SGOTM 16 - Kakumeika

[LowtherCastle]

PPP units

Here's a shot at unit movements:

Spies - Send one to Camulodunum and one to ???
Eve - Go home on the trade mission boat? or explore south?
Boudica (Combat II Chariot) ???
Archie - Move 1SW and fog-bust.
Adam - MP in city SweetClams.
Emerillion - pick up merchant and settler. Drop settler in desert, merchant in Elephantine
Sea Vous PLas - explore west and south.
Jaques Cartier (scout) - is sleeping. Wake him. unload 1S, reboard next turn. Continue exploring like that.
Crusoe - fogbust. Can barbs even spawn here? Should he return to our culture?
1st Workboat from CornFishPigs - net fish for DPF.
Horse City Chariot - MP.

• Not sure what to do with the second spy. Funny. Nearby back-up for Camulo?
• Eve could replace Adam, so he can plan to steal workers eventually.
• Boudica should reveal Brennus' southern cities, defog the southern half of our landmass, and harvest 10XP asap.
• For future defogging: Jacques Cartier could have disembarked after the galley's first move this turn, then moved across the second ice tile to re-board next turn. More defogging would have occured.
• Crusoe - Jacques and Sea Vous Plas will soon tell us if more barbs can spawn on this landmass. It's 35 unowned tiles per barb. Barb units in barb cities count against the quota.
• Wb in the northeast - I would finish all of that defogging before returning. You never know...

I think I prefer a free city later and no extra maintenence now. Assuming we capture this city quickly to get trade routes back.

Most of you seem to want to settle it ourselves. Is that because of the trade routes? or because we think he won't settle on the coast?

A 2nd island city should give nice trade routes (even more so when we lose the Brennus routes.)

My math shows SweetClam City trade routes increase = 5, island city = 15-16

It appears Brennus will settle on the hill 1N of of the sugar or 1SE of the iron. If we don't settle this city, then we have a lot of worker turns to spend connecting an iron resource. How long would that delay our mobilization against Brennus?

I agree with your math, which is why I would build another settler asap so we can settle both.

 

[WastinTime]

It appears Brennus will settle on the hill 1N of of the sugar or 1SE of the iron.

In my experience the AI settles right next to Iron. I would think he would settle clam/iron just like we'd hope. The other sites are also a little close to his other city. I think we're in good shape here.

 

[WastinTime]

Are you planning to work 2 sci and still grow enough to whip forges?

I guess my questions are:

• What's your long-term vision?
• What benefits of a faster education are you seeing?
• How do you see us leveraging our Oxford city? More specialists and fewer cottages?

Forges should still fit in before Edu even if we take some time to grow and work specialists. Naturally, I want Edu for Oxford in Paris. Working cottages there will be best.

I normally like to go to war right after univ/Oxford is up, but rush there and often skip metalcast/machinery and trade for those. If we research machinery, we should probably get the war on before longbows appear.

Even tho its not my style, REX and war both sound pretty good to me. I don't mind being a little lazy getting to Edu/Oxford for these goals, but we still need to keep a research focus and Edu is the target. We should burn all our cash to get there and then build up gold again.

 

[bcool]

I'd like to stick with keeping an engineer working in Paris without scientists for now. Otherwise work cottages and grow Paris. I definitely think securing the great engineer is something we should start focusing on for Mining Inc.

Also if it is possible run an engineer instead of one of the planned scientists in side cities if we get unlucky in Paris and want to use specialists for increasing our research rate.

I think the Colossus should be finished. I think it is worth it for the culture at the very least at this point. The earlier we finish it the more turns we will have it before astronomy. I think it will easily pay for itself in commerce and culture.

I think we will survive without the Sistine Chapel (but we should have a plan to capture it as soon as we locate where it is built).

I think we should keep the spies as defense.

I think we should settle iron/clams/sugar for the trade routes, and to save on worker turns hooking up iron. I think we should build another settler quickly to settle clams/Floodplains/iron city.

 

[WastinTime]

spy for defense. I'm not sure what that means. Just let him sit in the capital? or a city closer to Brennus? or perform counter-esp?

 

[Kaitzilla]

spy for defense. I'm not sure what that means. Just let him sit in the capital? or a city closer to Brennus? or perform counter-esp?

Hmm. We don't have enough espionage to steal Calendar in Calumo I think.

Mostly all we can use spies for now is to flip Brennus to our religion in case we want to trade for Calendar or beg him for gold to get 10 turns of peace.

I suppose a city revolt might be possible.

Anything we do with spies carries a -1 "caught spy" risk that we should keep in mind. There's no real using them defensively since Brennus doesn't know Alphabet.

If we have enough espionage to throw Calumodunum into revolt or flip Brennus, we might consider putting the spy there. Otherwise we'd hold them on our borders to head in when we no longer care about Brennus opinion to flip cities or scout.

The disadvantage of flipping Brennus is that he might like Ramesses enough to sign open borders and then 5 turns later when he goes back he might try to spread Buddism and turn Ramesses against us. Gnnnn. What to do with the spies >_>

 

[Kaitzilla]

I'd say we all like Machinery. What should we do when we get our 1000+ gold? Paper and Education or Optics?

Meeting the other AI is nice but what can they offer us besides backfill a few techs and being angry at our religion?

Monarchy, Literature, Music, Philosophy(which would be sweet),Feudalism is that all?

 

[shulec]

Hmm. We don't have enough espionage to steal Calendar in Calumo I think.

Would one turn of 100% , churning out 156 EP get calender for us at 50% discount? Probably. If we get the spy to 4 turns a in place, lets use one turn at 100% to get Calender. Now we have to guess how soon Brennus will get Calender, but that seems like a small sacrifice.

 

[Kaitzilla]

And we need to hash out our next Great Person. Should we try for a pure-ish Great Engineer in Paris or throw in some Scientists and go for fastest next great person? We've already conceded a pure Great Engineer chance with AP so philosophically speaking throwing some scientists in there and running an Engineer every great person attempt until we get a GE might be just crazy enough to work.

But the trouble with philosophies is that your way of life becomes a philosophy which upgrades itself to a cult one day and pretty soon you have a full blown religion and then it gets way out of control but enough about Ayn Rand or Cross-Fit.


Is Mining Inc. worth slow-playing our next Great Person? We are entering the era where Great People are their most powerful and we don't have a city dedicated to making them.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Would one turn of 100% , churning out 156 EP get calender for us at 50% discount? Probably. If we get the spy to 4 turns a in place, lets use one turn at 100% to get Calender. Now we have to guess how soon Brennus will get Calender, but that seems like a small sacrifice.

If Brennus had Calendar right now, we could trade a tech to him for it

Putting a spy back into his borders that gets caught(maybe 10% chance) will give us -1 relations which might mean we can't trade for Calendar and be forced to steal it.

Trading more than Currency with Ramesses will probably mean we can't trade for Calendar if the diplo hit is -3 or -4. Bcool might be correct that trading for Calendar in 9 turns and then sending the spies in might be the easier path to Calendar. The spies can only cause a few types of effective mayham.

 

[shulec]

And we need to hash out our next Great Person. Should we try for a pure-ish Great Engineer in Paris or throw in some Scientists and go for fastest next great person? We've already conceded a pure Great Engineer chance with AP so philosophically speaking throwing some scientists in there and running an Engineer every great person attempt until we get a GE might be just crazy enough to work.

But the trouble with philosophies is that your way of life becomes a philosophy which upgrades itself to a cult one day and pretty soon you have a full blown religion and then it gets way out of control but enough about Ayn Rand or Cross-Fit.


Is Mining Inc. worth slow-playing our next Great Person? We are entering the era where Great People are their most powerful and we don't have a city dedicated to making them.

I think we should continue slow building GE points in Paris. It will not be overcome/it will catch up to any three GP cities (2Sci, 1Eng) quickly enough. Since we want Paris working cottages, this is ideal. This way we aren't slow playing GP (well not really, considering we aren't switching to Caste System).

 

[shulec]

I would like to see a market in Paris after a forge. We will get +1 after we get silk, and the bonus at 0% research. We have to leverage those cottages both ways.

 

[Kaitzilla]

I would like to see a market in Paris after a forge. We will get +1 after we get silk, and the bonus at 0% research. We have to leverage those cottages both ways.

It will take 3 turns to burn through our current cash and with the GM trade mission coming we might not be building wealth for a while. A capital market is very strong though when the gold slider is at 100% ya. hmmm

I'm trying to think of our best leverage. Should one city be building Chichen Itza since we think Brennus is building it?

There are so many things we could build and do and expand.


I'm willing to bow to WastinTime's and Bcool's space race instincts at this point. I can't recall ever beating them to space in a serious competition. Something about windmills maybe.

Once we get access to Brennus' stone, there are some games we can play with wonder sharing. Like putting loads of chops into Moai Statues, then having a different coastal city build it.

Everyone should take their best swing at the test game of course to generate useful ideas. Bribing Brennus to attack Egypt and then stabbing him in the back like Mabraham suggested is pretty good.

WastinTime is gonna soak up the ideas and make what he/she thinks is the best turnset PPP and the sooner people say what they think we ought to do the sooner we can get it straightened out


I'm kind of torn on whether to use scientists in Paris. Mining Inc. is the best in the game when it is 20+ hammers. Nothing compares really.
I've never really gotten why people like Crossbows. They are mainly for countering Macemen and city defense. Longbows are better at city defense and Elephants make better Macemen counters.
Simulated trading for Aesthetics and teching Literature in 2 turns. Started the Great Library in T128 test game and got it done T134. Colossus was about 17gpt and Great Library was about 22bpt. Great Library an iffy wonder with a faraway civ getting Music done already.

Seems like we are still a little low on workers. Jungle pigs needs jungled cleared and pigs haha. And iron needs hooking up, and all kinds of things. Lyons can get a settler chopped out pretty quick at Size 4 for another barb island city. Nothing really pretty stands out this turnset. Everything is all pretty jarring for worker efficiency. Looks like Religion spread->whip forge->library might be best. Major cities that get done building wonders should probably build more workers.

I think we should send the workboat back to settle Deer Pigs Fish seafood. Fish is a strong tile and I can't think of anything up there we might find.

 

[Kaitzilla]

I'm going to try to construct a schedule of events so we can make better planning.

1)Currently have 9 cities and can switch 2 civics at once up to 12 cities. The 13th city means two turns to change two civics. Clams/Sugar/Iron, 2nd Barb Island City, and 2 double fish cities get us to 13 cities
2)T131 Will naturally get another +1 with Brennus and Ramesses
3)T132 Trade Mission arrives in Thebes (Great Merchant)
3)T133 Paris expected to hit Size 11
4)T135 Brennus should probably finish Calendar and be willing to trade it to us if we are still at "Cautious"
5)T135 The first barb galley showed up in the test game menacing the Lyons fish. That seems like the ares most in danger from barbs galleys. Can be easily countered with a trireme.
6)T136 Next AP vote if anything is eligable
7)T136 Earliest that Pope can hook up Iron if we settle Clams/Sugar/Iron. Unless we settle ON the iron Only warmongers do that though.
8)T145 LTC expects that Tolosa might have Chichen Itsa done at its current rate of construction

It is doubtful Brennus or Ramesses have decent maps to trade. Ramesses just got sailing and Brennus doesn't seem to like making coastal cities. Still, Paper is cheaper than Machinery and we don't really need Machinery until we have iron.

The galleys are out of place to settle any fish islands and we don't really have the happy resources to make great use of them. Still, if we got their settlement going now, they might be useful when Calendar resources come online.

Paris should reach Size 11 just fine thanks to whip anger wearing off. There is a health problem on T132 that can be solved by canceling Ramesses pig or sheep trade.

 

[bcool]

I think we plan to trade for calendar, if something happens and Brennus gets annoyed with us use the spies as shulec suggested. The turn we think we can't trade for calendar, then spy jumps into Brennus's gems city. We wait until 50% discount use slider to get eps necessary to try and steal it.

Until we lose the calendar trade possibility keep the spies in our borders.

 

[Kaitzilla]

I think we plan to trade for calendar, if something happens and Brennus gets annoyed with us use the spies as shulec suggested. The turn we think we can't trade for calendar, then spy jumps into Brennus's gems city. We wait until 50% discount use slider to get eps necessary to try and steal it.

Until we lose the calendar trade possibility keep the spies in our borders.

Aw man, I forgot Brennus isn't Friendly . Maybe he won't trade it to us until Ramesses has it too. Hopefully Ramesses will tech it soon so we can trade with Brennus for it. AI's seem to love Calendar.

I've never played semi-isolation before hardly. Everything about this game is so different from what I usually play.

There is still the Jungle Pigs gift idea. Calendar would be what, 80 espionage in Jungle Pigs? We'd be getting iron right about that time. Brennus seriously needs to whip courthouses and build cottages.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Well, in theory trading Currency to Ramesses for Aesthetics or something else will get us -1 with Brennus, which should be countered T131 from shared civics. That means we can trade for his Calendar on T135 (if he really finishes in 9 turns) and start doing heavy trading with Ramesses after. Or we can give Brennus some tech gift for another +1 if there is some kind of freak -2 hit trading Currency with Ramesses.

Sure, I'd say go for it. If it goes badly we can make another spy in Paris next. Should always have two spies for when the open borders go down to scout and cause mayham.

I gave incorrect advice!

We can't trade monopoly techs on T135 and I forgot. Very sorry!

Maybe we should put one spy in Camulo and one in Jungle Pigs.

 

[mabraham]

I'm going to try to construct a schedule of events so we can make better planning.

I'm going to construct a broader schedule

We'd like to get Oxford going pretty soon, and it'd be nice to smash some face as well. This combines well because smashing face should get us stone at a good time. Combining in WastinTime's ideas for making better use of our cheap libraries and Rep now and get cheap forges for fast universities later, I suggest a general strategy along these lines:

1) Finish Machinery for maces (roughly coincides with iron hookup from Iron/Clams/Sugar), then Paper+Edu (0% slider for 3 turns, then 100% slider for about 18 turns using trade mission; right now this tech path would take 23 turns of 100% slider, so with adding libraries and specialists the size of the cash pile is close to right)
2) Paris keeps running cottages, growth until trade mission, then engineer (specializing to produce commerce, cottage growth, hopefully Mining Inc; no other city can get the next GPerson unless they start running an average of four specialists in the next few turns, or Orleans does some hardcore wonder/specialist combo), builds cats+maces
3) Orleans finishes Colossus while running two scientists, then builds rax+cats+maces running engineer (backup for Mining Inc)
4) HC finishes missionary and rax, builds forge + cats + maces (since we don't want a university here, don't really have/want commerce here ever, and have a rax on the queue, it makes sense not to get a library here)
5) Other cities get libraries, run two scientists while building forges. If they've got a forge early, build wealth or units. Paris, Orleans, DrunkPigs, Lyons, CPF, DPF will build our universities. The latter four will turn off scientists to time the completion of the forge with/before Edu to start building universities.
6) Once we have enough cat+mace army to get the show started, we do that (e.g. kick off in 15 turns)
7) Capture Camul, Tolosa, Bibracte, Vienne in another 15-20 turns (depending on how much defense and bombing is required). Workers build roads to follow the army (for war reinforcements and stone connection later)
8) During those 30-40 turns of prep+war, we finished Mach-Paper-Edu and the forges in time to start 6 universities. Ideally we can finish the 6th university and road network in time for Vienne to come out of revolt.
9) Build Oxford with stone *and* Brennus heartland.
10) Profit

If we ran two scientists and no engineer in Paris starting now, we'd have at best a 33% chance of a GSci (and compromise our population for the trade mission, so in practice more like 30% GSci) and have rather more trouble generating our GEng later. So I tend to dislike running scientists in Paris for that reason, as well as detracting from growth and cottage working.

WastinTime's estimate of 15/20 turns for Edu without/with a bulb seems to more-or-less line up with the above plan - e.g. 3 turns getting cash, 5 turns for Mach and 20 for Paper+Edu is about the earliest we might ever capture Vienne (in practice, I think getting both Edu+universities and Vienne out of revolt are more like 35 turns away if we're trying to line them up).

Probably we should bribe Brennus to attack Ramesses now, to speed up our war maximally. If that means waiting 4 more turns to steal Calendar, or getting it from Ramesses, I think the strategic gains are worth it.

 

[LowtherCastle]

PPP units

Sea Vous PLas - explore west and south.
Jaques Cartier (scout) - is sleeping. Wake him. unload 1S, reboard next turn. Continue exploring like that.
Crusoe - fogbust. Can barbs even spawn here? Should he return to our culture?

• For future defogging: Jacques Cartier could have disembarked after the galley's first move this turn, then moved across the second ice tile to re-board next turn. More defogging would have occured.
• Crusoe - Jacques and Sea Vous Plas will soon tell us if more barbs can spawn on this landmass. It's 35 unowned tiles per barb. Barb units in barb cities count against the quota.

CORRECTION: Fog-gazing and testing (see updated Test Save below) shows Barb Island has 27 unowned tiles. No more barb unit/city spawning possible. Crusoe is free to garrison somewhere. (The tile 2S of Sea Vous Plas looks like it's Ice/Ice but that's an artifact of Worldbuildering. Ice/Ice would have gotten defogged. That tile must be Ice/Coast to not be defogged yet. Same with the still-fogged Ice/Coast tile 2S1W of Sea Vous Plas.)

Furthermore, Kaitzilla's decision to not deploy the Jacques was the better move, imo, though it was counter-intuitive to me. By waiting to move Jacques till next turn, we learn more about what's ahead sooner, at the expense of defogging three tiles to the northwest of Humbaba Haven that are clearly unreachable by us if we can't loop around to the west. Of course, there's always a risk that those three tiles will tell us something...but I think the odds are low. Two tile's are owned by Humbaba culture and we can't loop around they're useless to us pre-Astro. Plus, if we can't loop around, we can spy them on the way back. Anyway the land tile to the SE also defogs some tiles that we just missed.

As before, Sea Vous Plas should attempt to see all pertinent land tiles before Jacques lands, for safety reasons. It appears by fog-gazing that Jacques will be able to land safely.

You can test this here:

 

[LowtherCastle]

T126 Analysis

1. The Brennus chariot in JunglePigs on T124 vanished from the map on T125!?! He must have disbanded it because of financial trouble. (Can he research calendar while his economy is on STRIKE?) Furthermore his overall power dropped by -9, so he might have disbanded a couple of units.

2. T126: We can see Durocortorum (pop2) is working 2f and 2h1c (instead of 2h1f). This must be a sign of his financial troubles, choosing 1c over 1f.

As I recall, AWOL-Tachy said something about AIs emphasizing commerce tiles under Financial Troubles. That's good for us, isn't it? I wonder if he's coded to prefer courthouses to units under financial trouble if not WHEEOHRN or at war...