SGOTM 16 - U'nu'sual S'us'pec'ts

Oracle: Where are we going to be tech-wise when we finish the Oracle. It could be possible to make sure that we get a Merchant from city 2, although that would mean a later scientist. Or we could pollute the pool in city 2 and go for 50-50 scientist merchant. If we opt for that the Oracle could take Code of Laws leaving the Merchant to bulb MC. If we take MC with the oracle. What would the merchant bulb by the time we get there (at work, so can't check).
 
So the Merchant will bulb (unless we keep him for ages)

Metal Casting -> Code of Laws -> Alphabet -> Monarchy -> Civil Service.

I guess that suggests we take Metal Casting and run scientists as soon as we can in city 2. That way if we get a Merchant we can bulb Code of Laws and if we get a Scientist then that's a pretty good problem to have.
 
ChrisShaffer said:
Revent (and anyone else who wants to check), could you please look at the AI analysis lists here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=11832121&postcount=7

Let me know if they are correct, with the information we have at present.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the demographics! I'm not sure how different the victory condition screen is when showing land area but from what I can see, we have 50% more land than Brennus and this is despite being coastal, so he is almost certainly coastal!

The information is correct :)

I'm doing some test game runs with X number of AI starting with Myst. It'll give an indication of how fast Judaism is founded and whether or not it changes depending on how many AI start with Myst.
 
I vote Oracle CoL. If we want MC, we can easily generate a GM via Caste to bulb it for us. Oh, I'd also like to mention that I think it would be better if we kept our wonder spamming to two cities; our capital and a hammer heavy city.

@neil, I'm pretty excited about this game myself so no worries :p

Will post results from the test games soon :)
 
6 AI with Myst: Judaism- 40-47-59-58-40
As we can see, a lot of randomness involved! It's really a luck of the draw in this game regarding Judaism. There seems to be next to no correlations.

I'm not sure if it is worth carrying on with 3 and then 2 AI. However, I will give it a shot in a bit. Right now, I'm in the middle of a thought experiment which will probably yield to nothing but does seem like an interesting concept.

Edit: I'm not actually sure Chris! :p But I was thinking more long term of cities that will get to Legendary and wonder spamming cities shouldn't have an issue with that considering we ALSO want to optimise research.


Oh, something that crossed my mind is that we CAN found more than 3 corps even if they compete with each other. For example, one of the culture corps competes with mining inc, but we are ONLY going to be spreading our culture corps to L cities and mining to the remaining majority, etc..

Also, spreading a junk corp to an AI can be pretty good in terms of funding research.


/random thoughts
 
We will generate a GM from the GLH. We do not have writing yet, and won't until after Pottery->Myst->Med->PH->Writing.
So, I doubt very much that we can even build the library in GP Farm before the GM is popped.

.... but after Writing, we will probably go for Alphabet, for spies, which means Currency will be unlocked for the bulb. Currency is the best tech we could bulb, as it contributes instantly to our economy, without us having to build anything.

I am easy about if we try Oracle MC or CoL.
 
CoL costs 350 beakers.
MC costs 450.

If we Oracle MC, tech to Alpha & bulb Currency, we then have an extra 20% discount on CoL, for knowing both PH & Currency.

We shouldn't focus totally on fast research at this point in the game. We definitely need to research fast at the end of the game.

I believe our focus should be on growing our empire without crashing our economy. Expansion and Colossus should help a great deal, and half price forges will be awesome for all 3 of our cities, as they all have rather good production.

But that is just my gut feeling. We definitely need to test it out and prove it.
 
neilmeister said:
I believe our focus should be on growing our empire without crashing our economy. Expansion and Colossus should help a great deal, and half price forges will be awesome for all 3 of our cities, as they all have rather good production.
Click to expand...

Currency has nice synergy with our GLH plans, which would help pay for our expansion.

One advantage of taking CoL with the Oracle, is that we would have a religion for another shrine (with a GPro from the Oracle's GPPs). It would be one less we would have to capture (assuming we get one from Brennus).
 
Trystero said:
Currency has nice synergy with our GLH plans, which would help pay for our expansion.

One advantage of taking CoL with the Oracle, is that we would have a religion for another shrine (with a GPro from the Oracle's GPPs). It would be one less we would have to capture (assuming we get one from Brennus).
Click to expand...

Thats true, though one problem with us founding Confused is that we will need a GPro for the shrine. The second great person would ideally be a GS for an Academy.

In the tests I was doing yesterday, I was finishing Writing at the same time as finishing Oracle. So we could choose either (assuming he AI doesn't beat us)

1- Oracle CoL & bulb MC. No waiting for Alpha, can build courthouses, forges & Colossus. Currency a long time away.
2- Oracle MC, research Alpha, bulb Currency, then research CoL. No courthouses for a long time, but Currency, forges & Colossus.
edit: OR 3-
3- Oracle CoL, research Alpha & bulb Currency. Courthouses, Currency but no forges or Colossus for a long time.

I like 2 because new coastal cities will start with 4 trade routes. No help to economy from CoL until we actually build courthouses.

Another question to be asked of everyone, is what to build next. The micro points us at GLH in 'GP Farm', WB & Warrior in 'Production', exploring WB then worker/settler combo out of Paris. After that everything is on the table. The current testing had me whipping a Granary in Paris and overflowing into a lighthouse and finishing it on t73.

Horses are connected on t72
- Paris can start pumping Chariots starting t73. Granary & Lighthouse already built.
- GP Farm can start a Granary or Chariot on t72, the turn GLH is finished
- Production can start Granary or west coast exploring WB on t69.

How many Chariots do we need to take the presumably awesome barb city? 4 or 5?
 
neilmeister said:
Thats true, though one problem with us founding Confused is that we will need a GPro for the shrine. The second great person would ideally be a GS for an Academy.

In the tests I was doing yesterday, I was finishing Writing at the same time as finishing Oracle. So we could choose either (assuming he AI doesn't beat us)

1- Oracle CoL & bulb MC. No waiting for Alpha, can build courthouses, forges & Colossus. Currency a long time away.
2- Oracle MC, research Alpha, bulb Currency, then research CoL. No courthouses for a long time, but Currency, forges & Colossus.
edit: OR 3-
3- Oracle CoL, research Alpha & bulb Currency. Courthouses, Currency but no forges or Colossus for a long time.

I like 2 because new coastal cities will start with 4 trade routes. No help to economy from CoL until we actually build courthouses.
Click to expand...

Yeah - I wasn't necessarily advocating CoL as the best option. I like 2 as well, since MC is the most expensive and we could make immediate use of cheap forges, rather than the courthouses, which would not be really needed until our maintenence costs got above 5 gold/turn/city.

What concerns me is that we need not only 3 holy cities, but 3 shrines. How reliably does the AI build shrines? (I really can't remember this, ATM, since I usually don't pay a lot of attention to this in my games). If the AI is pretty consistent then this is not a concern assuming we can capture 3 (shrined) holy cities. The only real advantage of founding Confucianism is that it is one less holy city to capture. Of course we could (should?) found Taoism, so we'd have that holy city if we miss Confucianism. (Or alternatively could have 2 holy cities if we are first to both CoL and Philosophy.)

Another question to be asked of everyone, is what to build next. The micro points us at GLH in 'GP Farm', WB & Warrior in 'Production', exploring WB then worker/settler combo out of Paris. After that everything is on the table. The current testing had me whipping a Granary in Paris and overflowing into a lighthouse and finishing it on t73.

Horses are connected on t72
- Paris can start pumping Chariots starting t73. Granary & Lighthouse already built.
- GP Farm can start a Granary or Chariot on t72, the turn GLH is finished
- Production can start Granary or west coast exploring WB on t69.

How many Chariots do we need to take the presumably awesome barb city? 4 or 5?
Click to expand...

I agree with Deckhand. I think we'd need 5 chariots.
 
I do like the idea of two, however I'm not sure we NEED to bulb currency. What about settling him? Will that not help our expansion as well straight away with the 5 gold? And we will get currency very soon after anyway. Bulbing currency doesn't seem to have any clear benefit to me.
 
How many great people will we get, and of which types? How long / how many turns do we expect the game to last?

One of the things that impresses me about Plastic Ducks and other top teams is their ability to answer these questions and use the information to plan how to use their great people. I really think we need to have a target for number of turns until victory.
 
As regards Oracle usage I also go with Neil's 2:

2- Oracle MC, research Alpha, bulb Currency, then research CoL. No courthouses for a long time, but Currency, forges & Colossus.
Click to expand...

Financial muscle can always be converted into military muscle. We don't have to self-found the religions (and hopefully shrines). But if we fall back in our core strength areas, it will be harder to win the game, especially with the ten goals.

As regards chariots, I like the 2*defender rule of thumb, given equal or near equal strenghts. You can generally get away with 1 (or for larger stacks 2 or 3) less than the rule of thumb, but don't skimp.
 
Revent said:
I do like the idea of two, however I'm not sure we NEED to bulb currency. What about settling him? Will that not help our expansion as well straight away with the 5 gold? And we will get currency very soon after anyway. Bulbing currency doesn't seem to have any clear benefit to me.
Click to expand...

Currency is better for any empire of >5 cities, or smaller cities with multipliers. The gpt from an extra trade route in each city just blows away the extra five gold. And it has more potential for income growth with the addition of new cities into the empire.

Plus you've also got the cost of research you forego from not bulbing.
 
1) I like option (2) as well. We won't be building (full-price) courthouses for a while and I imagine we'll be whipping enough that we won't need to run more than two specialists at a time. And getting MC asap seems like a good idea for both the (cheap) forges and excellent trade bait.

2) I'm not convinced that we should spend any hammers trying to get the barb city now. I'd rather build our own cities for a while and capture the barb city later with a few melee units. Super especially if it's on a hill.

3) Definitely bulb with the GM. I'd prefer Trade Mission over settle. And those can actually be super powerful mid-game. But I'm pretty confident we'll get another one before the mid-game.

4) Good point Revent about the wonder building. We should try and focus these somewhere so as to focus our culture, just in case we go for that vc.

5) Good work on the micro Neil. Keep it up!
 
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