SGOTM 14 - Unusual Suspects

We can (and probably should) skip the settler for copper. However, the settlers for Chicago and Seattle are already mostly built in the previous turn set.

One of the two barracks is in Washington, which had nothing better to build. The other was in Atlanta, which doesn't really need to have a library yet.

None of the whips went to Hanging Gardens. New York could build a library and running scientists there before the aqueduct/HG. I don't think we are in big danger of missing the HG.

How will lighthouses help more than granaries? I don't get it.

I still think Yamps is right and slavery will get us to war faster. Xc's preferred route sees better infrastructure but later war. We want war fast, right?
 
Back online and getting caught up.

Deckhand - good work on the turnset.
On the autolog - did you check the buffy logging options screen to make sure it is enabled? That is the only other thing i can think of.

On the strategy are we in agreement that attack on the witches of the east is the next priority?

If so, what do we need? How many phants, archers, boats? What XP/promotions? If the east witches have swords, do we need axes? Do we need the culture bridge for a sea attack? Should we work backwards from preparing for the attack and then optimize a plan to get that as quickly as possible?
 
I think our strategy should be to attack Asoka as quickly as possible, before he gets longbows. To do that, we need elephants, catapults and galleys. That requires construction, horseback riding and sailing. With a culture bridge, 3 galleys will instantly transport two units per turn across the gap. It is a minimum of 6 land and galley turns to go around the bay. We probably need copper to make an axeman or two to fight the spearmen. We have Pyramids and we are philosophical, so specialists are good, so libraries are good.

If we can launch a good attack, I don't mind crashing the economy for a bit. We can always build it back up.

Several wonders may be great for us, and we should probably try for Hanging Gardens, but maybe not rush to it so fast (after all, if we delay it a few turns, we get another population in copper city).

Edit: Slotting in libraries in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston (in that order) and emphasizing scientists seems to fix the economy problem. It will be interesting to see if we get a great scientist of a great engineer. I also sent the first settler to found Chicago at clam/crab, and the second settler to 1SW copper for Seattle, leaving silver/pig for back fill.

Can anyone else do any testing?
 
With regards to the latest (slavery) plan:

Problem

Economy crashed. Bottleneck will be construction + horseback riding.

Questions

Maybe less granaries? Seems if you're going to whip an army, they're awfully useful. In this scenario, seems to me it's better to whip granaries then army or libraries after. But maybe some libraries would let us run scientists. The problem is, I whipped away anyone who was remotely non-productive, so there aren't a lot of citizens to turn into scientists.

Any other comments?
Click to expand...

Well... if you have HG in 3 turns, you have your scientists back then, right? I'm not sure what you mean by crashing economy... on strike??? ...no opportunity to open the save. 0% research should be giving us a fair treasury. Anyhow, I thought the whole point of running Repr specialists was to get through our needed techs without need of the slider to get research.

I agree w/ Yamps we don't need copper. If we have enough catapults to wipe out city defenses and do some collateral damage, spears won't be much problem. Pillaging metal would be useful but without scouting we can only manage that with luck.

The silver city should pay for itself fairly quickly, shouldn't it? Copper city is just for a resource we don't need.

I'm think Steelhorse has a very good suggestion. We should be deciding what we need to launch the attack. I think 2-3 galleys, 8 catapults, 6-8 WE's would be enough to run through the entire India civ. But I'm no good warrior, so the numbers you guys can judge better. But we should play various tests out to the point we have the force (the one we decide is enough to DOW with) is ready.

My guess would be that slavery is needed sooner rather than later... should get those libraries up (at least in the 2 or so cities that will pull the research) asap, hire Repr specialists and get HBR+Constr at max rate. Then begin whipping. HG is only worth building if we are going to whip those pop into units... we don't need the health bonus.

So the quest is to get tech fastest since we can't make the units we want until we get the techs. Sailing>Constr>HBR lets us build cats/galleys while teching HBR... so is probably the fastest tech order. We whip for infra to support specialist-driven research. Whip angry is gone and pop is returned by the time units can be builts.

Something like that sounds best if fastest attack is what we want.

Note, I'm not entriely convinced that's the winning strategy. We still know nothing about the Wizard and what we'll need to get him. What do we hope to gain from our planned war? (I assume the main thing is it represents 1/8th of what we need to accomplish to get fast conquest victory, or about 1/6th what we need for domination). Would we be better off sticking to a "Fastest Astronomy" strategy? Or at least a fastest Optics strategy to explore? Should we put more emphasis on continued exploration in this turnset? A galley with a archer to explore the west?

Anyhow, planning fastest attack on Asoka should not be too difficult to test. But we need to ask ourselves if we're ready to put all our eggs in that particular basket just with what we know now? If yes... then lets go for it, no looking back. But realize that this decision might be the one which decides our placing. Are we OK with making that decision somewhat blindly? Is this gamble what we need to get a jump on other teams who will wait to gain info before commiting? If so, then cast the dice. If not, we need to consider options. :scan:
 
Economy crashing meant 20% break even, construction in 12 turns. I think we can do a bit better than that with a couple more libraries slotted in. It's also possible we'd have less expenses with silver than with copper.

I agree, the big question is "should we devote all our energy to attacking Asoka?" I don't know the answer to that.
 
If there's one thing I've learned from the xOTMs it's that if you want a fast win you need to go to war sooner rather than later. Furthermore, the AI-teaming and random personalities make a Diplomatic win impractical, so we need to go knock some heads ASAP. It's possible that we'll find some other more attractive target than Asoka before we actually DoW, and we should leave that option open for awhile, but settling the culture-bridge clams/crabs site seems like a good thing to do no matter what.

Yeah, we really should do some longer-term tests, ending when we get 8 cats, 7 elephants, 3 galleys. We can DoW a little before we have all those, and maybe those aren't the optimum numbers, but they're a pretty good guess and will serve well as a fiducial. I won't have time to do any testing until the weekend, though. I would try a whip-later approach (surprise surprise). What other conditions should we set? Certainly settle the crabs/clams and silver sites. I'd argue for the copper site, too, but for now we only need to choose yes or no to have consistent test games. Finish any military units now under construction but do not build anything else other than the 8/7/3 above? Or should we toss in another couple warriors or archers? I'd say 2 more archers (in lieu of the axes I'd like ;)). How many barracks and where? Boston, Wash, NY, Atlanta, Silver? Do we want stables? Boston and Wash? Anything else?
[Edit: Maybe add a requirement that 3 galleys are loaded with 3 cats and 3 elephants?]
[Edit2: Require monuments (allowing libraries as a substitute) in Silver and Crabs/Clams?]

We should decide whether or not to go for the Hanging Gardens, both in the real and test games. Right now we have enough [edit: health] resources hooked up to grow all our cities to at least size 7. Pigs, clams, corn, rice, wheat, deer, and cows are not hooked up yet (that'll get us to 14), and we'll soon have crabs (15). Granaries will add 3 for the cereals (18). Most cities will have harbors, adding another 3. In short, getting more health is not a concern.

I messed up in a previous post about the cost of aqueducts--it's only 100 hammers, not 200. The HG is 300, but only needs 150 base hammers with the stone. So for 250 base hammers we'll get 2 Engineer GPPs/turn, 1 health in all cities (little if any value until much later), and 1 extra pop in 7 or 8 cities. Those extra citizens have, if nothing else, a value of 30 hammers each for whipping. The extra whipping capability is worth more than that because it gives us an army faster than otherwise, so I think it's clear the HG is worth it IF we can get it. If we spend 100 hammers on an otherwise useless aqueduct and barely start the HG then it'll be a wasted effort, but if we can put in a few turns or a chop toward the HG the 2:1 gold/hammer ratio will be helpful even if we fail. So yes, I think we should go for it, and I would not delay. More population earlier in all cities will more than outweigh getting an earlier library or whatever in one city.
 
The Hanging Garden also lets us use our scarce worker turns improving tiles instead of hooking up health resources with roads. And it gives us people to work in the libraries. And then you can whip them.

I'm not sure I'm up for "test until an army is complete." I think I can do a pretty good turnset getting two cities (silver & crab/clam), Hanging Gardens, and lots of granaries and libraries. The slavery first plan, with very limited whipping, will get us a long way, and we'll have more exploration. I think we can safely say that it will set us up for war production.

I note that Jovan is next, so he's the one who will be building the army most likely, or setting us up to build the army. I think that will work well.
 
Hmm...we need more people doing some tests or at least opening the save, it's a difficult situation. I'll do some tests now. :)
 
ChrisShaffer said:
Note that the test save file is short 1 beaker research, 2 food in Atlanta, and 1 hammer in Washington. Minor differences, but something to account for.
Click to expand...

I think there's also a grass hill SW-SW from Washington in the real game (by looking at the screenshot), this matters for the clam/crab city.

-----

I've played around a bit and what's bothering me is that there's no certainty that we'd get our forces in time to attack before longbows arrive whatever we do. Asoka/Ragnar have high GNP in the test game, it's pretty likely for them to get Feudalism around 1 AD.

How to develop our land is of course another question. We definitely need more workers. I suggest we dedicate Boston for that task, the city has high food surplus. There's a lot of forest to chop that could go to infrastructure.

Maybe we should just play peacefully for now after all and go with our strengths, Rep + Caste? If we are going to fight against longbows anyway, it's better to develop our land first.
 
Yamps said:
I think there's also a grass hill SW-SW from Washington in the real game (by looking at the screenshot), this matters for the clam/crab city.
Click to expand...

I can fix that tonight.

Yamps said:
Maybe we should just play peacefully for now after all and go with our strengths, Rep + Caste? If we are going to fight against longbows anyway, it's better to develop our land first.
Click to expand...

I'm comfortable with this, and my plan for the turnset is compatible with this. I definitely agree with making more workers.
 
But which plan for your turnset? Whipping or not? :crazyeye: And if we're giving up on early war shouldn't we go for other techs, such as Currency (+1 trade route per city, resource trades) and then CoL (for Caste), or Metal Casting (for forges and Colossus)? 1 AD is 33 turns away--when did youse guys' tests show us getting HBR? Longbows aren't that bad if you bring enough cats :D, and surely Asoka has settled at least some cities on flat land.

I am a little worried that Neil has some nasty surprise for us, though. Didn't one (or more) of the AIs have a ridiculously large population at the start of the game? It sure would be nice to know who that was (or was not) before we start a fight.
 
After Sailing, we should shut down our research and accumulate gold in any case. If we go peacefully, CoL and Caste before Currency. Btw, we also have to build another wb for exploration in this turnset to search for more AI. If we go peacefully, we could consider settling more cities...:crazyeye:

I don't have the time to test more, but it feels very risky to attempt a rush. If we run into longbows undeveloped we'll fall behind badly. :confused:
 
I am beginning to think that Hanging Gardens is not such a great thing for us. It costs 250 hammers total. If we whip the 7 population, we only get 210 hammers in return. I do not think we will ever need the aqueduct in New York. That 250 hmer investment could be put to better use.
 
kcd_swede said:
Note, I'm not entriely convinced that's the winning strategy. We still know nothing about the Wizard and what we'll need to get him. What do we hope to gain from our planned war? (I assume the main thing is it represents 1/8th of what we need to accomplish to get fast conquest victory, or about 1/6th what we need for domination). Would we be better off sticking to a "Fastest Astronomy" strategy? Or at least a fastest Optics strategy to explore? Should we put more emphasis on continued exploration in this turnset? A galley with a archer to explore the west?

Anyhow, planning fastest attack on Asoka should not be too difficult to test. But we need to ask ourselves if we're ready to put all our eggs in that particular basket just with what we know now? If yes... then lets go for it, no looking back. But realize that this decision might be the one which decides our placing. Are we OK with making that decision somewhat blindly? Is this gamble what we need to get a jump on other teams who will wait to gain info before commiting? If so, then cast the dice. If not, we need to consider options. :scan:
Click to expand...

I think we are at a critical juncture. We need to answer the question when do we attack and who. Common attack points are after getting Cats, after getting Maces, after getting Cav, after getting Rifles, after Infantry. If we don't attack now, when?
Note: I am not saying we should attack, just trying to figure out when.

If we don't attack, we need an investment in infrastructure. I am not convinced an SE economy will do the trick if we are planning on late war. We are falling behind the witch teams in bpt. Happy to be convinced otherwise. We also need a diplo plan as trading will be essential.
 
neilmeister said:
..., I have some excellent ideas about how to find and beat the wizard. :lmao:
Click to expand...
Most likely: wizard is a powerful barbarian unit
Highly likely: wizard is an airship or a modern unit
Highly likely: wizard cannot be reached in the early game (to protect AIs from him) (or wiz airship from the AIs); we need sailing or astronomy or paratroopers to reach him.

Maybe we can get a mountain fortress with a culture bomb (and captured great wall) [hmn, only works if airship with no city to go to; if land unit then would need to clear the entire map]. Maybe we can get to him early. Maybe we need paratroopers.

Not enough here for a strategy yet - we can't be certain that we need para's, galleys might work.
But I believe we can consider ourselves safe from him.
So, the game has two independent puzzles to solve: how to win quickly against AI teams and how to kill the wizard (first).

I don't usually rush.
And I don't usually win quickly.

I am still convinced we are likely on a hub map. Can we scout enough to determine that Ragnar and Asoka are on different spokes?
Assuming yes, then I am in favor of galleys/catapults/elephants on Asoka.

I am green for a strategy that includes whipping granaries, setting us up for a flexible path, and scouting.
 
ChrisShaffer said:
Can we win a battle with cats and phants?

My hope is that I can devise a plan that will leave us flexibility, while scouting to learn more.
Click to expand...

That's good. I agree we aren't going to be truly commited to a war after this turnset. My point was that of the alternatives presented, perhaps one leaves us better placed to execute the DoW earlier if it still looks advantageous to do so when the time comes. Because of the team aspect, it is unlikely that we get a much better window of opportunity at Maces, or at knights, or at cavs, or whatever. I guess I am kind of envisioning a game where at each tech juncture we take what opportunity offers, then consolidate. Wash, rinse, repeat.

The fastest finish games usually have decided on what the last tech needed will be, and then head there as fast as possible, shut down everything except building massive armies, and then roll. We are far from having enough info to make a good decision on that, so we are going with different assumptions. One assumption is that Astro will be needed - that assumption can only be verified by exploration. Another assumption is that we'll need either advanced units or a ton of less advanced units to defeat the wizard (not sure this affects the game all that much, and who knows, we could get lucky and an AI beats us to it). Another assumption is that diplomacy will be problematic with teams... will have to watch religions and favorite civics closely. So like I said, we still don't know enough to pick our tech, and must go by common good play rules of thumb.

So for now, I think that the cat/WE via culture bridge is an opportunity too good to pass up. But maybe my thinking is colored by the target being Asoka, who generally is not a big unit builder (but can be a tech monster if left alone). However, I'm not sure how that changes with random personalities. He could be a Monte, for all we know.

So my opinion is that we should run this turnset as if we really mean to be setting up for war on Asoka. And we should be testing to make sure that we are doing it the fastest possible. If we instead go peaceful, what we do here might end up being less than optimum, but not too bad. So the downside risk of plannning the fastest WE/cat war in this turnset is small, and the potential gain is pretty big. Its a risk worth taking, in other words. If we see something that changes the risk/benefit calculation, we re-evaluate.

Right now it seems that the slavery-now approach with limited specific whips of infrastructure is best, but until you see when the techs can be acheived and the army can be assembled, its hard to know whether one really is better than the other. :confused: So tests should be done as if we are commited to this war, imo.

BTW: Ghenghi favors Police State, Ragnar Hereditary Rule, and Asoka USuff, if my reference chart is accurate.
 
Yamps said:
After Sailing, we should shut down our research and accumulate gold in any case. If we go peacefully, CoL and Caste before Currency. Btw, we also have to build another wb for exploration in this turnset to search for more AI. If we go peacefully, we could consider settling more cities...:crazyeye:

I don't have the time to test more, but it feels very risky to attempt a rush. If we run into longbows undeveloped we'll fall behind badly. :confused:
Click to expand...

By concentrating espionage on Asoka/Ragnar, we should be able to judge fairly soon whether their research path is taking them towards LB's early or late. For this turnset we should plan as though we think we can beat Asoka down with WE/cats without much trouble. The substantial risk comes only once we start on the next tech after sailing. We should know their tech progress by the end of the turnset, and re-evaluate at that time whether its worth it to press for HBR/constr or a more peaceful development oriented path.
 
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