SGOTM 15 - Kakumeika

[shulec]

Here are a few things to note about liberating and gifting cities.

Liberating cities
Allowed based on certain requirements that have to do mostly with location and proximity to AI to which the city is liberated. (In SGOTM 14, on the wheel map, some liberated cities went to AIs whose city cultures were not the closest. I don't recall if they went to the AI with the closest capitol.)
It is affected by the cities culture (I am not clear on specifics).
Does not give +4 bonus for fair trade.

City Gifting
Requires that some sort of trade can be made to make gift (e.g. Open borders, trade route/resources)
If there is not trade route and neither the AI nor the human player have writing, the city cannot be gifted.
Does not give liberated city bonus.

 

[Manco Capac]

City Gifting
Requires that some sort of trade can be made to make gift (e.g. Open borders, trade route/resources)
If there is not trade route and neither the AI nor the human player have writing, the city cannot be gifted.
Does not give liberated city bonus.

This shouldn't be too hard if Hammuragawa gives a hand to us, or make the jobs ourselves. That river in the mountains only need another roaded tile.
Or else, a coastal trade route should be established sooner or later; his capital is coastal given the fishing nets.

Spoiler :

If there is not trade route and neither the AI nor the human player have writing, the city cannot be gifted.

Okay. I knew there was something wrong in that assumption:
Writing is not a necessary condition (either the AI or us have it) to start putting something on the table. All we need is a trade route (likely a watery one) and sailing. Even a situation where nothing can be traded exists.
The possible problem rising from this is how far Hamuragawa have revealed his surrounding lands to make the trade via Sailing available. I remember the fact both Toku and Hammuragawa scouts were on a hill in the early turns, thus I think they explore enough of that river. But as for the coastal trade route, I am not entirely sure, but very likely explored enough.
In a nutshell, if we have Sailing, our exploration is enough, otherwise their Sailing enabling won't take effect. And their lands don't need to be known because the remaining route is known by Hammu. Will attach test game.

 

[Manco Capac]

The guarded choke point guarantees no barb troubles in our lands.

Glad I put finally forth an useful idea (and super thanks for explaining it so fast!), not those idiocies I triggered as tech beaker OF from the last tech are kept along discounts when a test blew it away at once. God...how I wasted people's time an entire page. Ah yes, lesson learnt.

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.

Good idea. Usually easier in a raging barb environment, but the NCR option enabled eases it...as long we forbid the barb to camp in the virtual BFC of that city gift I guess.

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...

Indeed, this little micro proposed by you in the very last moments was there to push further from 24 fail to 30 fail from TGW while finishing the warrior to ensure us a sure path to the easter city settling. At that time, we didn't know for sure if Toku had settled exactly there the city, fogbusting a big chunk of that area. Finishing the warrior was an almost consensus lest the hammers decay after 10 turns (or 4 turns? after the second trained settler).

Research
BW=>Wheel=>PH
Binary research.

At the end of BW, you will run out of in bank. Try to bank a little more than for the whole wheel tech given there is no discount for that tech. PH in the other hands has Poly 20% discount. In any case, this should dovetail with PH done in right time for Oracle construction.

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.

I suspect this map is not full of Toku or else how a Toku may hate another Toku under same religion enough to stop putting EP on us. Even the random three modifiers diced at the start of a game is not enought to make a Toku abhors another Toku.

I take a dip on the supposition Neilmeister just wanted to escort team player to the victory with the best acquaintance possible.

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 ...

Never I would take badly any help from you. You are steering us rightly in term of CIV mechanics.
Unless you start trolling everyone, repeating everyone is noob and failaxis is fail...then I might start a browbeat...

In fact, I think it is great to move on new grounds to see where we might fail...despite how small the impact it may.
I haven't looked in deep details if the results are clearly correct or wrong, but I guess, in the loss column, red means "Ouch, we missed a beaker by so few", white means "so so, but may becauses a loss or not depending of slider manipulations" and at last green means "in any case, the loss is so small no place for a loss qualification".

Glad to know the free beaker is included in the formula. Then, I made an mistake 50% of 12 is 6 because the freebee is hidden IIRC.

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).

is a superior winner with all the beaker multipliers (over the neatly fewer gold multipliers) including the natural ones from the techs.
Although wheel is the next tech in the row, PH would have benefitted from this. And less turns on gold turns during wheel.

mabraham mentioned grasping a future calculator, but I think it is vividly hard project.

 

[mabraham]

Barb cities don't spawn for a while after the first barb units, IIRC.

 

[Manco Capac]

Here are a few things to note about liberating and gifting cities.

Liberating cities
Allowed based on certain requirements that have to do mostly with location and proximity to AI to which the city is liberated. (In SGOTM 14, on the wheel map, some liberated cities went to AIs whose city cultures were not the closest. I don't recall if they went to the AI with the closest capitol.)

You should have provided the test because I am trying to figure out the positions of city...
If I understand well, the liberation went the wrong owner. ?

Ah I think I understand what you made; it wasn't the true game, but the test game where civs are differently positioned.
It is a matter of capital/city to liberate distance that makes the choosing of owner IIRC.
Like in CiV, I think it was somewhat a matter of controlling aggressive expansion towards lands that should belong the the nearest civ. A civ is represent by its center, the capital.

Sorry I can't prolong. I have to sleep. Good night.

I thought differently in SGOTM14. Shame my body had the upper hand most of the time .

Still thinking the same way about capital as parameter for liberating, especially after what I read in
CiV subforum in the early days of September 2010; something like the AI will become more agressive towards the relentless human settling its cities too close to their capitals, will force you liberate cities.

 

[shulec]

Liberating mechanics seem to be dictated by distance from capitol.

Here is a test game from SGOTM14.

 

[DanF5771]

Clarification re conditions for city trading/gifting and liberation:

• capitals cannot be liberated

• cities will be liberated to spawned colony-AIs first if their capital is on the same landmass (overwrites distance rule)

• for liberation the city must be unthreatened (no enemy in BFC, 2 tiles away in diagonal directions is 'okay')

• city will be liberated to the player with the highest ratio of max(100,CityCulture*100)/CapitalDistance, but due to some strange looking code (bug?) the current owner always gets half of the total culture added to his own CityCulture

• fresh cities without any culture go to the player with the smallest CapitalDistance
• AI culture in the city will only help for cities that are located far away enough, i.e. Distance2Delhi > Distance2AICapital/2

• no other trade possibilities (open borders, resources) are required at all, you can even make contact with an unknown AI via the Alt+F1-variant of city liberation

There are two ways to liberate cities:

1. trade - open trade screen with known AI by Ctrl+clicking on his name -> gift city and gain +1.5 for city liberation but also +4 for fair trade and -4 with potential worst enemies
2. city-'discharge' - click on fist-symbol in F1-screen or press Alt+F1 -> liberate city for +1.5 gracious act, this is not a trade so no other diplo consequences

Attention: for variant 1, be sure to press the right key (Ctrl, not Alt!!!) when making contact


shulec's test game:



Although both cities are located in the immediate vicinity of green culture (= Wicked Witch of the West = 'WWW' = Monty), his capital is too far away (plotDistance = 13 & 16 for the northern & southern city). Gandhi (='GWW') gets the southern city via liberation and will accept the northern city as a regular gift. Genghis (='WWN') takes the northern city but is not willing to trade for (accept as gift) the southern city (too far away from his closest city = Old Sarai; plotDist >=10).

 

[DanF5771]

I suspect this map is not full of Toku or else how a Toku may hate another Toku under same religion enough to stop putting EP on us. Even the random three modifiers diced at the start of a game is not enought to make a Toku abhors another Toku.

There probably is no hate ... the code for AI allocation of espionage points is quite weird -- it appears they can only press their '+' buttons to adjust the weights in the espionage screen.

They recognize any deficits and try to catch up through incrementing the weights by certain values that calculate to

difference(espionage points spent)/8 - attitude_value.

The weights are capped at 99. There is no way for an AI to reduce them again ... if you open a late-ADs save in debug mode and check AI-EP-weights you will often see the 99s allocated to various opponents, also the friendly ones ...

So the AI east of Toku could also be another Toku without contact to anybody else -- thus he had to spend all EPs on our Toku who is now desperately trying to catch up ...

I haven't looked in deep details if the results are clearly correct or wrong, but I guess, in the loss column, red means "Ouch, we missed a beaker by so few", white means "so so, but may becauses a loss or not depending of slider manipulations" and at last green means "in any case, the loss is so small no place for a loss qualification".

Yes, I used conditional formatting in the 'loss'-column to quickly see where we were bleeding fractional commerce the most. The freebee included in the modifier-multiplication makes the difference so that for certain values of total commerce choosing a 50%-50% slider for 2 turns can be better than 0%-100% slider.

 

[DanF5771]

placing the gift-cities adjacent to the mountain peaks has several advantages:

1. it will be less useful for the AI (we could also dead-lock yummy resources with 'optimal' city placement)
2. it will alow us to explore territory behind the ridges via culture - this is where Stonehenge is also useful, if we consider it worthy, we might wait for the border pop after 10 turns before gifting the city
3. if we are really lucky with the layout of the lands and cultural patterns, we might even teleport units stationed in a city over mountain ridges by gifting the city to an AI that we don't yet have open borders with

re Optics<->Sailing:

It will be interesting to find out how the bodies of water are arranged. They may constitute excellent breeding places for barb Galleys so that shipping our Missionaries around with Caravels instead of Trireme-guarded Galleys could be clearly better, as they can outrun the Galleys and hide on the odd ocean tiles. I also think letting some Triremes hunt barb Galleys for 5XP or more and upgrading them later to 4+ Caravels would be very nice.

 

[shulec]

Goals:
Fail gold from TGW
Set up for Oracle and Corn steal at Gold Sheep site
Start up mass worker build.

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

Settler: Head southeast around the hills to tile 1W of gold.

Deergold City (Formerly Bombay)
T41-48 Build Worker
T49 Finish worker, start new worker
T50 Cont. worker build

Workers
Eiffel
Move to Deer, build camp
Finish Camp, move 1W and chop forest.
T49-50 Move 1S1E, chop forest

Fritz
T49-50 Move 1S and chop.

Warriors
Amundson
Move 1S1W, for 2 consecutive turns to end 1S1W of gold.

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

New warrior
Warrior produced T 42. Head south to fog bust/cover for settler based on animal seen, then return to 1W of marble.

Research
BW=>PH=>Wheel
Binary research.

Civics
Do not adopt slavery

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.
BW researched

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.

 

[DanF5771]

Nice PPP, shulec.

Warrior produced T 42. Head east toward deer in preparation for settler escort.

Settler: Head straight east to tile 1W of gold. (Take hilly route for safety and to delay settling one turn to facilitate finishing Wheel asap. Long route south of hills is faster, but slows oracle one turn.)

I'd prefer the faster Settler route around the hills for earlier working of river Gold at the Sheep site, therefore the new Warrior should also go south.
In my tests getting The_Wheel on T55 after PH was enough, the Workers spent their turns chopping and moving. Here is a screen shot of T61 with SheepGoldCorn finishing Oracle:



4th city DeerCow just settled and working improved Deer. Only 2 FWs hooked up Marble (T58-T60), the other 4 built roads, improved Gold & Deer and chopped 3 forests into Oracle on T61.

Finish Camp, move 1S and chop forest.
T49 Move 1S1E, chop for one turn, cancel action
T50 Move 1S1E onto forested hill.

I think it's better to start chopping 1W of Deer and then continue SE, complete chops quickly -- no cancelling of worker actions.

Amundson
Fortify in place.

Osaka and Delhi fogbust a lot of the SheepGoldCorn site. Maybe move Amundsen to Gold to prevent spawning of non-animal barbs in the south for safer travelling of our Settler, also using Toku's Archer as coverage against remaining Bears?

BW=>PH=>Wheel
Binary research.

Yes, finish BW @100% slider, perhaps then it is a good idea to stop the turn set for a quick discussion re Copper/no-Copper?
After BW, 1 turn @0%->TW is good because the following 4 turns of 100%->PH will give 15 'dirty' OF which will be reduced to 12 'clean' OF loss-free (assuming modifier=120).

Note: I'm not 100% happy with this 6-FWs solution and the many pre-math chops, would really like to read/hear more opinions of other team members.

 

[WastinTime]

I've been skiing/gambling in Lake Tahoe! Just caught up on reading the thread. I'd like to run a test or two later today, before I can comment.

 

[shulec]

I'd prefer the faster Settler route around the hills for earlier working of river Gold at the Sheep site, therefore the new Warrior should also go south.
In my tests getting The_Wheel on T55 after PH was enough, the Workers spent their turns chopping and moving. Here is a screen shot of T61 with SheepGoldCorn finishing

Sounds good, I just couldn't make the microwork with the fast route.

4th city DeerCow just settled and working improved Deer. Only 2 FWs hooked up Marble (T58-T60), the other 4 built roads, improved Gold & Deer and chopped 3 forests into Oracle on T61.

Nice micro, I needed workers for things other than chopping out that settler!

I think it's better to start chopping 1W of Deer and then continue SE, complete chops quickly -- no cancelling of worker actions.

I was playing with the posted test game and it does not have a forest 1W of deer. That certainly helps things.

Osaka and Delhi fogbust a lot of the SheepGoldCorn site. Maybe move Amundsen to Gold to prevent spawning of non-animal barbs in the south for safer travelling of our Settler, also using Toku's Archer as coverage against remaining Bears?

With a southern settler trek, this is a good idea. That settler trek may get disrupted by animals and barbs.

Yes, finish BW @100% slider, perhaps then it is a good idea to stop the turn set for a quick discussion re Copper/no-Copper?
After BW, 1 turn @0%->TW is good because the following 4 turns of 100%->PH will give 15 'dirty' OF which will be reduced to 12 'clean' OF loss-free (assuming modifier=120).

Just so I am clear, you are recommending 1 turn on TW while at 0% research, then the next turn to PH at 100%?

Note: I'm not 100% happy with this 6-FWs solution and the many pre-math chops, would really like to read/hear more opinions of other team members.

I like your micro. Prioritizing teching via the Oracle is more important in our game due to the "no tech brokering" setting. The early, pre-math chops for workers will help us grow, and will translate to more hammers that will hopefully make up for the chops. Maybe we'll grow some more forests due to more tiles without forests.

Unfortunately, our team has gone quiet. I plan to play in 48-72 hours. With a lack of feedback, I have to assume that no comments means approval.

@ DanF If we decide to stick with this micro path to the Oracle, I recommend you consider setting aside your lurker status and play turns 50-62.

When I get a chance, I will update the PPP with your suggestions. I am sure mabraham will have some thoughts too.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

PPP looks very good!

You might wait at least 24 hours for feedback on the final PPP which was posted about 14 hours ago as of the posting of this message.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[bcool]

Hi guys,

Sorry I've been not posting. I've been reading but I've had little time to test and add anything useful. My schedule has freed up, so I will be able to do some testing on Friday and for the rest of the competition.

I suspect that the appearance of copper near one of our cities might change the worker micro...
I suggest that as stopping point.

 

[WastinTime]

my intuition says:
chopping so much pre-math seems wrong.
having 6 (or even 5) workers seems wrong. We have very little land for them to work.

I think I agree with everything you plan to do up to BW, and I agree you should stop there so we can re-assess.

Do not switch to slavery.

 

[Manco Capac]

Unfortunately, our team has gone quiet. I plan to play in 48-72 hours. With a lack of feedback, I have to assume that no comments means approval.

Will try to study the case tomorrow morning (in other words 12 hours later).
bcool has returned to bring back order.

Do not switch to slavery.

Why? We are spiritual and events are off...and Monotheism for OR will go way after the cool down 5 turns between anarchy events.
Indeed, whipping without granary is inefficient if it was that you meant.

 

[WastinTime]

oh right, my bad, events are off (feels like cheating)--I almost always have events on. I guess it can't hurt to switch immediately to slavery then.

 

[mabraham]

Doesn't slavery have higher maintenance?

 

[Manco Capac]

Doesn't slavery have higher maintenance?

Yes indeed. Good point.
In the past, it was different, but slavery is so overpowered that game designers decided to make this civic maintenance now medium cost instead of low cost.