SGOTM 15 - Kakumeika

[mabraham]

I can't imagine we will get open borders with either of them unless we want to gift a city that has hinduism and then perform espionage to change them to our religion.

That's why gifting a city very near our culture early is good. We gift it once, culture-conquer it, and then re-gift it (which they should accept because they have culture there).

I have completed rather few religion victories in the past
How would we manage a religious victory if all of the AI were Tokugawas? I know that you can gift missionaries to get around theocracy, but how does one spread religion to a bunch of closed border civs? Maybe we will get lucky and only our 2 immediate neighbors are Tokugawa.

Apparently gifting a caravel with a missionary does the trick. Of course, that requires that they have sea culture. Worst case, we have to espionage-slider them into no religion having set up the conditions correctly.

 

[Manco Capac]

Apparently gifting a caravel with a missionary does the trick. Of course, that requires that they have sea culture. Worst case, we have to espionage-slider them into no religion having set up the conditions correctly.

Still, that doesn't let us controlling the city of spreading or success of spreading compared to a gift city with said religion already in it. For example, for Hamuragawa, that small passage that ended up to be a dead end is a perfect place for a city gift. All we have to do is find other weird lands like this for the others.

I strongly have the feeling the map is some of labyrinth as WastinTime pointed it out a while ago.

 

[mabraham]

So what sites might we gift? If we plan to settle 1W of gems, and get (whip?) a settler before the T57ish border pop, we could settle 2N3W of Delhi, which will come under our culture-flip pressure immediately. Delhi should be put on constant settler duty if we're not building the Oracle there, so this might be able to be made work. Alternatively, 2N of sheep will eventually give us two potential gift cities both under pressure from the Oracle city if we follow the above plan. The sheep plan doesn't have to be executed as quickly, but relies on the success of T63 Oracle. Either way, we'd need to do this before Hamm settles his fourth city, and we really won't have a good timer on that until we see his second and third go up.

If we settle 1N of gold, then gifting a pre-T57 cows city is a good option.

Here are some screenshots with my suggestions for our city sites in blue and possible gift city sites in red. One of the screenshots assumes we settle 1E of gold, the other 1N of gold. The idea here is that we can gift a city soon (to say Hammu), capture it back with culture and gift it again. There is time for us to get out two settlers in time for one to settle a gift city site before our capital pops its borders, so there's particular interest in those sites that are near enough that they come under immediate culture pressure.

 

[DanF5771]

20/20 hindsight slider management:

I've tried some optimization of the slider adjustment for the turns T31-T46 and would like to share the results. Yes, it's all water under the bridge by now, but I find it rather surprising that the optimal management has only 1 turn (T34) with 100% slider. The 50% slider often minimizes losses which are occurring due to truncation and happen to be pretty high for the binary research method and our given values of total commerce (I considered these fixed in order to retain optimal tile management). The other constraints factored in were the turns on which Hunting & BW need to be online (T42 & T46).



In order to be ready to chop on T46, the plan is to continue our research of BW with 100% slider. This puts us at 1 and 194/187 in BW on T46 -> 7 overflow which are reduced to 5 clean OF (floor(7*100/126)=5) before they are multiplied by the new modifier and truncated separately and only then get added to the normal research progress, i.e.

floor((regular beakers + 1 freebee)*Modifier) + floor(clean_OF*Modifier).

As you can see, overflow beakers are pretty bad as they suffer from truncation twice.

But messing with the slider during T41-T45 won't reduce our losses because our total commerce amounts to values of 21|22.
Remember, we won't suffer from direct commerce losses only for the following combinations:
total commerce = multiples of 2 -> slider = 50/50 okay.
total commerce = multiples of 5 -> slider = 20/80 & 40/60 okay.
total commerce = multiples of 10 -> all slider settings okay.
Unfortunately another turn with 50/50 will delay BW by 1 turn.

As you can see in the spreadsheet, the optimal(?) management would have brought us to 10 in the bank and 1 invested in the next tech, i.e. a gain of 9 for the cost of 4 (or 5 if next Modifier>=120).

If you find a mistake I made somewhere or can think of an even better way, please let me know!
And please Tachywaxon, don't take this as any sort of criticism for your turn set. I wasn't aware of the overflow mechanics until now, the modifier situation for BW was unclear, and well, after all it's just a handful of beakers ...

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I just speculated a little theory we are likely all connected via rivers in the middle of mountains. Not much to say, just images.

This entire map seems to be designed by hand; at least the water ways, rivers and mountains. The map may indeed be just a huge maze of water, land and mountains.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

On balance, I like TGW fail gold sooner rather than scouting plus later infiltration for distant tech stealing later and later Optics. What do people think?

I would rather have a Great Spy rather than a second Great Prophet (I see little advantage and control of the Hindu TAP Religion; The Holy Shrine provides no control of which cities the religion spreads to).

The Great Spy would be able to scout all land connected areas through unfriendly culture in perfect safety. Later he can be used to infiltrate the AI Team. Thus, I'd rather have The Great Wall than the fail Wealth.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I'm concerned about putting a lot of effort into getting Optics. The map is beginning to look like strips of land with Galley navigable seas (wide rivers). Perhaps, every land area can be reached by Galley like it was in SGOTM-13?

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[shulec]

We will surely be gifting Caravels loaded with Missionaries to spread our religion.

 

[mabraham]

Still, that doesn't let us controlling the city of spreading or success of spreading compared to a gift city with said religion already in it. For example, for Hamuragawa, that small passage that ended up to be a dead end is a perfect place for a city gift. All we have to do is find other weird lands like this for the others.

... and get a settler there. Caravels can get past closed borders, but can't carry settlers.

 

[shulec]

People, want me to play one more turn right away.
I know what to do.
Delhi:
Warrior for two turns,
2 GH plus Cf and FPf. Afterwards, shulec should switch one GH with a grass forest. The warrior should have then 3 OF hammers. The last turn before pop 5 needs 3 ; then work all GH and Cf. This should brings 15 *2 to the GW.

I am not seeing the benefit of working the 2, 1 tile over the 1, 3

With the above micro, we missed out on our chance to get to population 5 on turn 42. If we had worked to grass forests on T40 and T41, we would have gotten our settler one turn earlier too.

 

[mabraham]

I would rather have a Great Spy rather than a second Great Prophet (I see little advantage and control of the Hindu TAP Religion; The Holy Shrine provides no control of which cities the religion spreads to).

Sure, but when it does spread to a new AI, we know who is an AP member that we don't have to exert effort on. Getting OB and building missionaries and boats and sending them takes time and is not assured of success once you get there. One doesn't want to adopt a strategy that relies on chance, but accepting it as your ally can be reasonable. The gold makes a small contribution to our ability to turn off tech at some point (e.g. after Optics+Theol+Alpha using crossbows for what army we need) and use the slider for focussed espionage for organizing things like diplo bonuses via civic/religion flips.

The Great Spy would be able to scout all land connected areas through unfriendly culture in perfect safety. Later he can be used to infiltrate the AI Team. Thus, I'd rather have The Great Wall than the fail Wealth.

But do we need to scout the land? The Great Spy is very much less useful if we do not have a land connection to many more AIs - and having him will slow down the arrival of caravels. If we have caravels to scout the water, we only need a Great Spy to scout the land in the pathological case that we

• don't have a (fast enough) water route to some AI,
• have a land route (or fast enough caravel-enhanced land route),
• can't get the necessary OB to make contact and then spread Hinduism somehow, and
• can't do that fast enough with regular spies.

If that pathological case arises, the real problem with RL VC is going to be getting them a missionary. I don't see how the Great Spy will help with that. Maybe it'll find out faster that we have a serious problem, but it seems likely to slow down the solution, too.

I'm concerned about putting a lot of effort into getting Optics. The map is beginning to look like strips of land with Galley navigable seas (wide rivers). Perhaps, every land area can be reached by Galley like it was in SGOTM-13?

Sun Tzu Wu

It might - but that was a military game. Galleys are only useful for RL VC if we can get OB. If we have a map full of Tokus, or oceans to cross, we will need caravels. Even if we don't have a map full of Tokus, and they are all accessible by galley, getting the successive OB agreements that we would need in order to use caravels will be tedious and slow - if possible.

 

[mabraham]

I am not seeing the benefit of working the 2, 1 tile over the 1, 3

It maximizes the 30 hammers we put on TGW for one turn for the fail gold, while not slowing the growth to size 5 (further than we've already done). That fail gold is part of the payoff of farming the flood plain compared with earlier gold mine in Bombay.

With the above micro, we missed out on our chance to get to population 5 on turn 42. If we had worked to grass forests on T40 and T41, we would have gotten our settler one turn earlier too.

My test game play suggests that that settler near the eastern gold won't have a trade route or worker support for a while if we've chopped enough workers to get a fast Oracle either in the capital or that new city, as well as a gift city for Hammuragawa. With Toku having settled, the urgency for our next settler is not as acute as it might have been if he was still on one city.

 

[mabraham]

20/20 hindsight slider management:

I've tried some optimization of the slider adjustment for the turns T31-T46 and would like to share the results. Yes, it's all water under the bridge by now, but I find it rather surprising that the optimal management has only 1 turn (T34) with 100% slider. The 50% slider often minimizes losses which are occurring due to truncation and happen to be pretty high for the binary research method and our given values of total commerce (I considered these fixed in order to retain optimal tile management). The other constraints factored in were the turns on which Hunting & BW need to be online (T42 & T46).

Interesting. In principle, we should have done a dynamic program with the imposed constraints of empire commerce and expenses, together with the necessary times for Hunting and BW, in order to maximise the gold+beaker outcome given the unknowns of when the Gawas would get BW and when we might meet someone else who might enhance our multipliers. I might grapple with that for next SGOTM

 

[shulec]

My test game play suggests that that settler near the eastern gold won't have a trade route or worker support for a while if we've chopped enough workers to get a fast Oracle either in the capital or that new city, as well as a gift city for Hammuragawa. With Toku having settled, the urgency for our next settler is not as acute as it might have been if he was still on one city.

Yes, but a great strategist recently said:

Yes, but every settler and worker our capital builds for the rest of the game will be 2 turns slower. That is very likely to reflect in our victory date if our Oracle is fast enough already. Unfortunately we don't know whether we are fast enough...

And he was true because we could have gotten the fail gold turn on the turn the settler was built, but with a 5th tile being worked from the fifth population, not 4 pop on turn 42.

Anyway... the opportunity has passed.

 

[shulec]

Dehli
T41 Work Corn, FP, Mine, and Forest; Finish warrior, expecting 3 overflow .
T42 Work Corn, 3 Mines; build TGW
T43-48 Work Corn, 3 Mines, FP; build settler
T49-50 Build worker

Deergold City (Formerly Bombay)
T41-45 Build Worker
T46-47, build TGW.
T48 Build worker, chop for worker.
T49 Finish worker, build TGW
T50 Build TGW

Workers
Eiffel
Move to Deer, build camp
Finish Camp, move 1S and chop forest.
Move 1S and mine hill.

Fritz
T49 Move 1 SE, build mine for 1T.

Warriors
Amundson
Fortify in place.

Burke
1N1W Fog bust three turns, then head back toward Dehli to fogbust southern region.

Cook
1N1W, the 1S1W, move to choke spot NW of Deergold City

Research
BW=>Wheel=>PH
Binary research.

Civics
Adopt slavery once we need it, not sooner.
Espionage
Always on Hamuragawa.

Stopping points:
WHEOOHRN
Meet a new AI.
A dilemma regarding animals or barbs.
An info that breaks the planned game.
TGW or Oracle built by AI.
Resource popping on a mined hill.

Miscellaneous:
Look for AI culture in satelite view
Save game
Note (using Alt+S) forest/jungle growth, animals/barbs appearing etc.
Take screenshots if interesting developments.

 

[shulec]

I did two variant on builds for Deergold City. I built a mine 2S of the deer.

Build 1:
T41-45 Worker
T46-47 TGW
T48 Worker, Chop forest into worker
T49-T57 TGW

Build 2:
T41-48 Worker
T49-57 TGW
Chop forest into TGW on T49. This requires farming forest 1 turn or mining 1S of forest 1 turn to delay chop so it can go into TGW.

Both builds finish the worker on T49 and TGW on T57.

and on T57
Build 1: 6 and 3 overflow, Pop 3 on T54
Build 2: 2 and 3 overflow, Pop 3 on T57

 

[DanF5771]

With the above micro, we missed out on our chance to get to population 5 on turn 42. If we had worked to grass forests on T40 and T41, we would have gotten our settler one turn earlier too.

And he was true because we could have gotten the fail gold turn on the turn the settler was built, but with a 5th tile being worked from the fifth population, not 4 pop on turn 42.

Anyway... the opportunity has passed.

If I'm not mistaken growing to 5 a turn earlier would mean no Warrior before Settler, right? I believe the consensus was not to take that risk.
Also, the TGW fail gold turn after the Settler (2080 BC) might already be too late...

 

[mabraham]

If we want to gift a city to Hammuragawa that will flip back to us soonish so we can gift it again (setting him up to be our voting ally, and then maybe gifting it off to some other small AI later) then starting another settler this turn set is necessary.

If we want to get a fast Oracle either in the capital or the new eastern city, we need to be sure that we have enough workers to get it done. If we get the above settler, then Deergold needs to be fairly aggressive about chopping out workers - and I think there is not time to get ASAP marble and ASAP gold for a new city in the East. It might be doable with settler-settler-worker from Delhi over T43-60. We need some test games that get ASAP Oracles under various worker-building scenarios.

I think we need to get some contributions from the team on these questions before we can really address the details of the micro of this set. Unfortunately I'm away for about 48 hours. I might read and post, but no promises.

 

[DanF5771]

A T62 Oracle->MC is possible in the new eastern city (Gold-Sheep-Corn 1E of Gold). It requires PH before TW and starting Oracle there right away + some strong buildup of our work force.
Chopping 3 Fast Workers in DeerGold and building Settler-FW-FW-Settler in Delhi (1 forest chopped SE of Delhi and another forest on the tile of our 4th city = DeerCow) brings us to 6 Fast Workers. Overkill you might think? Well we have some superb land to settle quickly around us with those yummy 6-yield specials + Gems we want to hook up and we need roads towards neighbors for trade networks to enable resource deals and Hindu spreads. In my test, the first cultural building in Osaka was a Library (auto spread of Buddhism is imho very unlikely), so that Toku gained control of Corn for only 2 turns.

I'm afraid my suggestions for repeated city gifts may have been a bit ambiguous/mistakable. We can only earn diplo bonuses for city liberation if liberation is actually possible -- the city needs to be located closer to the capital of the AI (Hammu) than to Delhi. Otherwise it's just a standard gift which will max out the +4 for fair trade at the first time, so that multiple gifts to the same AI will not be beneficial. Thus I'd like to gift Hammu a city in the NW territory (close to Babylon -> city liberation), e.g. in the spot Tachy proposed. If we find Copper in our homelands and can get an Axe out quickly, we can also try to go for the double-gift with in-between barb conquest. Therefore I'd like to allow some barb spawning in the NW area. The guarded choke point guarantees no barb troubles in our lands.

 

[shulec]

Therefore I'd like to allow some barb spawning in the NW area. The guarded choke point guarantees no barb troubles in our lands.

Will do. I want to check out the ocean southwest of Hammarabi's lands before bailing out of the region. Earlier tests showed barbs around T45 IIRC. There is plenty of time to peek and get out.