Mitchum said:
Regarding Gold, the biggest reason I would consider settling it next is to work the early pre-improved deer. Since Gold-1E can't do that, I don't see the benefit. At gold-1E, you'd have to research AH next, improve the sheep on the turn it's settled and then work the gold after growing to 2 pops. This would put gold-1E way behind gems.
I'm a big fan of messing with the AIs. Settling aggressively toward Toku fits in with this paradigm, but since we can't raze Cities, we want to have a good idea of where he will settle so that we can know if settling a location like Gold-1E will actually mess him up or not.
Now, what I would be interested in seeing is a map that matches Toku's location and the rest of the land near him (if the current saved game doesn't already). Then, just end the turns a lot (make sure that it's the test saved game and not the real saved game!
) and wait until Toku settles... AI WILL sometimes settle differently due to Barb units and the location of where a neighbour settles, but for the most part, they will relatively stick to their guns.
In particular, if the test saved game has a unit or two of ours spawn-busting the area to Toku's north-west, we'll probably see where he will end up settling in the real game (unless the precense of a Horse Resource or something slightly alters his settling priorities).
Once you've got a good idea where he will settle, go back to the auto-saved saved game (maybe save a copy of it) that is, say, 6 or so turns before he settles (i.e. before he completes his Settler, so that he'll go through the settling decision again). Next, place a City at Gold-1E and then end the turns to see if the location of where Toku settles gets affected.
If his settling location gets affected, then try a third test where you reload your saved game from roughly 6 turns back (it might be less than 6 turns if Toku's new settling location was settled a bit quicker) and this time, wait for his settler party to move out before placing a City at Gold-1E, just to see how us settling while his Settler Party is on the move will affect him.
Only in that way will we get a good idea of what he's going to do... for example, it might be better to just let him settle a good spot for us if, by settling Gold-1E, for example, we force him to settle 1-off from the Fish Resource or something stupid like that.
On the other hand, he might end up settling a City that misses the Gold Resouce, in which case we'd only really have a Deer to pair up with the Gold (making for a yucky situation)... in that case, we'd have a strong argument for settling our own City by the Gold + Sheep + one of Deer or Corn.
Further, if Toku is just going to settle a City by the Corn (that perhaps also grabs the Sheep) but that doesn't mess up where we want to settle our Gold City and doesn't mess up a Fish City, but only if we don't settle a City in the east first, we may just want to let him do that so that he doesn't settle a crappy location for us to have to capture later.
LowtherCastle said:
Dhoom, you can see the peaks in my screenshot above.
Hmmm, are those Peaks at the edge of the map or just partway through the map?
Actually, the more important question is: if we settle a City on our mainland, can our Cultural Borders expand over top of those Peaks or will the Peaks be "invinsible from capture" for Domination Land Area calculations?
Even if they aren't invinsible to being captured, how feasible Culture-production-wise will it really be for us to get them within our Cultural Borders?
I mean, just how hard of a Domination Victory are we looking at here? Could it end up being that Conquest even becomes easier than Domination (assuming that no AI is isolated by a circle of Peaks)? We'd probably end up playing the two Victory Conditions in a similar manner anyway, but we may have to plan for the concept that we'll have to capture every single AI City before we can win the game, unlike last month's game where we were able to avoid warring with some of the AIs.
LowtherCastle said:
We'd have to figure out how to build a library quickly, in Delhi probably, and then work the 2 sci for 8.5 turns. That means a writing beeline. As a back-up, failed gold from GW and/or SH + REX would give us enough beaker-producing capacity to get COnstruction quickly.
As nice as it might be to beeline Writing, I think that we'd want Bronze Working first... Chopping (or even pre-Chopping using Fast Workers) or whipping will likely be required to get that Library built within a reasonable time frame. Writing before Bronze Working would only allow us to put a few manually-built Hammers into a Library first... probably not enough to warrant going Writing before Bronze Working versus getting whipping/Chopping earlier from going Bronze Working before Writing.
If the AIs won't Open Borders with us, then beelining Writing won't give us Open Borders, either (unless we're willing to gift City #3 just to get an AI to Pleased so that we can get Open Borders with him
).
ZPV said:
Do we need cats to take down Kyoto? If there are only 2 archers there, then they're costly and excessive. If there's anything more than that, then they're just the ticket.
Unless we Oracle Code of Laws, research Alphabet, gift him Code of Laws, revolt into Caste System, get a bunch of Espionage Points on him, build a Spy, and switch his Civic, he's going to have another Archer, likely another 2 or 3 Archers, from having whipped them.
ZPV said:
There's no point bombarding at 2%/turn for 50 cat-turns though - we'll just have to grin and bear it.
Even without Bombarding, Cats will make a huge difference in the warring. We could, say, throw 10 Chariots at the City and hardly even scratch the defenders. Throw 5 Cats at the City instead and we'll just need simple clean-up units to take down the defenders.
Would we be planning on pre-Chopping Forests for Catapults and then whip + Chop a stack of early Catapults?
Mitchum said:
How many city sites do we really need to be able to break out of said prison?
Four Cities with a Construction beeline and whipped + Chopped Catapults. Five Cities at most but such a rush is generally done with only 4 Cities to keep the Maintenance Costs down and because that 5th City really isn't going to be productive enough to produce units, with the exception of settling near a bunch of Forests and Chopping said units.
Mitchum said:
This applies equally to both Gold-1N and Gold-1E. Gold-1E does claim more new land, but the concept is the same.
Regardless of which Gold City location gets picked, we'll want to be sure to put spawn-busters in place... I really can't stomach the idea of risking a Settler's death to a Barb Animal if we can plan ahead to prevent it.
LowtherCastle said:
He might have connected all land into one landmass. In other words, a city on the tiles to the west of Gems might not give us 2cpt TRs...
So, you're thinking that the line of Peaks not only makes achieving the Domination Land Limit harder, not only blocks us in somewhat, but also reduces the chance of gaining the benefit of an instant +2 Commerce per City Trade Route, particularly in a game with no Colonial Maintenance Costs (due to having no Vassals)? Talk about a sinister setup!
LowtherCastle said:
Previously, I calced we would need 4 axes or 5 chariots per archer garrisoned in Kyoto, plus reserve for bad luck. That was without the -25% crossing river bonus, so it might be 5/6 now.
Yuck, there is a River to cross, too? Yeah, we definitely want Catapults. And Warriors. A Warrior lure or two might convince an Archer or two of Toku's to come out of his City. Certainly, the AI is good at setting up such bait (although the AI will do things like send out an Axeman that you can attack with a Chariot but then have a Spearman hiding right next to the Axeman that will kill your Chariot on the following turn); we should remember to do the same.
LowtherCastle said:
What is "XQ"?
Settling at deer-NE would mess up that location...
His tech pace will speed up as he expands because he'll be able to keep his science/espionage sliders at 100% for the entire game.
One minor point, settling at Gold-N wastes a forest because you have to settle on top of it.
Oops. I guess we're settling Gems-1N next and researching AH...
You're right, of course, but I had to proove it to myself.
