SGOTM 14 - Unusual Suspects

[kcd_swede]

Thanks, DH. Yup, you're right about trading Lit now.
------------
Observations and thoughts:

Nobody is in WHEOOHRN.Rag&Asoka must have dropped out of that ibt to t130.

The warrior NW of Philly can move SE into our culture and still prevent barb spam.I had been moving him back and forth because I wasn't 100% sure about that. But I noticed that it did not always save any gold to move him into borders... might have something to do with other units moving out I guess.

Mansa and Shaka have gpt for resource trades. Take it.Yes. Forgot to check after connecting a couple with roads.

Monte has 100 gold.
Gandhi will give HBR (or Med, PH, Mono) for Lit.
Monte will give HBR (and TBD gold) (or Med, PH, Mono, 45 of 100 gold) for Lit.
Liz only gives Med, PH, 10 gold for Music. Khan same minus gold (he has none).
Shaka gives Med, PH, Mono, 20g for Lit.

Tech trading isn't my strong point but how about:
Trade Lit to Monte for HBR and as much gold as possible.
Trade Lit to Shaka for Med, PH, Mono, and gold. Leave off Mono if we can get more gold?Question here is whether we want to use up our unknown limits on WFYBTA for techs like MED and PH that would take 1t to research ourselves. Might be wiser to tech Med and trade for Philo than to trade for Med and have to tech Philo. PH gives us nothing but temples... hardly useful right now. Mono might be useful if we want to go into a religion or get Monarchy on way to Feudalism... but actually I don't think we need these. Take them as war booty.
Next turn trade Music to everybody for whatever we can get (hopefully Cal, Construction, and gold).Cal/Constr/Hbr are useful to us. We should come up with trade plan to get all of those for Music line techs.

We have 9 trade slots w/out foreign routes. We can do a faster job of exploring. Get that scout off the galley and onto land to explore! Send archer2 to the SW and let the scouts scout settled land.I put priority on looking for mountain pass, but since there is none the scout/galley combo needs to be used as you say.

Yes! Ragnar is S of Asoka. He should be our first target. Seize the GLH and get those extra trade routes!

Our research rate will go up by 21 bpt next turn with GL (adding to 123 at 10%).

Parthenon, Chichen Itza, Sistine all available (for failure gold with resource bonus). Chop in NY? Chicago?Yes, part-building one of these would be better for gold than building wealth. But none will be useful to build complete.

Maybe run only merchants in Boston to keep the gene pool pure; currently there's 1 sci. Should we hold off on the chariot just started until we get HBR--> stable and horse archer? Keep it growing--with a lighthouse we can run more specs if we have more population.Need better planning here.... we have merchants in other cities that could pop one if we need one. I thought GSci's would be more useful tbh. We have 2GSci for Edu. If we bulb for Lib we need one? more which we get in 7 turns. If we tech or trade for Med it would bulb Philo instead of edu or Lib. Need to plan the bulbs out. If we tech Paper now, bulb edu, use GA for GA and switch to slavery (maybe org rel and confu too) we can whip out Unis for Oxford pretty quick. Is this the fastest way to Cuirs? I don't know... because conventional wisdom says we should be in Castes while in GA to max GPP. Who's the spreadshet king?

Market in Philly or wealth? Maybe we should think a bit more short term to get to cuirs ASAP and build wealth?I think if we get cuirs asap then we face axe/spear/sword and archers... maybe lonbow towards the end. Should be enough for Rag/Asoka.
In most cities it's a tossup between courthouses and markets if we value EPs at all.
I think we're not going to make a lot of EP compared to AI teams. So markets are better, especially where we run merchants for the multiplier.
Atlanta--mine that last hill and grow to work it.

Chicago needs to take the 2nd lake tile from Philly.

Warrior4 (4W of SF) can move 2W to fogbust now that SF's borders have grown.

Let's settle 5W of SF--9 extra food with lighthouse, can work 4 mines, lots of forests to chop, gets 5 resources (and 1 more fur outside BFC). And/or 1S of ivory near western India--this keeps ivory out of Indian hands (the military advisor says Ragnar and Asoka don't have it) and we get 4 resources and a nice base to launch war E and S.

We'll have Paper soon and need to think about how to trade maps to maximize our knowledge and gold while minimizing the AIs' benefit from new trade routes.Good point. It would also be useful to start on a priority of friends list for diplo. If Shaka is acting like a zealot, we might be able to have some AI-AI war instigating to help us, and open some nice backstab opportunities. So the "deny all demands" is probably no longer our best diplo option... but we need to figure out who to make friends with and who to piss off.

We need to work out a detailed research/bulbing plan.Great minds think alike.

Now I need to add 10 chrachters.

 

[Yamps]

Comments:

Yes, let's settle that spot SW from San Francisco. It's a nice spot and it's also on a hill. We couldn't defend SF from a dedicated siege attack, something to keep in mind.

Let's get Calendar, Monarchy, HBR and Construction in trade. No small techs, this could be a long game. Paras can't attack if there's just one tile to land to, maybe we'll need nukes like kcd mentioned. I suggest we trade CS, Gandhi/Monty have it already.

MoM would be good to build, some other stuff for failure wealth too.

It's wrong to build a market in LA, 150 hammers for only 2 gold per turn. We don't need markets anywhere except in Washington. No courthouses either, only in SF. Let's just hire specialists/build wealth to get to MT faster.

Bulbing/tech draft:

Tech Paper, 2 GS for Education. Start building universities, Oxford in Washington. Golden age with MoM, switch to Slavery at the end to whip universities. 1 GS for Philosophy if we don't get it in trade and 1 more GS for Liberalism before we get Machinery.

NE probably in Washington too, since we'll have the Glib in Washington. Btw, why didn't we go with Boston in the end for the Glib+NE combo?

If we can get more great people in this time frame, let them be great merchants to fund Oxford research. The alternative is 2 GS for PP, 1 GS for Astro (partial) and 2 GS for Chemistry after Engineering. Frigates would be useful for war, but it would be even more useful to attack earlier. It would be great to hit before Engineering, I'm not sure if that's possible though.

EDIT:

With teams and random personalities, I don't think we'll be making any friends.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

I think I agree with everything Yamps said, especially regarding tech trades, markets and courthouses.

 

[Xcalibrator]

Yeah, that all sounds pretty good. We still need a map trade/buy plan. Agreed that we only need 4 Sci's (5 would be OK)--ideally others would be Merchants because we can apply their benefits (cash) more flexibly than Sci's (bulbing specific techs that we don't have much control over). Washington, though, is going to be producing the bulk of our GPs after Philly pops its Sci. After Oxford we'll of course want to run only sci's there, so maybe we want to run merchants at some point before then--start now? [Edit: Nah, let's have the next be a Sci.] Maybe have all other cities run merchants? I'll try to work out a rough GP-popping timetable.

Should we burn the Artist for the GA or save him for a 2-GPer? I guess it depends what and how many GPs we get before then--we should burn a Sci for the GA if it looks like we'll have "too many."

We should move fast on settling that ivory spot.

NE probably in Washington too, since we'll have the Glib in Washington. Btw, why didn't we go with Boston in the end for the Glib+NE combo?

Yes, NE ASAP (or after market). Wash was just as fast and it leaves 2 nat'l wonder slots for Boston (HE and TBD).

 

[ChrisShaffer]

What are the possibilities for planting a city next to the mountains and using the artist to expand borders into the center of the mountain range?

 

[Deckhand]

Preliminary Partial Pre Play Plan:
(some questions to be answered and some details to be provided, gotta go now)

PPP SGOTM14 375 AD
Play 10 turns plus/minus
Pause at: need advice, WHEOOHRN?, DoWs?
Deadline: December 10

Trades: (1) Trade Lit to Mali for HBR & 20g; (2) tech to Meditation; (3) Trade Music/CS for Philosophy (if possible) and Calendar, Monarchy, and Construction

Tech: Meditation, Paper, Education (2 GS), Philo (1 GS), partial Nationalism with 0% science until 4th GS for partial Liberalism
Goal: Mil Trad from Liberalism
Avoid: Machinery
Note: we need Metal Casting and Optics before GS will bulb Liberalism

City Builds:
Wash: Great Library, National Epoch, Market, University

NY: Worker, archers for NY, LA, Sea, Hou, and SF, University

Boston: chariot, settler, settler?, university Where is 1st settler going? 5W is not on a hill, 3W on silver maybe, AIs would bypass it and go straight to SF. S of sheep can’t build a lighthouse.
Do we want a second settler? S of Ivory is nice, but we can pillage it at beginning of war. Why not let Asoka build it for us and don’t think we can beat him there anyway.

Philly: archer for Chicago, wealth, univ

Atlanta: Lighthouse, Library, Univesity

Chicago: Easter Egg Statues, build MoM, then various partial wonders for fail gold
Chicago will go unhappy next turn when it grows, it can stay unhappy until archer from Philly

Seattle: Library

San Fran: Courthouse

LA: finish market [108 of 150 invested]

Houston: Library? 57/90, I think Lighthouse would be more useful

City Specialists: tbd

Espionage: all East Witches


Preferred kill order is (1) Ragnar (déjà vu) (Great Lighhouse); (2) Asoka (closest), (3) Liz (close)
Friend preference: West (furthest), South, North (2nd victim), East (1st victim)
Accept reasonable demands except from East Witches.

Units
TBD

Workers
TBD

Questions
Send another spy to India or Vikings?
How many universities needed for Oxford on this map? Where to build 6th university?
What did I forget?

I will update Sunday morning (CA time)

 

[Xcalibrator]

What are the possibilities for planting a city next to the mountains and using the artist to expand borders into the center of the mountain range?

We can plop a city when needed and pop the borders to BFC in 2 or so turns--no need to use an Artist, I think. An artist would be needed, though, if we tried the captured-Great-Wall gambit that you or DH suggested. kcd said, though, that wouldn't work--probably worth some worldbuilder tests because it would be a game-changer if it actually worked. If we have to wait, Physics and airships will do the trick. Note that we'll need a city or fort near the mountains to act as a launch base for paratroopers, but we can presumably do that at the last moment.

Trades: (1) Trade Lit to Mali for HBR & 20g; (2) tech to Meditation; (3) Trade Music/CS for Philosophy (if possible) and Calendar, Monarchy, and Construction

and Metal Casting

NY: Worker, archers for NY, LA, Sea, Hou, and SF, University

With all the AI having Aesth we might want to start on some of those Wonders sooner rather than later to get failure gold. If we can get Calendar quickly (or trade with an AI for a happiness resource) then we could hold off on the garrisons awhile longer. Should we save NY's forests for its university so we don't have to whip it (as hard), or use them to cash in for quick failure gold now? Be careful not to finish our intended failures.

Where is 1st settler going? 5W is not on a hill, 3W on silver maybe, AIs would bypass it and go straight to SF. S of sheep can’t build a lighthouse. Do we want a second settler? S of Ivory is nice, but we can pillage it at beginning of war. Why not let Asoka build it for us and don’t think we can beat him there anyway.

Have Boston build a settler first thing. We don't want anybody to get ivory because war elephants have a 50% bonus versus mounted units (i.e. cuirs). We should settle the ivory site ASAP. I'm not sure about the clams/furs/sheep/marble/silver site. It could pay for itself pretty quickly, I think, but maybe we don't have the workers to spare at the moment. I wouldn't worry about defensive position--settle on the ice to leave more hills to mine and/or chop. We are wolves, not sheep! None shall survive who cross our borders in anger!

Should Chicago be one of the 6 university cities? Good production and food. Note that being Philosophical, we get a 100% bonus for universities!

I don't know what to do with Houston, but we might as well finish the library. If nothing else we could nurture its growth and then whip it to the ground to get one of the uni's, sparing some other city from the trauma. So yeah, a lighthouse next might be a good idea.

Send another spy to India or Vikings?
How many universities needed for Oxford on this map? Where to build 6th university?

The Easties have quite an EP advantage over us--another spy might fare just as poorly. Let's wait until we have the new ivory city settled so we could get a spy into India faster along our new roads--decide then.
I'm pretty sure it's 6 uni's for Oxford: Wash, NY, Boston, Atlanta? Chicago? SF? Houston and/or Seattle if they can grow fast enough to whip? I hate to whip Philly given its not great growth but perhaps I'm being too soft.

 

[SteelHorse]

Back after a road trip. Good Progress!
Sounds like the plan is to take on the East witches with Cuirs - great!
Tech plan looks good.

A couple of questions. Should we start building war infrastructure once we have HBR (Barracks and Stables)? And should we build some Horse Archers that can be upgraded to Cuirs later or is it better to just build cuirs after MT. Could send them barb hunting for some XP.

Comments:
MoM would be good to build, some other stuff for failure wealth too.

Bulbing/tech draft:

Tech Paper, 2 GS for Education. Start building universities, Oxford in Washington. Golden age with MoM, switch to Slavery at the end to whip universities. 1 GS for Philosophy if we don't get it in trade and 1 more GS for Liberalism before we get Machinery.

Is it the case that failure gold from building wonders is more than just building wealth directly in cities?

Are MC and Optics bulbable before Liberalism?

 

[Xcalibrator]

Yes, we should certainly get barracks and stables in place where we can, but our more immediate priority is to build universities for Oxford and/or get new cities in shape for production or war-time whipping. I don't know what to do about HAs in terms of upgrading, but we should certainly prebuild them (and have them finish as cuirs) when the time comes. Getting 3 more XPs (on top of 5 with rax+stables; remember, we're Charismatic and need 25% fewer XPs) for a HA would be great to unlock the Heroic Epic ASAP--I'm all in favor. I think DH's draft plan has Boston building a chariot to start but I'd recommend a settler, stables, and then a HA or two--timing wrt a university may complicate things.

Yes, failure gold from wonders with the resource bonus (and forges, and capital Bureau bonus) gets us more than just building gold--the hammers get treated as if they going to the wonder, and then those net hammers get converted to gold upon failure.

Yes, it's possible to bulb MC and Optics before Liberalism, but they're pretty cheap and we'd be wasting a lot of potential beakers.

SteelHorse is technically before Deckhand in the turn list but since DH has already put thought and effort into a PPP, and SH will likely want a little time to absorb recent developments, I'm assuming everyone is in favor of DH proceeding with his turnset once we've firmed up the PPP? But it would be great if you could take the next set, SH.

 

[SteelHorse]

Happy to have DH proceed. Snowstorm here is resulting in power outages.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Did we lose our spy?

 

[Deckhand]

Did we lose our spy?

Yes, on first turn in Asoka territory. Maybe I will look upt Xcal's post where he mentioned it.

 

[Deckhand]

Updated Preliminary Partial Pre Play Plan:

PPP SGOTM14 375 AD
Play 10 turns plus/minus
Pause at: need advice, WHEOOHRN, DoWs, city spot taken
Deadline: December 10

Trades: (1) Trade Lit to Mali for HBR & 20g; (2) tech to Meditation; (3) Trade Music/CS for Philosophy (if possible) and Calendar, Monarchy, and Construction

Sheep for Dye from Shaka. Any other resource trades? rice/5gpt from Mali; and deer/4gpt from Zulu

Tech: Meditation, Paper, Education (2 GS), Philo (1 GS) only if can't trade for it, Metal Casting (also if can't trade for it), partial Nationalism with 0% science until 4th GS for partial Liberalism
Goal: Mil Trad from Liberalism
Avoid: Machinery
Note: we need Metal Casting and Optics before GS will bulb Liberalism

City Builds:
Wash: Great Library, National Epoch, Market, University

NY: Worker, archers for NY, LA, Sea, Hou, and SF archers only if needed for happiness, else wonders for fail gold, University

Boston: settler, finish chariot, settleruniversity Where is 1st settler going? 5W is not on a hill, 3W on silver maybe, AIs would bypass it and go straight to SF. S of sheep can’t build a lighthouse.
Do we want a second settler? S of Ivory is nice, but we can pillage it at beginning of war. Why not let Asoka build it for us and don’t think we can beat him there anyway. next city = on ice S of ivory; after that on warrior hill 2N of fur by silvers

Philly: archer for Chicago, wealth (or wonder for fail gold), univ

Atlanta: Lighthouse, Library, Univesity

Chicago: Easter Egg Statues, build MoM, then various partial wonders for fail gold
Chicago will go unhappy next turn when it grows, it can stay unhappy until archer from Philly

Seattle: Library

San Fran: Courthouse

LA: finish market [108 of 150 invested]

Houston: Library, Lighthouse

City Specialists: scientists or merchants, similiar to as-is, use my judgement , fire scientists in Washington until Natl Epoch completed

Espionage: all East Witches


Preferred kill order is (1) Ragnar (déjà vu) (Great Lighhouse); (2) Asoka (closest), (3) Liz (close)
Friend preference: West (furthest), South, North (2nd victim), East (1st victim)
Accept reasonable demands except from East Witches.

Units
NW Scout by Beshbalik – explore Mongolia, then go to hub and explore SW.
Galley with Scout – sail around Mongolia and drop Scout off on next land mass to West. (would lose 4 turns by taking scout to hub now, and other scout can go to hub soon)
Mongolian Archer 2 – head back to hub (or take Galley west??) back to hub
Archer 3 – South, to find South Witches
Axe in India – go to Viking border
Other 3 Axemen – go to SF
Warriors 3 & 4 – stay fortified, spawnbusting
Warrior 5 – move SE and fortify, to spawnbust in our borders (may sometimes save a gpt)
Galley 2 – “tell me what to do” what to do with this galley?

Workers
Finish chopping forests and other in progress actions.
With Calendar, develop calendar resources; farm obvious locations.
Any other forests I should chop? prechop for universities Any thing else workers should do?


Questions
Send another spy to India or Vikings? - no
How many universities needed for Oxford on this map? (probably 6)Where to build 6th university? Chicago or maybe Houston
What did I forget?list to do every turn: check for WHEOORN
note that we can get next scientist from Philly in less turns

 

[Xcalibrator]

Not sure if I'll have time to open the save today. Nice that we can get Dye from Shaka. Can we also trade away a health resource or two for gpt?

If we don't research Compass then we don't need to research Optics before bulbing Lib'ism. In fact, we do not want to get Optics because that opens up Astro for bulbing before Lib'ism. So... add Compass to your do-not-tech list.

Good point about building wealth--unless we need the cash immediately, it would be more cost effective to partially build Wonders for failure gold. Maybe cover our bets by working on different Wonders.

Be sure we've got 6 libraries in the right places before we get Education. Save a forest or two (and prechop) for cities getting a university, since we get the 100% bonus. Build barracks and stables (with HBR) in 'appropriate' cities.

You have my thoughts on settling.

 

[Yamps]

No, we do have to research Compass. Optics requires Machinery so no problem there.

EDIT:

we should really try that GW great artist plan in WB, that would really break the game! If we plant a city on a tundra hill south from the mountains, GA bomb just might work. Who has the GW anyway?

 

[Xcalibrator]

Note: we need Metal Casting and Optics before GS will bulb Liberalism

No, we do have to research Compass. Optics requires Machinery so no problem there.

OK, right. We need Compass, not Optics. I was responding to DH's slip and then made my own goof. D'oh.

we should really try that GW great artist plan in WB, that would really break the game! If we plant a city on a tundra hill south from the mountains, GA bomb just might work. Who has the GW anyway?

Chris, you like playing with WB, right? Want to try it out some time? No big rush, since we have to conquer part of the world first, but this is something we need to know for sure.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

I can figure it out.

 

[Xcalibrator]

Thanks, Chris.

DH, what else do you need to polish your PPP? Does anyone else have any input? The first version was posted on Saturday, and a modestly revised one on Sunday, so we should be pretty close. The only weak point I see is what to do about map trading once we get Paper in 7 or so turns. It might be best to pause at that point for discussion, but as a starting point/speculation I would suggest first trading with Liz because she'd have the least to gain (having explored our domain by both land and sea), whereas we might gain knowledge of the 9 new trade routes we need (since the AI like to explore more than most human players and she probably has a good map to the west). We should NOT trade with the Southies, I think. It appears that the teams are paired up next to each other and in the 'proper' geographic orientation; since we have no sea route to the southern ocean we would not gain in terms of trades by getting their map (until we get the Westies' map showing a route around the left edge to the South).

Other than that, pick out the 6 cities we want for uni's--maybe have 7 set up with libraries to leave some margin in your hammer/population estimates (and remember we only need to whip 3 or 4 pop to finish uni's). Do not start a Golden Age to revolt into slavery until we've discussed--it'll probably happen in the next turnset anyway.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

If the barbarian unit is standalone, the great wall + great artist culture bomb works fine. If the barbarian has a city, then the city becomes a size one barbarian culture island, and any units in the city survive. If there is a city with units in a space just outside the city, the units are teleported into the city. I suppose it's possible you could culture flip such a city... but I wouldn't want to base a strategy on that.

 

[Deckhand]

^ so, if wizard is an airship in a one tile city in the mtns:
- we can't paratroop into it (or can we if no land units?; will one have spawned?)
- we can't culture bomb it away (maybe get it to flip with multile bombs?)
- can we nuke it?
- can fighters kill it?

======
Before playing, I need some green lights.

I just updated my post in red with my answers to my questions. I'd welcome other answers.

My big question was where to settle.
I missed that the tile 4 W of SF is a hill

Spoiler :

Yamps usually knows what he's talking about

So, I am proposing 1st Xcal's spot (ice above ivory) and then Yamps spot (hill by silver). Note that all AIs want silver (now). 5W is better - it has two more forests to chop (3, counting the 4 W location).