SGOTM 16 - The Shawshank Redemption

[Dhoomstriker]

Other random thoughts that have been percolating at the back of my mind:
1. Since we're racing for a fast Oracle for Metal Casting, and since we can build a Forge quickly, we can consider trying for a Great Engineer (either at a 100% chance or alongside of a chance to get a Great Scientist). If The Pyramids have not been built, then building them will more than make up for delaying an Academy. If The Pyramids have been built, we'll have a Great Person that can Lightbulb Engineering. Now, the Fast Optics VS Fast Education debate is still ongoing, but it has been put on the backburner for now, since we don't really have to commit to either one until after we've learned the techs for both of the Oracle and The Great Lighthouse. If we go for the Fast Education route, then we won't want a Great Engineer for Lightbulbing purposes, but we could then consider using it to rush The Apostolic Palace (really strong if built early) or The Hagia Sophia (also really strong if built early), assuming that we also generated a Great Prophet afterwards.

2. Corporations versus State Property? We've only seen 1 Fish Resource so far and some preliminary testing with this map type says that it can often be short of Seafood Resources, meaning that Sid's Sushi isn't amazingly powerful. State Property gives us a lot of strong squares (Workshops and something else--Watermills?), can let us have a billion Cities and/or Vassals, and is a lot quicker to set up than Corps. The downside would be that without our Corps, a Cultural Victory would be out, but a militaristic one, combined with a "get your Vassals to vote you to be the World Leader" Diplo or Religious Victory would work. As long as we didn't give Corporation Techs to our Vassals, we could give those techs to other AIs and conquest the Corporate HQ Cities.

Anyway, those are some longer-term things to think about.

 

[Jastrow]

Option B as well (Unless the move 1W reveals something really suprising; i.e mapmaker tampering, in which case we may want to think about it.)

 

[Mitchum]

Option B for me too.

 

[ingentingg]

2. Corporations versus State Property? We've only seen 1 Fish Resource so far and some preliminary testing with this map type says that it can often be short of Seafood Resources, meaning that Sid's Sushi isn't amazingly powerful. State Property gives us a lot of strong squares (Workshops and something else--Watermills?), can let us have a billion Cities and/or Vassals, and is a lot quicker to set up than Corps. The downside would be that without our Corps, a Cultural Victory would be out, but a militaristic one, combined with a "get your Vassals to vote you to be the World Leader" Diplo or Religious Victory would work. As long as we didn't give Corporation Techs to our Vassals, we could give those techs to other AIs and conquest the Corporate HQ Cities.

Running state property makes achieving 2 Legenday Cities harder. We loose out on the culture from Sushi and Creative Construction, but gain some extra production. The problem with production is that it is not mutliplied by the culture multiplier. We can still run as many artists as we want under caste, so it might be better overall. I guess we just have to wait and see.

 

[ingentingg]

I reloaded a lot of time while playing, but I think this is very close to correct.

I'd be curious to know when you started the Forge in the second City relative to completing the Lighthouse (before or after?) and which buildings, if any, you whipped there, and for how many population points each whipping action was.

Orleans was settled on turn 46. First build a workboat, then a library to run scientist.
I 2 pop whipped the forge right after I discovered MC and overflowed in to a scouting workboat. I whipped the lighthouse and overflowed into TGLH which I chopped. Missed the timing a little bit, so it finished 3 turns after Masonry was in.

Also, what is your overall theme for Worker actions? Did you Chop Forests into Workers or the Settler?

I farmed corn and food plains and mined green riverside hill. After that i chopped into a worker and farmed a grassland. Roaded the new city, and mined the second city hill. Chopped and farmed another grassland. Otherwise I think it was mostly chopping.
I chopped forests into workers, and wonders. I 2 pop whipped the settler.

When did you build the Settler relative to building additional Workers beyond the first Worker?

Builds in Paris:
Built worker - warriors - worker - settler (whip) - warriors - worker (whip) - library

We took a risk of generating a Great Prophet, right? A super-early, settled Great Prophet is one of the strongest Great People to settle. He'd be useful for Lightbulbing Theology, but if we go for the fast-Optics route, we won't know Polytheism or Monotheism, so we'd have to settle him.

The odds was very low. I ran two scientist for several turns before I finished Oracle.

It doesn't really make sense to delay The Oracle (doing delays the timing of when we can start on Forges and risks an AI beating us to that Wonder), so I wonder if we'll have to use a 3rd City to either Chop The Oracle or else to produce our first Great Scientist later than you were generating it.

The limiting factor on both Oracle and TGLH was teching. I chopped them both in 2 turns.

Nice test run. It's hard to get a lot done when all you give yourself are the visible resources in the test game. Hopefully KCD was a bit nicer than that and we've got some good stuff in the fog.

Having only two cities on T79 is a bit slow, I think. Again, it's hard when you don't have any resources and you're building libraries and running two early scientists to get an early academy. However, I'd be inclined to go for another city at the expense of a later academy/library/forge. The sooner we settle those early cities, the sooner they can start contributing to our empire.

I hate to research Hunting or Archery unless I absolutely have to. Let's pray that we can skip them here. In the last BOTM (which I made it to 0 AD but did not finish), the game was at Immortal level and we were isolated so barbs were a bear (no pun intended) and I survived without archers or copper. We did have horses so I did get the help of chariots. I'd be more inclined to research AH than Hunting/Archery even though it is a gamble. It will be less of a gamble if there is a pasture resource that we want early on.

The Oracle is quite cheap. Like Dhoom said, it would be nice if we could build it in our third city so as to avoid any GPro GPP in our capital. However, collecting wonders in 2 or 3 cities will be nice when it comes to getting two (or three) legendary cities.

EDIT: Did you actually have to research Pottery twice? I assume that the second one was Priesthood.

I expect our testing to pick up in earnest once Dhoom has scouted the surrounding area... and not having our warrior sitting on his butt in a forest somewhere.

The last Pottery is obviously Priesthood. I researched hunting and archery, to play it safe. If we have copper, or research AH and have horses, that's not necessary. We can afford to research AH before we go for TGLH.
We can fit in a second settler. I don't think there is any point in being more specific about my builds, since we soon get more information about the land in the real game.

 

[cas]

Option B as well (Unless the move 1W reveals something really suprising; i.e mapmaker tampering, in which case we may want to think about it.)

This. I don't see why it's hard to take a screenshot after you move 1W and post it...just in case something weird is revealed. Most of the team is responding pretty fast.

cas

 

[Dhoomstriker]

This. I don't see why it's hard to take a screenshot after you move 1W and post it...just in case something weird is revealed.

Okay, I can wait for a bit, possibly even until tomorrow, since it is an important decision.

Most of the team is responding pretty fast.

I agree. Great teamwork and participation! Thank you!


Without any further ado...

Spoiler :

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Here's what we see for Demographics and after having moved the Warrior:

Spoiler :

 

[Dhoomstriker]

We picked up a Plains Hills square by moving 1W, so I think that we can be happy with settling 1W.

1NW would have given us yet another Plains Hills square, but:
a) we couldn't have known that
AND
b) there are only so many Plains Hills squares that you can actually work with only 1 visible Food Resource

It's still possible that by moving to the 1NW location, we'd pick up an extra Food Resource, but I think that we are in general agreement that it's better to settle now than to keep wandering, particularly with our Warrior out of position.

In fact, it looks like we also picked up a Forest on the PFor square 2W of where the Settler is located.

Yes, I'm sure that it's possible to find a better capital location, but I'm not convinced that it's actually worth spending any more turn to do so. We could wander for 10 turns, luckily not die to Barbs, and settle right up next to some Gold square, only to find out that if we'd settled 1W of there, we would have had 1 Gold and 1 Gem. Better to settle our butts down and work on building our empire, leaving future Resources and Hills for other Cities. One City can't have it all, and even if it could, then a lot of those squares would be unworked and would go to waste.

So, I'd say that I'm happy with what we're going to get by settling 1W.

 

[cas]

SIP (1W of start location)
cas

 

[Dhoomstriker]

It's possible that some other SGOTM teams will move their Settler NE G Corn, NW PH and settle there.

However, they would miss out on the Flood Plains square (and wouldn't be on a River).

Plus, they would have had to completely guess as to whether or not they would get any extra production in the north, so I don't see that move as being a guaranteed strong one.


That said, one square that is common to all of:
Settling 1W, 1NW, 2N, or in-place is the barren Grassland River square (NW + W of the Settler's initial location). Seeing the surrounding Forests, and given the map maker trying to be "fair" by giving a Flood Plains square to those teams who did not move 2N to the PH square, I wouldn't be surprised if Horse (or more likely) Iron appeared on that GRiver square (1NW of our Settler's current location).


Humbaba

We can use the green bar above our warrior to determine what unit Humbaba is.

I haven't tried to do so yet, but won't 2 Nukes or maybe a few Cruise Missiles kill anything in the game?

Or, if a unit is inside of a City, will they have a chance of surviving a Nuke?

I imagine that Humbaba is inside of a City, to prevent the chance of the Barbs disbanding him or something silly like that.

Also, we can make an assumption about what unit Humbaba is, but I recall someone saying in a previous SGOTM game that if a powerful unit was added to the map and later removed, the unit hitpoint bars would still be adjusted as though that unit still existed in the game. Thus, it's probably safe to assume that whatever unit we determine to be in the game is actually in the game, but it's also possible that Humbaba is a weaker unit.

On the plus side, we know that it must be a Barb unit, since the AIs' Soliders scores were all normal values.

I pieced together the hidden diplo modifier. For the player vs AI it is pretty straightforward actually. Though the AI attitude (vs player or vs AI) is determined by 25 factors, there are only 3 factors that determine the hidden diplo modifier vs player("A first impression is a lasting one", short AFIIALO).

Are you saying that these factors will be consistent from map to map? Like, if I take any 6 opponents and use similar game settings as we have, then generate a few maps with those same opponents, each of those opponents will have identical hidden modifier values toward us each game? Therefore, it will only be the AI-AI hidden modifier values that change from game to game?

Is that a trick question?

6 * 16333 = 97988, which becomes 98000 total soldiers rounded up. Since there is at least one AI with 14k soldiers and at least one with 18k solders this means: 98k - (18k +14k) = 66k soldiers to be divided by 4 "other" AI.

No, I was being serious, thanks! I knew that the answer was right, but I couldn't figure out why. Not enough sleep recently, I guess.

At first, I thought "I'm a math guy, I should feel ashamed for asking that kind of a question," but then I thought further and realised that it is precisely because I am a math guy that I cared enough to know to ask the question, even if asking it made me appear silly.


Did we Settle our capital yet? No.
I'll wait on finishing off the PPP (basically, settling the Settler) until after I've seen some feedback from a few people. Since it's late here, it will be just under another 24 hours, give or take, before I get the time to finish the PPP. But, since there was some interest in seeing the screenshots and since we have good participation, I see no reason to rush things.


It's a shame that we can't get the PHRiv square that is 2SW of the Settler's current location (1SW of the Flood Plains square) within our big fat cross (Without giving up on the Corn), but on the plus side, a different nearby City can make use of it, particularly with our relatively-reginally-centralized, non-coastal capital location.

 

[Mitchum]

I agree with settling 1W, which is where our settler stands right now.

I don't have time to spend on the demographics data right now, but we should be able to tell if there are any Charismatic leaders in the bunch (appears to be at least 1) and/or Expansive. Although, health is a bit trickier since flood plains and forests come into play. We should also be able to estimate how many AI are coastal. No one is completely coastal (i.e. 3+ squares in the inner ring) since 7 is the lowest land value.

 

[Jastrow]

I strongly agree with settling now. (I would have been equally happy to settle in place, tho I do understand that point about making room for a coast city.) I hate wandering, and I think our current location is a very decent spot.

Indeed, it will make a monster cottaged-beraucracy-capital post levee.

 

[Mitchum]

In OSS, it was always LC or ZPV that figured out the hidden modifiers between us and the AI, but I'm pretty sure that there is an additional, random modifier that is rolled at the beginning of the game and can be adjusted in WB.

 

[ingentingg]

So, I'd say that I'm happy with what we're going to get by settling 1W.

SIP (1W of start location)
cas

I agree with settling 1W, which is where our settler stands right now.

I strongly agree with settling now

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Okay, I settled at the location 1W of our Settler's initial location, as everyone wanted. I took some screenshots but will have to upload them after a couple of hours.

We revealed a Silk Resource on the PFor 2W of where we settled. The other two Riverside squares 1W and 1S of the Flood Plains are Plains squares, so no extra Food, but it's still a decent Riverside + production-oriented capital with 3 PH squares.

 

[mscellaneous]

It looks like we have a 2nd FP 2W1S of the settler.

I agree with settling on current location.

Got my fingers crossed for a resource 1W2S, wheat would be really nice

Edit: oops, x-post

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Screenshots from after settling Paris

Spoiler :

 

[ingentingg]

Mining and worker first and scouting a circle around the capital seems a good plan. Continue when you are ready

 

[cas]

mining and continue scouting with the warrior. take screens of the demographics...although I am not good at decipering them.

cas