SGOTM 17 - The Shawshank Redemption

[Jastrow]

The saves come out tomorrow. Who's up first and do we have an agreed first move? Archer SW?

I think we all agree on Archer SW, and Scout first step NW. Does anyone disagree??

If not, we should pick someone to do that as soon as the save is released and post the pics.

 

[ingentingg]

I can pick up the game anytime between 16.00-24.00 UCT/GMT.
Do anyone know at which hour the save is released?

 

[Mitchum]

@ Jastrow I agree with those two initial moves.

If we do research CoL that late (i.e. Math -> Currency -> Col), it won't net us a religion if that's what we're after...

I can pick up the game anytime between 16.00-24.00 UCT/GMT.
Do anyone know at which hour the save is released?

18.5 hours from the posting of this message.

 

[Jastrow]

I am not *that* much after a religion. My plan is to emphasis growth by enhancing forrest chops, getting an extra trade route and getting our cheap courthouses. A (very lucky) religion would be a bonus, but I am not at all counting on it.

 

[ingentingg]

@ Jastrow I agree with those two initial moves.

If we do research CoL that late (i.e. Math -> Currency -> Col), it won't net us a religion if that's what we're after...



18.5 hours from the posting of this message.

Ok, If anyone of you on the other side of the globe are still up then, feel free to make the move.
Remember that it's not possible to upload a game on turn 0.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I'm saying that after 6 turns of exploration, we'll see:
a) Nearby Resources
b) Nearby abundance or lack of Jungles
c) A couple of tentative Resources to settle near (we won't have fully explored precisely where to settle) that could dictate which techs to go for
d) Whether we were able to meet any nearby AI neighbours

From there we make the decision on how to best go about getting ourselves some Happiness.

So are you suggesting that we might pick CoL as our first tech?

To address your question directly, if we end up being isolated, we won't anger our neighbours by having a State Religion but it would certainly help us in expanding our Cultural Borders and giving us a bit more Happiness.

If we aren't isolated, we'll be able to cultivate a potential ally (someone that we can bribe into war for Mutual Military Struggle positive Diplo and thereby hopefully get up to Friendly status for heavy tech trading).

So, unlike the concerns about isolation messing up an Alphabet beeline, we'd still greatly benefit from Code of Laws... in fact, if we are isolated, we could benefit a lot, as we'd actually have a Religion and could make very effective use of Organized Religion with a small investment in 2 more cheap techs.

The typical "need to get Slavery, Worker techs, Granaries, Lighthouses, etc unlocked ASAP makes beelining a Religion a bad thing" line of thinking doesn't have to apply here, since we already have those things unlocked right from the start.

The big tipping point for me is that Confucian Organized Religion would give us a good way to pump out Granaries + our Unique Courthouse Building (the Rathaus) to help us REX like mad if we really do have 1/4 of the world all to ourselves, while also provided some much-desired additional Happiness.


As I said, we'll have to make a more-informed decision later. For example, if we meet 2 AI Scouts within the first 6 Scout + Archer moves, then early Alphabet really might make sense. For now, I just wanted to put the idea out there that a good short-term teching goal would be to accumulate additional Happiness and going for Code of Laws from the start is just one possible way to achieve that goal.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I think we all agree on Archer SW, and Scout first step NW. Does anyone disagree??

LowtherCastle mentioned that he'd like those two moves to happen independently of each other, with the Scout moving 1NW first.


For example, if we spot something really great with the Scout, we may seriously end up considering sending our Settler north-west-ward. If we'd consider doing so, then perhaps the Archer would also be better off moving north-west, as we can always scout the area around out starting location on the coast at a later time for a potential second or third City.

Also, after the Scout moves 1NW Grassland (1NW of the western G Banana), it would be nice to have a paused saved game uploaded that people can use for fog-gazing.


That said, I would also be okay with the following approach:
1. Scout moves 1NW Grassland (1NW of the western G Banana)
2. Only if no new Resources were revealed by the Scout's first move, move the Archer 1SW Grassland (1S of the western Lake) [If new Resources were revealed, don't move the Archer]
3. Pause the game
4. Save and upload the game

Then, we'd try our hand at fog-gazing to see what other info we might reveal.

getting our cheap courthouses.

Just to be clear, the Courthouses would only cost less Hammers to build if we first had Forges or a State Religion + Organized Religion. However, our Courthouses will impact our economy more significantly than they normally would.

It would be worth testing to see if our Unique Building affects any other aspects of Maintenance that don't appear in the City screen, such as Civic Maintenance.

Ok, If anyone of you on the other side of the globe are still up then, feel free to make the move.
Remember that it's not possible to upload a game on turn 0.

Uhhhhhhh... it's not? Well, in that case, whoever plays the opening move (or opening moves if the Scout reveals no new Resources) should attach the paused saved game to a message in our thread.

I mean, the alternative would be for people to be fog-gazing with an older version of the saved game, which just has mis-click issues written all over it.

 

[Jastrow]

As I read the rules (check the current maintenance tread), passing the save in the thread is specifically forbidden.

 

[chopster]

According to AlanH's post, saves come out at 4pm my time.
I'll have some time I can dedicate tonight to making the first move (if it is explicitly agreed upon) and taking screenshots for the team.

Also, other than a couple of requests to be "in the middle" of the roster, I'll propose a roster order tonight also.

If it is not possible to upload a Turn 0 save (and we can't pass via the thread), and the team is in agreement on me making the first move, then I guess I would be first up, even if it was only a single turn turnset.

 

[ZPV]

The sgotm download page won't display any t0 saves except for the starting saves.

Passing saves from one turnset to the next is by uploading to the server only. Personally I'm comfortable using either the server or thread attachments for mid-turnset "just looking" saves.

The first archer move and scout half-move can go together - neither should really interfere with the other. They might reveal something to make our settling decision for us, but probably we'll end up moving the scout again without showing anything new.

Much more interesting to me is what we do with the worker and settler. If there's a site with some genuine power land tiles, we'll be better off moving, and then settling the bananas later.
The talk about building a farm before chopping reinforces that for me - improving a resource instead of building a grassland farm would be much more powerful.
Probably the worker should go north-north, unless we see that we're not going to find anything out that way.

 

[chopster]

Much more interesting to me is what we do with the worker and settler. If there's a site with some genuine power land tiles, we'll be better off moving, and then settling the bananas later.
The talk about building a farm before chopping reinforces that for me - improving a resource instead of building a grassland farm would be much more powerful.

This.

I keep thinking of power tiles and the huge impact they can have on the value of a city.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

The sgotm download page won't display any t0 saves except for the starting saves.

However, you are presumably still able to upload such a saved game, right? If you can upload it, then the person uploading it should get a link to that saved game.

Right-clicking on that link and selecting "Copy Link Location" or "Copy Shortcut" should copy that shortcut into your copy & paste buffer and then you'd only need to paste the link into a message in our thread.

To make a phrase of text linkable in our thread, you would first type the text, such as "real saved game (paused)" and then highlight that text with your mouse. From there, you can click on the Insert Link icon (

) of the forum message editor and then paste the link (Ctrl + v or right-click -> Paste) that you copied from the Submissions page.


It certainly would be nice if we found a better location to settle, but we'll have to balance looking for such a location against the urgency of settling soon and just getting to work on building additional Settlers.

 

[ZPV]

I'm not sure. I think uploading them was disabled, because there wouldn't ever be a link displayed on the main progress page, even if you could copy the link from the submission form.

 

[chopster]

I've updated my first post to include an initial suggested roster to work from.

My name at the top was based only on being available shortly after the saves are, to post detailed screenshots and make initial (agreed) moves as early as possible.

Please feel free to suggest any changes.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

You should be able to upload a Turn 0 save. I made the necessary script changes a couple of years ago. There is no evidence in the saves for previous SGOTMs that any team has actually used the facility, so I just tried it with a copy of a start file from SGOTM 16, and it uploaded fine.

So, we should have no difficulty with uploading a Turn 0 saved game.

 

[chopster]

Unless I hear explicitly a consensus to make a move, I will only download the save, open it and take screenshots.

I'm likely to be able to do this around 3 hours after the timestamp on this post.

 

[chopster]

OK, I have the save and I will just make some screenshots.

 

[chopster]

Full starting screenshot

Spoiler :

Western Fog

Spoiler :

Northwest Fog

Spoiler :

Northern Fog

Spoiler :

Demographics

Spoiler :

Settings (in case there is any useful info there that wasn't in the pregame thread)

Spoiler :

The game was paused, screenshots taken and then exit to desktop - NO MOVES WERE MADE and no save was taken.

I'm far from a great fog gazer, but I don't think there's anything additional that would influence our decision making from these screenshots of our starting position compared to the pre game thread one.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Normally when I do fog-gazing, and perhaps that's because I'm not so good at fog-gazing as I am at under-the-fog recreating, I have a test game and a real game and I take identical screenshots of each... and then I compare the differences by flipping between the two screenshots... then I change the test game's terrain and take a new screenshot of the test game. I repeat this process until I get the screenshot of the real game looking like the screenshot of the most up-to-date test game.

As for explicit fog-gazing, I'm not great at it myself, but it does indeed look like there is land at the square SW + S + S of the Archer, as was mentioned earlier, and SW + SW + W of the Archer.


Everyone who spoke up agreed on moving the Scout one square 1NW to the Grassland square. That's moving from the G Banana to the Grassland square 1NE of the western Lake.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Note that when I take screenshots for comparing, I tend to click on a unit and press "c" to centre the screen on that unit. In that way, I can ensure that I'll get identical screenshots across two different saved games.


Assuming that the AI starting units have not been tampered with, the 42000 Soldier value indicates that one of Hammurabi or Mansa Musa is in the game. The 38666 average value indicates that only one of them in the game.