SGOTM 19 - The Shawshank Redemption

[LowtherCastle]

With the copper gift and a potential immediate ax rush, I have to assume that there are no close neighbors. I'm willing to war as soon as it makes economic sense. Certainly before Cuirassiers. We should aim for 30 cities by 1AD, T115. That's a good target for Democracy too I think. Build the Statue of Liberty in 1 turn.

Now that's what I call a strategic plan. I like it. Since we have to run castes (or build some specialist-building in every city) we should have our primary whipping done by then too.

 

[Mitchum]

A wise man once said:

Regarding AH or BW, that question never occured to me, as one of the few rules I follow is, "always improve the food first" , and I'm sure that's one of the very few good rules there exist.

So it seemed strange that both Seraiel and WT were both improving the copper before pigs and/or corn. Did it have something to do with the timing of the granary or getting it to a 1-pop whip ASAP?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Starting saves are out. Here is a link to our saved game.

 

[WastinTime]

So it seemed strange that both Seraiel and WT were both improving the copper before pigs and/or corn. Did it have something to do with the timing of the granary or getting it to a 1-pop whip ASAP?

Why is that strange? Pre-granary, your food is being wasted. A 6 food pig is really like 3 food. It's best to work the hammers first.

 

[WastinTime]

So, we are in the dead center. The Warrior/Scout are just above the center line (They can move 15 tiles to the north and 16 tiles South) To determine this: It's best to pause the game, but you don't have to if you trust your mouse. You can tell this by right clicking anywhere on the map and dragging around. When you hit the end of the map, the 'goto' cursor stops.

Center would have been my guess. We have saltwater to the west, so we have to go around one way or the other to find our neighbors. Probably not close... as we figured.

 

[WastinTime]

So I'm for having the scout go towards the Marble and the Warrior NW.

I just counted 9-10 hammers if we settle on the PH and 18-20!! if we settle 2S. Fog-gazing shows there is a hill south of the Pigs and another one 2W. That seems like a no-brainer. That means we can't settle on the marble....which means we can't get it hooked up in time for a reasonable Oracle play.

So, the worker has to do the Pigs before Copper. I think I prefer those over dry-corn.

The AI starts with PHood. I didn't know that when I ran my test, but it was posted a few days ago. Not only will they probably beat us to the Oracle, but they may also go for CoL for the religion.

On turn 5, if we don't go for Medi/PH, then I think our best research path is going to be Math, Currency. Trade math for Alpha, trade Currency for CoL. Then CS. If the AI is really slow or uncooperative, at least we can move on with CoL/CS. We won't need Medi/PH to get to CoL. A detour to Literature is also wise.

Currency will really help if we REX. I don't like to get more than 6-8 cities before currency.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Observations:

1. Rice is wet.
2. All AIs have 35K power to our 28K, as expected. That means no Mansa with skirmishers.

 

[Mitchum]

Why is that strange? Pre-granary, your food is being wasted. A 6 food pig is really like 3 food. It's best to work the hammers first.

Really? I get that food is worth less pre-granary but you still have to grow the city, right? I thought food > hammers even at the very beginning of the game. The sooner we grow to 4 pops the sooner we can whip a settler for city #2...

Regarding the GoTo command, it's been discussed and is disallowed in SGOTM based on general agreement as far as I recall. I've heard that you can even use it to map out hills and such. In any event, I think we should refrain from using it since it tells us things that we really aren't supposed to know. My $0.02.

Regarding the Oracle, we've been discussing the fact that the AI start with PH for a while now. I thought the consensus was that the AI would 99% not build Oracle first but would go archer -> settler before even thinking about the Oracle. I thought the general idea was that the team was willing to take a small gamble on the Oracle. It sounds like we need to revisit that decision because I still think it's worth the gamble, especially with marble.

 

[WastinTime]

I've never understood what the 'flying camera' trick is. I understand that is not allowed, but I asked my previous team about this 'go to' thing before I used it, and they said that was OK. Is it really banned? If so, I won't use it again, it's not really very important information anyway.

 

[Seraiel]

A wise man once said:



So it seemed strange that both Seraiel and WT were both improving the copper before pigs and/or corn. Did it have something to do with the timing of the granary or getting it to a 1-pop whip ASAP?

The now improved, and even better, "wise man" now tells:

1 = 1 without a Granary
(Riverside) Grassland Copper (6 yields (+1 ) > dry Corn (5 yields)

With a Granary however, 1 gets doubled to 2 so then:
Dry Corn (10 yields) > Riverside Grassland Copper (6 yields) .

------------

Regarding AI beating us to Oracle, I don't see that yet. We're playing on Immortal, AI afaik always builds a Settler with 100% priority choosing the next build while being at 1 city. (I think I recall that info from Tachywaxon , but we could check in Worldbuilder just to be completely sure) .

Oracle costing 150 on normal though, changes things for me. 150 is a Settler, then Oracle is still better, but only if gotten, which as said, we can check via Worldbuilder-testruns.

150 imho don't justify a city that has no , because then it's 300 wasted, because cities without just don't help at all, and early game, production is very critical. 150 for Oracle are ok, they're better than 75 + 150 for Marble-Oracle + a wasted Settler.

Regarding warring however, I think 30 cities at 1 AD are not possible on normal speed.
I achieved 11 cities in my 8xx AD Domination game, that's holding a #1 for non-Incan games on Standard / normal. The scaling is simply completely different, maybe 15 cities are possible, 20 I already find unbelievable even with having bonuses.
Just recall the last SGOTM, best teams had 12-15 cities at 1 AD. 30 is possible on Marathon with an ok -> good UU, but normal follows other rules.

Regarding Democracy beeline: I'm very sure, that the speed of Conquest is the greatest factor, and we definately should commit to 1 early unit. I'm leaning more and more away from Horse-Archers though and towards Elepult, because teams in last SGOTM showed, that any form of Catapult war can actually work on the same level as an incredible well executed HA-rush, that's correct, isn't it? TSR and Ducks went for Catapult wars, only we at Kakumeika committed to Horse Archers, and we sometimes weren't sure if we'd be successful at all, so it was incredibly close sometimes.

------------

Out for now.

 

[WastinTime]

Regarding the Oracle, we've been discussing the fact that the AI start with PH for a while now. I thought the consensus was that the AI would 99% not build Oracle first but would go archer -> settler before even thinking about the Oracle. I thought the general idea was that the team was willing to take a small gamble on the Oracle. It sounds like we need to revisit that decision because I still think it's worth the gamble, especially with marble.

Correct, I know we have all been aware of the PH thing for a while, but I was pointing out that when I tested for an early (T25) Oracle...and I was trying to show that we can do it earlier than the projected Oracle dates, that could be interpreted that I am still for the Oracle gamble. I am not. It's mostly the Settle 2S change and not PH that changed my mind. I was liking settling on the plainshill before the save came out.

Let me run a couple tests and see how it looks now that we have to quarry the marble. I do NOT want to make a 2nd worker before a settler.

 

[LowtherCastle]

GoTo is frowned upon by ethical players but I don't believe it's been explicitly banned for more than one or two SGs. There is another way to determine where a flat map boundaries are without the GoTo tool. I think we should simply agree to not use these "tools" since we all know they're not meant to be used. Team agreement. Who cares what anyone else does.

It was more or less obvious we're in the north-south center based on the type of forest. We in the temperate zone of forest with one colder forest to the south.

For exploration purposes, we need to decide how far toward the north and south tundra/ice we want to explore initially. By the time we get Democracy, we should have scouted simply everything.

I'm personally in favor of settling 2S, always have been, unless someone's going to propose a strategy with an Oxford beeline.

xpost

 

[WastinTime]

With a Granary however, 1 gets doubled to 2 so then:
Dry Corn (10 yields) > Riverside Grassland Copper (6 yields) .

Why does the corn get it's food doubled, but the copper doesn't? I guess it's still 10 > 8

 

[LowtherCastle]

We can easily connect the marble by about T23/24, settling 2S. The question to me is do we want to build another worker before the settler, or what? I would prefer to build Oracle in City 2.

 

[LowtherCastle]

The way I view early food, especially starting with slavery, is that 22/24/26 food = 30 hammers.

IN any case, in my tests, I've found two things:

1. We want to improve and work those tiles asap. As fast as the worker is, so fast we want to grow, plus the 1whip, or faster.
2. We want to 1whip the granary asap.

The best start is an optimization of tthose two.

 

[WastinTime]

Sounds like we have enough info to play 5 turns, yes? (up to where we commit to research, don't move the worker after the Pig pasture.)

 

[LowtherCastle]

Got it! (In keeping with the spirit of faster play.)

 

[LowtherCastle]

PPP Turns 0-5

T0 adopt Slavery.

Assuming we will settle 2S, I'll move the settle 2S first. That will defog some hills to the SW. Who knows, we might see something so juicy, we won't want to move our worker to the ph tile.
Move warrior NW and explore north- and westward probably, depending on what appears. For now looking for our next city site.
Worker to the ph tile.
Scout does the same going south- and westward in the fastest sensible manner.

Settle 2S, build granary with optimized MM (yet to be finalized).
Pasture piglets.

Set research to nothing each turn.

Make save each turn.

Study demographics for all they're worth.

Stop on T5 before making any irreversible moves.

~~~

Open questions:
1. Settle 2S or SIP?
2. BUild granary?
3. Optimal MM?

I plan to play on SUnday at the latest, sooner if we come to agreement. I reserve the right to play 24 hours after this date stamp.

 

[WastinTime]

Don't forget Slavery on turn 0

 

[WastinTime]

I'm for Settle 2S, granary, pigs first.

If we can get an agreement on that, I'd like to see you play today. Once we have some of the surrounding area revealed, we can run some more realistic tests out to 6 cities.