SGOTM 15 - One Short Straw

[ZPV]

Did you happen to start building warriors instead of a worker in the northern gold city as I mentioned in my last post or are we still building that worker? In either case, should we switch to warriors now?

There've been no warrior-hammers so far in Zlatorog

That's it. I think it gives you plenty of options. The lion will be moving away from Toku's culture. The problem with T38 warrior-NE is that there could be two lions in the forest now, not just the damaged one...

EDIT: Mitchum is right that sheep before gold is better (or is it?). The cost is 2 wkr-turns in exchange for 6f5c and G1E grows to pop3 just before border expansion. But that rules out your plan to safely defog a couple tiles, so we can get both workers pasturing on T42. An additional cost is 38 coins less by T47 and this might affect our BW completion thus possibly delaying Gems.

What to do after the workers finish pasturing is up in the air, because if one mines the gold for just 1t, then goes to Delhi to chop the Gems settler, we can get it out by T51. We'd have to MM the beakers to get BW by T47. The Zlatorog worker also chops the Gems settler. That leaves the other G1E worker to do something else.

I'm not sure we need a warrior now in Zlatorog. I think I'd stick with worker. G1E will produce quite some hammers and we won't need to put them into a worker.

Regarding the sheep, it only costs one worker turn (the one to climb the gold hill again), not two. With two workers pasturing the sheep, the eastern gold city will grow very quickly. I'd have both workers mine the gold hill, completing it 3 turns after the pasture (2 worker turns total lost with two workers climbing the hill and 4 worker turns to mine the gold). That should give us even more commerce, not less, right? Then one worker can head back to Delhi while the other one builds a farm or mine around the eastern gold city while waiting for BW and chops...

EDIT: This all needs to be tested out oviously.

For Sheep-Gold, I think we need to remember that growth is important here - with Stonehenge in the capital, we'll probably try to pop a GS here, so getting to pop 3 is important. Having two workers lets us chop out a library in double-quick time.

Warrior in Zlatorog? What is it going to do? Our southern fogbusting is flaky, but 4 turns build time + 8 turns travel time means that it's quicker to use the one currently going south, the one near Toku, and just build a garrison warrior in G-1E.

 

[ZPV]

Regarding the sheep, it only costs one worker turn (the one to climb the gold hill again), not two. With two workers pasturing the sheep, the eastern gold city will grow very quickly. I'd have both workers mine the gold hill, completing it 3 turns after the pasture (2 worker turns total lost with two workers climbing the hill and 4 worker turns to mine the gold). That should give us even more commerce, not less, right? Then one worker can head back to Delhi while the other one builds a farm or mine around the eastern gold city while waiting for BW and chops...

EDIT: This all needs to be tested out oviously.

So is there anything else to discuss before next turn? I think we'll need to stop next turn to work out the beakers for BW.

My intention is to play one more turn and then update the test save with the correct beakers for further inspection, if anyone has the will to do that. With the extra worker there are worker turns to be played with, and this will let us either expand quickly, or have them go to waste.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I'm definitely up for some testing, at least to find out when BW will get done.

Go for it, ZPV!

 

[Mitchum]

Agreed. Go for it ZPV. Although, is it easy to tell how many OF beakers you have the turn after learning a new tech? Oh, wait. You want to see if we're going to get any bonus beakers because Hammy knows BW, right?

Regarding Gold-E, you had to ignore the gold mine for many turns while hiring scientists for a GS, right? That was bugging me a bit. Now, with some "free" worker turns courtesy of the real Mr. 'Gawa, we should be able to pasture sheep, mine gold and build a farm so that we can possibly grow to 4 pop and continue to work the gold... I'd like to see something like that if possible.

Are we still on track to get peace in T+5 from stealing the worker?

 

[ZPV]

Agreed. Go for it ZPV. Although, is it easy to tell how many OF beakers you have the turn after learning a new tech? Oh, wait. You want to see if we're going to get any bonus beakers because Hammy knows BW, right?

Regarding Gold-E, you had to ignore the gold mine for many turns while hiring scientists for a GS, right? That was bugging me a bit. Now, with some "free" worker turns courtesy of the real Mr. 'Gawa, we should be able to pasture sheep, mine gold and build a farm so that we can possibly grow to 4 pop and continue to work the gold... I'd like to see something like that if possible.

Are we still on track to get peace in T+5 from stealing the worker?

Yes, we can tell, simply by setting science to 0% and seeing how many turns it forecasts a tech will take.

Yes, I ignore the gold for several turns, viewing it as a "necessary evil". If we're serious about pop4, the farm comes even before the goldmine, so the benefits might be there, but might not be that great.

I'll knock out this turn, upload, and then get to work on the test save.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

In regards to Sheep versus Gold:
Improving the Sheep first might be even better than preivously if we can have 2 Workers Pasturing.

Previously, we'd only grow to Size 2 one turn faster, but if both Workers do the Pasturing, we might be able to grow an additional turn faster (untested--my computer's graphics card really is in bad shape and I'll probably need to replace it--but I'm going to try and change the fan on it first).

If we're serious about pop4, the farm comes even before the goldmine, so the benefits might be there, but might not be that great.

Well, we're delay Bronze Working for certain if we Farm a Grassland River square before Mining a Gold square.

Why would we need to build the Farm first, though? Are you saying that we wouldn't be ablt to grow to Size 4 in time otherwise?

Also, the Sheep = 5 Food, which won't quite feed 2 Scientists + 1 Gold Mine, so even if we did find a way to grow to Size 4, we'd have to give up further turns of working the Gold to avoid starvation every few turns.

Grassland River Farm = + 1 input (1 Food)
PH Riv Gold Mine = + several inputs (1 Hammer and several Commerce--what is it, 6 of them?)

As a result, it's really hard to justify working a Grassland River Farm in place of a PH Riv Gold Mine. Temporarily stopping work on the PH Riv Gold Mine to hire 2 Scientists will probably work out better than growing without a Granary on a G Riv Farm while not working the Gold, then periodically also not working the Gold in order to avoid starvation.


So, if you move the Fast Worker 1N and spot a Lion, what's the plan? Pause play and discuss? Or do you want to lay out your moves for that case?

 

[ZPV]

I've played the turn and uploaded.
turnset report
Osaka grew to size 2.
Kyoto built an Archer.
The wounded Lion is directly between us and Osaka, but there are no other animals in sight.
I propose attacking it at 99.03% odds and taking the 2XP that'll give us.

I'll get to work on the test save.

 

[ZPV]

So, if you move the Fast Worker 1N and spot a Lion, what's the plan? Pause play and discuss? Or do you want to lay out your moves for that case?

We know there is a lion there. And I ignored it as I was always going to do.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

The wounded Lion is directly between us and Osaka, but there are no other animals in sight.
I propose attacking it at 99.03% odds and taking the 2XP that'll give us.

Why not keep the Lion around? He's certainly much better than a Panther, Wolf, Warrior, Archer, Spearman, Bear, or even a fully-healthy Lion.

Now that we're short a unit, our dead Warrior (from within the Lion's belly) is probably best milked for its spawn-busting capabilities.


Besides, it's not like we'd really take Woodsman I, since there isn't a Forest square that is 2 squares away from Osaka that is between us and Toku.

Combat I isn't really that valuable of a promotion to give up the value of a free spawn-buster, even if that free spawn-buster isn't perfectly placed.


Besides, if no Barb unit appears to replace the Lion, then it could be argued that this Lion could deter Toku from settling out a relatively-undefended Settler Party in the general direction of the Gold square or to the north, either location being one where he'd likely settle in a location that we don't like, and with those locations being so close to our capital, we actually care about that fact.

 

[ZPV]

Why not keep the Lion around? He's certainly much better than a Panther, Wolf, Warrior, Archer, Spearman, Bear, or even a fully-healthy Lion.

Because we can't go over it, can't go under it, and can't go around it. We've gotta go through it!

(The lion is on the blue-red square on the picture I uploaded)

 

[ZPV]

Here's the updated test save, with the beakers right and rogue forests removed:

 

[LowtherCastle]

The biggest disappointment about losing the warrior is the potential for Woodsman II, which is great for worker stealing. Though it would be nice to keep the lion around, I agree with ZPV that we have no good alternative here. We need to threaten Osaka to DoP. Plus, the lion has managed to put himself in a useless place for our fogbusting. Finally, the 2XP at virtually no loss of HP is a gift.

Thanks for the test save, ZPV. I'll test BW out tomorrow morning.

Anyone check out our power curve? Other teams are feasting on that, which is fine by me. I kind of like to share our misery with everyone else. We're the only team to lose a warrior, if I'm not mistaken.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

(The lion is on the blue-red square on the picture I uploaded)

I'm not sure what square you mean and the only Civ-4-capable computer that I have can't even get to the Windows login screen without dying on me.

Anyone check out our power curve? Other teams are feasting on that, which is fine by me. I kind of like to share our misery with everyone else. We're the only team to lose a warrior, if I'm not mistaken.

Would there be any way for them to tell that we stole a Worker?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Okay, I have no way of checking, but I'm going to assume that the Lion is 3W of Osaka (since that square has both a blue line and a red line on it in ZPV's screenshot) and that our Warrior is 4W of Osaka.

If that's the case, then I figure that it would be great if the Lioni wandered off to the south to spawn-bust that area.


The question that I have is: will a badly-wounded Lion have enough "courage" to be able to attack our Warrior if our Warrior moves onto a Hills square or into a Forest? I mean, could we just safely walk by the Lion and feel confident that it won't attakc us? Or would we have to backtrack a bit and try and walk "around" the Lion in order to make it to Toku's area while keeping the Lion alive?


Also, I'm still not really clear on how close we need to be or how long we need to be in order to "threaten" Toku's City of Osaka, assuming that its Cultural Borders have not expanded.


Further, is there a time-limit, whereby our Worker capture action will wear off or whereby if Toku keeps getting Hammers, he'll get too much Power, such that whatever case is relevant, he'll no longer be willing to give us a Cease Fire? I.e. Do we have a small window of opportunity to try and get a Cease Fire?

 

[Mitchum]

Regarding the sheep, if both workers pasture it, it will be done and ready for use on T+1. The city will grow much quicker than the old way with one worker, which was only one turn sooner than gold first as Dhoom said earlier.

Then, the two workers can build a partial farm at gold-SE so as not to waste any worker turns. Then they can both mine the gold, which should be completed before the city grows to two pops. Or, if one worker can do it (or most of it) in time, the other one can head out right away, after one turn at a partial farm, or after one turn at a partial farm and one turn on a partial gold mine. Then the one worker can hang back, finish the farm, build mines, whatever until BW is in while the other heads to speed up the gems settler and get gems city on its feet quicker.

 

[LowtherCastle]

@Dhoom:
As far as I know, there's no way of telling if another team has stolen a worker. We should assume that other teams have also stolen them, without losing their warrior.

Figuring out the odds of a barbs attacking are somewhat complex, according to klarius, but they will attack at fairly low odds. I'm not sure about a few percent. I suppose it's testable, but there's always a certain RNG probability that barb animals decide not to attack, so the test would have to have many trials for certainty.

We threaten Osaka from 2 tiles away, including diagonal. The concept evidently is that we're a threat if we're one move away from attacking. Toku has to get something around 100 or more power before we won't CF, as long as he doesn't win a battle. But as long as we are at war that can influence Hammy's WHEOOHRN and DOW, iirc. Furthermore, it influences Toku's builds. RIght now he's building units and/or barracks. That's not really in our interest. I'd like to arrest his mobilization asap, if for no other reason, so as to get the chance for another worker steal asap. The fewer we have to build the better.

Anyway, the lion is threatening the path of our settler. If it travels SW, our settler has no way through, in fact, it could be severely detrimental to our settling date if we let this lion get past our warrior and then another appears from the forest at Sheep-1W.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Hammy has axemen, btw.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Okay, I can't figure out how to pasture the sheep first and still get BW on T47. So the choice is between developing G1E a bit faster or Gems a turn sooner. Since we want to spawn a GS asap, that would be in G1E, I suppose. So...

1. Two workers need to start pasturing the sheep on T42. (Note that our settler's path could get blocked just SE of our culture, since we're no longer able to defog the south marble area.
2. We want to CF Toku on T41. We only have one warrior split between defogging Southern Marble and stalking Toku's next worker. If Toku gets BW, then we probalby dont' want to steal more workers till we have a strong unit ourselves.
3. We build SH at 18hpt, right?
4. I would complete teh worker in Zlatorog, then build a warrior. Beware that the Governor switches from the gold tile to the deer when we build a warrior. We want to keep working the gold.

That's all I can think of for the turns between now and T46, when SH is done.

 

[ZPV]

Okay, I can't figure out how to pasture the sheep first and still get BW on T47. So the choice is between developing G1E a bit faster or Gems a turn sooner. Since we want to spawn a GS asap, that would be in G1E, I suppose. So...

1. Two workers need to start pasturing the sheep on T42. (Note that our settler's path could get blocked just SE of our culture, since we're no longer able to defog the south marble area.
2. We want to CF Toku on T41. We only have one warrior split between defogging Southern Marble and stalking Toku's next worker. If Toku gets BW, then we probalby dont' want to steal more workers till we have a strong unit ourselves.
3. We build SH at 18hpt, right?
4. I would complete teh worker in Zlatorog, then build a warrior. Beware that the Governor switches from the gold tile to the deer when we build a warrior. We want to keep working the gold.

That's all I can think of for the turns between now and T46, when SH is done.

I've been building SH at 18hpt at size 3. It's 2 turns slower, but we grow to size 4 at the end of it, and can get BW on t47 (30%-0%-100%) without any extra beakers from Toku learning BW.

The western warrior: I want him to sit on banana 1N. However, this means the lion that might still be trapped by the gems will attack eventually.
Because of this, I think he should travel via one of the forests south of gems, where he can defend at 95% odds.

 

[LowtherCastle]

ZPV, when does G1E pop the GS in your scenario?