SGOTM 16 - Misfit Gypsy Nuts

[Ronnie1]

I was just playing around with the ugly test game I posted earlier. If we go Masonry next, we can chop the GW in city #2 after an initial warrior build by about T59. Sending a worker there slows down founding city #3 by a few turns, but I still got it up by T55. It pushes the Priesthood line back, but if we are interested in going Great Lighthouse, we need Masonry anyway.

 

[Ronnie1]

If we do go to the SW with City #2, should we consider either the Yellow-Dot or Red-Dot in the attached screenshot? Yes, they're both off the river, but neither site's BFC overlaps with Paris. The riverside Plains Hill would have 4 tiles of it's BFC overlap with Paris.

I would NEVER worry about overlapping tiles. It is very rare that 2 side by side cities even grow big enough for it to be a a concern. I often do just the contrary on purpose. I put cities that can work capitol cottages early while my cap is working food and mines, or if the cap is whipping off pop, that the cap can use later after they are mature.

 

[Ronnie1]

With the breadth of the continent that we can see, is Great Lighthouse more valuable than Oracle? We can see Gems now in 2 locations, does that make early Metal Casting a better option from the Oracle?

 

[Sleepless]

My vote would be as mentioned 1W of the sheep.

Glh.

Techs needed for Glh fish - sail - masonry + lh build in designated city. I think we could hold off the GLh for a while and go for it once we have another 2 or 3 cities. That way our second city could still get its tiles improved and help a bit with our early expansion.

Oracle.

Don't think we've decided yet what to go for with the Oracle. MC is likely to be the best beaker price we can manage comfortably from the Oracle without going out of our way to pick up different techs i.e mono for Theology.

From what we can see so far my likely tech route if we want both the Oracle and Glh would be.

Fish - Myst - Med - Priest - Pot - Writing - Sail - Mas. We save a couple of turns on writing by having the pre-requisites and Pot for MC.

City sites. Sheep first - wheat second - double sushi site third (for quick lib and run scientists).

Ideally we need to explore the wine area for potential city sites in that area. Until IW the jungle isn't very attractive but what we could plan on is having settlers ready to settle if any AI looks like beating us to it.

Also need to revolt to slavery once the settler is finished. Always forget that in my games..

 

[Conquistador 63]

On diplomacy

I see that Brennus & Ramesses are the worst enemies of each other. Perhaps they are located pretty close to each other?

This is due to their different iBasePeaceWeight (XML values). Ramesses has 6, while Brennus has 0.

From this thread:

Item 4 (not visible)
If THEM is NOT Human:
+(4 – abs(US Peace Weight – THEM PeaceWeight))

Item 4:
abs means that the result of (US Peace Weight – THEM PeaceWeight) is always a positive value
PeaceWeight = iBasePeaceWeight + (0 to iPeaceWeightRand) as shown by Seven05 - This is the only case were a Random Number is used directly to determine an Attitude Value.

iPeaceWeightRand is a random variable (between 0 and 3). Net effect, they may have from -5 to +1 (starting with -2 before the random factor, and can go up to 3 in either direction) towards each other. It's likely it is at least -3 so they're annoyed.

I agree there must be a 3rd AI in our landmass, given the espionage values. Definitely focus EP on Brennus.

I think we should eventually conquer all of our continent, but should start with Brennus, giving Ramesses enough time to build us a bunch of wonders. He has Theocracy as favorite civic, so he might as well learn Theology soon and build the AP for us.

Wonders

I see value on GLH, but not as a immediate priority. Too many non-coastal sites. With another IND leader already spotted, Oracle shouldn't take too long to be built by the AI, and its benefits can't be captured...We can still debate what tech to gain from it.

I do not see GW as a strong move. It is only Emp level, we are pretty safe from barbs (mostly open to them from the South), and still will have access to horses for barb defense.

Tech

I vote for Myst/Poly/PH next. Brennus already has Medi, so we should be able to get it by espionage/trade/extortion at some point. After PH we pick either Fishing/Pottery to get MC or Writing for CoL. We can have a better informed decision down the road.

EDIT: cross-post with Sleepless, +1 for sheep/horse city next.

 

[Ronnie1]

Here is a test save up to our current position.

If C63 votes for horse city next, then add me as another vote to go that direction.

 

[adrianj]

I pretty much agree with everything C63 says: GW not worth it; Oracle higher priority than GLH; Let Ramesses live long enough to build some wonders for us; +1 for sheep/horse city.

One thing we differ on is tech path. I think we should go fishing next if we're going to settle the sheep city. A 52 tile (the fish) is too good to delay for too long.

My preferred tech path would therefore be the same as Sleepless': Fish -> Myst -> Medi (or Poly?) -> PH.

MC is also looking more attractive now that we have more AI to trade it around to, and the gems are a good reason to build cheap forges.

 

[adrianj]

PS - I pretty never have access to the game (do most of my typing away from playing computer).
Could we get some more screenshots please? I really like to see the inside of our city and some more detail on recently discovered lands.

 

[Ronnie1]

Screenies for Aj!

Some of the tiles away from the capitol in the test game may be inaccurate but easy enough to change as needed. EP off for sure.

 

[adrianj]

Thanks Ron.

I hate to sound like an annoying person, but the zoomed out shot is just as Oz posted. I was hoping for some more detail, eg, tile yields visible when zoomed in closer.

Another minor thing - when taking screenshots, perhaps take the opportunity to show some more information by hovering the mouse over something?

What it does help answer for me, is that we could settle pigs/gems/clams city sooner rather than later. Yes, it won't be at full potential until we have IW to chop away the jungle, but access to the clams means it will at least be productive. The bonus of settling it early is that we beat the AI to it. Perhaps it is city #3 or #4?

Demographics - interesting to see that some AI is producing 21/turn. Does that strike anyone as being quite a lot for only turn 36? A size 4 city with each population/tile averaging almost 5. Or is that a size 5 city? I wonder if this AI was given a free worker or two, or some pre-built improvements.

 

[Ronnie1]

Yea I thought it may be toooooo wide a shot. I'll take some more.

The Pig/Clam/Gem city misses the south Gem to get the 2 foods.

 

[adrianj]

Looking again at the Demographics Food and Population numbers: Am I correct in that a size 2 city = 6000 people, size 3 = 21000, size 4 = 48000? In that case, population 54000 must be split over two cities of size 4 and 2. On turn 36!

Sure, an AI could conceivably build a settler that fast (after all, we're only 1 turn from completing one) but for it to be at size 2 already implies to me that it was settled at least 7 turns ago, working floodplain or similar. That sounds like mapmaker tampering to me.

There's obviously nothing we can do about it, and it doesn't affect our strategy too much. The only thing I can think of is we might find some World Firsts (eg, wonders, techs) go earlier than a 'typical' emperor level game.

 

[Ronnie1]

Here are 2 more.

Settler is 84/100 and food bar is 3/26.

 

[Grifftavian]

...I was hoping for some more detail, eg, tile yields visible when zoomed in closer.

Another minor thing - when taking screenshots, perhaps take the opportunity to show some more information by hovering the mouse over something?...

Here are some screenshots zoomed in to some of the City Site locations we have been discussing.

EDIT: x-post w/R1

 

[adrianj]

"It never rains, but it pours"

Thanks Ron and Griff I appreciate it.

 

[Ronnie1]

Test Game shows that at size 5 population in Demo screen shows 90K.

It follows that 54K must be a size 4 + size 2 cites as you already surmised. If could be that the newly founded city stole an improved food resource from the capitol. We did not found until T2, so the settler could have been 5-6 turns ago.

 

[Ozbenno]

Should we go Writing next to get quick library and scientists in capital??

Also count me in for sheep horse city next.

 

[adrianj]

Should we go Writing next to get quick library and scientists in capital??

Also count me in for sheep horse city next.

No, I don't think so. It's still early days, I think we should be building nothing but warriors, workers and settlers until we have
A) at least 3 cities,
B) workers to support them (at least one per city) and
C) enough warriors to properly fogbust the lands to the north and between us and the AI.

If we are concerned that our tech rate is too slow to achieve some kind of Oracle gambit, I don't think the solution is more ; the solution is a more achievable goal. MC springs to mind.

 

[Ronnie1]

No, I don't think so. It's still early days, I think we should be building nothing but warriors, workers and settlers until we have
A) at least 3 cities,
B) workers to support them (at least one per city) and
C) enough warriors to properly fogbust the lands to the north and between us and the AI.

If we are concerned that our tech rate is too slow to achieve some kind of Oracle gambit, I don't think the solution is more ; the solution is a more achievable goal. MC springs to mind.

I agree 100% with this! More cities and workers!

 

[Ronnie1]

REMINDER!

Make sure your .ini file is set to autosave every 1 turn.

I was just playing with some auto saves from the test game and realized mine had somehow reverted to the default setting of 4 turns.