SGOTM 16 - Maple Sporks

[nocho]

Yes, I was planning to play some more turns. Frankly I was waiting for people to test stuff or chime in with some ideas, so good you did just that. However, I don't quite get some things so please elaborate.

You say GLH is "broken" which I understand to mean top priority, but then you discard it building it soonish because you don't "like it". What is it you don't like? How is going for other wonders first different?

Do you really mean 1E of sheep? East, not west? I can see a point as it'll have a lot of hills, but it's the first time it's mentioned.

Why the temple of artemis? I rarely build it. It's very expensive without marble and for an inland city has very little benefit in my experience.

I do however agree with early pottery, Ororo also mentioned that. Note I went fishing-pottery in my run. I also think mids is rather important.

And beware of concluding that we have much time for wonders. In the test save they seem to be falling much slower than may be the case in the real game.

For now I still favour basically the run I did (optimized of course), but likely skipping Oracle and related techs. I still like settling on the PH north of sheep for the extra hammer and less overlap of tiles, but only DS seemed to like it, so can live with 1W too. 1E I'll have to think quite hard about still.

 

[Ororo]

Building ToA can actually be harmful... Say we spawn a GM a decide to go for a trade mission. However, we couldn't send it to a ToA city as usual cos we built it ourselves. So in the end we would get less gold for a trade mission. For this reason I hate to build the ToA with no marble (with marble I build it just for failgold )

I also can't think of any reason not to build GLH asap. It allows for a sustainable expansion, and not just that...we're going to make money by expanding (especially after Currency and foreign trade routes). And the only better thing than sustainable expansion I can think of is HA Pangea conquest, which is not available to us for obvious reasons.

I'd go Pottery next but Fishing is fine as well if the majority votes for it... Capital build should go something like Worker (I can think of about zillion things to do with our workers atm) -> Settler (to immediately start growing onto those juicy FP cottages).

 

[astre]

well to my point of view, GLH is usefull later not early (it will give us 2 gold for some time) and more importantly the techs it required are not that usefull early on.
fishing for exemple is not that usefull as our city have already lots of food on land.

That's why i said i was bored with the starting by GLH. mutch better to start with pottery and massonery IMHO.

For TA, it give a priest which give 1C+1H+3Beaker+ 2GP points under rep. For me that's enought but maybe I'm wrong.

of course, it is the other E, you known that obviously...
well W in fact , sorry write it to fast...

one safe path we could take is pottery/massonery or fishing/sailing but we lose the benefit of oracle completely but... why not...
as long as we get mids, we will be going fine. (great library will help too ^^)

 

[nocho]

Ok, 1W.

I'd think a 5f2c tile makes fishing by itself very much worth it, especially if the tile will be shared by 2 cities... And building a WB at least gives the city something to do pre-sailing. Besides, without hunting there's only the sheep for food.

 

[astre]

there is also farmed flood plains if we go 1W.

but as I said pottery / fishing / massonery or pottery / massonery / fishing are all fine to me.
at this point, we can think again IMHO

 

[Iagoc]

Are all test runs based on the same initial save file? If so, it wont give an accurate spread on the wonder build dates, its very dependant on the AI(or IA)'s terrain and behaviour... It cant be too difficult to start a few random games with the same initial conditions and just play randomly until the relevant wonders are build.

 

[astre]

No i did it on my own test map.

 

[Sengir]

Did a testrun without Oracle (pottery first) got GLH at turn 75, Mids at 89; Second city on PH north of sheep, third city on incense, fourth city getting fish/pigs/deer in north/east. Fifth city can go on tiny island and share fish with incense city, sixth city down south.
Tech: Pottery > Fishing > Sailing > Masonry > Writing
There should be quite some improvement possible in worker actions, city-builds and tech-order though.

Will do another with the Oracle

 

[Sengir]

Did another testrun without Oracle first;
GLH at 79, Mids at 89,
Build Incense city first this time, then PH north o Sheep, fish/pigs/deer later. This gives a higher beaker output at the end, and doesn't have a big impact on wonder dates. At turn 89 I had math ready and a settler as well.
Tech: Fishing > Pottery > Sailing > Masonry > Writing > Math
Again, not optimized yet.

 

[Ondskan]

Nevermind ( I couldn't figure out some of the shortenings of the words but I know most and just remembered PH is Plain Hills)

 

[Ondskan]

make 2 test games.
In the first, i followed the strategy push GLH but didn't like it.
Too mutch time doing nothing, i didn't went far.

In the second, i teched pottery then oracle then TGL
found 1E of sheep
get oracle in orlean turn 75 after 1 chop/2pop
get temple of artemis in -875 in paris after 3 chop /2 pop
started pyramid T90 only to lose it T91

get GLH in lyon (pig, fish deer city) T99 (2 chop/2 pop)
get colosse in T100 in orlean T100 (3 chop/3pop)

What i get from theses tests:

We have no comerce at all. potery is a top priority. All my 3 cities could be fully cottage easily.
Happiness is a huge factor ! -> we must beline pyramid before everything IMHO.
We have some time to get GLH...
.

I like this.
So you don't go for Alphabet at all I assume then? Or did you manage to squeeze that in as well? Did you steal Iron Works?

Temple of Artemis is fine with me but I don't care if we don't go for it.

 

[Sengir]

Oracle first:
Oracle 77, GLH 89, Mids 99. Took MC with Oracle. 4 cities
Tech: Fishing > Pottery > Myst > Poly > Priest > Sailing > Masonry > Writing

I'm not too sure about the moment of building the fourth city. I should probably delay it a bit, and build more warriors/chariots against barbs. That's something to be decided on the real map though, as that's the only way we can decide on fogbusting.

 

[astre]

I like this.
So you don't go for Alphabet at all I assume then? Or did you manage to squeeze that in as well? Did you steal Iron Works?

didn't hat time to tech alphabet
had just time to tech writting after massonery

 

[Sengir]

No i did it on my own test map.

Just too be sure: the same map you posted right? Because in that case we have to adjust between the dates of tests on your map and Norvins map by 35 turns.

 

[astre]

Yes i finished it (replayed the 35 turns and tweak at T35) before play the test.

 

[Sengir]

Okay, that means we can just compare dates. Can you make another testrun, skipping ToA, hopefully getting Mids done earlier?

I find it interesting that you think the GLH means you've got nothing to do. I got that feeling on my Oracle runs...



How about some more discussion on city sites?
I think we are all agreed on the location of the NorthEast city (the only spot which gets Pigs/Fish/Deer)

About the western cities:
I'd propose settling Incense and 1N of Sheep (PH) (in that order). PH gives extra hammer, gives less shared tiles and leaves the possibility to switch the fish to the one-tile-island (Moai?). Incense first means more commerce sooner. NorthEast city can come fourth, followed by One-Tile-Island, which gets an early Moai.

 

[astre]

It is true that oracle rush is so slow. It might be even slower than GLH

pottery change all that. You have always something to do with your workers and always something to build (granary if nothing else...
The doing nothing feeling disapear in a blast.
No more testing today for me, maybe tomorow.

 

[nocho]

@Sengir, I'm trying to get my head around understanding how it can be better to settle incense before sheep, if for the latter we can immediately improve it (pastures) while for incense we need both fishing and pottery for cottages still. Could you elaborate? Also, how many turns did you have between settling incense and sheep?

I agree with city spots. I also like the PH for sheep but might get convinced by 1W. Pretty sure though that fish long term won't be worked by sheep city.

 

[DwarfSleepy]

[...]

How about some more discussion on city sites?
I think we are all agreed on the location of the NorthEast city (the only spot which gets Pigs/Fish/Deer)

unless we unfog something interesting in the north

About the western cities:
I'd propose settling Incense and 1N of Sheep (PH) (in that order). PH gives extra hammer, gives less shared tiles and leaves the possibility to switch the fish to the one-tile-island (Moai?). Incense first means more commerce sooner. NorthEast city can come fourth, followed by One-Tile-Island, which gets an early Moai.

I like the island-shares-the-fish argument for settling 1N of sheep. The tundra tiles that the BFC covers won't matter much, unless the city grows very big, which it won't do for a while I guess

 

[DwarfSleepy]

Are all test runs based on the same initial save file? If so, it wont give an accurate spread on the wonder build dates, its very dependant on the AI(or IA)'s terrain and behaviour... It cant be too difficult to start a few random games with the same initial conditions and just play randomly until the relevant wonders are build.

Please go ahead. Several have been done, see the posts before. Always good to have a more representative set of dates