SGOTM 15 - Unusual Suspects

kcd_swede · Feb 24, 2012

Just thought I'd pass on this communication I had with Rusten.

Re: SGOTM15

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Not forgotten about you, nor have I lost interest in the game, but unfortunately my home computer has crashed and I have yet to fix it. Means I have no access to the game and minimal internet access at the moment (mainly from university).

So looks like Deckhand will take the next set. :mischief:

As for exploration, imagine what we could miss out on if Mansa is nearby and all the other teams meet him before we do.... it is needed for Religious VC to have any chance... and it doesn't hurt Culture VC by more than the 2 turns for fishing. Could even help as it would speed up tech rates if I understand Xcal's comment correctly. Of course, if those two turns are the ones that cause us to miss another religion it hurts. Odds are we lose the religion before then since Mansa is going to be hogging them :mischief:

Oh, btw... the AI that started with Theo and got Islam appeared to me to be the one with least land, (I think I recall making that conclusion but having the server eat my post about it and I forgot to mention it earlier. Now I can't remember the grounds on which I made that conclusion, but the data should still be there). That is why I'm feeling good about our chances of at least getting the AP despite giving them quite a head start... they will be trying to expand and get worker techs, most likely. Or spamming galleys. Who knows? :lol:

Xcalibrator · Feb 24, 2012

I've added a "Key Strategy Posts" section in the Reference post since it's hard to remember all the arguments. Please let me know if you have a favorite post that should be added to the list. We might also think about having the original posters edit them to collect related thoughts in one place.

I'm going back and forth on Religion vs Culture, but I think the path through CoL is pretty good for both. IF we can get agreement that's the way to go for now, I could take that set--and probably should, unless someone else is comfortable with the MM. But as shown by my/SH's interaction in preparing the prior turnset, having more than one person work on it can yield substantial benefits.

One thought on an AP win is that even though the AI are Aggressive (hidden negative diplo modifiers) and may all be Toku's, one point in our favor at getting somebody to Friendly is that we can gift techs with wild abandon without fear of them being subsequently traded away--No Tech Brokering is our friend.

Xcalibrator · Feb 24, 2012

My post above was xposted with kcd...

kcd_swede said:
Oh, btw... the AI that started with Theo and got Islam appeared to me to be the one with least land, (I think I recall making that conclusion but having the server eat my post about it and I forgot to mention it earlier. Now I can't remember the grounds on which I made that conclusion, but the data should still be there). That is why I'm feeling good about our chances of at least getting the AP despite giving them quite a head start... they will be trying to expand and get worker techs, most likely. Or spamming galleys. Who knows?

Good to know about Rusten--let's hope he has a speedy fix.

kcd, if you can remember your logic I'll add it to what is probably my related post, which some people apparently didn't take entirely seriously.

But I was truly trying to draw some useful conclusions, or inspire others to do so, or at least speculate in an amusing fashion. In any case, I agree that we probably have a good shot at getting the AP; the founder of Divine Right must have been given a big tech advantage to start, but must be handicapped in some other way otherwise he'd make it impossible for us to win.

ChrisShaffer · Feb 24, 2012

Sorry, crazy busy, will be Monday before I can look at much or participate. I'm in favor of the CoL path, and also strongly in favor of fishing and exploration, despite the risk of losing a religion.

SteelHorse · Feb 24, 2012

I am good up to CoL on the basis that AP VC will require some amount of converting AI the hard way :ar15:

which will likely mean mace and cats. In fact, we may need to take some AI completely. Will spend some time tonight or tomorrow looking through the plan specifics. And CoL with Confu could get us a religion for Cultural.

kcd_swede · Feb 25, 2012

Xcalibrator said:
My post above was xposted with kcd...

Good to know about Rusten--let's hope he has a speedy fix.

kcd, if you can remember your logic I'll add it to what is probably my related post, which some people apparently didn't take entirely seriously. But I was truly trying to draw some useful conclusions, or inspire others to do so, or at least speculate in an amusing fashion. In any case, I agree that we probably have a good shot at getting the AP; the founder of Divine Right must have been given a big tech advantage to start, but must be handicapped in some other way otherwise he'd make it impossible for us to win.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot we were looking for the one-armed man....

But seriously, I think I made my conclusion by opening the saved game, looking at the religious adviser, and concluding that Islam has to be in the single smallest city. Also consider that a few turns later, the Free Missionary that Islam founding provides, did not expand the spread of Islam. Either that spreading mission failed (very unlikely for an AI-controlled missionary), or that civ has nowhere to send it.

Either that, or I just dreamed the whole thing. :lol:

Deckhand · Feb 25, 2012

Xcalibrator said:
I'm going back and forth on Religion vs Culture, but I think the path through CoL is pretty good for both. IF we can get agreement that's the way to go for now, I could take that set--and probably should, unless someone else is comfortable with the MM. But as shown by my/SH's interaction in preparing the prior turnset, having more than one person work on it can yield substantial benefits.

By "that set" do you mean the current set?

Player Status
Deckhand - Crazy Busy with work
High King J.J. - Crazy Busy with work
kcd_swede - Busy with BOTM or something else
Rusten - No computer
ChrisShaffer..... (T0-14) "Crazy Busy"
AAA...............(T14-21)
Xcalibrator.......(T21-33)
Trystero..........(T33-50)
Steelhorse......(T50-68) -- Just played

I really don't have time to play now. I thought I'd have some time this weekend, but turns out I have to work. Plus I would prefer while we have test games we have someone play the turnset who has practiced it on the test game.
If AAA has time to do that than he should be up.
Else it looks like XCal should take the next turn set.

sorry

SteelHorse · Feb 25, 2012

One thing to keep in mind is that we are looking a bit vulnerable. I've read through through DanF's article on war and many of the prereqs for war are in place with Toku.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7223693&postcount=100

Aggresive AI, paranoia, low strength ratio, and he seems to be building a stack :eek:

I suggest at a minimum we get a couple axes in Drona. In general, Drona looks to be our strongest production city (outside the capital) and given proximity to Toku not a bad spot to generate some military.

Going for AP in Capital seems right given the path we have taken. Once we have it may even make sense to put a crappy city somewhere near Toku (3N of Osaka for example) infect with Hindu and gift. We can also use this to steal techs if we are so inclined with espionage points.

If more testing is to be done, we way want to swap the horse in Toku's land for Copper.

I agree on cottaging Delhi. Vijay and Pata are likely cottage sites as well, Bombay and should probably be production.

If we get the AP, the two biggest challenge that I see to an AP victory at this point are:
1. Getting an AI to vote for us (perhaps we should form a colony to the west).
2. Meeting all the AI. If we can meet early, gifting infect cities should be the preferred if we cannot open borders.

In any event - great work Xcal :goodjob:

Xcalibrator · Feb 25, 2012

kcd_swede said:
But seriously, I think I made my conclusion by opening the saved game, looking at the religious adviser, and concluding that Islam has to be in the single smallest city. Also consider that a few turns later, the Free Missionary that Islam founding provides, did not expand the spread of Islam. Either that spreading mission failed (very unlikely for an AI-controlled missionary), or that civ has nowhere to send it.

Cool.

Trystero, if you still have your saves from then, could you take a look at the Demographics and/or Religious advisor and see if you can confirm or add to this? I'm not sure what to look for, but at least the Religion Influence stats. Wouldn't there also be a note in the running game log about "Islam has spread to ..." or must we have "mapped out" that city to get the message?

Deckhand said:
By "that set" do you mean the current set?

Yes. As usual, people have busy lives. As usual, we'll deal with it.

It would be good to hear from AAA, but I can play the next round if needed.

SteelHorse said:
One thing to keep in mind is that we are looking a bit vulnerable.

Yeah, I have Bolly building an axe for the east, first thing. But maybe Drona should delay its granary and pump out an axe, too. And given that Bombay (northern gold city) isn't going to grow anytime soon, maybe it should build an axe, too.

Going for AP in Capital seems right given the path we have taken...
If more testing is to be done, we way want to swap the horse in Toku's land for Copper...
If we get the AP, the two biggest challenge that I see to an AP victory at this point are:
1. Getting an AI to vote for us (perhaps we should form a colony to the west).
2. Meeting all the AI. If we can meet early, gifting infect cities should be the preferred if we cannot open borders.

Oooh, good point about Japan's horse/copper. Yes, I think Bolly is the only option for a fastish AP. And we may need the AP no matter what VC we choose simply to block the Buddhists from winning that way. (Although we've tentatively inferred that Neil has set things up so the Islam founder could/would eventually build the AP if we don't, so perhaps an AI Religious win isn't really a concern.) As for how we could win via the AP, vassalage/colonies is off, so no cheese via option 1.

AAA · Feb 25, 2012

Hello All,

Sorry for the long silence I been in Mexico for a wedding - I should have told you :hammer2:

that I was disappearing, sorry I was nutty getting off.
I have appeared at the top of a list of people who should do something :eek:

.
I should have the time. I idea is that I'd run, rerun the test game until look good enough for everyone, then do that turn set.

Fantastic work Steelhourse :goodjob:

. The oracle is always nail biting :twitch:

.

Xcalibrator · Feb 25, 2012

A few observations at T68:

Religion Influence: Budd 58%, Hindu 3% (Bolly + Delhi= 3+2 pop), Juda 1%, Christ 3% (Drona=4 pop), Islam 3%. Total is 68%. Islam has apparently spread little if any, supporting our guess that the founding civ may be confined to one, probably poor, city.
Top 5 cities have pops of 8, 7(3), and 6.
We're 10th in soldiers, 3rd in land, 9th in pop (barely)
Babylon is in WHEOOHRN.
Japan had a recent big step up in power.
Japan and Babylon are Friendly at +5 with each other. They're at -1 with us.
Cultural control on the eastern corn is 96/3% vs TBD in the test game.
At the moment, switching out of Slavery saves us 0 gpt. ~~Monotheism~~ OrgRel-->Theoc or nothing saves us 1 gpt.
We have 256 espi pts on Japan--259 to see what he's researching (but do we need Alphabet for that??). Whoever plays next, please keep an eye on that.

Xcalibrator · Feb 25, 2012

I've adjusted things a bit to give us two axes and two warriors in Drona and comfortably finish CoL by T87, which is the drop-dead date for being able to switch to Caste and run the scientists we need in Delhi to pop a Great Sci before Bolly pops its Great Prophet. I estimate we should be able to get Math by T95 (possibly 94) and finish chopping the AP the next turn. I'm assuming our northern axe can deal with the adjacent barb without messing anything up. I'm also assuming we don't lose Drona's corn to Japan for awhile. I did take into account the two extra food in Drona's bin, but not the slight differences in gpt and bpt between Test and Real games--there should be enough slop it shouldn't matter, but I've tried to list our status every turn or two.

Spoiler Draft PPP for T68-87 (finishing CoL) :

If/when Drona loses the corn you should probably stop. We may need to emphasize cottages there to make up for lost pop growth. I'm assuming whoever plays from T68 will [edit: NOT] go to T87 in one shot, so we can reoptimize after taking into account world events.

kcd_swede · Feb 26, 2012

Sounds good, XCal. I'm a little concerned about going 20turns without a pause at this early stage of the game, though. I'm suggesting the PPP should include some pause conditions... for example if we find ourselves at war, that's a game-changer. If anything else game-changing is discovered (exploration starts at t77), a pause should be made.

Perhaps a pause at t80 should be explicitly included, since at this state of the game a lot of things could affect our judgements (for example, stuff like religion advisor often gets overlooked when one person is called on to run the show).

That's just a suggestion. If we actually do a culture or religious VC, this is giong to be a short game, and we have loads of time.

Xcalibrator · Feb 26, 2012

kcd_swede said:
Sounds good, XCal. I'm a little concerned about going 20turns without a pause at this early stage of the game, though. I'm suggesting the PPP should include some pause conditions... for example if we find ourselves at war, that's a game-changer. If anything else game-changing is discovered (exploration starts at t77), a pause should be made.

I'm very concerned about going 20 turns.

Sorry, it figures I'd leave out the key word--I've now edited. Yes, 20 turns is way too much to do in one shot--I was just laying out the path to make sure we could get CoL by T87 (assuming nothing goes very wrong). Here's a tentative list of pause conditions. Please comment!

Drona loses its corn farm to Japan.
We get DoWed.
Somebody goes into WHEOOHRN--Babylon is already--or otherwise looks threatening.
We meet somebody new. (We could open borders now that we have Writing.)
Should we try to get resource trades going? And do we need to pause/consult for that?
Potentially interesting tech trades become available.
Religion spread to any city? Maybe just for foreign religions? Or would having Hinduism spread to one of our cities change our build plans because it gives the +25% OrgRel bonus? At the moment only Bolly and Delhi have Hinduism.
The Vijay site is taken by Babylon and/or we spy AI settling parties.
Other...

Are we happy with the builds in the PPP? Perhaps Bombay (or Vijay) should build a 2nd WB? Delhi doesn't have much production and can't afford any more whips beyond what's in the plan. Note that I've delayed the settler in Drona a little to speed growth; it now requires only a 1-pop whip instead of 2 but this delays settling of Vijay up by the wheat to T75. Here are the builds in the PPP--there's a fair amount of queue swapping, not all of which I list.

Bolly--axe, granary, library, FW, Htemple
Drona--settler (interrupt), granary, settler (finish), Ctemple
Delhi--barracks (inter), granary, WB, barracks (finish), warrior, warrior
Bombay--monument, axe, warrior, warrior, granary
Vijay--founded T75, granary

Research path is Pottery(71), Fishing(74), CoL(87), Math(~95). This plan will let us pop a Great Scientist in Delhi on T92. We can get a Prophet from Bolly around T100.

I've roughly laid out some alternatives previously but there haven't been many comments on ... anything. Should we hold off for awhile and hope people's lives quiet down enough for lively discussion? Or should someone play soon according to the above plan to see whether or not we are first to CoL?

ChrisShaffer · Feb 26, 2012

I think any trades, including resource trades, should be discussed and approved by the team.

I should be able to review plans and comment on Monday evening (about 36 hours from now). Don't hold up the game for me, but that's when I can really contribute again.

SteelHorse · Feb 26, 2012

Running through a couple of tests. In one of them both Tokus attacked with out WHEOHRN on T88! Had one axe, one warrior, and whiiped a second axe. Lost the city. To be fair, he did have one chariot with a couple of axes and a spear, but still. I hooked him up with copper in the test game.

So add DoW to the list of pause conditions.

EDIT: Here is the T68 test save with the Copper added and horses removed. Also deleted any Toku chariots wandering around.

A couple of other thoughts on Xcal's plan. I would start AP sooner than T87 and work Hunting in before CoL. Perhaps after building an Axe. I would also park two Axes in Drona with fortify and cross-water defense bonus. Also be ready to whip a third. Also I work work Hunting in before CoL. The deer in the north are useful for those cities.

Xcalibrator · Feb 26, 2012

I think a DoW is covered by "or otherwise looks threatening," but I'll add it to the list.

We should have 2 axes and 2 warriors in Drona by ~T78 if we follow the draft PPP, and Drona will have plenty of population to whip more defenders, so we're probably... hopefully... all right.

Now about the north... We're probably hemmed in by mountains all round (other than going through Babylon) but there are a couple fogged tiles up there that could conceivably lead to verdant valleys. :lol:

All we have in the vicinity, though, is one lonely axe. And Babylon has bowmen, who get +50% against melee. So I'm not anxious to take the axe off station for exploring. But it's worth mentioning.

SteelHorse · Feb 26, 2012

Also found this which is interesting. Gandhi and Toku are at opposite ends of the spectrum in Attitude modifiers for war traits. I think this explains why we are worst enemies so soon.

Xcalibrator · Feb 26, 2012

SteelHorse said:
EDIT: ... I would start AP sooner than T87 and work Hunting in before CoL. Perhaps after building an Axe. I would also park two Axes in Drona with fortify and cross-water defense bonus. Also be ready to whip a third. Also I work work Hunting in before CoL. The deer in the north are useful for those cities.

I replied above before seeing SH's edit--I think we'll be OK with Drona defense.

Starting the AP sooner doesn't buy us much, unless we're willing to sacrifice a lot of trees before getting Math. We can easily finish off the AP with 4 chops on T96 (or maybe 95). That gives an extra 50 hammers (with the 25% OrgRel bonus) vs without Math. But maybe I'm being too "efficient" again, about not wanting to "waste" forest hammers, instead of getting the AP done ASAP. 50 hammers is only 2.5 turns of manual building. Maybe the more important trade-off is in how long it takes to get CoL. If we start the AP earlier we have to drop something else, like a library or FW. I think we really need the library to finish CoL by T87, which is required if we want to pop a Great Sci before a Prophet.

I've been assuming that getting an earlier academy (and library), and waiting for the Math-bonus for chops, and bulbing Civil Service, is better long term than getting CoL and the AP ASAP. We could birth a Prophet around T82 and bulb CoL (but then we can't bulb the more costly Civil Service later). And we could also chop out the AP faster; I don't know how quicky, but if we don't need to focus on cottages, then probably well before T90. I just don't have it in me to try that, though. It would be great if somebody else could, and we could compare saves around T102. (I think I posted one like that.) Or, we could just decide that getting CoL and the AP several turns faster is worth it, period.

At the moment my reasoning is that it's no big deal if someone beats us to CoL and founds Confusion--we'll catch enough religions one way or another to go for a Culture win. And with the AP, I'm guessing that nobody but the Islam founder has Theoc yet, and he is on a small hammer-poor island and will have a tough time beating us. But we don't know how true that is. Can we estimate? We can probably assume he doesn't have a Great Eng and isn't going to get one. He got Theoc on T39. It's 450 hammers for the AP. Assume he's running OrgRel, so that's 360 base hammers. Say he has 56 turns (to beat us to finishing on T95). He'd need 7 base hammers per turn. Hmm, not unreasonable. But would he really build the AP without building anything else?? Does he have any forests? Without Math they're only worth 20 base hammers to him. I don't know what to think. It does make me a bit nervous, but so did the Oracle. :confused:

Edit: Oh right, Hunting. Hunting doesn't do much for us as long as we're trying to pump out commerce for research--even if the deer are camped, it will take 5 turns for Bombay to grow, and we can't afford to lose 5x8cpt (I think it's 8c for the gold mine, right?) plus a couple turns devoted to Hunting while we're racing for CoL. Unless someone shows me that growing Bombay/Vinay faster will make up for it, which could certainly be the case.

AAA · Feb 26, 2012

Are we concerned that Axemen and warriors fair very poorly against bowmen?

SGOTM 15 - Unusual Suspects

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Procrastination at its finest

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