SGOTM 19: Spectators and lurkers ONLY

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I can access all saves now. Nice work Alan. :goodjob:
 
I wanted to avoid the rng factor of early AI Oracle from being a deciding factor in the competition. Every team going for Oracle first would get boring. I was stunned that almost every team tried for it anyhow.:crazyeye:

We probably should have known better, but all test games pointed to it being very possible and worth attempting. Despite being given IND, access to marble, etc, the AI rarely attempted to build it until much later. Common AI behavior was Archer first followed by some growth to S2 or S3 and then a settler or sometimes even settler at S1 which was even slower.

I know HC had marble + IND + 6H cap at S1 here, but I'm still surprised that you could be sure he would choose to build it so early. It seems to be like RNG would come into play allowing some teams to get the Oracle simply due to HC delaying it.

Did you know for certain he would build it so quickly that it would be impossible for all teams??
 
I think it was an educated guess about HC. He builds wonders 8/10 according to know your enemy. I don't know if having the resource, ie marble, increases the chances of an AI to decide to go for a wonder that gets a bonus from that resource. HC also does tend to go religions too, so also increased the chances for it. In PR's game, HC did probably go for an archer first as HC held out the longest, at least it looks that way from this thread.
 
kcd_swede got HC to build Oracle before the players could pretty reliably. Here's a quote from earlier in this thread:

In my tests...
Spoiler :
One out of about 40 tries I was able to get beakers into Priesthood. t13-14 is as late as I've seen it go. So I am biting my nails since PR are in uncharted waters.:scared:

Shortly after we failed Oracle I guessed (as did others in PR) that no teams would complete Oracle. The reason I mentioned Oracle in the pre-game discussion thread is because I was worried that RNG between teams completing Oracle at different dates (maybe some not at all) would have too much effect. Kcd_swede did a very nice job of preventing that. The only thing that surprises me is that some players ran tests with Ind AIs settled on marble that didn't build Oracle first thing, but I guess HC built it more reliably than more religion-flavored industrious AIs.

Part of the reason most teams went for Oracle is because the rewards were so much greater than the risks. I don't think PR lost much if anything by teching Poly->PH since we needed Poly for Aesth and PH for CoL, and we made up beakers from not trading for Poly/PH by being able to trade for Alpha instead of teching it ourselves. The main way that we might have done better is by selecting HBR as our first tech to capture Asoka's cities sooner, but I don't think any teams did that--I'm not sure any teams even knew about the tundra horses by turn 5.
 
That's a shame, i wish he would've built it earlier in our game to save us a couple of turns into PH.
 
That is one huge stack apostrophe have just found. I count 40 or so units. Leaving nappy last has its price. We faced a lot of units with Alex but all his troops were backwards and in several smaller stacks.
 
That is one huge stack apostrophe have just found. I count 40 or so units. Leaving nappy last has its price. We faced a lot of units with Alex but all his troops were backwards and in several smaller stacks.

47 units total, from their count. Only 7 are pikes/elephants, though, so the cuirassiers should be able to handle it. They are definitely going to take some losses, though. Any idea how many cuirassiers they have nearby? They were talking about having 4 attack stacks, but I assume they will consolidate their forces to hit Napoleon's doom stack.
 
Your Oracle trap / ??? was one of the strong ideas on this well thought out map imo.
While i was thinking the Ironclad was too weak, with it moving away from it's blocking position.

I'm glad you thought the map/scenario well thought out. About the ironclad, its hard to know what top players will find too difficult or too easy. I figured forts would play big, if you had the worker turns to spare. Really, it was a lot of thought to make Alum Corp NOT the obvious choice... when I should probably have put more effort to making sushi less appealing?

Oh well, I learn a lot in these games, too.:goodjob:
 
Loving fact that on Apostrophes game the Nappy stack has just continued to attack Alex while they raze all his cities. The AI are so stupid at times.
 
I'm glad you thought the map/scenario well thought out. About the ironclad, its hard to know what top players will find too difficult or too easy. I figured forts would play big, if you had the worker turns to spare. Really, it was a lot of thought to make Alum Corp NOT the obvious choice... when I should probably have put more effort to making sushi less appealing?
:goodjob: on a well thought out map from me too.

If TSR can pull off a win with Alum Corp, then I don't think Sushi being too appealing was a problem. The main problem with Alum was that nobody ever checks the corp screen. I think we were not the only team who didn't notice it until quite late (how many noticed it in the first couple of turnsets?). Of course that is really our own fault for not checking for any info available, but still I think a subtle hint somewhere in the game introduction wouldn't have been totally out of place. If everybody had known from T0 that Alum Corp is present, then we would have seen which was more appealing.
 
About ASS:
Spoiler :
It seems to me that they are still unaware about Alum. Corp in the barb city. Couldn't find anything relating to that when searching the thread.

Duckweed just posted a list of 8 techs that they need to research, but they could do with half of that amount (Chem, Bank, RP & Lib->Steam Power) if they went for Alum instead. That would be 6 turns instead of 12 turns. Or they could add in rifling to speed up war and still finish teching faster. Obviously they haven't planned for this and making such a radical change of plans at this point probably wouldn't speed up the win date anymore, but I'm starting to see why Alum. could have been a very strong option if you aimed for that right from the beginning. Alum also comes with the added benefit that you don't need to waste a GM founding the corp.
 
It still could end up being reasonably close b/t ASS and TSR. Duckweed thinks they could found their corp on T155. TSR is probably looking at T148 SP (unless they find a lot of extra beakers) with an immediate rush buy of corp exec from GTJ. With their fort and galley chain they can spread to Gondar, a reasonably central city, on T151, 5 turns ahead of ASS.

I think that's enough of a cushion to secure TSR the victory even if ASS manages to get to Med faster than projected, but their corp could be slightly more difficult to spread and they also still have ~28 cities to capture with 1-movers, and not too many turns left to do it. I suspect they will make it all happen though.

I'm interested to see how many cities these teams manage to get rid of too.
 
:goodjob: on a well thought out map from me too.

If TSR can pull off a win with Alum Corp, then I don't think Sushi being too appealing was a problem. The main problem with Alum was that nobody ever checks the corp screen. I think we were not the only team who didn't notice it until quite late (how many noticed it in the first couple of turnsets?). Of course that is really our own fault for not checking for any info available, but still I think a subtle hint somewhere in the game introduction wouldn't have been totally out of place. If everybody had known from T0 that Alum Corp is present, then we would have seen which was more appealing.

Turn zero after initial scout moves :)
Just looking at the save again and noticed a tiny detail: Aluminium Corp has been founded already! All other Corps have not.

Since the demo screen indicates no AI cities have been founded, it must be barb property. And since Alu Corp only needs one resource (coal), I might presume this barb city has been tucked away somewhere pretty inaccessible. I was actually contemplating Alu Corp as an interesting option to go for with the presumeably few resources it would take to monopolize them all. All this seems to indicate the mapmaker might have thought the same and wanted to make this route slightly harder. ;)

Followed by:
Aluminum Co already founded? Very interesting.... That opens the possibility of capturing the HQ and being able to win at Steam Power, without needing to push through to Rocketry to actually found the corporation. You may be right that the map maker will have done something tricky to prevent this from being too easy a target, but that is why exploration will be so important. :) We can try to find the HQ and see if it is possible to capture without ridiculous efforts. I admit I am envisioning a barb city surrounded by mountains with teleport traps, similar to the Evil Lair. :lol:
 
I think the big difference in going for either Sids/Alum is we knew where Sids resources were. Coal could have been anywhere.
 
I think the big difference in going for either Sids/Alum is we knew where Sids resources were. Coal could have been anywhere.

Anyone have a good picture of where the coal is located? We never revealed it in our (MGN) game, and I have not been following the TSR thread closely yet. How hard was it to get control of all the coal?
 
KCD said there's one on the tiny island in the far NW, but the rest are in fairly normal areas and I don't think there are a great deal of them.
 
I think the big difference in going for either Sids/Alum is we knew where Sids resources were. Coal could have been anywhere.
I think at the beginning of the game Sushi and Alum would seem quite equal. It's fewer beakers to Steam Power, but on the other hand you could win on the same turn that you research Med without spending extra time hooking up missing resources.

The Democracy requirement really helps those who go for Alum. It makes conquest by far the strongest VC option, which means that you will have most of the map cleared out by the time you get the corp tech, so there shouldn't be anyone in your way preventing you from hooking up some coal. Any missing coal can for sure be hooked up in the same time that you spread the corp if you have some settlers ready to settle on top of missing resources. That small NW island is probably the most difficult place on the map to hook up, but you should be easily able to get a city up there in the 8-10 turns you need to spread the corp, so it doesn't really slow you down. The demo requirement effectively removes the advantage Sushi had in knowing where the resources are, and clearly makes Alum. the better option in my opinion.
 
FE save shows coal. I count 11 total with the only notable ones being the tiny NW island and the 1 tile island closest to Madrid.
 
You would still need to conquer map for all the coal. As none of the AI would likely be able to trade the coal without steam power.

The main delay on alum corp is spreading it. 3 turns to reach main land. Plus 1-2 turns to reach your cities. A bit slower to spread too as you can't farm it out quickly from the middle of the empire. So bound to be some wastage.

Still all thought out pretty well.
 
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