SGOTM 14 - One Short Straw

[shyuhe]

At least it gives us an extra hammer.

Given the iron, I suspect the Ducks are going mace/pult on the AI from a pretty early stage.

 

[ZPV]

Okay, and what about MC and HBR? Same?

HBR: Probably every other team needs to know it. It unlocks a whole bunch of strong units, so the test is proportion that know it vs threshold*3.2. We could possibly be able to trade it when there's one AI that doesn't know it, but I wouldn't hold your breath.
MC: as soon as one other team learns it.

 

[ZPV]

What can we conclude about Liz/GK's techthreshold since they'll trade mono with 1 other team knowing it?

Nothing. It doesn't unlock any buildings or units, so it, like alphabet, will always be traded even as a monopoly.

 

[shyuhe]

At least we know that neither of them is Ragnar, Shaka or Toku (none of them trade techs at cautious).

 

[LowtherCastle]

bbp, not sure what your plans are now, but I definitely want one chop into a monument asap in Bridge City. It hires 2 sci about 10t sooner that way.

 

[ZPV]

Gandhi is -1, Pleased towards Genghis.
Genghis is -3, Annoyed towards Gandhi.
We can cancel out the peace weights and warmonger respect; so that leaves Gandhi having at least 4 greater hidden attitude mod than Ghengis. The rank difference is 5.
The only way I can see of getting that is:
Gandhi: +1 base attitude, +2 or 3 better rank difference.
Genghis: -1 base attitude, -2 or -3 worse rank difference.

(+2 base attitude is out because Gandhi needs to have 0 DifferentReligion modifier).
That narrows Gandhi down to the personalities of Roosevelt, Asoka or Cyrus and confirms Montezuma behaves like Mansa Musa.
It also means that Genghis behaves like Brennus or Montezuma.

 

[babybluepants]

bbp, not sure what your plans are now, but I definitely want one chop into a monument asap in Bridge City. It hires 2 sci about 10t sooner that way.

I intended to stop in 3t at Literature so it's not part of my TS. I know you want this and I'm indifferent, tbh.

 

[babybluepants]

Here's the test game to 575 BC. Research is way off. I didn't manage to simulate the extra TR's and obviously did something else wrong. The cities and workers seem to be right, though. I'll fix the research situation somehow in the next mini-set.

I think I'll just play out to Lit today and hand off, unless someone strongly objects soon. I don't really see any issues for discussion up until then. Afterwards, we'll have to at least think about our research path a bit, IMHO, now that there are some potential trades on the horizon.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Go for it!

 

[Mitchum]

Agreed. Go ahead and play out through Literature.

Based on the roster, it looks like LC is up next... and then mdy, who's MIA.

 

[shyuhe]

Fine by me.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Here's the test game to 575 BC. Research is way off. I didn't manage to simulate the extra TR's and obviously did something else wrong. The cities and workers seem to be right, though. I'll fix the research situation somehow in the next mini-set.

That's not too hard to do... each City has its own Food and its own Hammers but Commerce is a globally-earned item. Thus, for example, you could temporarily plop down a Gold Resource plus a Forest on any worked Mine, which would maintain the same number of Hammers but would add a bunch of Commerce.

Slightly too much Commerce? Switch the Gold Resource into a Gem or a Silver Resource.

Not enough Mines for you to temporarily put on Gold + a Forest? Plop down a Gold Resource and a Mine improvement on a different square that you are working, such as a Coast, then then switch one of the other squares so that it is working 1 less Hammer (such as adding a Gold Resource to an existing barren Mine but not putting a Forest on that square).

If you have a couple of turns to work with, like you will, then get a rough estimate for the first couple of turns then fine-tune it with saves and reloads for the last turn... just:
a) capture your auto-saves (manual saves are better) from the real game first
AND
b) make sure that you're playing around with the test saved game, which is potentially easy to mix up after having played some real game sessions recently

I think I'll just play out to Lit today

You have my blessing to play. I can't look at the saved game to offer any tips but from the way that the discussion has been going, it seems that you should be good to go.

 

[babybluepants]

Done. Our WB spotted Gandhi's borders. We might have reason to OB next turn. Otherwise, nothing happened. I haven't whipped Pigs yet, in case someone comes up with a better plan.

Here is your Session Turn Log from 575 BC to 500 BC:

Spoiler :

Turn 92, 575 BC: You have discovered Code of Laws!
Turn 92, 575 BC: You have discovered Alphabet!
Turn 92, 575 BC: You have discovered Iron Working!

Turn 93, 550 BC: Good Witch of the South/Wicked Witch of the South has no worst enemy.
Turn 93, 550 BC: Wicked Witch of the East won't trade Clam
Turn 93, 550 BC: Gems City will grow to size 4 on the next turn.
Turn 93, 550 BC: Ivory City will grow to size 4 on the next turn.
Turn 93, 550 BC: Marble City will grow to size 2 on the next turn.

Turn 94, 525 BC: Gems City has grown to size 4.
Turn 94, 525 BC: Gems City can hurry Library for 2⇴ with 8ℤ overflow and +1⇤ for 14 turns.
Turn 94, 525 BC: Ivory City has grown to size 4.
Turn 94, 525 BC: Ivory City can hurry Lighthouse for 2⇴ with 31ℤ overflow and +1⇤ for 10 turns.
Turn 94, 525 BC: Marble City has grown to size 2.
Turn 94, 525 BC: Wicked Witch of the West will trade Monotheism
Turn 94, 525 BC: Good Witch of the West will trade Monotheism
Turn 94, 525 BC: Washington will grow to size 7 on the next turn.
Turn 94, 525 BC: Silver City will grow to size 2 on the next turn.
Turn 94, 525 BC: You have discovered Literature!
Turn 94, 525 BC: Wicked Witch of the West adopts Organized Religion!
Turn 94, 525 BC: Good Witch of the West adopts Organized Religion!

Turn 95, 500 BC: Washington has grown to size 7.
Turn 95, 500 BC: Stone City can hurry Work Boat for 1⇴ with 25ℤ overflow and +1⇤ for 10 turns.
Turn 95, 500 BC: Ivory City has grown to size 5.
Turn 95, 500 BC: Silver City has grown to size 2.
Turn 95, 500 BC: Silver City can hurry Work Boat for 1⇴ with 7ℤ overflow and +1⇤ for 10 turns.
Turn 95, 500 BC: Wicked Witch of the West/Good Witch of the West is the worst enemy of Wicked Witch of the North/Good Witch of the North, Wicked Witch of the East/Good Witch of the East.
Turn 95, 500 BC: Wicked Witch of the East/Good Witch of the East is the worst enemy of Wicked Witch of the West/Good Witch of the West.
Turn 95, 500 BC: Wicked Witch of the West will trade Meditation, Monotheism
Turn 95, 500 BC: Good Witch of the West will trade Meditation, Monotheism
Turn 95, 500 BC: Wicked Witch of the North will trade Meditation, Monotheism
Turn 95, 500 BC: Good Witch of the North will trade Meditation, Monotheism
Turn 95, 500 BC: Good Witch of the North will trade Cow
Turn 95, 500 BC: Wicked Witch of the East will trade Copper
Turn 95, 500 BC: Will Sign Open Borders: Good Witch of the South, Good Witch of the West, Wicked Witch of the South, Wicked Witch of the West

I'll update the test game later tonight.

 

[babybluepants]

Test game. Didn't update map at all.

 

[LowtherCastle]

The Ducks have a peculiar cultural graph. The slope decreased. One possibility is that they adopted a religion other than the one they founded. That seems unlikely. They could have lost or given away a city with culture. That seems unlikely, especially with no dip in their score graph. Hm...

Okay, I guess they could have revolted for 1 or more turns. That would do it and seems a lot more likely. IN that case, their slope will shift back next turnset.

 

[babybluepants]

Yeah, that's a revolt.

I just played on a bit in the test save. We can pretty easily bulb through Astro and Eng at 200 AD, but I think it's possible to cut that down another 2t at least. Getting the Gems GP asap is important. We don't know if it'll be GS or GM and we'll need to make a decision on where to invest beakers and what to bulb right around the time it comes.

Short term notes:
I'm thinking we delay the Bridge settler (slow build it from here), since there will be no worker turns available for it anyway. Then go WB-Worker(whip) in Pigs. That seems to work nicely with the growth pattern. Both Washington workers chop, for TGL @ 325 BC. Marble whips library for max OF into LH, then eventually also 1pops the LH. That's the best I could do.

Research: no idea. We could go Currency or Calendar and hope for a trade, but I'm more inclined to stick with our research path. I would consider going HBR first, both for a stable in Ivory and an option on the Construction trade. Would HBR be enough for that trade? Probably not even close, but we could still invest some beakers in Construction first, right?

Who's up next?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I would consider going HBR first, both for a stable in Ivory and an option on the Construction trade. Would HBR be enough for that trade?

I think that we've discussed that Horseback Riding would be slightly easier to get in trade relative to Construction, due to Construction unlocking more units (Cats + War Elephants versus Horse Archers) as well as more buildings + unique buildings (I think--I don't have the F6 screen in front of me).

If we don't think that we're going to get either tech in trade, and if we don't think that we'll build a couple of early Catapults to use against the Barb City, then we can start on Horseback Riding at 0% Research, for your Stables idea.

That said, I think that we're going to aim to build Cats and War Elephants WITHOUT using Stables (maybe 1 Stable at most) for the first little while, just to get our first war started with decent units. Thus, if we're still on board with that idea, then Construction -> Horseback Riding (using binary Research to delay the time that we invest a lot of Flasks into these techs) is the way to go, so that we can begin immediate work on building Catapults after our Barracks have been completed. We might even skip a Barracks in a couple of Cities that can only contribute a couple of Cats to the initial war--2 unpromoted Cats are better than an extra Barracks + 1 promoted Cat for our initial assault. If we can pick a roughly targeted timeline for when we want our units to be completed, we can more easily make the determination as to whether or not we should take the time to build a Barracks before the initial assault on a City-by-City basis.


Currency is tempting but I think that it is simply a distraction. We ARE kind of counting on getting Calendar in trade, but Currency is only going to give us +1 to +2 Commerce per City on top of our already +3 to +6 Commerce per City from Trade Routes--not a huge relative increase yet still very nice in the medium term, but delaying our initial rush unless we somehow get super lucky and get both Construction and Horseback Riding in trade--not luck that I want to really rely on. So, I would stick with heads down on our targeted techs.

As for trading value, I'm not sure if this explanation makes sense, but it can possibly help to give us a rough estimate:
Generally, we can't trade on a one-for-one basis in tech trading. An AI might give us somewhere between 80% and 90% of the value of the tech that we are trading to it--those numbers are very rough, by the way. With the team factor involved, you would think that these values would scale by 1.5, thus somewhere between 80% * 1.5 = 120% and 90% * 1.5 = 135% of the tech's value. A lot of trades that might not otherwise be possible would become possible. I'm not convinced that we would want to trade away either of Construction or Horseback Riding, though--AI Cats one-by-one are not too bad but they do still tend to attack out against your stacks a lot and if they mass a few they can spell doom for your stack. Our test saved game has Ivory in the hands of multiple AIs so I imagine that the same could be true here.

I actually wouldn't mind seeing AIs building Horse Archers but I would mind seeing them building War Elephants. Delaying a trade might just end up only delaying said tech from the hands of an AI team for a turn or two... but, it might not. Don't forget that they have different trading thresholds and they often feel compelled to trade at equal value unless they like the other team a lot--with the potential for conflicting Religions messing up relations, we might not see much happiness across AI teams.

If we can focus on "eating up" all excess Resources that one AI team could trade to another AI team, we can definitely keep the level of "liking each other" lower, while also getting something in return for the Resources that we should probably be gifting out regardless of what we get in return.

I did see that a Cow Resource was available for trade near the end of the turnset log--it's not about saying that "Cow is a bad Resource to get in trade" but is about saying that "well, that's one Cow that said AI won't have available to trade to a different AI if we snap it up."


Again, unless every AI team gets Monotheism, we should probably avoid taking it in trade, to slow their learning of said tech which is also currently useless to us. As a further reminder, we definitely want to avoid taking Meditation in trade.


The 'Ducks, according to what we believe, did get Confucianism--could they have actually revolted to a State Religion? I suppose that if you have it well-spread, you might as well take advantage of it, particularly if you will be using war instead of peace for your tech-trading.

 

[ZPV]

I think that we've discussed that Horseback Riding would be slightly easier to get in trade relative to Construction, due to Construction unlocking more units (Cats + War Elephants versus Horse Archers) as well as more buildings + unique buildings (I think--I don't have the F6 screen in front of me).

If we don't think that we're going to get either tech in trade, and if we don't think that we'll build a couple of early Catapults to use against the Barb City, then we can start on Horseback Riding at 0% Research, for your Stables idea.

That said, I think that we're going to aim to build Cats and War Elephants WITHOUT using Stables (maybe 1 Stable at most) for the first little while, just to get our first war started with decent units. Thus, if we're still on board with that idea, then Construction -> Horseback Riding (using binary Research to delay the time that we invest a lot of Flasks into these techs) is the way to go, so that we can begin immediate work on building Catapults after our Barracks have been completed. We might even skip a Barracks in a couple of Cities that can only contribute a couple of Cats to the initial war--2 unpromoted Cats are better than an extra Barracks + 1 promoted Cat for our initial assault. If we can pick a roughly targeted timeline for when we want our units to be completed, we can more easily make the determination as to whether or not we should take the time to build a Barracks before the initial assault on a City-by-City basis.


Currency is tempting but I think that it is simply a distraction. We ARE kind of counting on getting Calendar in trade, but Currency is only going to give us +1 to +2 Commerce per City on top of our already +3 to +6 Commerce per City from Trade Routes--not a huge relative increase yet still very nice in the medium term, but delaying our initial rush unless we somehow get super lucky and get both Construction and Horseback Riding in trade--not luck that I want to really rely on. So, I would stick with heads down on our targeted techs.

As for trading value, I'm not sure if this explanation makes sense, but it can possibly help to give us a rough estimate:
Generally, we can't trade on a one-for-one basis in tech trading. An AI might give us somewhere between 80% and 90% of the value of the tech that we are trading to it--those numbers are very rough, by the way. With the team factor involved, you would think that these values would scale by 1.5, thus somewhere between 80% * 1.5 = 120% and 90% * 1.5 = 135% of the tech's value. A lot of trades that might not otherwise be possible would become possible. I'm not convinced that we would want to trade away either of Construction or Horseback Riding, though--AI Cats one-by-one are not too bad but they do still tend to attack out against your stacks a lot and if they mass a few they can spell doom for your stack. Our test saved game has Ivory in the hands of multiple AIs so I imagine that the same could be true here.

I actually wouldn't mind seeing AIs building Horse Archers but I would mind seeing them building War Elephants. Delaying a trade might just end up only delaying said tech from the hands of an AI team for a turn or two... but, it might not. Don't forget that they have different trading thresholds and they often feel compelled to trade at equal value unless they like the other team a lot--with the potential for conflicting Religions messing up relations, we might not see much happiness across AI teams.

If we can focus on "eating up" all excess Resources that one AI team could trade to another AI team, we can definitely keep the level of "liking each other" lower, while also getting something in return for the Resources that we should probably be gifting out regardless of what we get in return.

I did see that a Cow Resource was available for trade near the end of the turnset log--it's not about saying that "Cow is a bad Resource to get in trade" but is about saying that "well, that's one Cow that said AI won't have available to trade to a different AI if we snap it up."

I definitely prefer HBR first. Having a Stable and a Barracks means we can get a 5XP elephant right away, and that only needs to win one battle to unlock our Heroic Epic.
(and HBR is much harder to get by trade since it's a prereq for all mounted units except chariots. We will not get it in trade.)

Getting Currency and trading it around? No, thanks. That's a much bigger boost for the AI than not using up their Cow. (btw, trading for their spare cow is a false economy, since we have to give them a resource to pay for it. It's not like we can get it for free, so it's basically giving that AI some benefit for it. We'd have to do the same with their trading partner, so it's basically us that pays them both for the resources instead of each other.

Giving resources to boost relations? I don't want to give away any unique ones, (we're about to try and grow our cities so we'll need them) and most of the seafood they'll have anyway. Who do we want to schmooze, and why?

edit: Compass is good trade bait. If we're going to be able to trade for Construction or Metal Casting, we should research it after HBR.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Well, you only need to get one of the two Resources that would otherwise make up an AI-AI trade in order to block said trade.

As I said earlier, gifting or trading a Resource does impact how much Gold we can Request from a Pleased AI team, so if we have Resources that we aren't using for 10 turns, then we can get some bonus value out of said Resources. I have no idea if it affects how much we can Demand from a less-than-Pleased AI team.

It's not about saying that "well, Wheat gives +2 Health and Cow only gives +1, so let's not trade" but is more about "let's take that Cow as long as we won't need the excess +! Health from having a Wheat instead of a Cow, at least until another AI that said AI would have traded with hooks up their own source of Cow OR until we need that +1 Health ourselves."


Eh, are you saying that EACH pre-requisite tech for a unit gets counted, not simply the tech where the unit's graphic is displayed on the F6 screen? I.e. War Elephants get counted for both Construction AND Horseback Riding? I would have thought that whatever was displayed on the F6 screen would get used, but logical thinking and the code don't often align.


As for boosting relations--the main intent with doing so is getting a team that won't trade with us unless they are Pleased with us to start trading with us. A secondary benefit is getting a team up to being Pleased with us so that we can occasionally Request a lump sum Gold gift from said team (them being Pleased takes away the requirement for us to have a really high Power ratio and also prevents them from getting mad at us just for having asked).

 

[ZPV]

Well, you only need to get one of the two Resources that would otherwise make up an AI-AI trade in order to block said trade.

No, we need to get both resources; otherwise the second one is there for an AI to trade for a mystery 3rd resource.

As I said earlier, gifting or trading a Resource does impact how much Gold we can Request from a Pleased AI team, so if we have Resources that we aren't using for 10 turns, then we can get some bonus value out of said Resources. I have no idea if it affects how much we can Demand from a less-than-Pleased AI team.

It's not about saying that "well, Wheat gives +2 Health and Cow only gives +1, so let's not trade" but is more about "let's take that Cow as long as we won't need the excess +! Health from having a Wheat instead of a Cow, at least until another AI that said AI would have traded with hooks up their own source of Cow OR until we need that +1 Health ourselves."

I don't quite see where the link is between resource trading and gold limits.
The amount of gold they'll trade us depends on their population, gold per turn, etc, and how much gold they've traded to us, but not resource trade turns.
I don't believe us giving them resources will let them gift us more gold - as far as I can tell it's just a running total of how much they've given us free.

If we don't need the health and definitely won't, then fine, but the only benefit is +0.2 attitude for one AI, which is worthless unless there is a specific AI we want to please.

Eh, are you saying that EACH pre-requisite tech for a unit gets counted, not simply the tech where the unit's graphic is displayed on the F6 screen? I.e. War Elephants get counted for both Construction AND Horseback Riding? I would have thought that whatever was displayed on the F6 screen would get used, but logical thinking and the code don't often align.

You're right. I took getPrereqAndTech() to mean any of the prereqs, when it's really just the first one. (The other ones are hiding behind the function getPrereqAndTechs() )

As for boosting relations--the main intent with doing so is getting a team that won't trade with us unless they are Pleased with us to start trading with us. A secondary benefit is getting a team up to being Pleased with us so that we can occasionally Request a lump sum Gold gift from said team (them being Pleased takes away the requirement for us to have a really high Power ratio and also prevents them from getting mad at us just for having asked).

Begging for gold? We need to be really careful with that, since we don't want a peace treaty with the wrong person at the wrong time.