SGOTM 16 - Kakumeika

[LowtherCastle]

@Kaitzilla

1. The tile at DrunkPigs 5S1E is only fogbusted by Boudica right now, so if Boudica stops covering that tile, Archie would have to move 1 tile westward to cover it. Archie is currently fogbusting two more vulnerable tiles: DrunkPigs 5S2E and 5S3E. Important to keep in mind.

Border expansion of Isca (located 2S of the corn) will NOT handle that vulnerability.

2. Trojan Horse should build wealth until it whips the granary. OF hammers will just get lost if we gift TH to Brennus.

3. If we want to beeline a settler in DrunkPigs, growing to pop6 and 3whipping builds the settler on the same turn, but on T126 is +10f+6h-2c ahead. Also, either clams site will need fishing boats, so if we build a wb starting now, build a settler for 2t at pop6 (T121), then the settler is done T124, wb done T126. Not ideal on the wb, but I see no sensible way for the new Barb Island city to build it sooner. If we spot a Brennus or Ramesses settler coming, we could still whip the settler done on T123.

4. Do we want to road Paris-2E? If we build a spam city at Paris-3E1S, as mabraham has suggested, and leave it unconnected, it could build garrison warriors forever.

5. Does Eiffel need to road the sheep on T124? Slows down the horse pasture 2 turns.

6. There's no MM for DeerPigs Fish.

7. Could you detail your Paris MM for HG, please?


.

 

[LowtherCastle]

If there's no Buddhism spread to TH, missionary spread to TH is certain, no? I don't want to focus on a backup missionary on the off-chance that Buddhism spreads when Confu must be several times more likely! A second missionary that is really intended to go elsewhere is OK, though. But I'd rather HC be getting its AP buildings up while we wait 7 turns to find out if we'll have our 55% shrine than have HC rushing for a second missionary. The shrine makes natural spread three times as likely, or something. Rushing a second missionary out of HC to speed up religious buildings and OR elsewhere seems like a false economy to me.



BI has got granary/forge/lighthouse to whip before it really needs to get confu buildings, and that's a big window for natural spreads. All those buildings add at least as many effective hammers as the confu buildings. So the only real value of a spread is getting access to OR earlier. That's nice, but that niceness has to pay off 40 hammers (plus opportunity cost in the city that built it) in the window before a spontaneous spread would have occurred. Whipping and chopping any three of the five obvious early buildings for BI offers enough bonus hammers from OR to break even, but it's going to take 15-20 turns to reach that point.

How likely is a spread supposed to be to BI? To DP? 5% per turn? Anyone have the formula? We can probably compute how probable a spread needs to be and compare that with a spreadsheet growth plan and see the payoff returned by the some future time is reached of a spread at any intermediate point in time. An earlier spread has a snowball effect, of course, and the analysis is complicated by whip timings - you don't need OR at all before the first whip.



My first thought was that I don't think much of a lighthouse anywhere without a seafood, but the ability to grow on coasts while setting up 3-pop whips is pretty good. If we weren't going to work mines sometime soon, though, we've settled on the wrong tile?



If our TH strategy has any doubt about whether we'll get TH *back* fairly soon then we want another spam city (e.g. the inland clam city I've been suggesting, or maybe something SW of Paris to use the wheat when Paris gets too big). That has consequences for the pressure on the worker at HC-1SE to get to the deer, or not.

If our TH strategy has any doubt about whether we'll give TH away, then we want to focus on getting DPF going. Either way, CPF wants to put out at least two more workboats soon from whip overflows, so there is no rush to get a missionary over there (because OR only applies to *buildlings*, of course).

0. The first religion spread to a city is 100% guaranteed. The second is 91%, and so on.
1. Trojan Horse must have Confucianism to be nominated for the AP Resolution: Return City to its Rightful Owner.
2. Our first decision in all this is how we want to get IW. I completely forgot about the possibility of Brennus defying the resolution.
3. Confucianism also adds +1 as does a temple. Our outer cities are limited to 4. We can't count on gems in trade.
4. DrunkPigs growing faster is about working the mines sooner. I'm not sure the lh is needed in the short run. DrunkPigs can build 21gpt at pop7 which is currenlty 40% of our expenses.
5. The purpose of any intentional Confu spread is finding balance in maturing all our cities asap. The power of CIV is primarily wieghted toward military with an emphasis on food growth. If a few hammers from HC enable3 3 or 6 cities to grow much faster, that's a power move. The sooner we can go down on Brennus, the better. Brennus has several cities more valuable than anything we have left to settle.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Before we settle Paris-3E1S, we should verify there is no seafood at Paris-6E4S. Speaking of Paris-3E1S, I'm not convinced that Paris-3S isn't a better spam city from the beginning a long term, because it can get to pop3 really fast and work 3 cottages, and after turning those cottages into cities, can be chain-gifted to Ramesses as a tech-steal city.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Out-of-the-box thinking: Leveraging the Hanging Gardens

If we're serious about cottage spamming, we need to start those cottages pretty soon. They'll each need 70 turns to towns. The first problem with cottage spam cities is that, because they're crapola cities, it takes a while to grow them so they can work the cottages.

Now, I have never built the Hanging Gardens as a way to jumpstart an empire, but we can do that here. By my count we could settle as many as four more cities by T122, so that each one became pop2 on T123. Unfortunately we didn't plan for this a few turns ago or we could possibly have settled prime real estate, but there are still some decent sites to be settled.

• DeerPigsFish (born in Horse CIty T121)
• Paris-4W2S (b. Orleans T120)
• Paris-3S (b. CornDF T117)
• Paris-3E1S or anywhere along the eastern coast (b. CornDF T120)

This would be a REX-heavy strategy intended to have Paris working 14 towns by T200 or so. We'd obviously stunt our research for a while, but eventually we'd accelerate and after Oxford, we could really take off.

We'd probably just keep Trojan Horse in this case and attempt to steal IW from Camulodunum.

Of course, there's no guarantee we'll get the Hanging Gardens but those cities can spam cottages either way.

Food for thought.

===

Boudica can defog Paris-6E4S on T120, before we'd have to commit to where we'd settle east of Paris. I think Boudica should do this no matter what.

 

[LowtherCastle]

There's a problem with Brennus defying the resolution if we have OBs with him: He can fill that city with units. I think he's actually coded to do that to fight against cultural flipping.

Then the problem is that having Trojan Horse close to both Paris and Orleans, loaded with units and ALWAYS NEXT TO OUR BORDERS, he could dagger us at any time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and we'd be piled on the next wagon going home, proudly showing off our shiny wooden spoons.

So if he defies, we'd want to close borders with him. But if we're going to close borders with him anyway, why gift him all those techs to get our borders open? Why not just go back to our original DoW plan, take the 34% chance of losing the granary re-capturing, CF after three turns, and be happy he's stone-aged techwise?

Or open borders for the extra commerce and just steal IW from Camulodunum...

===

Now it's someone else's turn to post something...

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

As I've said before, I prefer to just send 2-3 Spies into 2-3 of Brennus' cities with the best espionage bonus to steal Iron Working. The Trojan Horse idea is becoming too expensive in many different ways.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Walter_Wolf]

I've replayed the last few turns removing the HG from Cahokia.
The sheep and pigs gift turns to Ramesses don't match exactly. They have a 2 turn delay I believe. Hope that's not such a big deal.

The rest should match besides I can't know if the bakers OF does.

hope that helps and keeps the test game usefull.

cheers

EDIT: btw, I hope we don't find marble in the northern islands . If we do, that might mean other teams discovered it earlier than we did, and used it to their advantage .

 

[bcool]

Why do we need to take Trogan Horse back...?

Perhaps the best path would be to gift him the city, steal IW, keep borders closed... Delay war, don't use the AP to get the city back (or try just because there is no other useful AP resolution)

If we never give him the city back then we can...
Steal calendar from him when he eventually researches it without worrying about diplo penalties with Ramesses when we regift it back to him.

Yes we lose a cottage spam city but we don't have to pay the maintenance. Not that big a loss I don't think.
Also once we get a 2nd island city there won't be that much advantage of trade routes with Brennus. We keep him backwards...

The problem with this plan is there is no easy way to get him out of financial crisis. We could still gift gold to him and declare war to cancel those gold trades but then we would possibly need to defend a bit. Not that big of a deal. Don't worry about about taking the city back.

Getting IW and calendar essentially for free from the city gift isn't a bad deal even if we don't get the city back anytime soon.
We also don't need to worry about building a granary there, so we could gift the city the same turn it reaches 2 pop if we wanted to to avoid the worst enemy penalties.

 

[Kaitzilla]

...

So if he defies, we'd want to close borders with him. But if we're going to close borders with him anyway, why gift him all those techs to get our borders open? Why not just go back to our original DoW plan, take the 34% chance of losing the granary re-capturing, CF after three turns, and be happy he's stone-aged techwise?

...

Yes, I now think the original plan of DoWing Brennus T121 and taking Trojan City back T122 with 2 steal chances is our best move. Let Brennus rot with his overexpanded economic crisis as we zip ahead to macemen.

Open borders only gets us crappy trade routes that we don't need, gems that are unrealiable when he wardecs us if left alone, and an invasion island that isn't really needed to murder him.

10% chance we don't get Iron Working, very tiny chance 50gpt doesn't get him out of economic crisis, 34% chance we lose the granary. A pretty good chance we can drag Ramesses into the war on T122 with a holy war resolution.

It's kind of funny. My simulated AP resolution to return Trojan was defied by Brennus, but in Walter_Wolf's test the resolution worked.


There is also a miniscule chance a major Egypt city gets a random spread and converts to Buddism now that Brennus has a coastal city. That would be quite annoying losing our Friendly civ. Even worse if Egypt dogpiled us because we attacked his fellow buddist civ, but Ramesses converting to Buddism is such a freak event it would be a stopping condition.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Why do we need to take Trogan Horse back...?

Perhaps the best path would be to gift him the city, steal IW, keep borders closed... Delay war, don't use the AP to get the city back (or try just because there is no other useful AP resolution)

If we never give him the city back then we can...
Steal calendar from him when he eventually researches it without worrying about diplo penalties with Ramesses when we regift it back to him.

Yes we lose a cottage spam city but we don't have to pay the maintenance. Not that big a loss I don't think.
Also once we get a 2nd island city there won't be that much advantage of trade routes with Brennus. We keep him backwards...

The problem with this plan is there is no easy way to get him out of financial crisis. We could still gift gold to him and declare war to cancel those gold trades but then we would possibly need to defend a bit. Not that big of a deal. Don't worry about about taking the city back.

Getting IW and calendar essentially for free from the city gift isn't a bad deal even if we don't get the city back anytime soon.
We also don't need to worry about building a granary there, so we could gift the city the same turn it reaches 2 pop if we wanted to to avoid the worst enemy penalties.

Well, if we wanted Brennus to keep Trojan city so we could steal Calendar later, we could take the city back from Brennus on T122 and then give it to Brennus for peace T125. I'm pretty sure city gifts for peace treaties don't invoke "traded with worst enemy" penalties. This would solve the gpt issue. Another solution might be to gift him sheep +50gpt and then destroy all our sheep and hope that cancels the deal next turn, but that idea sucks haha.

If we wanted to do this, we should forget the granary and whip something else in Trojan city on T120. The peace treaty would prevent us from taking Trojan city back until T135 with another war dec. There is no way it will culturally flip back to us since we gave it away and don't have "city flipping after conquest" enabled for this SGOTM.

 

[bcool]

I actually think it would be better to let him keep the city. Then we don't have to worry about the diplo hit later with Ramesses when we want to give Brennus the city back so we can steal calendar...

xpost... Why bother taking it and giving it back in the peace deal?

confused, just let him keep it... is having the city for 3 turns worth the trouble?

There is no need for a peace deal is there? Do we need the war successes so peace is possible?

 

[Kaitzilla]

Out-of-the-box thinking: Leveraging the Hanging Gardens

If we're serious about cottage spamming, we need to start those cottages pretty soon. They'll each need 70 turns to towns. The first problem with cottage spam cities is that, because they're crapola cities, it takes a while to grow them so they can work the cottages.

Now, I have never built the Hanging Gardens as a way to jumpstart an empire, but we can do that here. By my count we could settle as many as four more cities by T122, so that each one became pop2 on T123. Unfortunately we didn't plan for this a few turns ago or we could possibly have settled prime real estate, but there are still some decent sites to be settled.

• DeerPigsFish (born in Horse CIty T121)
• Paris-4W2S (b. Orleans T120)
• Paris-3S (b. CornDF T117)
• Paris-3E1S or anywhere along the eastern coast (b. CornDF T120)

This would be a REX-heavy strategy intended to have Paris working 14 towns by T200 or so. We'd obviously stunt our research for a while, but eventually we'd accelerate and after Oxford, we could really take off.

We'd probably just keep Trojan Horse in this case and attempt to steal IW from Camulodunum.

Of course, there's no guarantee we'll get the Hanging Gardens but those cities can spam cottages either way.

Food for thought.

===

Boudica can defog Paris-6E4S on T120, before we'd have to commit to where we'd settle east of Paris. I think Boudica should do this no matter what.

I'm not really fond of doing a super REX for a wonder we have crappy odds of getting. Still, thanks for pointing our all our options!

 

[Kaitzilla]

I actually think it would be better to let him keep the city. Then we don't have to worry about the diplo hit later with Ramesses when we want to give Brennus the city back so we can steal calendar...

xpost... Why bother taking it and giving it back in the peace deal?

confused, just let him keep it... is having the city for 3 turns worth the trouble?

There is no need for a peace deal is there? Do we need the war successes so peace is possible?

Well, if we take it and then give it back for peace, the war success should getting him willing to talk peace quickly enough so we don't have a problem. He does vastly! outgun us right now

If we are gonna do the war, might as well take the 3gpt and 40g for Priesthood deal with Brennus on t116.

Hostile Brennus route means we should also settle clams/sugar before he does.

 

[Kaitzilla]

@Kaitzilla

1. The tile at DrunkPigs 5S1E is only fogbusted by Boudica right now, so if Boudica stops covering that tile, Archie would have to move 1 tile westward to cover it. Archie is currently fogbusting two more vulnerable tiles: DrunkPigs 5S2E and 5S3E. Important to keep in mind.

Border expansion of Isca (located 2S of the corn) will NOT handle that vulnerability.

2. Trojan Horse should build wealth until it whips the granary. OF hammers will just get lost if we gift TH to Brennus.

3. If we want to beeline a settler in DrunkPigs, growing to pop6 and 3whipping builds the settler on the same turn, but on T126 is +10f+6h-2c ahead. Also, either clams site will need fishing boats, so if we build a wb starting now, build a settler for 2t at pop6 (T121), then the settler is done T124, wb done T126. Not ideal on the wb, but I see no sensible way for the new Barb Island city to build it sooner. If we spot a Brennus or Ramesses settler coming, we could still whip the settler done on T123.

4. Do we want to road Paris-2E? If we build a spam city at Paris-3E1S, as mabraham has suggested, and leave it unconnected, it could build garrison warriors forever.

5. Does Eiffel need to road the sheep on T124? Slows down the horse pasture 2 turns.

6. There's no MM for DeerPigs Fish.

7. Could you detail your Paris MM for HG, please?


.

1) Ah thanks! Yes, will move Archie 1W to cover the hole Boudica makes by leaving. That will allow Archie to retreat to Drunk Pigs or Paris if needed in 3 turns and let Boudica go check our eastern coastal fog.

2) kk, will build wealth in Trojan Horse, T116 and T117. Gonna do chariot T118 and whip chariot T119 since the current plan involves Brennus keeping Trojan city a while.

3) That's not a bad idea. I think we should commit to building a settler in Drunk Pigs and another workboat for either of the clams in that region also seems like a good build. Will try to grow to pop6 first.

4) A little road development might be prudent now that our cities have so many things they can whip. I don't really like 3E1S of Paris as a cottage spam city as the lack of food and only 2 health without road access means it will rely on Hanging Gardens to be kind of functional.

A pigs+clams city 3S3E of Paris would have more utility and be able to work 2 of Paris' cottages. I think someone mentioned wanting to scout the sea fog more before we settled there and we have a war coming up with Brennus soon so that spot might not be prudent. There is a good chance that waiting too long will allow Brennus to settle those clams though

5) No, doesn't have to road sheep. Just that Paris will need health if we get Great Merchant and we can trade extra resources for gpt now. I'll switch to earlier pasture.

6) DeerPigsFish will be granary first. Will add it to PPP thanks

7) Ya, I shoulda put the micro for that. Adding now

 

[bcool]

If we know that Brennus and Ramesses will be worst enemies T120, we should give Trojan Horse to Brennus on T119 (after the whip but before it produces a unit)

I have no problem giving up a chariot or a granary in Trojan Horse if it means we can avoid a -4 diplo hit with Ramesses. Getting Ramesses to friendly is far more important than a chariot build or a granary.

I guess I'm confused... Are Brennus and Ramesses going to be worst enemies T120, but not T121?

 

[Kaitzilla]

If we know that Brennus and Ramesses will be worst enemies T120, we should give Trojan Horse to Brennus on T119 (after the whip but before it produces a unit)

I have no problem giving up a chariot or a granary in Trojan Horse if it means we can avoid a -4 diplo hit with Ramesses. Getting Ramesses to friendly is far more important than a chariot build or a granary.

I guess I'm confused... Are Brennus and Ramesses going to be worst enemies T120, but not T121?

I suppose we can do the deed on T119 ya. T120 would be best, but I am unsure how the game calculates relations between AI's. We gave Ramesses Monotheism on T100 and he converted right away. We converted one of his cities to Confuscianism on T115 and he converted right away. The shared religion (heathen) and shared civics that Ramesses feels towards Brennus should be advancing T120 to -2 and +3 respectively.

We should be able to do the gift and steal fine on T120 but my shakiness on game mechanics made me want to do the gifting on T121 just to be safe. Need that friendly Ramesses this turnset.


Man our cities are having a lot of happy issues in this turnset! We still have 0 happy resources >_<

If we whip a chariot from Trojan City, it can explore the east coast instead of Boudica. The chariot that comes out of Horse City T124 can take back Trojan city and bring Brennus to the peace table.

 

[shulec]

I don't have much to add to the discussion, but wanted to state the following:

My first impulse on TH was the same as bcool's--do we really need it back. When we declare, we can take it then. If Brennus puts a bunch of units there, then they are easily wiped out.

We want to try to work in 1-2 triremes after we get MC. They can do barb galley patrol while waiting for Optics upgrade to caravel.

 

[Kaitzilla]

I don't have much to add to the discussion, but wanted to state the following:

My first impulse on TH was the same as bcool's--do we really need it back. When we declare, we can take it then. If Brennus puts a bunch of units there, then they are easily wiped out.

We want to try to work in 1-2 triremes after we get MC. They can do barb galley patrol while waiting for Optics upgrade to caravel.

If we don't take Trojan Horse back, how long will it take before Brennus is willing to talk peace? Chariots can't beat Gallic Warriors.

If we don't declare war, how will we sever the huge (probably) gpt gifts we gave Brennus to take Trojan City?

A trireme might not be a bad build. Our sea resources are awful spread out so not sure where best one might go.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I guess I'm confused... Are Brennus and Ramesses going to be worst enemies T120, but not T121?

Ramesses will not consider Brennus his WE any more after T121 when they get +3 Civic, because according to Kaitzilla's Ramesses chart, Ramesses will max out at -2 for different religion. Unless Ramesses somehow goes to -2 before T121, Breenus won't be his WE till then either.

Getting IW and calendar essentially for free from the city gift isn't a bad deal even if we don't get the city back anytime soon.

I actually think it would be better to let him keep the city. Then we don't have to worry about the diplo hit later with Ramesses when we want to give Brennus the city back so we can steal calendar...

So we should be able to gift Brennus a city as often as we like, from now on, if Brennus ever researches something we need...

===

bcool, could you upload the saves from your last turnset, please?

 

[LowtherCastle]

If we don't take Trojan Horse back, how long will it take before Brennus is willing to talk peace? Chariots can't beat Gallic Warriors.

18 turns.

If we don't declare war, how will we sever the huge (probably) gpt gifts we gave Brennus to take Trojan City?

We won't.

===

Okay, I looked at worst-case scenarios to see if we could eliminate any solutions. I got this:

Worst-case scenarios
1. Gift gpt, spy FAIL, DoW, spy FAIL #2, SoD threatens, re-capture, DoP. Result: TOTAL FAILURE to steal IW till after ~T132.
2. Camulo, spy FAIL, FAIL...Succeed. Result: Steal IW very late in the game.
3. Gift techs, spy FAIL, spy, FAIL, close borders, ...spy succeed, DoW recapture. Result: Steal IW after gifting techs, but we have closed borders with Brennus.
4. Gift techs, spy succeed, AP defied, DoW, re-capture, CF. Result: Steal IW after gifting techs, but have closed borders with Brennus.

===

Unless we don't care if we get IW some time between T129 and T150, by process of elimination, my conclusion is that the only sensible solution is:

1. Gift Brennus the techs up to Cautious
2. Sign OBs with Brennus (asap)
3. Gift Brennus Trojan Horse
4. Trade for gems (same turn but before steal IW)
5. Steal IW

With these options:

• Spread Confu-Call AP Resolution to Return Trojan Horse
• Dow-(bribe Ramesses to DoW)-recapture Trojan Horse-CF/DoP

So I suggest we trade:

T116 Phood for 40g+3gpt (as Kaitzilla said)
T116 Gift Theology​

Then hope that Bibracte starts building the Hagia Sophia. Then, if we can't OB yet:

T117 Gift CoL​

I firmly don't care if he builds the Chichen Itsa. I'd just rather not trade him Currency and give him such a big boost to his economy. Longbowmen are much worse than +25% city defenses. Plus, later we can always cancel OBs if we want to hurt his economy even more.