruining rop rep).

Thus I would suggest we build our army in Nara, orange dot and town S,SW of orange dot (rax then 2-3 horses each), Kagoshima builds harbour then lib and Nara builds lib.
Satsuma should build workers - may benefit from granary once it gets to more than 1spt.

Actually orange dot could access 2BGs and Nara 3 without the extra town S,SW of orange - with orange dot being least corrupt that should allow easy 3spt with only 2 BGs mined, so I feel best is only settle one more town (orange dot) - with current settler

Roster
Abegweit - up
Paul - on deck
Killercane
Andronicus
Redbad - just played

 

[Redbad]

Did the Yanks sent anything but spears (and settlers) yet?

Only thing we know for sure thats there is spear in baltimore.

I'm not convinced that Abe would build a settler on S-island if there's room for another town. Building one in the states and shipping him over looks more obvious to me. I find it even very probable that there's a settler on the galley at orange dot, because it sailed straight to orange dot.

I dislike building a town in the middle of the new island not on coast,

Paul nor me suggested such a thing.

Nara I suggest should use the granary as a lib pre build to allow it to culture steal the incense from Baltimore

I'm sure I read that somewhere before .

I feel best is only settle one more town (orange dot)

That leaves 5 bg's unuseable until expansion. Building W of orange and another town 2S (as I suggested) or S,SW (as you suggested) lets all bg's come into play without cultural expansion.

 

[Paul#42]

I find it even very probable that there's a settler on the galley at orange dot, because it sailed straight to orange dot.

That's likely, good catch. He won't build a settler there either way.
Maybe we should trap it: the turn before we settle 2S (or 2SW) we open orange dot and let him land / draw the settler combo there. Then we settle and block their way back with our warrior(s). Ever saw an AI unit mount a galley outside a town?
That's two cheap slaves.
He will not found a town closed to our borders, will he?

That leaves 5 bg's unuseable until expansion. Building W of orange and another town 2S (as I suggested) or S,SW (as you suggested) lets all bg's come into play without cultural expansion.

4 BGs, but

Abe, any thoughts?

 

[Redbad]

Maybe we should trap it ... That's two cheap slaves.

And possibly, by the time we're ready to fight, we can use them to provoke Abe declaring war on us

4 BGs, but

no 5, the fifth is aquired by build W of orange dot rather then on orange dot.

 

[killercane]

Rome has 18 friggin cities? Thats not too shabby for the AI.

I agree with the harbor on the starting continent to get all the cities to size 4. Disagree with the library to culture steal the incense or whatever. We'll just take it by force. The only option to build it quickly is to build some workers to work and then join back in order to whip it and keep it size 1 with scientist forever. Not great prospects.

2 main cities- workers
3rd city- harbor to grow and be a science city with some galleys produced
Big continent cities- workers until we can start buying an army?

Trade lit for CoL and Philosophy and as many earlier techs as we can get? Then 50 turn research on Republic?

If we can find more people our prospects improve a bit so I would still like to see more suicide galleys but that is a lot of production wasted when they sink... Dont know about it really.

 

[Paul#42]

I'd rather have a harbor in Kyoto - that could be a two-turn-worker-factory with cow and two fish... And we need those workers and won't get them fast enough on our new island. Harbor then lib in Kyoto?
Or granary, harbor and lib in Osaka?

I'm torn about the library. We want libs all over the continent I think, and to get the incense would be nice - but a lib is worth almost three horses.

I'm pretty sure it is a banned exploit to join workers solely for the purpose of pop rushing... It's to easy to cap infinite unhappiness with a scientist at size 1.

Palace jump: I just saw (CA2) we just need 7 units garrison to jump the Palace to the new island!!
That's surprisingly cheap. We should discuss that, we could do it in a turnset's span if we want.

 

[killercane]

Im pretty sure its not banned. But its not going to be something ideal to do.

2 turn worker factory sounds good to me.

 

[Abegweit]

Im pretty sure its not banned. But its not going to be something ideal to do.

It is banned. This is pretty silly because, as you say, it's not something ideal to do. Back to the AWD game, someone on Wacken's team used this trick to whip a barracks out of a captured SoZ town. I forget what the exact penalty was but I know that it involved shooting horses.

I think that back in the very early days of vanilla, there was some sort of exploit involving this but the loophole in one of the early patches. I believe, in fact, that it was closed before the ban was imposed.

 

[Paul#42]

I think it still makes sense to ban it because the "natural" penalty (unhappiness) is easily neclected by leaving the town at size 1 with a scientist. Imagine the impact on a 100k game where you could pop-rush like mad in corrupt towns.

 

[killercane]

I think it still makes sense to ban it because the "natural" penalty (unhappiness) is easily neclected by leaving the town at size 1 with a scientist. Imagine the impact on a 100k game where you could pop-rush like mad in corrupt towns.

Hmm you mean like every 100K HOF game?

 

[Andronicus]

It seems we have some agreement for harbour then 2 turn worker factory in Kyoto - of course if we do move the capital, corruption of about 30-40% would put a spoke in the works

Seems we need to decide whether to move capital now (lose a granary in Kyoto) or perhaps later when we might lose further improvements. I think the sooner we move capital to southern island the better. Requires building enough warriors and transporting them there

? which town should be new capital. Shifting it to Edo would allow expansion with culture from capital allowing use of the other BGs. Other central option is orange dot.

Flip risk in Nara is expressed as 0.2-6% by civassist and in Satsuma as 0.0-1%


Not keen on granary, lib or harbour in Osaka - I think it is better building galleys (for exploring) or warriors (for shifting capital)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Andronicus
I dislike building a town in the middle of the new island not on coast,

Paul nor me suggested such a thing.

sorry, I must have misunderstood

Maybe we shouldn't settle orange dot, but 1 W and 2 S of orange.

I thought this was referring to the BG 2SE of Edo


West of orange allows short term use of another BG (if we build another town to fill up to south, but not required if we move capital to Edo or orange), but puts a fish permanently out of reach.

 

[Redbad]

I thought this was referring to the BG 2SE of Edo

Ah yes that explains it. And I can see now that the text could easily be interpreted that way. Sorry about that.

I agree with you that, in case we move the capitol soon to Edo or Orange, we should settle a city on orange dot. The long term benefit of having the fish workable outweighs the sort time benefit of having an extra bg earlier.
On the other hand, if we settle orange dot and we don’t move the capitol soon but concentrate on building only military the extra bg will not be workable for a long time.

I’m not sure about not building an extra city 2S or S,SW of orange. I would think the fact of having an extra city on the island would be more of a benefit rather then being a burden. If so, then having early access to 4 extra bg’s would be an extra reason of founding such a city.

I’m not totally sure about moving the capitol soon. Aside from having the mentioned negative effects on Kyoto, I could imagine that we want to move our capitol to the American mainland after getting a foothold there. In that case we would have only a little time period in which we could benefit from the first palace jump.

Disagree with the library to culture steal the incense or whatever. We'll just take it by force.

I can see your point. But maybe, as this is a science game, we possibly want to build a library in Nara anyway. So by prioritising the library we could have the incense as a bonus which allows all the cities on the island to grow bigger. And the incense itself compensates for the unhappiness of 1 poprushed man in Nara.

 

[Paul#42]

It seems we have some agreement for harbour then 2 turn worker factory in Kyoto - of course if we do move the capital, corruption of about 30-40% would put a spoke in the works

If we move the capital, granary and harbor (and culture) would be gone anyway...

I think the sooner we move capital to southern island the better. Requires building enough warriors and transporting them there

? which town should be new capital. Shifting it to Edo would allow expansion with culture from capital allowing use of the other BGs. Other central option is orange dot.

Orange dot would be better for our old world...
Edo is better for culture and spares a library...

Not keen on granary, lib or harbour in Osaka - I think it is better building galleys (for exploring) or warriors (for shifting capital)

In contrast to our capital, Osaka will persist. (It would require own culture though if we do not resettle our capital immediately - but I guess that's what we will do). Maybe it's better to invest there, especially if we move our Palace soon...

West of orange allows short term use of another BG (if we build another town to fill up to south, but not required if we move capital to Edo or orange), but puts a fish permanently out of reach.

I don't like west of orange.

I'd like to make a plan for a Palace jump this evening. We won't need too many new warriors if our old towns shrink a bit, 6 might be enough. Especially if our new capital should be size 2 by then.

However this collides with the urgent need to get lit asap. So we need two plans and compare them.

Anybody feel bored now (before I get bored in the evening)?

 

[Andronicus]

I'd like to make a plan for a Palace jump this evening. We won't need too many new warriors if our old towns shrink a bit, 6 might be enough. Especially if our new capital should be size 2 by then.

However this collides with the urgent need to get lit asap. So we need two plans and compare them.

Anybody feel bored now (before I get bored in the evening)?

Go for it Paul

 

[Andronicus]

I’m not totally sure about moving the capitol soon. Aside from having the mentioned negative effects on Kyoto, I could imagine that we want to move our capitol to the American mainland after getting a foothold there. In that case we would have only a little time period in which we could benefit from the first palace jump.

I dont know

Perhaps I'm lacking vision of us being a militarily dominant civ, but I cant see us benefitting from a core in America for a very long time.
We would need to aquire territory in America significantly bigger than we have in our current area to make up for not investing earlier in infrastructure.
We will need a number of cities able to build the spaceship parts (with benefit of pre builds over the AI I dont think this will be a major problem), and need to aquire the necessary techs and resources. Getting techs by self research / trading, or stealing / trading should be doable without going to American mainland, the difficult bit might be getting the resources (trading or fighting for).