SGOTM 14 - One Short Straw

[babybluepants]

PPP for discussion

Washington: keep building cats
Gems: do we keep running Sci? Otherwise, whip galleon after Astro/PS
Pigs: if we're not taking the other PH, we should be whipping it from size 9 to 7.
Stone: as is
Ivory: grow 2 pop in 5t and farm a grass for it, build WEs, switch to HE after Madurai
Marble: whip galleon after Astro/PS
Silver: just units; whip it 6-4; start the chops
Panama: whip galley now for Madurai; start another galley; whip galleon after Astro/PS
Bridge: granary and seafood in 2t; start on galley/galleon. Grows into a 2pop whip in 9t (including PS revolt)

Tech: aim for Optics in 4t. We'll trade Lit to Shaka for 50g. Should be doable, esp with Ivory now working multiple coasts for 5t. After Optics, I don't really like teching Music. There's almost no chance we'll get the GA. Do we have other options?

Bulb Astro and Eng, and revolt to PS on T+4.

Attack Madurai on T+5, landing 4WE+2cat. Attack with unpromoted 5xp WE first to gain 3xp. LC, do you know if we actually get 3xp for attacking the second archer? It's not CG1.

Scout heads towards suspected Oz location. Steps only 1 tile per turn once out of Aztec borders.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Why not? Didn't we have more in SG12? Somewhere around France, I think. Edit: you're right. It's two tiles.

I can't load that save on my new computer, but there must have been a lake tile there. Canals can only be two tiles long between water tiles. That why we can do it from Pigs to Gems, because there's a lake in between.

oops, xpost with your edit (which I didn't see till after my post appeared)

 

[babybluepants]

One thing I'm wondering is if we wanna get a caravel out now. It could map out Ragnar a bit and try to figure out the Oz setup.

 

[babybluepants]

I can't load that save on my new computer, but there must have been a lake tile there. Canals can only be two tiles long between water tiles. That why we can do it from Pigs to Gems, because there's a lake in between.

oops, xpost with your edit (which I didn't see till after my post appeared)

I checked. Looks like it was only 3 tiles (I remembered wrong), but also included Paris. Tested it in WB, and it seems to be only 2 forts.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Ivory: I agree that the forge takes a long time to pay back, but our war weariness may become a serious problem and we don''t want our main production cities losing hammers to unhappiness. But that doesn't mean it's optimal to build it now. It will also help later if we want to spam settlers.

Marble: We can grow to p5 in 1t borrowing the corn, then work the marble. This gives us more hammers into the galley and coins for Optics.

Panama: I wouldn't whip the galley. We don't need to be so worried about Madurai. The primary goal is the 8XP unit. If we get that but have to bail out of capturing it for some reason, big deal. Then it serves as the unit magnet that Dhoom was talking about. I'd send 3WEs+1axe (or 4WEs) there on 2 galleys.

Instead, I'd switch the sugar to a ph mine this turn, building a monument, then next turn at pop5 work all three mines to get the monument in 2t.

Bridge City: Make sure we finish the granary in two turns. My guess is the governor will switch from the mine to the nets and you'll have to switch it back for 1t, then switch back to fill up the granary.

-----------------------

No AIs can research Music yet. Why are you two so sure we can't get the GA? I'd be tempted to beeline Optics-Music (before going to PS, that is) because our GPs have become so expensive. The GA will be useful no matter what.

-----------------------

I think the most important problem we have is figuring out how to capture Asoka's cities faster than 1 every 3t. How can we capture them 1 per turn (starting after Bombay)? We'll need about 7 galleons for chaining and transport. That could be Panama-Gems-Marble-Pigs-Panama-Gems-Bridge, for example. All whipped at the appropriate time.

Then we need to somehow plan on having about 3-4 WEs arrive at the next city each turn. If the city is on the plains with only 20% then the WEs should be fine against 2 archers. If there are more units or defenses, we'll need reinforcements in terms of cats most likely.

HE has eight cities. So if we capture Bombay on T+10 or so, then we want to capture the remaining 6 in about 6-8 turns. Then 6-8t for Ragnar puts us at about T+25. By then we might be able to start working on our second front, letting the first force go westward. We'll need to beat down on about 5 AIs for domination, so we would need the Zulu team and Liz to finish it off. This might be doable in 50t. That's what we should target, I think.

Thoughts?

 

[babybluepants]

I think the most important problem we have is figuring out how to capture Asoka's cities faster than 1 every 3t. How can we capture them 1 per turn (starting after Bombay)?

I think you start by eliminating all unnecessary expenditures. The monument in Panama and WB somewhere else, forge in Ivory. Those are worth about 4 WEs under PS, which is easily a city captured pre-Feudalism. Most of all, eliminate the delay in PS for Music. I'm sorry, but I couldn't care less about GP's right now. This is about getting the most units in the next 10t, followed by the most units in the 10t after that, and so on. The faster you attack, the better. Having more units over 30t doesn't count for much if you have less in the first 15t. Our pre-LB window of opportunity is closing fast. Heroic Epic is a worthwhile expense right now, as is the granary in Bridge City. Maybe, maybe the GE in Stone... Nothing else strikes me as worth even a 1t delay in the next unit. If Ivory has to eat some WW in 25-30t from now, so be it. By then Asoka will be dead and we will be rolling on two other AIs and quickly approaching our end game. Also, we'll have three more happy resources soon anyway (silk, spice and wine).

The wine makes me think - we should trade for Monarchy soon. Thoughts on that trade?

We can grow Marble borrowing corn, sure. I'll do that.

Attacking with two galleys is also fine, I guess. I prefer not finishing any more galleys this close to Astro. Bringing an axe with 3 WE is probably better, too, since he has copper and could conceivably send a spear at us and we don't even all 5xp units.

Bridge City: no worries.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

As for a Canal, I thought that you could build Fort -- City -- Fort, and as long as the two Forts touched water, a boat could sail right through the lot of it.


As for a Great Artist, the island that we see looks pretty thin--it might be that the Wizard is to the south of there (we don't yet even see the Cultural Borders)... such that a City cannot be placed where a Culture Bomb can work. Chasing after Music is already a risky thing, even under Representation. Besides, you're forgetting that if we put the emphasis on military units, we can do things like capture The Parthenon or a Size 18 City that can hire like 9+ Artist Specialists under Caste System, if not both.

We can land 4+2 units on T+5 in Madurai, but we'll need another galley then. Either have to 1pop Panama or 2pop Marble.

Edit: only two of the 4 WE would be 5xp

We might as well whip the 3rd Galley then. Since we seem to be able to shuttle around some units reasonably quickly with Galleys (the whole point of building Bridge City was so that we could do just that), one more can't hurt but definitely help us in trying to get our 8-XP unit. We only need two 5-XP War Elephants anyway... either we'll get success or they'll both die... a 3rd attacker probably wouldn't get +3 XP out of the attack regardless, so a 3rd attacker wouldn't need to have 5 XP.

One thing I'm wondering is if we wanna get a caravel out now. It could map out Ragnar a bit and try to figure out the Oz setup.

It's not a bad idea, but if we're self-teching Optics, we won't get one super quickly... and there's no point in building a Trireme if we're spending all of our Gold on self-teching Optics. We can still build one, but we'll only get it 2 turns after learning Optics (1 turn after to have some Hammers invested in it to whip and 2 turns to have the whip Hammers "realised" into a unit). Then there's the travel time from the City it was whipped in, at a rate of 3 movement points per turn. By then we could have already declared war and landed at Madurai. I'm not saying that it won't be useful, just that we won't get the info in time to help us decide whether to wait on the declaration of war or not.

Ivory: I agree that the forge takes a long time to pay back, but our war weariness may become a serious problem and we don''t want our main production cities losing hammers to unhappiness.

Hmmm, yes, a Forge = +3 Happiness, which is a compelling factor. Generally, you want to have your Happiness buildings in place BEFORE you experience War Weariness anger, but again, such War Weariness anger would be a ways off from now, so I'd be fine with delaying such a Forge for a good long time (only building it if we think we'll need it for the Happiness, although a temporary Cease Fire or Peace would be another alternative option at that time).

Panama: I wouldn't whip the galley. We don't need to be so worried about Madurai. The primary goal is the 8XP unit. If we get that but have to bail out of capturing it for some reason, big deal. Then it serves as the unit magnet that Dhoom was talking about. I'd send 3WEs+1axe (or 4WEs) there on 2 galleys.

Fair enough, but what's the "bailing criteria"? We don't want to capture the City only to lose 2 wounded units as a result of capturing it. Having extra units would mean having full-health defenders to deal with Asoka's troops.

It's far better to go in with 6 land troops so that we can defend whatever units of ours are wounded. The goal isn't to throw away 4 units, which might happen if we only bring 4 and Asoka counters us.

I would also rather not use Madurai as the luring City, since:
a) It doesn't have as direct a path to Asoka's capital or other Cities by the looks of the coast to the south of there, so it won't act as a great lure
AND
b) The City is close enough to Bombay that units could just double-back if Bombay was threatened
AND
c) We actually wanted to capture Madurai according to your "spend our Galley upgrading Gold on Optics" plan, so as to cut down on the sailing path for Galleys
AND
d) The "lure" City would first be attacked by Catapults, so we wouldn't be aiming on giving the defenders big promos. Having our two 5-XP War Elephants die and then feeling that we can't dare to continue attacking with our other 2 units would just be handing away free promos. At the north-west City, we wouldn't be potentially tossing away such War Elephants since we'd be softening the defenders up before attacking.

The two Cities really do have a very different situation from each other.

Also, I'd rather attack Madurai -> north-west City -> Bombay, so as to have a decently-sized force built up and Galleonable ready for Bombay before "threatening" Bombay with our troops.

A question: is it "2 squares away with 1-movement-point units" that causes an AI to be threatened? How does it work for the sea? Will the AI say "oh, well that Galleon is 7 or 8 moves away, so it can reach me in 2 turns, so I am threatened"? Or does the "feeling threatened" mechanic work differently for boats?

No AIs can research Music yet. Why are you two so sure we can't get the GA? I'd be tempted to beeline Optics-Music (before going to PS, that is) because our GPs have become so expensive. The GA will be useful no matter what.

My fear wasn't missing Music but of someone trying to justify staying in Representation longer, which is what you just tried to do.

Tech: aim for Optics in 4t. We'll trade Lit to Shaka for 50g.

If we're even semi-serious about getting Music though (which includes even switching to Police State after learning Optics and researching Music at a 0% Science Rate), then we definitely would rather trade away Code of Laws intsead of Literature to Shaka, if we need his Gold that is.

After Optics, I don't really like teching Music. There's almost no chance we'll get the GA. Do we have other options?

Not really... we could trade for Meditation (AFTER Lightbulbing Astronomy ONLY) and self-tech Philosophy, but then we'd be forced to fully self-tech Philosophy before we could enact our Military Science Lightbulbing possible approach (which I really doubt that we will need).

We definitely can't finish Civil Service, as doing so opens up Paper -> Education -> Printing Press, etc Great Scientist Lightbulbs.

We could go after Drama as long as we didn't learn Meditation or as long as we aimed to self-tech Philosophy afterward, so as to keep our Great Scientist Lightbulbing open. That said, Drama would mostly be of use for generating a Great Artist, and if we did so, we wouldn't really care too much about getting Great Scientists for Military Science, as we'd never get sufficient Great Scientists.

That said, let me ask a question: What does Astronomy + CHEMISTRY (forgetting Military Science) give to us? Frigates? Or do we need Military Science for Frigates in BtS? Could Frigates be useful for coastal Bombardment or would they just sap too many of our Hammers to be useful?

As long as we don't trade away Literature, I suppose that we have a shot at Music, but I'd rather not delay Police State and would just say "if we get it, we get it," and leave it at that.

Music really is the best option but I'd rather just tech it under Police State at a 0% Science Rate.

Washington: keep building cats

I'm not sure how far you will be playing, but if you'll be playing for a number of turns, I'd suggest switching to Trebs as soon as we learn Engineering (finish off the last Cat that you'd started at that time).

LC, do you know if we actually get 3xp for attacking the second archer? It's not CG1.

Build the units in a test game using the World Builder, save the game (just in case you need to make a small change), end your turn 5 times (for the Fortification bonus to kick in) and then check. It could be that we might even be able to take a promotion against the City Garrison Archer. If we can still get 3 XP when using a Combat I promotion, then we definitely want to promote to Combat I first, right?

Scout heads towards suspected Oz location. Steps only 1 tile per turn once out of Aztec borders.

Sounds fair, although I would advise using the "step 1 square per turn" even when at the edge of Aztec borders, to counter the possibility of Barbs having already entered Aztec Cultural Borders.

The wine makes me think - we should trade for Monarchy soon. Thoughts on that trade?

Wait until every AI knows Monarchy.

If we have to lose a couple of more units due to having to face Longbowmen sooner, then those lost units will equal the Happiness, but we'll still be behind because we also won't have those units to use in future battles.

Wines aren't even great squares to work. In other words, we likely won't be getting Monarchy in the short term.

Attacking with two galleys is also fine, I guess. I prefer not finishing any more galleys this close to Astro. Bringing an axe with 3 WE is probably better, too, since he has copper and could conceivably send a spear at us and we don't even all 5xp units.

If you're only going to go in with 4 units, then a test game to check out Victory XP from various combat scenarios is not an optional exercise:
We'd want to test out:
Combat I War Elephant VS City Garrison I Archer (fully fortified)
Combat II War Elephant VS City Garrison I Archer (fully fortified)
No Promotion War Elephant VS No Promotion Archer (fully fortified)
Combat I War Elephant VS City No Promotion Archer (fully fortified)
Combat II War Elephant VS City No Promotion Archer (fully fortified)

If there is only a single shot at getting an 8-XP unit, for example, then do we really want to launch that war so soon? Alternatively, if we can't add any promotions to our units, do we really feel safe going in with only 4 units? Sure, if we win our first battle, we'll be golden, but if we lose it without even denting the Archer, we could just end up losing all 4 of our units and creating two City Garrison II Archers that might very quickly promote to Longbowmen. Ugh. Or, we could end up luring a Spearman or Swordsman to attack and kill whatever wounded unit or units of ours survive. I'd feel so much better about going in with 6 units.

 

[babybluepants]

If we're even semi-serious about getting Music though (which includes even switching to Police State after learning Optics and researching Music at a 0% Science Rate), then we definitely would rather trade away Code of Laws intsead of Literature to Shaka, if we need his Gold that is.

Fair enough. I'm thinking we maybe don't need that cash. Let's try it without and maybe reconsider on the last turn or so. I'm sure he or Mansa will have some cash.

We could go after Drama as long as we didn't learn Meditation or as long as we aimed to self-tech Philosophy afterward, so as to keep our Great Scientist Lightbulbing open. That said, Drama would mostly be of use for generating a Great Artist, and if we did so, we wouldn't really care too much about getting Great Scientists for Military Science, as we'd never get sufficient Great Scientists.

LC's comment about Ivory made me wonder - is WW potentially somehow worse here? I wonder if 10-20% culture could prove useful. Otherwise, Music it is, but I don't like sacrificing anything for it. Certainly not PS. I expect we might end up in a heated discussion about whether to upgrade galleons or invest in Music at some point, too.

If you're only going to go in with 4 units, then a test game to check out Victory XP from various combat scenarios is not an optional exercise:

Sure.

Fair enough, but what's the "bailing criteria"?

If we go into Madurai, we just capture it.

It's not a bad idea, but if we're self-teching Optics, we won't get one super quickly... and there's no point in building a Trireme if we're spending all of our Gold on self-teching Optics. We can still build one, but we'll only get it 2 turns after learning Optics (1 turn after to have some Hammers invested in it to whip and 2 turns to have the whip Hammers "realised" into a unit). Then there's the travel time from the City it was whipped in, at a rate of 3 movement points per turn. By then we could have already declared war and landed at Madurai. I'm not saying that it won't be useful, just that we won't get the info in time to help us decide whether to wait on the declaration of war or not.

It was mainly a suggestion for scouting out the path to Oz, and possibly Ragnar as an added bonus. We're attacking Asoka blind.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Fair enough. I'm thinking we maybe don't need that cash. Let's try it without and maybe reconsider on the last turn or so. I'm sure he or Mansa will have some cash.

Sure. 50 Gold isn't a lot, so there's a chance that the value will go up. There's a chance that the value will go down, but then maybe we will just self-tech Optics in 5 turns but be able to save our tradeable techs to get Currency in the future.

It's a small risk to delay the sale but I'm okay with taking that risk.

LC's comment about Ivory made me wonder - is WW potentially somehow worse here?

Yes and no.

No because War Weariness is a constant value based on how many units you kill, whether you win or lose the fights (I think that this part plays a factor), and where you kill the units (all of our fights will be outside of our Cultural Borders--I think that you need to "own" the most Culture on the square, as in square Culture, and not Cultural Borders, so even Cities captured from an AI will "count" as being fights outside of our borders.

Yes because even if we eliminate Asoka, as long as Ragnar is alive and we stay at war with Ragnar, we MIGHT (I'm not sure here) still keep the War Weariness around. Definitely, though, in a normal game, we could Cease Fire Asoka and still fight Ragnar, but even if War Weariness is AI-specific, war status is Team-specific, meaning that if we took Peace or a Cease Fire with Asoka, we wouldn't be able to fight Ragnar without reactivating Asoka's War Weariness.

Hence was one reason for my suggestion was to attack Asoka then the eastern AI of the south, leaving Ragnar for later (War Weariness reduces faster during Peace or a Cease Fire compared to staying at war).

EDIT: If War Weariness is by the player instead of by the team (which makes sense), then an alternative option is to eliminate Asoka completely and then still be able to attack Ragnar without incurring Asoka's War Weariness throughout the war.

I wonder if 10-20% culture could prove useful. Otherwise, Music it is, but I don't like sacrificing anything for it. Certainly not PS. I expect we might end up in a heated discussion about whether to upgrade galleons or invest in Music at some point, too.

It could prove useful, but we'd probably be able to trade Music for Drama at some point.

I'm inclined to at least (passively, while running Police State and a 0% Science Rate) try to tech Music and we can always bail on that approach partway through if we'll miss being first to that tech.

Sure.

I'd still greatly prefer to go in with 6 units, though, instead of just 4 units. Since we have another within-Galley-range City (Asoka's north-west one) and since we'll be keeping Madurai (making Galleys able to get to Bombay a bit faster), I don't see a problem with having a 3rd Galley.

It was mainly a suggestion for scouting out the path to Oz, and possibly Ragnar as an added bonus. We're attacking Asoka blind.

Sure, I see no problem with building the Caravel... I was only pointing out that we're going to have to make this war declaration decision blindly regardless of building a Caravel, but a Caravel could potentially help us to figure out how much force to use on Bombay and future Cities.

THAT SAID, since we need to make the decision to declare blindly anyway, as long as we do declare war, why not just make the boat a Galleon? A Galleon can:
a) Survive better if it encounters one of Ragnar's boats or a Barb Galley
AND
b) Move 4 squares instead of 3 squares
AND
c) Still move through Asoka's and Ragnar's waters if we are at war with them

The bonus of the Caravel came in IF we were Lightbulbing Optics now, so that we could get advance scouting of Asoka without needing to declare war. Since we aren't doing so anymore, you might as well just plan to send a Galleon in place of a Caravel.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

One further thought: I have no idea what the logistics would be like, but MAYBE it is possible to use 1 Galley to drop off 2 units on Asoka's northern coast such that these units could walk into the Cultural Borders of Asoka's north-west City after declaring war. That way, the same Galley could double-back and pick up 2 units, hopefully around the same time that the further-away Galley does the same thing.

That way, we could land with 2 fully-loaded Galleys dropping off troops inside of the borders of Asoka's north-west City and have the other 2 troops marching onto the same square.

Then we'd only need 2 Galleys but could get 6 units at one of Asoka's Cities.

Yes, we might end up capturing or razing Asoka's north-west City in our quest to get an 8-XP unit, but so be it. Otherwise, we'll have a decently-sized force to continue the siege of his north-west City after having (hopefully) earned our 8-XP unit.

 

[LowtherCastle]

War Weariness

Yes, city population is a factor. For our purposes, the equation is (as I understand it):

City population * WWPoints / 200 * .5 * .9

The .5 is for Police State and the .9 is for a standard-sized map.

The WW points are:
1 per successful attack
3 per failed attack
2 per our unit attacked, live or die
6 per city we capture
-1 per turn while at war

So after we capture Bombay and 6 of Asoka's remaining 7 cities in 10t, our WW points will be a minimum (assuming 2 units per city, 3 for capital, no losses) of:

18 + 14*6 - 10 = 92 and WW in Ivory would be:

11 * 92/200 * .5 * .9 = 2

Ivory would still have happy citizens in that ideal scenario.

 

[LowtherCastle]

If you're only going to go in with 4 units, then a test game to check out Victory XP from various combat scenarios is not an optional exercise:
We'd want to test out:
Combat I War Elephant VS City Garrison I Archer (fully fortified)
Combat II War Elephant VS City Garrison I Archer (fully fortified)
No Promotion War Elephant VS No Promotion Archer (fully fortified)
Combat I War Elephant VS City No Promotion Archer (fully fortified)

un WE vs. CGI 69.51 3XP
un WE vs. CGI 71.58 3XP (city defenses 12%)

un WE vs. CGI 73.79 2XP (city defenses 4%)
CI WE vs. CGI 74.87 2XP
un WE vs. arch 74.87 2XP

We get one shot with an unpromoted WE. We can bombard the city defenses with one cat to increase the odds by 2%.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Our troops on galleys and galleons do NOT threaten AI cities, not even right next to the city center tile, within their borders.

Our galley will be able to safely see into Bombay on T+6 from the Bombay 2NE tile assuming there is no Asoka galley on or next to that tile, because we will be able to have a unit scout that zone from the copper or wheat tile. So we need not be attacking Bombay blind.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Fort-city-fort is a NO GO.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I think you start by eliminating all unnecessary expenditures.

This is absolutely true. That's why we aren't building chs, libraries, and harbors. We're not even building barracks in most of our cities.

I'm not going to do the calcs, you can if you want, but the Panama clams tile would clearly pay off. I'd even bet the lh there would pay off. As it is, Pigs, Gems and Panama are sharing food resources. Furthermore, Gems and Panama share three mines that are mostly going unused. No wonder we're short on hammers. To maximize hammers, we poprush, then grow back asap while working mines till we whip again. If you've never some comparison calculations, it's a good exercise.

 

[LowtherCastle]

GA bomb over water has very limited usefulness.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Okay, bbp. I'm fine with your plans. You haven't mentioned workers much. I'd take the two sugar workers and fort the Gems 1N tile. Then if we decide to whip a galleon in Pigs after teh WE, it can start the chain.

What are you planning to build in Panama if not a monument? Too many hammer for the galley before Astro. COuld be an archer for the Maginot LIne.

Whatever you decide is fine with me. Let's play on. How many turns will you play. I think it would be better for me to play a set soon so other teams won't complalin about you playing too many turns at once.

Also, on the trade for 50g, we can get Monotheism also.

 

[babybluepants]

Ok, I played 2t and paused.

Archer in Panama was a good idea - I was gonna do a WE, but a cheap Maginot unit's better. 2 galley attack with 2 WE, 1 cat, 1 axe is the plan. Edit: we could swap out the catapult for a WE still. I haven't decided.

Gandhi and Monte discovered Currency this turn. We could trade Compass for Currency + 110g right now. I haven't made other trades. Also, Mansa & Shaka are apparently teching COL now, as the trade value of it dropped a lot. We could take 50g from Mansa, if we wanted to.

Optics will finish in 4t regardless of these trades.

England has a port on the SE coast. There are some swords and axes wandering around the countryside, but all Combat 1.

 

[babybluepants]

Also, we'll have three more happy resources soon anyway (silk, spice and wine).

We also have incense, which I totally forgot about.

 

[babybluepants]

If we make those trades, we'll have cash to upgrade one galley. I was also thinking of whipping a galleon from Pigs, so we could have 5 galleons after Astro. One could be sent on the reconnaissance mission.