SGOTM 14 - Phoenix Rising

Scouting will be huge either by land or sea. We need to find the Wiz and ascertain the scope of the map.

I totally agree with aggressive bulbing strategies here. Bulbs that many of us here don't always consider optimal in most games.

GB - I gave you a pretty detail explanation on random personalities in a PM not long ago.

Yep, I can put together a test map of the start. I'm making assumptions, like GB, that this is likely not a Pangaea type map. It could be 1 of a number of maps, but I'm assuming the Wiz will need to be accessed by water, so I plan to use a modified fractal or big/medium and small map. I'll try to get something up in the next day or two.

Looks like the warrior move isn't going to tell us a whole lot. Also, not too much to go on with what we see at present as to the whereabouts on the map other than a couple of desert tiles. This leads be to believe we are somewhere near the equator, but there is no jungle nearby.

edit: actually, moving the warrior 1N may reveal a bit of land to the north that might make us consider a move. I don't like PH at all in this case and it looks clear to me that we have strats on the PH or 1W of the Settler.

I think I'm going to choose Churchill as the Wiz for the test game...ha...he looks like the Wiz
 
Unfortunately the warrior cannot spy 3N from his position beyond the oasis, it is a sight blocking tile.
 
Early thoughts:

Conquest or domination, as always, will be the quickest way to go.

Not sure about starting location either, 1w looks tempting with possibilities of getting a lot hooked up for 2nd and 3rd cities to use quickly

less buildings, more troops (or, in lieu of troops, settlers and workers)
 
1W actually does look good as it adds a food resource, while keeping the same production (at least viewable). However, I'm afraid there might be a strat on that tile like horses (on a normal roll i'd say the odds are pretty high that tile is horse, but who knows with a modified map) The oasis is kinda nice to have early too.
 
If it wasn't a forest, i'd say 1N would be better (judging from the tiles we can see) than 1W.
Most likely a cow is traded for not settling on a strat ressource and the oasis, 2c while building the worker and improving the first tile is always sweet. 1W we have to live with no extra commerce for 5 rounds, then 1. This after all is like loosing a few turns of working a gold mine.
But with loosing a turn...difficult ;)
 
And let the discussion begin. 1st things 1st, Gumbolt, can you please edit one of your posts to have the starting screenshot on the first page if possible?

Most people seem to be on a similar page atm. I agree that oracle and GLH are key wonders to consider. Unless we really want Stonehenge with cha monuments... The presence of marble or stone may bring other options onto the radar however.

Scouting is the main thing that I think needs to be emphasized this game given our deficincies last game in this area. Neilmeister had a post which seemed to allude to the fact that the wiz is on another landmass so this is worth considering, atm I'd say it's somewhere not too close but not too far reachable by galleys.

I think that 1W will be a strat resource but that doesn't mean we shouldn't settle there...

As for victory types, I'm near certain that conquest will be the quickest if achievable, followed by dom then diplo. (Remember, no AP wins!) Looking forward to much more discussion!
 
Most people seem to be on a similar page atm. I agree that oracle and GLH are key wonders to consider. Unless we really want Stonehenge with cha monuments... The presence of marble or stone may bring other options onto the radar however.

I would really really really love to know if Obsolete is advocating in PD thread the need for Stonehenge.
From what I got that boy really likes SH...

But it would mean teching myst as first/2nd tech and slow early expansion. And super early Great Prophet with whom has to be calculated (settled? 2h+5g if I remember right...)

Imo we should try some out of the box thinking too... I will probably look into it once we get test game from L.
 
Early rush or not is a difficult topic with PHI from my experience.
On Emperor, it should be possible to bulb to units that can really wind up AIs quick, the question here is what is faster: older units that have a chance to die and are most likely slower, or better units at a later starting date with just rolling over the AIs ;)

First plan should be to test out into every little detail the bulbing possibilities.
Especially towards Astro. I'll to this tonight ~~
If there are AIs reachable by land, it gets more tricky.
There we would have to find a good balance between using them as tech partners for a while, or taking them over with something as early as HAs.
As Gumi says, scouting is the key :)

In terms of bulbing. Remember last SGOTM it was won by the top teams in 640ad? Unless we can magic curs super early it seems you would be waiting for mace again. I think if we are going conquest we should be rolling out axes or maybe chariots/HA.

In any case we won't have the early pop to 2-3 pop units via the whip. My gut feeling is we are isolated or alone with one AI. The resource is probably a horse resource. Plains copper seems unlikely. I think Lymond probably has the map right.

I would like to see how early we could bulb to mass media. You can pretty much use scientists all the way down that line. We might find that quicker than war.

In terms of Ai trading. If we plan to wipe them all out ASAP then we won't want to do this too much. Hold back monarchy and feud from them. We could even work out which Ai are more likely to tech feudalism earlier. ;)

@ V - As for SH. We will most likely try for Oracle too. Remember every side tech we go for slows down our win date. It may be quicker to go directly for writing and bulb to maths/alphabet. A GP is a slight headache if we get both SH/Oracle. That is 25 or so turns to try and not create a GP. I would rather capture SH than build it. By all means see what dates you get by testing it. We could build libraries instead of Monuments.

I was actually thinking settling 2 east! Firstly we will be able to access the sea from turn 1 and can get a workboat out asap. Secondly gives GLH option much earlier in the capital. Again i still think we could capture the GLH/SH. The 1f2c indicates it must be a coastal tile. Secondly it gives the option to place 1-2 cities on Ai land mass nearby. PD did this to great effect on the earlier SGOTM. Ai footholds could be important. As you can land units ready for war. (Lesss ships early on) If 1W is a resource we will get it on the capitals border pop. We lack many mountains wherever we settle the cap.

1 west does have a 3H forest tile. I am not sure what other tiles are further due North/East.

The one thing everyone has missed is fact there are 8 AI! This will be one crammed map! I am expecting 4 good witches and 4 bad! So this may delay PD/OSS win date.

Right we need to get all these thoughts into some kind of logical order. :)
 
A possibility on this setup might be to oracle Civil Service :D
Let's see...we need math - could be bulbed, no obstacle.
CoL we have the pre-techs, the question here would be how fast can we tech it?

Let's say we chop out a library to run 2 Scientists asap, settle one to increase our speed and use the second one for the maths bulb. I guess for this plan the oasis is a big factor, i'll have to give this a test run to see what oracle/CS date i can get. The benefits should be huge, CoL is a very desireable tech anyway, and CS is out of question as huge benefit with boosting our capital, irrigating the corn and being a requirement for maces.
Switch to Caste or Slavery and Bur. in 1 turn...a dream, question is can it become true :)
 
A possibility on this setup might be to oracle Civil Service :D
Let's see...we need math - could be bulbed, no obstacle.
CoL we have the pre-techs, the question here would be how fast can we tech it?

Let's say we chop out a library to run 2 Scientists asap, settle one to increase our speed and use the second one for the maths bulb. I guess for this plan the oasis is a big factor, i'll have to give this a test run to see what oracle/CS date i can get. The benefits should be huge, CoL is a very desireable tech anyway, and CS is out of question as huge benefit with boosting our capital, irrigating the corn and being a requirement for maces.
Switch to Caste or Slavery and Bur. in 1 turn...a dream, question is can it become true :)

was one of things that came to my mind too... I just think settling the first GS has the potential of slowing down the date if you are too quick with CoL

1W has the lakes (same commerce as oasis, less food of course)
 
Good points Vran, lake tiles would slow down the worker production thou, not good cos we also need growth quick to run scientists and work commerce tiles.
I agree with the settled GS, on Emperor we might get to CoL before the second GS comes out.
Iam leaning more towards 1N for this plan, the cow would not play a big role, but we would gain a fair amount of commerce even with 1 turn lost while using the oasis until tiles are improved.
 
I think we're best off by keeping the military options foremost. Random personalities introduce a lot of guessing into diplomacy, so a straight UN victory may be very hard to pull off.

Scouting is very important here, no doubt. Should we make a principle of it, so that e.g. a WB keeps scouting, even if barbs pillage a couple of nets back home.
 
TEST GAME ATTACHED

I've attached a test game that should mirror the start as best as possible as well as the known parameters for the map/game. I ended up choosing a Fractal map that I regenerated about 5000 times until I found something I liked. I wanted a good isolated spot for the Wiz. However, I placed one tile modification that won't make him completely isolated. Who knows what the map maker has in mind, but I think he will setup the Wizard to not be easily accessible by human/ais , yet not totally isolated so as to keep his tech pace decent.

I chose Churchill for the Wiz as that is my guess. He looks like the Wiz if you are familiar with the movie. Roos might be another option as well, but who knows, it could be anybody.

Random personalities is on. Of course, this is impossible to mimic to the real game. However, for those of you that may play the test game out a bit, it may give you some familiarity with how this game option works if you are not used to it.

Note that I added two AIs to the game as the intro states that there are 8 of them.

The save uses BUFFY but I turned off Locked Modified Assets, as you can't go into WB with it on. It has no bearing on the game otherwise.

Hopefully, this map will be good for at least testing the opening. I expect the real map to be grossly different and may have to start a whole new one once we start that game and learn more about the map. First thing I recommend is to check the map for accuracy based on the start pic and report. I'll make adjustments promptly. It's very easy to miss stuff

Question: Is the Crab resource generally something you find in the northern parts of the map?
 

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  • SGOTM14 TESTGAME0 BC-4000.CivBeyondSwordSave
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Yay for the map, just some minor hickups:
A plains and grasland is switched at the settlers position and 1N.
3W of the settler is not a hill as far as i can judge it, 3W1S not a forest.
No idea if it matters :p
 
Yay for the map, just some minor hickups:
A plains and grasland is switched at the settlers position and 1N.
3W of the settler is not a hill as far as i can judge it, 3W1S not a forest.
No idea if it matters :p

Just a test map really. We will add data as the game goes on.

I am yet to create a game rota. Waiting on kadazzle and Stevoh.

A few key points made maybe to discuss more later.

Conquest as winning option. (Most agree)

We are predicting a non pangea map.

Some form of bulbing to obtain CS or another tech from oracle. Also bulbing towards astronomy.

GLH or SH/ oracle as wonders. Maybe even TC too if coastal island. We need to weigh up building these against capturing them from AI.

We all agree early scouting is key. As well as E-w workboat gambit. Especially before turn 100! Open trade routes and finding the Ai will be very important too. We could use TMIT of scouting round the coast so the scouting unit survives too. Remember what PD said last game. You scout the area you don't know when looking for new city areas.

In terms of starting locations. 1w/1N or 2 east have been suggested. We have not decided yet.

The main sticking point is when do we throw down the hammer and start the wars.

CS vs slavery will be another debate. Caste system is not really an early war civic.

We have not yet considered an early GE strategy for mids or other wonders. Could be useful. Any thoughts here???
 
A very basic test of a tactic i seem to like early:
Settling 1N and oracling CS.

Tech path AH, Mining, Writing, Myst + Med + Priest, CoL
I used no tiles that we cannot see on the original screenshot, except the horse.
With horses the production was high enough to not need BW/chops for a library in 10 turns.
City at size 5 the day Priesthood was researched.

Result: Oracle and CoL finished 1480BC (turn 63).
This should be 99% safe, if these are none-doctored Emperor AIs.
Even on Deity it sometimes goes later. No AI started working on it, only 1 has Priesthood.

Ofc this test does not include the needs for additional things like settlers/workers, and in reality we probably would need BW to speed up builds while the teching to CoL happens.
 

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Loving fact you have got CS by 1480bc. Pretty impressive. Could you of got out 1-2 more cities?? It does show how important 2 scientists could make this game.

Do you think a GE strategy would work better? Or a machinery bulb?

Remember the main objective is conquest.

It is a gain vs loss situation. What you gain in techs you lose in early expansion. Never the less it does show a Oracle CS is more than possible. An oracle on Philosophy could be interesting purely on bulbing front?
 
@Gum
until we know more about AI's nearby it's tough to talk about wonders... if we find 2-3 neighbors right away (or even more!) then we can do some wonder buying, if we are isolated it completely changes the focus.

At this point I prefer the 10 HA wonder
 
I have to do some more tests with BW and the focusing on getting expansion rolling out while doing this, was just to get a feeling for it being a decent option or not :)
It should be very possibe to get at least 1 more settler and worker out, at the cost of forests ofc.

Philo hmmm good question, that needs even more testing ~~
My feeling on GE bulbing thou is bad, mainly cos i know from my Deity games with engineering/x-bow rushes that it is a pain to do.
 
oh well I tried 1W with Oracle->CS at 925BC ehm...

I did a bit different tech path in the start (ah, tw, mining, myst, writing) and built Stonehenge and size 3 settler which was settled 1E of oasis.

I did some mistakes on the way (like employed scientists in cap 3 turns later at least).

This test made me think about something else to Oracle... what about currency like PD did last game?

I think going writing after mining and myst hold the game back... should retest it.
 
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