SGOTM 15 - Kakumeika

[Kaitzilla]

It looks like flipping a civ to another religion is 600 base

A spy with 50% bonus from waiting and 40% from our holy city + our religion present in a heathen's city, it will cost around 200 espionage to flip one of our neighbors to our religion (75-85% odds i think). We just need a lucky hindu spread, or gift a city that has hindu to one of our neighbors once our spy has sat in it a while. So there might be a reason to switch our espionage over to Tokugawa.

If they adopted our religion, we'd have +1 from years of peaceful relations and +1 from shared religion. We could gift a big tech or city and get +4, which should be enough for open borders (+6, if we didn't have border tensions ...) They would likely switch back to Buddism in around 5 turns and cancel open borders, so we'd have to send our missionaries and scouts through their lands right away. A religion flip is about the only way I can envision getting open borders with the Toku's in any kind of a reasonable timeframe.


We do have some options on what to Oracle.

1) Metal Casting is the most valuable tech, and it opens of triremes once we have sailing.
2) Code of Laws is rather strong, as it allows us to switch to Caste and run lots of scientists/artists/merchants in any city we wish.
3) Alphabet opens up exploring the map with spies. It also allows us to gift/trade techs with our terrible neighbors. One of my favorite techs to get early in Emperor games, but how useful is it with no tech brokering turned on?
4) Paper if we choose to bulb Theocracy and wait until T68-T70? Madness.
5) Aesthetics. Opens up literature path and allows us to build that adopt-any-religious-civic wonder if we wanted it.

 

[bcool]

I think the fail gold from the Great Wall is very important. Our tech pace is going to be critical for an early victory. I would rather grow to 4 on the great wall and then build a worker. And after the worker I would like to grow to 5 (on a farm ideally so it is 3 turns to grow to 5) also building the great wall. The opportunity to get fail gold from the Great Wall is rapidly closing and this will help power us through some important technologies like Animal handling, writing, monotheism and mathematics.

I'm impressed that Kaitzilla could get the Oracle by T62, but I think sacrificing the fail gold opportunity on the Great Wall will hurt us much more than delaying the Oracle by a turn and delaying the settling DeerCows. We are not gearing up for a war so early settling of a non-commerce city isn't that critical in my opinion.

I think we also want to plan to build the pyramids in DeerGold and chop a few forests into the pyramids in Delhi (or somewhere else) once we have mathematics and organized religion going. That fail gold (67 per forest) will really help us power through the tech we need.

From my tests I think currency is a good side tech to get since it help power the research like nothing else (with several city building wealth). It puts us in a strong position after optics if we feel we need to continue teching past optics.

However, if we chop several forests into the pyramids for fail gold in several cities I can see how we could power through to optics without currency.

What tech to Oracle.
I think Oracling Metal Casting is still the best choice. The forge in Delhi at the very least is nice for the happiness and how it speeds up the build of the AP. And Metal Casting is on the direct path of Machinery and Optics. No other tech is. Code of Laws is intriguing but I think we don't have a ton of excess food so we aren't going to run that many more than 2 scientists in most cities.

espionage on Tokugawa
I like espionage on Tokugawa as well, since I like the possibility of flipping him to hinduism with espionage. I can see us flipping him again to hinduism by using the espionage slider and/or spreading hinduism to his capital so he stays in hinduism. This effort to convert him to hinduism is something that might avert a war. The cost of flipping him to hinduism and perhaps keeping him there could be significantly less expensive than fending off a war from him.

Of course if we go this route we might want to research alphabet instead of currency.

 

[bcool]

alternative test game

T63 Oracle, and 184 gold on T63 (from almost max fail gold in Delhi on Great Wall)
4 workers (1 worker built in Delhi at 4 pop), farm built near Delhi that allowed it to grow to 5 pop before starting a settler destined for DeerCows, I only had 2 workers working on the Marble Quarry since I wanted to build the farm in time for Delhi to grow to 5 in 3 turns after its worker. There might be a way to get 3 workers on the marble and still get the farm.

I like Kaitzilla's road plan for the settler it is clearly superior to my plan. (immediate trade route to SheepGold and immediate access to stone for a bit more failure gold on the GreatWall).

 

[Kaitzilla]

alternative test game

T63 Oracle, and 184 gold on T63 (from almost max fail gold in Delhi on Great Wall)
4 workers (1 worker built in Delhi at 4 pop), farm built near Delhi that allowed it to grow to 5 pop before starting a settler destined for DeerCows, I only had 2 workers working on the Marble Quarry since I wanted to build the farm in time for Delhi to grow to 5 in 3 turns after its worker. There might be a way to get 3 workers on the marble and still get the farm.

I like Kaitzilla's road plan for the settler it is clearly superior to my plan. (immediate trade route to SheepGold and immediate access to stone for a bit more failure gold on the GreatWall).

If everyone is comfortable going with T63 Oracle and max possible commerce, I suppose that could work.

If we are really scrounging for gold, we could switch back to tribalism on T52. That will save us one gold per turn once we found SheepGold on T53 according to the test game. The savings disappear once we found a 4th city, as the maintenance becomes -4gpt for both tribalism and slavery.

 

[mabraham]

Hmm, worker first improved Oracle completion up to a T62 finish date.

Nice! Note that Deergold is the city in the NW that has deer and gold in its inner ring. The eastern city that has sheep and gold in its inner ring we have been calling "SheepGold". Too much gold! If we go with this strategy, we may want to duck warriors inside our culture T52 to avoid paying for unit supply.

I was able to improve on the micro - spreedsheet, screenshot and saved game attached. My version keeps most of the good features of Kaitzilla's micro, as well as

• preserving the BFC forest N of copper,
• adding a road on that tile, and
• chopping the forest on the DeerCows site before it settles.

The only turn where a worker doesn't improve something is the unavoidable move onto the forested deer hill. My settler for DeerCows builds one turn later, but settles at the same time because of the better roads (or chopped settling tile).

The biggest downside is that I chop all three forests on T61, so the workers are all in the east. I build the road to SheepGold on the tile 1N of gold, so that when the Oracle chopping completes we have a worker already on the road, and the others closer to the road. Optionally, my micro can complete the camp for DeerCows to work immediately, or send one worker to improve gems starting T62. The fact that two of the workers are on roads and can end 1W of Delhi T62 after completing the camp on time offsets some of the down side from worker positioning, I feel.

I don't really like that Delhi doesn't have time to accumulate hammers on TGW... Edit: actually, T55 we can put a few hammers on TGW without delaying the settler.

 

[mabraham]

I think the fail gold from the Great Wall is very important. Our tech pace is going to be critical for an early victory. I would rather grow to 4 on the great wall and then build a worker. And after the worker I would like to grow to 5 (on a farm ideally so it is 3 turns to grow to 5) also building the great wall. The opportunity to get fail gold from the Great Wall is rapidly closing and this will help power us through some important technologies like Animal handling, writing, monotheism and mathematics.

I'm impressed that Kaitzilla could get the Oracle by T62, but I think sacrificing the fail gold opportunity on the Great Wall will hurt us much more than delaying the Oracle by a turn and delaying the settling DeerCows. We are not gearing up for a war so early settling of a non-commerce city isn't that critical in my opinion.

I think we also want to plan to build the pyramids in DeerGold and chop a few forests into the pyramids in Delhi (or somewhere else) once we have mathematics and organized religion going. That fail gold (67 per forest) will really help us power through the tech we need.

From my tests I think currency is a good side tech to get since it help power the research like nothing else (with several city building wealth). It puts us in a strong position after optics if we feel we need to continue teching past optics.

However, if we chop several forests into the pyramids for fail gold in several cities I can see how we could power through to optics without currency.

What tech to Oracle.
I think Oracling Metal Casting is still the best choice. The forge in Delhi at the very least is nice for the happiness and how it speeds up the build of the AP. And Metal Casting is on the direct path of Machinery and Optics. No other tech is. Code of Laws is intriguing but I think we don't have a ton of excess food so we aren't going to run that many more than 2 scientists in most cities.

espionage on Tokugawa
I like espionage on Tokugawa as well, since I like the possibility of flipping him to hinduism with espionage. I can see us flipping him again to hinduism by using the espionage slider and/or spreading hinduism to his capital so he stays in hinduism. This effort to convert him to hinduism is something that might avert a war. The cost of flipping him to hinduism and perhaps keeping him there could be significantly less expensive than fending off a war from him.

Of course if we go this route we might want to research alphabet instead of currency.

I agree with all of this. I'd rather risk a turn of the Oracle and get a large pile of fail gold from TGW than get Oracle T62. I am still skeptical about Currency, unless we work in a galley or are focussed on getting a Gawa to our religion so that we have trade routes that are actually worth something.

I like espionage+Alpha to try to get Toku to Hindu if we see he gets a spread. Alphabet should precede currency if this is the plan. Gifting him a fourth city 2N of sheep that has Hinduism might be an effective way to get leverage. An espionage flip to Hinduism, a Hindu city gift and a beeline with three missionaries might lock him into OB, Hinduism, Friendly and monopoly tech trading for the rest of the game. But can we do this before he DOWs us?

If we see Hammu gets a spread (because flipping to Hinduism will be legal in the diplo screen) then he may make a better flip candidate in the long term because of the lower border pressure.

 

[mabraham]

Here's a suggestion for Delhi+SheepGold plan for T63 SheepGold Oracle maximising TGW fail gold. This only needs three workers and the three chops near SheepGold. I don't think the maintenance hit from fast DeerCows is worth the 7 base hammers gained from an in-culture chop. Since we can't get a Gfarm up in time to speed re-growth to size 5 if we don't build a worker, there's 7 turns of re-growth to size 5. There's only about 6 turns of room on TGW in Delhi, so I let SheepGold build TGW T54 on the first turn working the gold mine, while Delhi puts a turn on Pyramids (for lack of anything better?).

I haven't actually played through it in the game, but the tech timing (when we can start Oracle) is correct.

 

[DanF5771]

Chopping costs three worker turns assuming no movement penalties. As I analysed a few days ago, DeerGold is producing 8 per turn on a worker. So the 20 hammers on the chop for the worker accelerates production by about three turns, and costs three turns of the first worker. So there's no profit of worker time until the chopped worker has done a turn of work. It's much harder to assess whether saving the forest hammers to get 50% more later on is worthwhile, of course. The more we whip, the less valuable our workers are, because we use less of the improvements they're building.

Just for comparison purposes I ran a quick no-whip test with less aggressive chopping. 3 chops from DeerGold give us the 5th Worker which we will clearly need. Here is a T65 screen shot, Oracle in SheepGold T63, Sheep online next turn, GemsPig ready to settle next turn with Gems online in time, Delhi @6 with 98 invested in Pyramids:



I believe the 3 early chops to get the 5th Fast Worker out quickly are worth it and the GMines of unwhipped Delhi at size 5 and 6 probably compensate the used forest hammers.
It's all water under the bridge right now and nothing to discuss at the moment, but maybe the different road pattern might be something to test with the current game.

 

[mabraham]

Just for comparison purposes I ran a quick no-whip test with less aggressive chopping. 3 chops from DeerGold give us the 5th Worker which we will clearly need. Here is a T65 screen shot, Oracle in SheepGold T63, Sheep online next turn, GemsPig ready to settle next turn with Gems online in time, Delhi @6 with 98 invested in Pyramids:

View attachment 315495

I believe the 3 early chops to get the 5th Fast Worker out quickly are worth it and the GMines of unwhipped Delhi at size 5 and 6 probably compensate the used forest hammers.
It's all water under the bridge right now and nothing to discuss at the moment, but maybe the different road pattern might be something to test with the current game.

Hmm. Given that it is possible to get T63 Oracle in SheepGold with just three workers after a whip (post 907), perhaps there was an option to avoid the whip. Your empire development looks superior, and tech looks comparable... for now. You probably don't have the pile of TGW fail gold that can be gotten during regrowth, and need to put out a sixth city soon, so maybe another 20 turns is needed for the comparison... sigh

I think the road pattern you used delays the trade route to SheepGold, or its settling date (given the lion in the real game), or both. I think we want that trade route to get more leverage for chances for Hinduism spread.

 

[bcool]

Just for comparison purposes I ran a quick no-whip test with less aggressive chopping. 3 chops from DeerGold give us the 5th Worker which we will clearly need. Here is a T65 screen shot, Oracle in SheepGold T63, Sheep online next turn, GemsPig ready to settle next turn with Gems online in time, Delhi @6 with 98 invested in Pyramids:

View attachment 315495

I believe the 3 early chops to get the 5th Fast Worker out quickly are worth it and the GMines of unwhipped Delhi at size 5 and 6 probably compensate the used forest hammers.
It's all water under the bridge right now and nothing to discuss at the moment, but maybe the different road pattern might be something to test with the current game.

Yes, however saving the forests near DeerGold for organized religion and mathematics means we get 17 hammers more per forest. That makes up for a lot of turns with Delhi at 5 pop instead of 6 pop. Delhi in the real game can make another worker after DeerCows settler bringing us up to 5 workers. The forests in DeerGold can also cause another forest to grow that might not have. The forests in DeerGold also likely mean we get the pyramids built earlier (and perhaps means we get the fail gold from the pyramids built in other cities earlier and we get the benefit of the pyramids earlier).

So I don't think it is clear that chopping workers in DeerGold and not whipping was superior to not chopping workers in DeerGold and whipping in Delhi.

 

[WastinTime]

I play mostly of peaceful games, and I'm hoping to learn some more combat tactics. Do y'all have some trick that tells you when/if the stack is coming from Toku? I'm not comfortable with Sheepgold at size 1 and no forests (i.e. no slavery, no chop = no rushed axes). Or do you just plan to let him take sheepgold and then we re-group and take it back?
That would surprise me, I never like to lose a city, even briefly.

while we're talking about taking cities...
I see Hindu spread to Toku happening when we take his corn city and coast city. Spread hindu to the coast city and give it back to him. We don't need espionage for that. If you want to put EPs on him, we'd want to use them for dealing with the castle. If we can't build up enough EP for th at, then let's leave the points on Hammu.

 

[bcool]

The AI will go into WHEOOHRN (we have enough on own hands right now) when you move your mouse over the option for them to declare war on someone else. This indicates that the AI is preparing its own war. And in the BUG mod, a little fist appears in the lower right corner to indicate the AI has gone into this state so you don't have to check the diplo screen.

So if we see Toku preparing for war we have time (at least 5 turns) to build/whip axes in nearby cities and send them over to SheepGold.

I personally don't see the value in producing the military units necessary to take Toku's cities. His cities don't look all that great especially when we take the corn from his 2nd city. I don't see us capturing his cities, so I do like the espionage option to try and make him our friend.

I play mostly of peaceful games, and I'm hoping to learn some more combat tactics. Do y'all have some trick that tells you when/if the stack is coming from Toku? I'm not comfortable with Sheepgold at size 1 and no forests (i.e. no slavery, no chop = no rushed axes). Or do you just plan to let him take sheepgold and then we re-group and take it back?
That would surprise me, I never like to lose a city, even briefly.

while we're talking about taking cities...
I see Hindu spread to Toku happening when we take his corn city and coast city. Spread hindu to the coast city and give it back to him. We don't need espionage for that. If you want to put EPs on him, we'd want to use them for dealing with the castle. If we can't build up enough EP for th at, then let's leave the points on Hammu.

 

[mabraham]

I play mostly of peaceful games, and I'm hoping to learn some more combat tactics. Do y'all have some trick that tells you when/if the stack is coming from Toku? I'm not comfortable with Sheepgold at size 1 and no forests (i.e. no slavery, no chop = no rushed axes). Or do you just plan to let him take sheepgold and then we re-group and take it back?
That would surprise me, I never like to lose a city, even briefly.

Seeing WHEOOHRN will likely trigger us to get out at least an axeman from Delhi (built naturally in 2-3 turns!) for defence. The road should get him there in time, and our culture defence should be appreciable. If we've culture-captured the corn by then, then the tile visbility we get off the hill 2N of corn will make it impossible for Toku to sneak up a force to which we cannot respond. The river attack penalty will likely help us also. I can't imagine a scenario where we would be close to losing SheepGold, and would drop just about everything to make sure we didn't.

while we're talking about taking cities...
I see Hindu spread to Toku happening when we take his corn city and coast city. Spread hindu to the coast city and give it back to him. We don't need espionage for that. If you want to put EPs on him, we'd want to use them for dealing with the castle. If we can't build up enough EP for th at, then let's leave the points on Hammu.

True, but that's more of a late-game "we're desperate to convert the last AI" tactic. Building an army to do this early is not efficient, if we then discover that we're going to need Astro to convert some landlocked AI on the far side of the world. If we just wait, his cities are so close that they are very likely to get a Hindu spread before the end of the game. When we see they all acquire another religion, then now we can address the issue.

I've said this a lot - I don't see what we have to gain from war with Toku. We don't want his land. We're not desperate to flip him to Hinduism. We can run a defensive campaign forever if needed. If he's got Hinduism we can get AP peace. If he doesn't have Hinduism we can get shared war diplo benefits.

We can gain nicely from getting him to Friendly via Hinduism if it means we get a critical tech trade, contacts to other AIs, trade routes, resource trades, etc. That could easily be worth a few hundred EPs for an espionage religion flip plus hammers for missionary flood to lock him there.

Speaking of locking him there, AIs look at their best religion when deciding whether to flip:

ReligionTypes CvPlayerAI::AI_bestReligion() const
{
	ReligionTypes eBestReligion;
	int iValue;
	int iBestValue;
	int iI;

	iBestValue = 0;
	eBestReligion = NO_RELIGION;

	ReligionTypes eFavorite = (ReligionTypes)GC.getLeaderHeadInfo(getLeaderType()).getFavoriteReligion();

	for (iI = 0; iI < GC.getNumReligionInfos(); iI++)
	{
		if (canDoReligion((ReligionTypes)iI))
		{
			iValue = AI_religionValue((ReligionTypes)iI);

			if (getStateReligion() == ((ReligionTypes)iI))
			{
				iValue *= 4;
				iValue /= 3;
			}

			if (eFavorite == iI)
			{
				iValue *= 5;
				iValue /= 4;
			}

			if (iValue > iBestValue)
			{
				iBestValue = iValue;
				eBestReligion = ((ReligionTypes)iI);
			}
		}
	}

	if ((NO_RELIGION == eBestReligion) || AI_isDoStrategy(AI_STRATEGY_MISSIONARY))
	{
		return eBestReligion;
	}
	
	int iBestCount = getHasReligionCount(eBestReligion);
	int iSpreadPercent = (iBestCount * 100) / std::max(1, getNumCities());
	int iPurityPercent = (iBestCount * 100) / std::max(1, countTotalHasReligion());
	if (iPurityPercent < 49)
	{
		if (iSpreadPercent > ((eBestReligion == eFavorite) ? 65 : 75))
		{
			if (iPurityPercent > ((eBestReligion == eFavorite) ? 25 : 32))
			{
				return eBestReligion;
			}
		}
		return NO_RELIGION;
	}
	
	return eBestReligion;
}

Unfortunately, Toku's favourite religion is Buddhism. If he doesn't spread Buddhism, then if we get his ratio of Hindu to Buddhist population more than (4/3)*(5/4) = 5/3, then his eBestReligion will be Hinduism - and he will choose to flip to it if the subsequent conditions are satisified. That will require a missionary to Kyoto, or getting all his side cities to Hinduism if they're big enough.

Then iBestCount is the number of cities of the best religion. One Hindu city is enough for (iPurityPercent < 49) if he has only two religions, or two cities is enough if he has 3-4 religions.

So if we do an espionage flip to Hinduism after a spontaneous side city spread, then we beeline missionaries to Kyoto, convert that, and then convert any other city we can in the time available. Once he's in Hinduism, then we have the 4/3 inertia factor working for us and he'll need more Buddhist population than Hindu to want to flip back.

 

[bcool]

Flipping him to Hinduism will not necessarily allow open borders with Toku. And if we don't have open borders we will not be able to flood him with missionaries.

Will
+4 from trade relations (from a city gift or tech gift)
+1 same religion
+1 peace
-?? from close borders
+/- hidden modifiers

Be enough to get open borders with him?

 

[Kaitzilla]

Final PPP​

Goals:
1) Working towards a T63 Oracle so we can pick Metal Casting
2) Construct the Oracle in SheepGold to steal Tokugawa's corn
3) Connect bronze
4) Generate a lot of fail gold by putting hammers into The Great Wall


Techs: Wheel, Priesthood, Pottery, Animal Husbandry


Civic Changes
T52 Tribalism. Should save 1gpt while we have 3 cities (T53-T61) and no whips are planned.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Screenshot of main area of interest:

Spoiler :

Burke and Cook:

Spoiler :

DeerGold

T50-T59 Settler; Deer Gold


Dehli

T50-T52 The Great Wall; Corn FPfarm Bronze
T53-T56 Worker; Corn FPfarm Bronze Gmine
T57-T60 Settler; Corn FPfarm Bronze Gmine


SheepGold

T51 - Settler moves onto deer
T52 - Settler moves onto gold
T53 - The Great Wall; Sheep
T54-T58 The Great Wall; Gold
T59 - Oracle; Gold




Warriors

Burke - Fortify
Cook - T51 move Northwest and fortify in the forest
DeSoto - Fortify, kill any barbs that T58 Dehli border pop reveals Move 1N1E on T50. If the barb lion heads north, move 1N1E onto hill, else head back.
Amundsen - Promote medic T50. Protect workers and settler from lion, then move 1N1W of gold around T55.




Workers

Fritz
T50 - Move to 1E of Dehli
T51 - Road 1E of copper
T52 - Road 1S1E of deer
T53 - Road 1N of gold
T54 - Mine gold
T55 - Camp on deer
T56 - Road 1SE of Dehli
T57 - Road 1S of copper
T58-T59 - Quarry marble
T60 - Go west to mine gems

Hoover
T50 - Move to deer
T51-T52 Road deer
T53-T54 Mine gold
T55 - Camp on deer
T56 - Road 1SE of Dehli
T57 - Road 1S of copper
T58-T59 - Quarry marble
T60 - Chop forest 1S of copper for Dehli
T61-T62 Chop forest 1N1W of SheepGold

Eiffel
T51 - Road 1E of copper
T52 - Road 1S1E of deer
T53 - Road 1N of gold
T54 - Mine gold
T55 - Prechop forest 1N of SheepGold
T56 - Prechop forest 2N1W of SheepGold
T57-T59 - Chop forest 1N1E of deer for Dehli
T60 - Prechop forest 2N1W of SheepGold
T61-T62 Chop forest 1N of SheepGold

Karl
T57 - Prechop forest 1S of copper once road is built
T58-T59 - Quarry marble
T60 - Chop forest 1S of copper for Dehli
T61 - Prechop forest 1N1W of SheepGold
T62 - Chop forest 2N1W of SheepGold once DeerCow is settled and the chop will go into Sheepgold




Espionage
Switch to Tokugawa T50

Trades
Gift Deer to Hammarugawa T50

Stopping points
New AI discovered
A Toku goes into war prep mode
Oracle or The Great Wall built by another civ

Other Notes
Will check the victory screen to see if Toku starts getting culture in a side city.
Will check zoomed-out culture to see if any distant borders.

 

[Kaitzilla]

I structured the PPP to get T63 Oracle, delay DeerCow until the last possible moment T62, max out The Great Wall failure gold, get the gems out west up by the time the settler gets there, and not waste worker turns.

Thanks to chopping DeerCow's settling site and building a road 1N of gold as Mabraham suggested, I was able to get it all done by chopping the forest 1S of copper. It made everything fall into place, else DeerCow settles T63 and the outside-our-borders chop on T62 makes Oracle fall short. Every turn of building TGW had stone and every turn of Oracle had marble.

Here is the screenshot:

Spoiler :

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Kaitzilla, your PPP looks very good! Hopefully, we will be able to build The Great Wall in one of our cities every turn of your turn set (as you planned it).

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[bcool]

Kaitzilla, very impressive PPP, just went through the play test and everything worked very nicely. I think it is the best plan that anyone can come up with.

I vote for switching the espionage to Tokugawa. The option of eventually being able to flip him to hinduism is more valuable in my opinion then knowing what Hamuragawa is teching eventually. We are unlikely going to do much tech trading with him, so the knowledge of what he is teching is limited. The espionage on Tokugawa will open up an option to flip him to Hinduism or just give us more knowledge of our likely opponent. Plus even if the hindu flip doesn't happen then the espionage will eventually give us knowledge of what he is teching, or give us the option to revolt his capital in the event of a war (one that we decide not to keep completely defensive).

 

[mabraham]

I structured the PPP to get T63 Oracle, delay DeerCow until the last possible moment T62, max out The Great Wall failure gold, get the gems out west up by the time the settler gets there, and not waste worker turns.

PPP looks good. It only maximizes of TGW fail gold on the condition that we want to get DeerCows settled when we do, both for itself and the extra 7 base hammers in SheepGold's Oracle chop. I'm happy with all of that, but a true maximization would have Delhi grow to size 5 on TGW (post #907).

There is one potential minor issue of timing. The PPP builds a road SE of Delhi with two worker turns. That road saves Karl one worker turn, and will maybe be useful in the short term. In the long term, the arterial road we want runs NW-SE between the two deer tiles. A road SE of Delhi is useful only pre-Construction, or if we're heading to southern city sites. If we don't get that road up, then we can put a T56 on the deer camp with Hoover, pre-chop 1S of copper T56 with Fritz, and waste T57 with Karl. This swaps the two turns on the road SE of Delhi with a turn on the camp and a wasted turn. Ideally, I'd like to find a way to get the camp complete before DeerCows settles, but the only way I can see to do this involves using Fritz after the marble quarry, and I think we'd rather he headed off T60 to get the gems mine up the turn that PigGems will settle. We can get the camp up T63 whether we do this swap or not, and all those eastern workers will be a little bit stuck for work after chopping and before AH completes, so perhaps we'd rather have our bridge-free road SE of Delhi. Not good enough, not having the road SE of Delhi delays the DeerCows settler.

Thanks to chopping DeerCow's settling site and building a road 1N of gold as Mabraham suggested,

Originally, the idea of chopping that site came from WastinTime (or maybe DanF... sorry to whoever! ). I did enjoy finding that Eiffel's chopping crab-shuffle times out perfectly!

I was able to get it all done by chopping the forest 1S of copper. It made everything fall into place, else DeerCow settles T63 and the outside-our-borders chop on T62 makes Oracle fall short. Every turn of building TGW had stone and every turn of Oracle had marble.

Yep.

An additional stopping criterion might be a forest growth around SheepGold or Hindu spread there. For example, a growth 1S of gold very soon would allow us to maximize TGW fail gold early while growing Delhi to size 5, building the Oracle from T59-62 of 4 base hammers plus three inner-ring chops, which is the required 76 base hammers for the Oracle. We'd have to rework the micro to take advantage of that. Then again, settling DeerCows sooner working unimproved forest hill deer is a higher return than a quicker fifth population in Delhi, so we might want to power on regardless... but we should stop to discuss opportunities.

 

[bcool]

We might want to revisit the grand strategy as well. I had hoped that we would do that before each turnset.

here is what I have written on the first page. I think several things have changed and/or still up for debate. I edited based on what I thought we are currently thinking.

The Grand Strategy

work in progress...

Goal Religious Leader Victory

Stonehenge early to give options for repeated city gifts later (and to help get early great prophets to build Kashi and Bulb Theology.
Assuming we need caravels to reach everyone we will take metal casting with the Oracle
Bulb Machinery with a great scientist before we research meditation and fishing after we research alphabet, mathematics, aesthetics.

Maximize fail gold on the GreatWall and the Pyramids to power research thru to machinery and beyond

Tech either currency or alphabet to allow us to build wealth/research to accelerate research to optics without any non-Theology bulbs.

Bulb Theology after we then research meditation

Bulb Optics with a great scientist after we research fishing and sailing
Analyze map via coordinates of capitol/equator to try to determine what base map the mapmaker used.
Explore the seas asap with caravels to assess what we need to do to win religiously.
Spread hinduism city gifts, missionaries, and gifted caravels (upgraded wounded triremes! to make sure the AI unloads the missionary) with a missionary in the case where we can't get open borders or random religion spreads.

Dealing with Tokugawa either
1) flip him to Hinduism and somehow keeping him there (and make a friend to trade with)
2) play a defensive war with him and bring a holy war against him for diplo benefits of all the Hindus in the world (that we happened to randomly convert with the Kashi)