SGOTM 15 - Kakumeika

[Manco Capac]

Okay,
although

To all the fog gazers: the screenshot above is a very early one, which we reverted to due to the potentially spoilerish info contained in the mini-map, that some players saw. As such, the tiles around (but not in) the starting area may have been modified since the screenshot was taken.

So, you might want to wait for the actual save before gazing into the fog.

in maintenace thread, here's a proto-test save of the starting location which is remote from the main fractal continent.

If someone wants to make some testing.

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@mabraham

I'm sorry frogdude is not participating, but I guess he'll chime in at some point to at least check on how we are doing.

Any news about him? I am asking to you as you seem close to him.

 

[bcool]

Tachy, thanks for testing out the AI behavior. So you also agree that no AI starts with mysticism, so any start location that we can settle in first turn or 2 is on the table.

I posted the new team rules on the first post, sorry for the delay.

The Changes for the returning members.

• I want to try a new planning process for turnsets.
• New way to report when things get finished
• Team Goals

The short version of the new planning process for turnsets(a more detailed one appears in the first post)

• post got it within 24 hours of prior player finishing
• post a copy(editted with proposed changes) of the grand strategy and a goal oriented PPP within 24 hours of the got it
• allow for a minimum of 24 hours of team feedback about the goals and grand strategy, editting Goal Oriented PPP or Grand Strategy as you adopt changes
• post a detailed PPP with all necessary micro (city tiles worked, worker movements, whip timing, etc.)
• allow for another 24 hours for team feedback, editting PPP as you adopt changes
• post a time when you can play ideally giving the team 12-24 hours notice
• play your turnset

New way to report when things get finished
When you state the turn/year research is completed (or any other event), please use the turn you get the report. ****This is a change from the last game**** So if the research for polytheism shows it will be completed at the end of T12 then when T13 starts and we get the report. Please report that polytheism finished on T13. Or if we build an axeman and it will finish at the end of T25, report that it finished on T26 (the first turn that we can actually move the axeman).

Team Goals
The goals for Kakumeika are
1) to get the GOLD!
2) learn something through exhaustive debate about the grand strategy, the goals for each turn set, the inner-workings of the code, and best micro plans.
3) have fun ('cause learning is fun )

 

[mabraham]

@mabraham



Any news about him? I am asking to you as you seem close to him.

Yeah, I poked him today. He had said he was interested and would sign up later, so we may see him yet. No idea if there's a deadline on signups.

 

[Manco Capac]

Yeah, I poked him today. He had said he was interested and would sign up later, so we may see him yet. No idea if there's a deadline on signups.

Fast enough. I think the deadline has already expired.
AlanH accepted a new member for the PD because the team has few members, but ours has many, so better he does sign up fast.

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@bcool

I have read all the rules once again (and the new ones) and I acknowlege it.
In regards to summary, I don't for now. Will see if time allows me.

Tachy, thanks for testing out the AI behavior. So you also agree that no AI starts with mysticism, so any start location that we can settle in first turn or 2 is on the table.

Yes I agree. There is no way to beat a 9-10 turns Poly completion from the AI with our 12-13 turns.

 

[mabraham]

Interesting scenario, AP allowed and all ... this game might be over rather quickly (after Optics? depending on layout of land masses).
And interesting options, definitely require intensive testing in order to avoid bad surprises, but they could also provide opportunities for -may I call them- slightly "exploitive" tactics.
I believe 'No City Razing' still allows disbanding of a city after culture flipping -- so in combination with 'City Flip After Conquest' there may be ways that still allow a fast military approach to this game, but this is just a rough idea I'm throwing out here, nothing thought out at all...

Even if this disbanding mechanic works, I'm struggling to see how we're going to get to use culture to flip AI cities short of GArtist bombs.

Quite excited to see what the map creators give us in terms of AI opponents and how they guarantee the player founds Hinduism.
Will this be a 4000 BC save, or perhaps 3960 BC with the AI capitals founded and research already chosen?
I need to refresh my knowledge about the impact of 'Aggressive AI' and 'No Tech Brokering'...

The starting screenshot is 4000BC. I think Tachy's subsequent study shows that if the AIs have Mysticism, they've been locked on another tech somehow.

One thing to explore is whether we can get out a timely worker+Ag before Poly. If not, then because we start with Myst+Mining, a worker-first start would probably mine the river Ghill while waiting for Poly->Ag to complete.

 

[shulec]

Mapmaker

I can see Neilmeister being very devious on this one. I know he has played an extensive number of standard religious victory games for the HoF. STW is the religious victory master, WastinTime and I have a strong background with these victories too. I think it is plain to see that this game will be nothing like those AP sprints. I can see Neilmeister trying to setup the game in such a way that the religious victory could be the most difficult.

How would I do this?

I would make 8 Tokugawa's and give them their own nation. (i.e. Toku from England, Toku from Spain, Toku from Russia, etc.) I doubt there will be anything like this as diplo would be an unfair nightmare, e.g. Toku requests that you cancel all deals with Toku! Well... which Toku is that? This could be worked around by naming them all something other than Toku, but still keeping them as Toku.

As an alternative, I would choose several religious zealouts. They can easily have mysticism swapped out for another starting tech by the mapmaker. Does anyone know who the zealots are? Is this defined by "flavor" (Dan)? And do they all start with monotheism and have theology as their favorite tech? The zealots will likely be nearby to be pissed at us for running a different state religion.

Additionally, having AI with polar peaceweights . The psychopaths and cupcakes will have several wars and diplo tension would make things difficult.

I would separate a flat map with water and require Astronomy. I would also start us far from the water an require cities be taken to get a coastal city to build Naval transports. Note that the story says: "the voyage home is a long and treacherous one. He is of course caught at sea by vikings."

No tech brokering limits our ability to trade techs to foster better relations.

With limited information we have, I think we can expect some of the above limitations on a religious game.

Victory
Conquest It may be difficult to get conquest without domination, but who cares.

Domination No city razing. Ouch!

Culture SGOTM 14 showed this is slow.

Diplomatic Difficult with Hinduism only, maybe with diplomation.

Religious By diplomation only.


Tech pace.
Tech pace will be very slow! Aggressive AI tech slower. No tech brokering will be slower.

Will this make it easier bring advanced troops against primative? I think it will. But... I am a peace-lover, not a warmonger. I will defer to chief warmonger Kaitzilla for this.

Worker stealing!

They are probably going to hate us anyway, so why not!

 

[mabraham]

Good thoughts, shulec.

Mapmaker

I can see Neilmeister being very devious on this one. I know he has played an extensive number of standard religious victory games for the HoF. STW is the religious victory master, WastinTime and I have a strong background with these victories too. I think it is plain to see that this game will be nothing like those AP sprints. I can see Neilmeister trying to setup the game in such a way that the religious victory could be the most difficult.

How would I do this?

I would make 8 Tokugawa's and give them their own nation. (i.e. Toku from England, Toku from Spain, Toku from Russia, etc.) I doubt there will be anything like this as diplo would be an unfair nightmare, e.g. Toku requests that you cancel all deals with Toku! Well... which Toku is that? This could be worked around by naming them all something other than Toku, but still keeping them as Toku.

IIRC they ask to "cancel your deals with the vile Zulu" rather than the leader name, so I think this is not an issue.

As an alternative, I would choose several religious zealouts. They can easily have mysticism swapped out for another starting tech by the mapmaker. Does anyone know who the zealots are? Is this defined by "flavor" (Dan)?

Yes, "religious" flavour predisposes each tech choice towards a tech that has that flavour - as do the other flavours. It's not a certainty, however. Isabella has extreme religious flavour, and as I'm sure we've all seen, she basically seems to target each religion-founding tech in turn.

And do they all start with monotheism and have theology as their favorite tech? The zealots will likely be nearby to be pissed at us for running a different state religion.

Then they will have to be educated or assimilated!

Additionally, having AI with polar peaceweights . The psychopaths and cupcakes will have several wars and diplo tension would make things difficult.

I would separate a flat map with water and require Astronomy. I would also start us far from the water an require cities be taken to get a coastal city to build Naval transports. Note that the story says: "the voyage home is a long and treacherous one. He is of course caught at sea by vikings."

Hmm, that sounds like back-story rather than map clues, but I guess it might turn out to be relevant.

No tech brokering limits our ability to trade techs to foster better relations.

With limited information we have, I think we can expect some of the above limitations on a religious game.

Victory
Conquest It may be difficult to get conquest without domination, but who cares.

Domination No city razing. Ouch!

Culture SGOTM 14 showed this is slow.

Diplomatic Difficult with Hinduism only, maybe with diplomation.

Religious By diplomation only.


Tech pace.
Tech pace will be very slow! Aggressive AI tech slower. No tech brokering will be slower.

Will this make it easier bring advanced troops against primative? I think it will. But... I am a peace-lover, not a warmonger. I will defer to chief warmonger Kaitzilla for this.

Worker stealing!

They are probably going to hate us anyway, so why not!

Indeed. This may suggest opening with a warrior or two while teching Poly and timing a worker for the subsequent arrival of Agriculture.

 

[Manco Capac]

Indeed. This may suggest opening with a warrior or two while teching Poly and timing a worker for the subsequent arrival of Agriculture.

Hmm. Interesting. I'm surprised, shulec, you didn't know what I am doing best, enslaving. Perhaps...
I am looking forward for this: worker farming. And FW are so awesome to bring back, better survival rate along the warrior or even without.

 

[mabraham]

I am looking forward for this: worker farming. And FW are so awesome to bring back, better survival rate along the warrior or even without.

Oh... That certainly enhances the case for starting with a warrior or two and timing our first worker for the end of Ag, as appropriate.

 

[shulec]

Hmm. Interesting. I'm surprised, shulec, you didn't know what I am doing best, enslaving. Perhaps...
I am looking forward for this: worker farming. And FW are so awesome to bring back, better survival rate along the warrior or even without.

Now that's the Tachymagic!

 

[bcool]

Cultural isn't completely out I don't think until we know more about the map.

If we are isolated then a cultural victory might be the fastest, especially with stone and marble nice and handy.

If we are not isolated then worker stealing is very attractive as tachy suggests. Also I think we might want to try the great wall again for the early great spy. Espionage will be both stronger and weaker with no tech brokering. I think it will enable us to accelerate our teching in a slow teching game and backfill several techs by theft but of course it isn't quite as strong since we won't be able to trade them (I assume--I suppose this could be a very big exploit to no trade brokering option if stolen techs can be traded... I will test this to confirm that you can't trade stolen techs).

Tested... Stolen techs can not be traded.

 

[mabraham]

Cultural isn't completely out I don't think until we know more about the map.

If we are isolated then a cultural victory might be the fastest, especially with stone and marble nice and handy.

Yeah, I agree. Scouting is key and I want to get more of it done than ever. We were unlucky to lose Toto last SGOTM, but should have been more proactive about getting another warrior scout and a WB scout going counter-clockwise (as STW was suggesting).

If we are not isolated then worker stealing is very attractive as tachy suggests. Also I think we might want to try the great wall again for the early great spy. Espionage will be both stronger and weaker with no tech brokering. I think it will enable us to accelerate our teching in a slow teching game and backfill several techs by theft but of course it isn't quite as strong since we won't be able to trade them (I assume--I suppose this could be a very big exploit to no trade brokering option if stolen techs can be traded... I will test this to confirm that you can't trade stolen techs).

Well worth considering (and please do test!), especially as Masonry is an automatic tech for us if we settle other than on one of the masonry resources. However we do have to have a neighbour to have a chance of getting value. So we come back to that scouting thing.

 

[Manco Capac]

Going north (stone) approaches us to that unfogged area, just to throw an idea. Perhaps there is something and it may centralize our capital (still too early to say we are in the south).

I doubt the exploit will work, but make the test to be sure. Okay then.

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Nonetheless, because settling on a quarry PH resource has gotten many of us, the real question to start with is which one to take instead of the other? Many will take marble thanks to its broader use and better wonders, but which wonder do we need so soon, Oracle? Being first to Poly (otherwise we don't have reason to discuss further), we are likely to discourage 7 AI's out of 8 going for Priesthood. Even so, on emperor, we won't necessarily encounter super early date of completion, thus the marble may wait a second city (onto it?, sharing the corn and grasslands for a bureaucratic capital).
What I found is when losing to the religious race, the AI makes a let down and pursue another tech (worker tech) and rarely pursue to the end (despite it happens). But Great Wall is an early wonder that requires Masonry and the discount will assures us the said wonder.
Even though we settle onto stone and find out neighbours are absent, settling on marble isn't such a hurry in the counterpart.

What I suggest is to make our warrior goes SE to look if marble is that attractive first. If nothing super, we might go for the stone. In the same way, our warrior is parting from the settler and the future capital, which one will enroll another warrior two tiles in the north after four turns (grass forest) or even better (and the best on normal speed) 3 turns by working a plain forest.
Our initial warrior may find a neighbour in the south and steal a worker (on emperor we have wait unfortunately), which happens to be nearer to the corn or FP if the corn tile being already improved by the time.

Either choice, the capital will have its share of rivers and grass tiles, thus a bureaucratic capital is attractive.

 

[mabraham]

It occurred to me that the military victory conditions are tougher, but not impossible. What you can't afford to do is multiple complete conquests (without a funky Versailles-FP-Palace plan, or waiting for a State Property beeline). However, it is enough to stone-age an AI by taking its main economic and production centers. The main army moves on to the next target. The captured economic cities pay for the new empire costs, and the captured production centers slowly build second-string army that disperses to camp near where they'll be wanted later. Then when we judge we have enough available land and people for Dom, those second-string armies swoop on the host of small cities with backward tech that the AIs will have settled. We only pay silly city maintenance for the last 20ish turns. We do have to pay higher unit maintenance, and we can't rely on our captured cities to replenish siege units, but military VCs remain viable. Whether it's competitive with culture/religious/diplo remains to be seen.

 

[bcool]

Good insight on the military victories. And this is only emperor so the maintenance is often manageable especially if we are whipping heavily, don't go for complete conquest until the end and/or have a wonder or 2 to help the economy (the great lighthouse? or the pyramids? or just rely on espionage even).

With the philosophical trait a state property beeline isn't out of the question either.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Great discussion so far.

In my opinion, being forced to convert to Hinduism and remain there for the entire game is meant to make the Religious Leader Diplomatic Victory more difficult, but it doesn't make it that much more difficult. There are many ways to make one's competitor for RL DV very unpopular among his peers.

I agree with bcool that a Cultural Victory might be the quickest way to win, depending the map and how difficult that makes the other victory conditions, including the Cultural Victory itself.

Again, a big welcome to WastinTime and DanF5771!

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[mabraham]

Great discussion so far.

In my opinion, being forced to convert to Hinduism and remain there for the entire game is meant to make the Religious Leader Diplomatic Victory more difficult, but it doesn't make it that much more difficult. There are many ways to make one's competitor for RL DV very unpopular among his peers.

Indeed, however the reduced ability to manage religious dislike (by not adopting a religion) makes all the VCs harder, because it is much less likely you can get open borders, decent trades of techs or resources, avoid DOWs, etc. OTOH we'll be more people's worst enemy, so we can trade more freely without incurring so many diplo penalties (if we can trade at all).

Usually a religious win builds a fast AP, which requires a state religion, which in our case must be Hindu. While it is possible the stars could align to permit us to hijack someone else's AP religion, we'd not be a full member, so I think it practically impossible to get elected winner (and formally impossible to get elected Resident). If we have neighbour(s) to whom Hinduism spreads and they adopt it, that's great for many aspects of the game, but bad if they're our winner-vote opponents and we can't get at least someone else to vote for us. The cheesy style of getting a single small city of each AI to have the AP religion may be less possible here.

Certainly OR, Theo and Paci are more accessible than normal, and we need to make sure we leverage these suitably. So Mono, Theo and Philo are higher-priority techs than a normal game.

TL;DR - I think the Hinduism constraint makes all VCs harder, and changes the flavour of the game.

 

[bcool]

Going north (stone) approaches us to that unfogged area, just to throw an idea. Perhaps there is something and it may centralize our capital (still too early to say we are in the south).

I doubt the exploit will work, but make the test to be sure. Okay then.

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


Nonetheless, because settling on a quarry PH resource has gotten many of us, the real question to start with is which one to take instead of the other? Many will take marble thanks to its broader use and better wonders, but which wonder do we need so soon, Oracle? Being first to Poly (otherwise we don't have reason to discuss further), we are likely to discourage 7 AI's out of 8 going for Priesthood. Even so, on emperor, we won't necessarily encounter super early date of completion, thus the marble may wait a second city (onto it?, sharing the corn and grasslands for a bureaucratic capital).
What I found is when losing to the religious race, the AI makes a let down and pursue another tech (worker tech) and rarely pursue to the end (despite it happens). But Great Wall is an early wonder that requires Masonry and the discount will assures us the said wonder.
Even though we settle onto stone and find out neighbours are absent, settling on marble isn't such a hurry in the counterpart.

What I suggest is to make our warrior goes SE to look if marble is that attractive first. If nothing super, we might go for the stone. In the same way, our warrior is parting from the settler and the future capital, which one will enroll another warrior two tiles in the north after four turns (grass forest) or even better (and the best on normal speed) 3 turns by working a plain forest.
Our initial warrior may find a neighbour in the south and steal a worker (on emperor we have wait unfortunately), which happens to be nearer to the corn or FP if the corn tile being already improved by the time.

Either choice, the capital will have its share of rivers and grass tiles, thus a bureaucratic capital is attractive.

The Marble has fresh water and looks like it will have significantly more river tiles. I think the Marble is significantly more attractive than the stone especially if we go for a bureaucratic capital.

I'd rather move the warrior NE to see if there is any reason not to settle on the marble.

 

[Manco Capac]

The Marble has fresh water and looks like it will have significantly more river tiles. I think the Marble is significantly more attractive than the stone especially if we go for a bureaucratic capital.

I'd rather move the warrior NE to see if there is any reason not to settle on the marble.

There is a bent river around stone too.

 

[mabraham]

There is a bent river around stone too.

I can't see any sign of that. When we get the real save we can see if stone has fresh water, and fog-gaze better.

I'm also not sold on the value of settling on either resource, yet. We need to do some testing once we know how long our tech paths might take and what we can produce during that time.