SGOTM 13 - T'dr'duzk b'hazg t't

Next time I'm going to see what happens if we forgo the worker at the beginning. I'll build a warrior until fishing is in and then go three straight workboats --> worker --> 10 turns of furious chopping and whipping to get in a lighthouse, galley, settler, and monument. Tech path will go Fishing --> Sailing --> Mining --> BW --> Mysticism --> Polytheism.

Does anyone notice anything immediately dumb with that?
 
Only thing I can see Benginal, is the hammer degredation on the warrior, I'd slot him back in after the 2nd workboat.
 
Yeah, hammer decay is annoying and I've never paid it that much attention before. I guess I was planning on just sacrificing the hammers that went in to the warrior. But that does indeed seem wasteful.

Here's a post with major contributions from DanF talking about hammer decay: heres it is.

So we might be able to build 10 turns of the workboat and then switch back to the warrior before it starts to decay and thus save the hammers.

Another option is to start on a building first as we then get a much longer time to let it sit before we have to work on it again. But we won't be building a barracks for a while anyway, so this seems pretty wasteful too. Shrug.

If we just start with a warrior and then ignore it forever, we end up wasting 9 hammers. Notice that in my test game we lost those same 9 hammers on the worker. So unless we start on the first unit before even the first workboat is finished, we lose those 9 hammers.

So we lose 9 hammers unless we settle on the plains hill... (?)
 
I thought it was epic speed? Hammer decay scales up with speed (so would be 15 turns), if I am not mistaken.
 
I thought it was epic speed? Hammer decay scales up with speed (so would be 15 turns), if I am not mistaken.

You'd certainly think so, but apparently this isn't the case. From post number 4 in the thread I linked to:

So Buildings and WONDERS are decaying after 50 "idle" turns with NewHammers = RoundDown(0.99*OldHammers).
Units are decaying after 10 "idle" turns with NewHammers = RoundDown(0.98*OldHammers).

There is no scaling for game speed!!! The AI does not suffer from hammer decay.
"Refresh turns" don't work, decay will proceed after such turns, once it has begun. Items will then need to be completed without taking them from the top of the queue in order to avoid loss of hammers.
 
IF we started with Fishing, I think SIP could work very well, but obviously we do not have Fishing.

The start is just super ugly, inital hammers are wasted, A-M doesn't grow to pop2 until turn 40!

I am going to have another go at settling on the corn. I did not include the food from the lighthouse in my earlier calcualtions. Also, we do not have to work the mined PH, so we could still have 7 surplus food, but with the option to maximise hammers.

Fishing still needs to come first, but at least Worker 1 should be built as quick as possible.


edit: this worked out better than I thought. Fishing takes 9 turns, growth occurs in 10. So, build Warrior for first 10 turns (these hammers are wasted), as soon as we are at pop 2, switch to 2 WB's. Then a worker, lighthouse, galley & settler. No whipping this time, as we do not quite have the pop.

I will see if I can optimize it.
 
Settling on the corn proved to be very interesting, but there was no whipping, as there wasn't quite enough food. Tech rate was improved, we got an extra 10% beakers, but this was at the price of food.

The extra hammers came in very handy for Oracle, finished it on t103, several turns earlier than when I settled on the PH.

The biggest difference is the number of cities. Settling the corn means that we do not get Settler 2 out before Oracle.

What I did learn, was building the lighthouse before the galley was a very good idea. I will have another crack at settling the PH, but lighthouse before galley. This means that we don't have as much opportunity to scout where to put city 2. We will still have ~5 turns to explore, we will have to extremely careful about where we explore.


edit: The extra beakers that exist in the Corn settling are temporary. When settling the PH, the ability to get city 3 out before Oracle gives enough extra commerce that by t100 the beaker output is the same. Lighthouse before galley meant that A-M had more food in storage and we did less exploring with galley, but everything else was the same. So this might actually be a risk we might not want to take.
 
So this might actually be a risk we might not want to take.

I agree with this. This map could go so many ways I think it's very important that we try to figure out what's going on with it.
 
Weird, I thought I had managed to post a message this morning, but apparently not.

I can't wait to try all these settings with you. My two pesetas (naah, it's euros now too...) : turn 100 for the oracle on emperor is ballsy to say the least. In my (painful) experience at emperor level, every turn after 80 is pushing it.
 
Weird, I thought I had managed to post a message this morning, but apparently not.

I can't wait to try all these settings with you. My two pesetas (naah, it's euros now too...) : turn 100 for the oracle on emperor is ballsy to say the least. In my (painful) experience at emperor level, every turn after 80 is pushing it.

Ballsy is the only chance we have of winning the laurels. It gets pretty compeditive and the best way to stay in there is to get an early advantage and abuse it like there's no tomorrow.
 
Weird, I thought I had managed to post a message this morning, but apparently not.

I can't wait to try all these settings with you. My two pesetas (naah, it's euros now too...) : turn 100 for the oracle on emperor is ballsy to say the least. In my (painful) experience at emperor level, every turn after 80 is pushing it.

Is that when you play normal speed? We are playing epic, t100 is pretty good for Oracle at epic. I got Oracle in every one of my tests.
 
Minor observation: I was messing around making test games and noted that neither Big and Small nor Medium and Small map scripts have a "World Wrap" option at set up. This suggests to me that we are probably dealing with a (possibly heavily) modified Archipelago map.

I'm going to run some tests tonight to see when The Oracle goes on a number of independent maps/starts.
 
Both map types can have cylindrical and toroidal.

Good thinking about Oracle tests.
Include a worst case scenario, a spiritual/industrial leader (Ramesses) with marble in the BFC.
 
Ramesses doesn't start with mysticism though.

Isabella is always an Oracle whore.

Aren't the opponents the same from a previous game? (something about Napoleon being exiled?)
 
Both map types can have cylindrical and toroidal.

Really? I'm looking at the "Custom Game" set up screen and the B&S and M&S map types have no option for world wrap. Is this a variable that can be modified in a WB save?

Good thinking about Oracle tests.
Include a worst case scenario, a spiritual/industrial leader (Ramesses) with marble in the BFC.

That would be worst case! :) And is hopefully unlikely, since Ramesses would really stretch the definition of "European", but I see your point.
 
Ramesses doesn't start with mysticism though.

Isabella is always an Oracle whore.

Aren't the opponents the same from a previous game? (something about Napoleon being exiled?)

The opponents I was thinking of for test purposes are: Victoria, Catherine, Isabella, Joao, Frederick, and Willem.
 
Good point.

Not sure about the Civs, I didn't think they were the same as a past game. Alan did say that they weren't exactly the opponents that Napoleon faced. I take this to mean that we will probably have Victoria, Bismarck, Peter.... but considering thetask is conquest, I would expect Monty & maybe Toku as well.
 
But they did say that they were "European" AIs. That would eliminate Monty or Toku.

Edit: From the Maintenance thread:

Opponents: 6 European AIs.
 
Let's assume Bismarck and Izzy then for worst case Oracle gambit.
 
Back
Top Bottom