SGOTM 19 - The Shawshank Redemption

[LowtherCastle]

We capture Constantinople, connect stone, build the Pyramids (8 chops), run scientists for GSes and merchants for cash. Anyway we need to figure outhow to speed up our research on this almost river-free, commerce-resource-free map.

I think this game might boil down to which team captures Constantinople first.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Our exploring warrior has only 1XP. If he recovers full strength and can attack a lion, that would give him +3XP, if I'm not mistaken. With Woodsman II, he could then move more safely through forests.

 

[WastinTime]

we need to figure outhow to speed up our research on this almost river-free, commerce-resource-free map.

I agree, but pyramids doesn't seem right with our race to Const.
Capturing mids is fine.

The best way to get to Const on a riverless food/hammer map (not counting mids) is Currency

I would be game for the mids rush if someone pushed for it and tested it. I haven't ruled it out. I plan to test Math->Currency->CS. If I can get to CS that way by T73, we have a winner. I'll run those tests as soon as we get up to Math.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Our scout has gone 37 tiles out of 52 tiles westward. Looks like there might be one more AI in the southern half, or Humbubba. I think he should now move 1 tile at a time, sticking to flatland generally.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I agree, but pyramids doesn't seem right with our race to Const.
Capturing mids is fine.

The best way to get to Const on a riverless food/hammer map (not counting mids) is Currency

Sure, I get that, but Currency is a lot of beakers. Furthermore, by my calculations, our biggest tech stretch is Nationalism and Constitution. That's a ton of turns and the Mids could halve that. I'd give up the eight chops in a heartbeat for the Pyramids, especially on this layout.

Another alternative is lots of coastal cities and the Colossus, but we're not teching MC either.

xedit

 

[LowtherCastle]

Of course, there's also Failed Gold...I guess...

 

[LowtherCastle]

Who do we want to put our espies on?

 

[WastinTime]

Sure, I get that, but Currency is a lot of beakers. Furthermore, by my calculations, our biggest tech stretch is Nationalism and Constitution. That's a ton of turns and the Mids could halve that. I'd give up the eight chops in a heartbeat for the Pyramids, especially on this layout.

yea, and we really do need a lot of GS's after Const, so it would be great synergy to already be running an SE. Hmm..

What is it you are suggesting? Are you saying you want WheatSheep #3 so we can focus on the army ASAP? Or can we just proceed with goldcity and then make that our priority? I want goldcity first. Worst case, chasing the mids, we get some failgold.

 

[WastinTime]

Who do we want to put our espies on?

I'd like to see Asoka's research, then change EPs.

 

[WastinTime]

Our scout has gone 37 tiles out of 52 tiles westward. Looks like there might be one more AI in the southern half, or Humbubba. I think he should now move 1 tile at a time, sticking to flatland generally.

I would keep moving him 2 for a bit. Try to find one more AI and get inside open borders. He's going to have to die soon anyway.

 

[WastinTime]

I'm out for about 24 hours, so let me know if ya'all just want me to formalize my plans into a PPP for 26-35. It's almost done already. I could even work it out up to Math. But if ZPV wants to continue or Jastrow wants the easy turnset, go ahead.

 

[LowtherCastle]

yea, and we really do need a lot of GS's after Const, so it would be great synergy to already be running an SE. Hmm..

What is it you are suggesting? Are you saying you want WheatSheep #3 so we can focus on the army ASAP? Or can we just proceed with goldcity and then make that our priority? I want goldcity first. Worst case, chasing the mids, we get some failgold.

First of all, I completely forgot that we might not even get the Pyramids...

Otherwise, I'm just looking at the map and trying to figure out where and when we want to settle. Neither Gold nor WheatSheep are really on the path to Constantinople. That would be more HorseRice. Maybe there's a city beneath the gold.

I doubt our axe will get to Asoka's horse tile before the horses are connected. Will we DOW and deprive him of horses? If so, what does that do to our waar plans?

 

[Mitchum]

Going for the 'Mids and a Constitution beeline is a bit belt and braces, no? If we're really going to take a shot at the 'Mids, then I think we should be looking at other techs on the wider Democracy beeline to see if we want to scoop any of them up on our way to Democracy. I guess the only tech that would really make sense would be Metal Casting and only if we can get it soon enough to be a monopoly. So our tech path could go CoL -> Math (bulb or trade?) -> CS -> MC. We could trade MC around in the hopes that an AI picks up Machinery before we have to go for PP. Just a thought...

So, I guess our warring will be with axes and a couple of spear stack protectors, right? I have heard no talk of Construction or HBR (other than Dhoom). So how far do you think we can get with axes and possible swords once we can pick up IW in trade? 18 cities by T90 sounds tough... especially since axes are soooo slow.

 

[Mitchum]

Regarding library vs. archer in LM, am I the only one that's a bit nervous about the coming barb axe/spear invasion? The AI are starting to lay down their second cities. It can't be too long until the barbs will enter our borders. I'd feel a lot better having a spawn buster both north of LM and south of the capital. Any barbs west of the lake between us and Asoka (i.e. from the top to the bottom of the map at the longitude of the lake) may go his way but anything due north and due south is ours. Let's get some protection in place before we assume that we can just REX to our heart's content.

Gold City is going to be out in the open and the axe will likely be parked in the city for the foreseeable future (unless we fully spawn bust its SE, I guess). If we're planning to settle HorseRice #4, it will be a barb magnet as well. Luckily barbs don't pillage roads in the wild but getting the roads built in the first place is going to be a chore.

How many units do we need actively spawn busting to allow us to REX to Gold City and the southern path to via HorseRice to Asoka?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

@ZPV: Thanks for playing your turnset very well. I have been overly pessimistic. You played it out great according to one of the posted plans, which is what counts.

Q: close borders before they demand it? I think yes.

Makes sense, given that we are far away from getting Foreign Trade Routes (unless Rice City is going to be City #3).

Q: Archer or Library in ELake? I think library

But, how do we plan to 2-pop-whip a Library without a Military Police unit to control Happiness?

T35: goldcity settler moves, build something to grow on and whip 1
...
T33: At size 4, (one angry) start worker
T34: whip worker
T35 worker moves, finish Archer (1) or continue library

If both units will come out at roughly the same time, which unit do we want to be more in the north, the Settler or the Worker? Then again, is it possible to earn 10 Hammers in a Settler in 1 turn in City 2?

Worker:
5 turns on quarry
move
1 turn corn-road
FP cottage
(beyond T35, finish corn road when needed, and grass cottage) At this point Trumpster is done with the GS and needs tiles to work.

Why keep losing turns to movement? Why not just finish a Road at Trumpster-1SW?
EDIT: Since I'm now wanting Wheat City to be City #3, the Road there makes perfect sense.

One option is we keep running 2 sci in Trumpter until T73 We will time CS and Philo both then.

Since we have chosen to share squares with Trumpster, it kind of makes sense to do so (if we really want a fast 2nd Great Scientist--I'm not convinced that we do), and then we could skip a Library in City 2 in order to build more Military Units (say, 2-pop-whip an Axeman into a Monument, even, for net-neutral Happiness from that whipping action) or another Settler.


RE: Pyramids
Settlers are cheap for us. Settle a Stone City and a gifted junky City near our empire and get a Road between our Stone and our capital.


RE: Currency
Currency is one of the easiest techs to get in trade, with only Monarchy, Alphabet, Philosophy, and Calendar being easier, on the list of techs that we looked at. (Monarchy I didn't have to check, since everyone will trade it when it is a monopoly tech.)


RE: Warrior Fight
Generally, you can get more XP by attacking with a unit, but defending with a Warrior who has 1X P will give us much better odds than attacking a Lion and we'd still get our Woodsman I promotion even with just +1 XP.


RE: EPs
We'll probably want to pick an AI who will trade techs readily, so as to avoid duplicating Research with that AI.

Of our choices:
Leader = iTechTradeKnownPercent, iNoTechTradeThreshold
Asoka = 20, 10
Alexander = 30, 5
Napoleon = 60, 10
Tokugawa = 100, 5

Well, Asoka is Alex's and Toku's Worst Enemy, while Alex is Asoka's Worst Enemy. I'd probably still stick with Asoka and just hope that when we make trades with him, the trades will be close enough to "fair" that we won't earn too many "You Traded with our Worst Enemy" penalties from the other AIs.

I'd be hesitant to switch away from Asoka until we have a large lead on him in EPs so as to be able to see his research for a long time afterward... flip-flopping between two AIs just causes the 2nd AI to spend more EPs on you than it otherwise would have.


City 3

Are you saying you want WheatSheep #3 so we can focus on the army ASAP?

It does make a lot more sense for us to settle a City that can grow ASAP as City #3. We can get a lot more use out of a City that can whip a lot, rather than stagnate at Size 1 or Size 2 for a very long time.

Gold City offers +1 Happiness... if we get a Road to the City. It might better to wait for a bit later to get Gold City when we can get a Road to the City around the time that we'll settle it, i.e. at a time when Wheat City could use the extra Happiness from all of the whipping that it has been doing. Wheat City as City #3 sounds like the stronger play, especially if one of our first two Cities will be generating Great Scientist #2 and won't need the extra Happiness (i.e. Gold City's Happiness would only benefit 1 City if Gold City is #3... it just doesn't sound as good as before when we weren't planning on getting a 2nd Great Scientist out so quickly).

Even without a fast Great Scientist, I have trouble with Gold City now that we have chosen to go for the non-Military-Unit spam approach out of City 2. I would have supported Gold City as City #3 with a Military-Unit-heavy approach, but it's potentially going to be razed, if we even get to build it at all. A City that is closer to our empire seems much stronger and the Wheat location is good if for no other reasons than it is close and our Worker can improve the Wheat after improving the Marble, so it can get going right from the start, while a Rice City would have to wait a while before it got going at a similar pace.

I have heard no talk of Construction or HBR (other than Dhoom).

Construction... HBR...


RE: Military Units

18 cities by T90 sounds tough

It is a laughably unachievable goal without Cats or Horse Archers.

I'd rather forget the 2nd Great Scientist for a while, focus on spamming Settlers, Workers, and Axemen defenders, get a Stone City set up and a junky gift City set up and thereby net ourselves The Pyramids.

EDIT: The Pyramids = tech path flexibility + Police State for getting our Cities + Representation once we own more Cities.

One Great Scientist... fine. A second one so early really hurts us.

Democracy will come eventually, but if we focus on getting a Stone City and a Road connection to an AI, we'll be able to get their via a more round-about route... sure, Nationalism can be self-teched after Construction, Metal Casting, and Literature... once we eventually get our 2nd Great Scientist at a leisurely pace. The Pyramids gives us a lot of options and a much more balanced empire. Worst case, we get beaten to The Pyramids and then we have a staging City (a Stone City) to send a stack of Catapults to before stealing The Pyramids from an AI.

EDIT: It will also be painful to get Bureaucracy and then NOT be whipping in Trumpster. Bureaucracy's main benefit will be the extra Hammers... 2 Scientists will contribute no direct value to Bureaucracy.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Why a Gifted City?
- It saves our Worker turns for something useful
- We should get 1 to 2 AI Workers coming to our core area, at which time we can capture the Worker or Workers + the City
- We're Imperialistic, so a Settler costs us roughly 67 Hammers, not much more than a Worker
- It means that we don't have to commit to guarding our Workers in the field
- It messes up an AI's tech rate by a bit
- An AI who loses Workers to Barbs will keep sending more Workers our way, messing up that AI a bit more
- We could gift a City in a location that we will want in the long term (say, at the Rice City location) but don't necessarily need in the short term, and then coincidentally temporarily open up Foreign Trade Routes or at least a Trade Network with Asoka (a Trade Network would get us a chance at Buddhism spreading to us)


So, I'd see us doing something like:
- Wheat City as City #3, which can help with REXing
- Rice City gets gifted
- Gold, Rice, and Stone Cities as Cities #4, #5, and #6, in some order, depending upon how quickly we get a Road up to the Gold City area and how much in jeopardy we feel that The Pyramids will be
- Bureaucracy -> Construction -> whatever (Literature if we somehow get Aeasthetics in trade? Metal Casting?) -> only much later grab Nationalism for Trade Bait + later-game a Golden Age when we have several Cities to make use of said Golden Age
- We plan to build The Pyramids with Stone, but if we fail to build them, we Chop out an army of Catapults and take The Pyramids from its builder, using our Stone City as a way to keep Unit Supply Costs down while gathering our army in the field
- Our first Axeman acts as a temporarily Military Police unit in City 2, then spawn-busts north of there while an Archer replaces him as a Military Police unit, and then after our Worker does useful stuff (like an FP Cottage that Worker 1 didn't have time to do, what with Worker 1 being busy preparing Wheat City, and perhaps a G Riv Sugar Farm), we can have our Axeman guard our Worker as the Worker Roads toward the Gold City location
EDIT:
- Axeman 1 acts as a temporary Military Police unit in Late Megacity -> Fortifies at the Wheat City location to spawn-bust it and to build its Fortification bonus
- Worker 1 Quarries the Marble, build a Road at Trumpster-1SW, then Roads toward the Wheat and Farms it... giving us the +2 Healthiness that we wanted (so we can skip the Corn Road for now)
- Worker 2 gets built out of Late MegaCity and improves that City for a bit... FP Cottage... Chops into additional Workers once Math is in... G Riv Sugar Farm... Roads to Rice + Gold Cities
- Late Megacity, after whipping its Worker, will complete its Archer and then can put Hammers into a Monument while it waits to be able to 2-pop-whip an Axeman into completing the Axeman (to guard a Worker or two Roading toward Gold City) and overflows into completing the Monument, for net-neutral Happiness from the whipping action

- We figure out a way to get a Monument in Trumpster after completing the Wheat City Settler
- REXing (safely) and getting The Pyramids take priority over a war with Asoka, but we plan to go down on Asoka once our Stone City and planned Road-building AI are set in motion, using Cats + Axes + the odd Spearman to capture Asoka's Cities efficiently
- Great Scientist #2 can come much later... if we miss The Pyramids, build an army and go take The Pyramids, forgetting about a Constitution beeline (it is just so expensive without Lightbulbs beyond Philosophy... unless someone can find a way to Lightbulb part of Nationalism or Constitution)
- A City built for a Stone Resource could always Chop + Whip out a Courthouse if finances are tight

 

[WastinTime]

2 Scientists will contribute no direct value to Bureaucracy.

We're done running scientists after we get Bureau cus we time Philo and CS to come together (for a hr, bureau, caste, pacifism switch). If we don't have mids then scientists are not a priority at this point.

We should not get distracted by too many techs on our way to Democracy. If we're gonna wait around for the AIs to get Currency (which is painful) then we should be able to wait for free MC, Construction, HBR, etc.

Gold city: We need gold city for the gold (happy) and mainly the research boost. We can't lose the land grab battle and wait to capture it. I don't care if the city is at size 1 for a long time. It's making 8 commerce. It has some forests too. Our economy will collapse without it.

RE: road SW of Trumpster...of course we will finish that road if it's started (or maybe even if it's not.) I was just doing a quick test, not a full micro PPP. btw, if it does have 1 turn in that road already then there should be a sign posted.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I'm pretty sure that there is no partial Road on the square at Trumpster-1SW.

Gold City's +1 Happiness won't come for quite some time, not until well after Wheat City has productively grown and whipped a couple of times.

I edited my above message... ZPV's approach was to get us an earlier Worker 2 at the cost of delaying Settler 3... well, let's capitalize on this approach and get our Wheat City set up, using the new Worker to improve Late Megacity and then Late Megacity can produce a defender to guard a Worker Roading northward.

A delay in settling Gold City will also mean settling the City faster from the time of the Settler being built to the time of the City's founding, due to having a Road going most of the way to Gold City.

We'll also have to figure out how we're going to guard a Settler heading toward a Stone location... perhaps we'll get lucky and Axeman 1 will earn his way up to Woodsman II while he spawn-busts and later defends the Wheat City location.

If you really insist on Gold City as City #3, play it out and show us when we will get the City, when the Gold will get Mined, and when the +1 Happiness will come in. I believe that Wheat City's contribution by that date will far outstrip what Gold City could have contributed in the intervening turns.

 

[WastinTime]

If you really insist on Gold City as City #3, play it out and show us when we will get the City, when the Gold will get Mined, and when the +1 Happiness will come in. I believe that Wheat City's contribution by that date will far outstrip what Gold City could have contributed in the intervening turns.

I played it out and got CS and philo T73.
EDIT: gold was being worked T43. No idea when it gets connected to our empire.

If you insist on WheatSheep #3, then You show me that we can get WheatSheep first and then not screw up our economy.

 

[WastinTime]

Hold on. Is Wheatcity even that great? No. We won't get Sheep for a long time and the Wheat is dry Neither the Wheat or the Sheep are on a river. Why are we even talking about this city for #3?