SGOTM 14 - Kakumeika

[bcool]

We would need a plan for border pops for side cities (or to not need them before libraries) - which might Mysticism. At the same time, we would need a plan to keep the economy afloat, which means at least one of pottery or writing arriving in good time.

The first city in my test was able to share the corn and a mine with the capital profitably (and so I thought delaying mysticism wasn't too bad). And I did tech pottery and the early granary is pretty big I think. I expect it can be improved as well since that was an unrefined attempt.

I hope to try a test with 1W as well. I'm obviously not married to any plan (especially because we are assuming a coastal fish with the 2E site).

P.S. I think scouting NE with the warrior is definitely something to consider. I have been convinced that this is probably better than SE. One more ocean tile revealed that might have a seafood for the 2E site, or 1 more land tile revealed.

P.P.S. Other settling options... We could move the settler down 1SE 1S (next to river and corn with cows in fat cross with 9 unexplored tiles) A bit crazy but it has some appeal.

 

[Manco Capac]

A fast question, bcool...
Are worker farm or simply repetitive worker stealing a big no-no? Diplomatic kickback can be rampant.
I've just practiced myself in BOTM44 for my war abilities (Not necessarily I who will make those turnsets but I want to be sure I can do it)(Epic though) under no reload conditions (that is starting again style). Sorry for my short absence.
I am glad it went rather well.

 

[bcool]

I have no objection to repetitive worker stealing if the opportunity presents itself. It can be difficult to get a diplomatic win with those penalties, but if we do it early or against AI that are either not well liked or semi-isolated it then I think there is no problem.

 

[Manco Capac]

I have no objection to repetitive worker stealing if the opportunity presents itself. It can be difficult to get a diplomatic win with those penalties, but if we do it early or against AI that are either not well liked or semi-isolated it then I think there is no problem.

Well, we have a warrior at the beginning of the game and if we stumble upon a worker at the border of a leader, do we steal? And we do not have the complete diplomatic web yet.
Moreover, did you ever seen a (S)XOTM where the map designer was enough relentless to add a strat. resource under the capital. Of course, the leader may warn us they have such units, but maybe we stole too early.

 

[bcool]

When I suggested we keep a diplomatic victory in mind, I just meant that we proceed to crush our continent (if we have a continent) or our nearby neighbors, but look for opportunities to make an AI a friend who is not a convenient victim.

So I think we steal the early worker from a nearby AI if our warrior stumbles upon it.

I can't remember a (S)Xotm game where a map designer put a strategic resource under a capital, but I certainly haven't played all of them. Even if they did have this an early worker steal would probably happen before they got access.

There is some tendancy in SGOTMs that the map designer tries to avoid situations that might wipe out the team early on I believe. So I doubt we have a warmonger with metal under their capital right next to us.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I have no objection to repetitive worker stealing if the opportunity presents itself. It can be difficult to get a diplomatic win with those penalties, but if we do it early or against AI that are either not well liked or semi-isolated it then I think there is no problem.

I normally plan to eliminate any Civ that I steal Workers from, so the -3 Diplomacy for a DoW is not an issue. We can even do a Cease Fire and steal a Worker or two from the same Civ later just prior to killing it. In such cases we may get 2 * -1 Diplomacy for DoWing a friend with other Civs it knows, but gaining a net +8 Diplomacy (including hidden bonuses/penalties) by the time we build TUN (The United Nations) is quite trivial to do, since there are so many ways to gain Diplomatic favor by that time. One can even DoW a Civ twice and still get to +8 Diplomacy, but I have already recommended killing off such a Civ.

Some Alternatives to Diplomatic Victory:

However, I believe that definitely Conquest and possibly Domination may be quicker ways to a win than a Diplomatic Victory. I do agree that Diplomatic Victories can be done quite early though. Even a Cultural Victory can be achieved very early, especially via an early rush that secures two AI capitals as the 2nd and 3rd cultural cities. Depending on the map, a Cultural Victory may actually be the quickest, but one must plan for it from the early game on.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[bcool]

I played with settling 1W (and assumed we settled on horses)

stats at T46

built 2 settlers and settled the cities (T38 and T44)
built 2 workers
built 3 warriors

by 2 pop whipping once and 2 forest chops in the capital

1st city settled whipped a workboat for crabs, started another after (scout)
2nd city started a workboat

teched animal handling, mining, bronze working, wheel (and part of pottery finish in 4-5 turns

capital is at 3 pop and 2 settlements both at 1 pop

cities are settled close to each other to share tiles and avoid the early issues with the lack of easy cultural border pops.

Seems like 1W we can expand faster than settling 2E (even assuming there is fish) but the tech pace is significantly slower (especially if you settle the cites and get maintenance costs)

In the real game tech might be better if we met AI with the tech we are researching.

similar conclusions to mabraham (I need to go back and compare his results now...)
edit: can't really compare since I assumed there were horses.

Tachy's 6 chariot start is intriguing as well. So much depends on what we find of course. It is nice to get a sense of what is possible.

 

[frogdude]

The first city in my test was able to share the corn and a mine with the capital profitably (and so I thought delaying mysticism wasn't too bad). And I did tech pottery and the early granary is pretty big I think. I expect it can be improved as well since that was an unrefined attempt.

P.P.S. Other settling options... We could move the settler down 1SE 1S (next to river and corn with cows in fat cross with 9 unexplored tiles) A bit crazy but it has some appeal.

If you're going to move 1SE1S to settle, you may as well keep moving more S and pick up even more unexplored tiles. You'll certainly be able to achieve most of what the 1W tests to date have done since my test ran corn+cow for the bulk of the middle part of the run. You might do even worse on the commerce front though, as turn 6-20 of the 1W runs use the unimproved sheep square rather than the unimproved corn square so you'll potentially be 15 commerce behind by turn 20.
However, if the southern site turns out to be really good, then we don't need to make it our capital. We can just make it the 2nd or 3rd city site.
We have quite a good (food+hammer) capital site already. Leaves a bit to be desired on the commerce front, but can't have everything. Do we really feel like we can gain enough from the gamble?

If we do think that the decision to settle south or west is close enough that seeing a resource could swing it, then maybe we should be reconsidering the warrior move back to SE

The sharing corn plan could well work and we'll only be in a proper position to do that once we have done some scouting. Same thing can be achieved by sharing Sheep. I might make my next test run a little bit past the settle of the 2nd city to see how it plays out.

Exploration will be paramount on this setup.

 

[bcool]

If we are willing to delaying settling for 1 or 2 turns there are a number of scouting plans that open up.

for example
We can move the warrior 1SE and then move the settler 1SE 1S.

Before we settle we can move the warrior 1N (which will see all of the possible seafood that a 2E site would have in its fat cross) If we did find multiple seafood we could move the settle back to the 2E site.

If we didn't find seafood and we didn't find anything with the move settler move 1SE and 1S we could continue exploring south with the settler or settle with the corn and cows and hope the 5 unknown tiles have something that would make it competive with the 1W site. Or we could move back.

Is a delay of 2 turns worth the extra scouting and more informed decision? I don't know. If there are no additional resources to the south, the cows and corn would have a real commerce disadvantage early as frogdude pointed out. It does have a river so long term it might not be too bad, but the early disadvantage could be quite damaging.

 

[Kaitzilla]

OK, got some more time now to spend on this.


LINCOLN: Useless UU/UB for us. Starts with fishing and agriculture. Philosophical and Charismatic. Double Great Person Point generation and cheap universities. Troops upgrade at 2xp/4xp/8xp/13xp/20xp/28xp/38xp. +1 happy bonus/+1 additional happy with monuments.



Fastest finishes for HOF normal/emperor games:

Domination - 750BC *25 settlers placed on the 3rd to last turn (No barbs obviously)
Religious - 450BC
Conquest - 940AD
Diplo - 1270AD
Culture - 1530AD
Space - 1685AD


REFERENCE GUIDES
Great People Bulbing List - http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=140952
General Purpose Reference - http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=144897


Emperor Maintenance Costs:

1st City - None
2nd Ctiy - 1.22 # of cities, 1.29 distance, 1 Civic upkeep = 3.51 total
3rd City - 2.64 # of cities, 3.01 distance, 3 Civic upkeep = 8.65 total
4th City - 4.64 # of cities, 4.39 distance, 4 Civic upkeep = 13.03 total
5th City - 7.15 # of cities, 5.77 distance, 7 Civic upkeep = 19.92 total

*fluctuates a bit according to city sizes but generally accurate.



Dom Victory
----------------------

With no vassals and 8 AI, domination might be faster than conquest.

For a rough estimate, on turn 0 when the capital is settled, count the number of land tiles within cultural borders. Settling 1W yields 7 land tiles on turn 0. Press F8 and see how far that initial settling gets you towards dom limit.

If it 1% already, map is small. If it 0.4% map is big. Take that number and divide by 7 to get dom% per tile. Then just 60%dom limit/%per tile to see roughly how many tiles needed for domination victory. Perhaps this is 800 tiles. 21 land tiles per big fat cross, and you need roughly 40 cities spaced out evenly to win a domination victory.

The 750BC HOF dom victory was achieved by settling 25 settlers on the same turn, and using caste system artist + Stonehenge to pop all borders within 2 turns.


Normal Speed
-----------------------

Normal speed affects wars, espionage, and whipping in subtle ways, compressing them a bit harshly compared to epic speed.

A medic unit is vital. March and medic II become useful. The first GG should almost always go towards a super medic in my opinion.

Espionage missions are kind of crippled by the fast pace and lack of scaling.

Whipping is weakened, in the sense that you still have to wait one turn before whipping no matter the speed, but the hammers/turn has to be manually lowered that one turn on faster speeds much more often to get proper 2pop whips. A +20 hammer city makes a unit every turn on quick speed, but that same city makes 20% of a unit on marathon and can 2 pop whip the next turn. High hammer cities, Heroic Epic and Aposolistic palace+monastaries+temples get stronger on the faster speeds.


Fast Rush vs. Slow Rush
------------------------

I don't like chariot rushes on normal speed because archers can decimate them sometimes with superior str and first strikes. Axe/Sword/Horse archers rushes are much more successful I think. Emperor AI gets enough bonuses that it can be more beneficial to let them build up a bit before running them over with military.

My favorite early tech on emperor is Alphabet, as the AI's are usually too slow to get it themselves, but fast enough to have a lot of techs for trade once reached. Alphabet also allows the ending of early wars with a tech, or starting one between neighbors with a bribe which is awesome under no vassals. It also allows cities to produce research and build spies.

Purposely gifting techs to the AI's can also speed up the game's pace if desired.


Bulbing/Oracle Gambits
-----------------------

There are many of these we could do. We could ignore civil service/theocracy/meditation and try to bulb early astronomy with great scientists. Or we could bulb math and oracle construction. Or we could oracle metal casting, whip a forge, run an engineer, use the GE produced 17 turns later to build the pyramids, and use the 2nd GE produced 20 turns after that to bulb engineering for city destroying trebs/fast roads.



Last Thoughts
-----------------------
I'd really recommend trying a practice game with 8 random AI and lincoln for 30 minutes just to see what it is like. Nothing helps clear the mind and get a sense of timing better than a good practice game.

I've looked all over for info on random AI's and near as I can tell no one uses that setting. What appears to happen is that Hatty can get Monty's personality, or Shaka can get Isabella's. I'll see what more I can find out about this.

Also, I love stealing a worker at the start. Settling the 2nd city close to the first so it can share food and hills can remove the need for a monument. The 3rd city can pop its borders with the Oracle, also skipping a monument.

 

[mabraham]

P.S. I think scouting NE with the warrior is definitely something to consider. I have been convinced that this is probably better than SE. One more ocean tile revealed that might have a seafood for the 2E site, or 1 more land tile revealed.

Settling 2E or E-NE would require our scout to find more than coastal fish, i.e. two resources. So, settling 2NE would require our scout to find about three new resources, because we'd be losing the corn. Scouting NE does uncover 7 tiles, but that forested hill NW of the crab isn't likely to have a natural resource. So scouting NE uncovers only

• 5 BFC tiles for settling 2NE (the forested hill, east of it, east of that, one coast, one ocean) - so only four tiles for the three needed resources
• 5 BFC tiles for settling E-NE (the forested hill, east of it, two coast, one ocean) - so only four tiles for the two needed resources
• 3 BFC tiles for settling 2E (one coast, one ocean, one coast/land east of the desert hill)

So actually settling 2NE or E-NE requires a pretty big parlay to occur - multiple resources visible in adjacent tiles. Yes, scouting NE reveals more tiles, but it's rather improbable that the information gained is relevant to making a correct settling decision.

Scouting SE uncovers

• 1 BFC tile for settling 2NE (ocean) - to find three needed resources
• 2 BFC tiles for settling E-NE (coast, ocean) - to find two needed resources
• 3 BFC tiles for settling 2E (coast, ocean and land south of the desert hill) - to find two needed resources
• 1 BFC tile for settling S-SE (land south of desert hill) - to find one needed resource

Basically I think the chance of finding enough stuff to settle 2NE or E-NE is so unlikely that maximising the chance of settling well on 2E or somewhere to the south is best.

P.P.S. Other settling options... We could move the settler down 1SE 1S (next to river and corn with cows in fat cross with 9 unexplored tiles) A bit crazy but it has some appeal.

That's actually not a bad option at all, because once we've moved the settler SE-S, next turn we could settle there, or one further S/SE/E/SW(?), depending what we learn (think about gold on hills in the distance...) That land could well be better mass-cottage country, and our second city (say) 1S of the spice has some food and the potential to be a big hammers site. Settling the capital 1W can also be a big hammers site with this hypothetical southern site available for our second or third city, but there's rather more synergy to be had from having our palace where our commerce improvements/buildings will exist, than having our palace where the hammers improvements/buildings exist (until/if we use Bureaucracy). If we're in a crowded early scenario, then catering for heavy city specialization is probably a good thing.

However, if it is crowded, then the value of 1W is its flexibility at possibly producing a rush force early and still making a sound capital later. But can we have the best of both worlds?

 

[bcool]

Ok good discussion and resources

As I mentioned I randomly came up with the turn order and here are the results

Sun Tzu Wu... up first
mabraham... on deck
Tachywaxon... in the hole
Walter_Wolf... waiting
Kaitzilla... waiting
frogdude... waiting
bcool... waiting
shulec... waiting

let me know if you want any changes.

I imagine we will pausing the first turn set after some scouting and we will do some extensive testing of different openings.

 

[bcool]

There was some discussion about not putting silver/gold/gems near the starting location in the thread about ideas for this sgotm. It also might swing the early game quite a bit to give people who take the settle south risk gold/silver/gems. Would the map maker do this?

For this reason I doubt settling south would give us gold/silver/gems in the fat cross. So the chance of a more favorable site to the south might be lower than usual.

 

[Manco Capac]

Tachywaxon... in the hole

I have no idea what you are talking about...?
I did search...but still no clarification was brought.
You didn't capitalize me...really I'm lost now.

Ah, you meant you forgot me, am I right?

I know my contribution was a bit lame. I'll see tomorrow if I can do something useful...

 

[shulec]

I have no idea what you are talking about...?
I did search...but still no clarification was brought.
You didn't capitalize me...really I'm lost now.

Ah, you meant you forgot me, am I right?

I know my contribution was a bit lame. I'll see tomorrow if I can do something useful...

It is a baseball term. For the team that is batting, the batter who is currently batting is "up" or "up to bat". The next batter is "on deck". And that batter after that is "in the hole". You must be third on the list.

 

[bcool]

"in the hole" is a baseball reference to the batter who is up after the player on deck. Didn't mean anything by it, sorry for the confusion. And I just forgot to capitalize your name the first time.

 

[Manco Capac]

Many thanks for the clarification (and no surprise shulec answered first when it comes to baseball) and it becomes obvious to people I don't either watch or play baseball.

I'm okay with my position, but stressful, of course. The earliest turnsets are the most critical.

But I guess some players will have to replay; I don't think we will necessarily finish with 8 players.
The game may become sluggish depending how evil Neil decided to be.

 

[bcool]

Oh I imagine we will all get to play at least twice. Since it is normal speed. I'm imagining maybe ~20 turn sets for the first 2 and then ~10 turn sets after that. Of course we can change that if people disagree.

And I'm betting the wizard will be hard to kill, so I highly doubt we are going to be able to finish the game in a super fast domination game.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Great analysis Kaitzilla!

+1 happy bonus/+1 additional happy with monuments.

Note for my final comment below.

Fastest finishes for HOF normal/emperor games:
...
Domination - 750BC *25 settlers placed on the 3rd to last turn (No barbs obviously)

Dom Victory
----------------------

With no vassals and 8 AI, domination might be faster than conquest.

For a rough estimate, on turn 0 when the capital is settled, count the number of land tiles within cultural borders. Settling 1W yields 7 land tiles on turn 0. Press F8 and see how far that initial settling gets you towards dom limit.

If it 1% already, map is small. If it 0.4% map is big. Take that number and divide by 7 to get dom% per tile. Then just 60%dom limit/%per tile to see roughly how many tiles needed for domination victory. Perhaps this is 800 tiles. 21 land tiles per big fat cross, and you need roughly 40 cities spaced out evenly to win a domination victory.

The 750BC HOF dom victory was achieved by settling 25 settlers on the same turn, and using caste system artist + Stonehenge to pop all borders within 2 turns.

The key to winning an early Domination Victory is killing the closest AIs very early and switching over to Settler spamming when your military's momentum is climbing/high and about half the AIs have already been killed or have given up offensive operations. Obviously Domination is most easily achieved on a single land mass, by it can done with just Galleys on suitable water maps (Archipelago). Otherwise, one may need to resort to Astronomy, but other victory conditions like Culture and Diplomatic start to look easier when, because Military Science, Military Tradition, Rifling and Steel will be needed to upgrade and build higher Technology units to match.

The HoF record for Emperor Domination Standard Normal is 775 BC (turn 84).

Normal Speed
-----------------------

Normal speed affects wars, espionage, and whipping in subtle ways, compressing them a bit harshly compared to epic speed.

A medic unit is vital. March and medic II become useful. The first GG should almost always go towards a super medic in my opinion.

Espionage missions are kind of crippled by the fast pace and lack of scaling.

Whipping is weakened, in the sense that you still have to wait one turn before whipping no matter the speed, but the hammers/turn has to be manually lowered that one turn on faster speeds much more often to get proper 2pop whips. A +20 hammer city makes a unit every turn on quick speed, but that same city makes 20% of a unit on marathon and can 2 pop whip the next turn. High hammer cities, Heroic Epic and Aposolistic palace+monastaries+temples get stronger on the faster speeds.

We have lots of Forests to chop to build units quickly, so Slavery won't be quite as important, but we can't wait for Mathematics for +50% Hammers, unless we bulb it.

Kaitzilla suggested that a 20 Hpt city at quick speed might a build in a turn (for example Chariots). That same 20 Hpt city at normal speed can build an Axeman/Swordsman every other turn on organic Hammers alone. Adding a Forest Chop every 1-2 turns will cause the same city to complete an Axeman/Swordsman every turn!

Bulbing/Oracle Gambits
-----------------------

There are many of these we could do. We could ignore civil service/theocracy/meditation and try to bulb early astronomy with great scientists. Or we could bulb math and oracle construction. Or we could oracle metal casting, whip a forge, run an engineer, use the GE produced 17 turns later to build the pyramids, and use the 2nd GE produced 20 turns after that to bulb engineering for city destroying trebs/fast roads.

We definitely need to leverage our Philosophical trait via early Great Person generation and quite possibly some strategic bulbs. We need to consider odd sets of having or not having certain Technologies to gain unusual and valuable bulbs. This can be done in Buffy via selecting various sets of Technologies and noting the bulbing opportunities that arise in the left edge of the Technology window.

Last Thoughts
-----------------------
I'd really recommend trying a practice game with 8 random AI and lincoln for 30 minutes just to see what it is like. Nothing helps clear the mind and get a sense of timing better than a good practice game.

I've looked all over for info on random AI's and near as I can tell no one uses that setting. What appears to happen is that Hatty can get Monty's personality, or Shaka can get Isabella's. I'll see what more I can find out about this.

Also, I love stealing a worker at the start. Settling the 2nd city close to the first so it can share food and hills can remove the need for a monument. The 3rd city can pop its borders with the Oracle, also skipping a monument.

Yes, I agree with the practice game idea. Just tone down the micro-management to speed the practice game up. We will be able to do significantly better with extreme micro-management, but the practice games will give us a good insights on how to achieve our goals, especially to test out Grand Strategies, and anything below it.

I agree that Random Personalities is nothing more that reassigning the exiting 52 personalities randomly to the actual AI Civs being played against us.

Since Dorthy is Charismatic, we can delay Monuments for the culture pop they can provide, but they are relatively cheap for the Happy face they provide, so we will want to build one in each city, or possibly build Stonehenge to avoid building many Monuments.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Oh I imagine we will all get to play at least twice. Since it is normal speed. I'm imagining maybe ~20 turn sets for the first 2 and then ~10 turn sets after that. Of course we can change that if people disagree.

And I'm betting the wizard will be hard to kill, so I highly doubt we are going to be able to finish the game in a super fast domination game.

Let's assume we can pull a turn 80 (875 BC) win. That would be eight 10 turn sets with shulec getting us a domination win! Maybe The Wizard of Oz won't be so tough to beat after all. I still think he is nothing more than one of the eight Civs, likely with a few advantages like some pre-built Great Wonders, including The Apostolic Palace.

I'm OK with 10 turn sets, starting at turn 0. It will help keep the pace of our beginning game slow where extreme micro-management will provide the greatest advantage. We should do everything we can to proceed slowly, as long as we can comfortably complete by Dec 10th.

I don't really think we can achieve a turn 80 (875 BC) win, but a turn 120 (125 AD) Domination win might be possible. Let's worry more about The Wizard of Oz when we find him and determine how he can reliably be destroyed.

Sun Tzu Wu