SGOTM 20 - Civ Geeks United

[Noble Zarkon]

That was what I had guessed initially, but the website I looked at said differently.

I guess it suffices to say that you two are significantly ahead of the rest of us.

I'm in the UK - well I'm in Egypt right now lol but I live in the UK so GMT +0 in the winter and +1 in the Summer (British Summer Time our equivalent to DST).

 

[shulec]

shulec was the same, but which time zone do you belong to now?

Still in Chicogland, so -5 GMT

About exploration... I would ultimately want to get the scout back to our capitol for barb fog busting. Hammers wasted on barbs are expensive. If land is such that we won't need the scout to fog bust, I definitely agree with getting him out exploring.

As for as having big picture implications, I think settling the capitol in the optimal location is Paramount. We also don't know if there are barbarians to the south. I don't want to put our scout at risk

 

[zbgayumn]

I would also usually say that the optimal capital site is the highest priority. The hidden objective makes things a little more complicated, but doesn't really override that. I suspect that if we gained a lot of information about the former capital and the other civs by t10 or t15, we wouldn't really be able to do anything about it. We want to strike a balance between or knowledge of the surrounding world and our capacity to act. On t0 (or t1) we have the capacity to settle a city, so it makes sense to maximize knowledge directly related to that. For the next 25 or 30 turns, we'll have limited capacity to act, so there will be time to explore the map.

Sending the archer south definitely decreases the risk of losing a unit. There shouldn't be anything capable of killing an archer wandering around out there (fingers crossed that the mapmaker isn't too evil).

The game info said the scout is a medic. Is there anything remotely useful about that in the early game?

 

[shulec]

Here are a few things that I have found to be really important to winning on immortal BTS. I have arranged them into what I consider to be the most important first. Any agreement, expansion on my comments or disagreements are welcome.

1. Control Barbs. They are treacherous on immortal. They are relentless. They are worse than on deity because the AI don't settle the land as quickly immortal.
2. Wonders can be a big trap. Generally, if you want a wonder, you really have to prioritize it.
3. Plan your economy from the beginning to avoid falling behind in tech. Whether it be form luxury or seafood resources, cottage or specialist, you can't over expand trying to grab as much land as possible unless you can finance that first trade tech, whether it be Alphabet, aesthetics or CoL.
4. Expand as allowed by the AI. If the AI is close, find a strategic resource and go to war early. If there are no close AI, REX and develop.
5. Deny the AI strategic resources. I am not big on choking, but this in one option. Chose an AI to attack that you can easily pillage their resources. It is generally better to let the AI develop their cities a bit before taking them.
6. Carefully plan diplomacy. Cultivate friendships to ensure trade partners and carefully watch anyone you anger.

Most of the top games played involve heavy warring early, and often. And, of course, play the map.

The save will be available in about 5 hours.

 

[zbgayumn]

I appreciate the insight. I haven't won on immortal, so I can't offer much critique.

Will you go ahead and move the archer, warrior, and scout? Or wait for more team input? I think we have consensus at least up to the scout's second movement point.

 

[shulec]

I think we should take a look at the save first. I'll propose the T0 movements and wait for feedback.

 

[shulec]

I have taken a look at the save the only surprise is this:

Spoiler :

I don't think we will be founding any religions!

PPP:
I propose to move our units as follows:
Warrior (Garrison 1 promoted) 1N1W
Archer (Garrison 1 promoted) 1S
Scout (Medic1 promoted) 1N1E

I will make these moves in about 24-36 hours unless new suggestions are made.

 

[astre]

well, it is only half a surprise...

With religion founed, there is prefounded cities and that mean there is a city the other side of the road. the archer 2S must be the first move. The will will give us lots of data. If needed, the warrior will have to follow archer...

We need archer move ASAP before deciding rest of moves.

could anyone post demo stuffs? I can do it in 12 hours by now...


I will add what i learnt for my previous SGOTM, early worker stealing is very important. Maybe one of the most important. Also, the top team are usually very aggressive very early.

BTW, i'm not here for medal, just to do my best and having fun.

 

[astre]

second analysis after lunch. with prefound religion, our game will become heavyly oriented toward conquest. The "play the map" will become very important -> our tech plan might change

any wonder already built?

 

[shulec]

any wonder already built?

There are no wonders built. Oddly enough, there are no cities on the Top 5 city screen. As soon as these cities are founded, they must become Holy Cities.

 

[astre]

thanks

do barbarian cities appear in top 5? to be tested...

 

[zbgayumn]

well, it is only half a surprise...

With religion founded, there is prefounded cities

I would agree with that statement, but the screen shulec showed had "0 cities" shown under each of the religions. Based on the Influence numbers, I would say there are 21 39 pop points in the world, but if so, why isn't there anything in Top 5 Cities?

Maybe Barb cities explains that apparent contradiction... I'm not sure.

Edit: Am I correct that Influence is directly related to population? 39 seems like a big number, but it's the only way to make it work with whole numbers.

Edit2: See post below. Rounding is making this very annoying, but I now believe 57 pop is the smallest number that would explain 21% Confu and 19% "no religion"

 

[astre]

it is related. Here, i think one pop is 5% ->
4 pop are confu, 3 are jewish, 1 pop is buddist, other religion are 2 pop, 4 pop are without religion

on this table, i think there are only cities we found.

If you can open demo screen, you will see if AI have already cities or not.

 

[zbgayumn]

it is related. Here, i think one pop is 5% ->
4 pop are confu, 3 are jewish, 1 pop is buddist, other religion are 2 pop, 4 pop are without religion

The assumption 1 pop = 5% would work if it weren't for Confu showing up as 21%. I'm not sure what kind of rounding rules the game code uses, but the numbers get quite large if you have to explain 21% Confu and 19% "no religion" using only whole numbers.

If you use FLOOR as the rounding rule, you can make it work with a total population of 57. I think I need to test this out in Worldbuilder just to satisfy my desire to make the math work.

 

[shulec]

I tried to correlate population to percent influence and there is no way to do it with simple calculations. You would have to dig into the code to try to figure it out.

 

[astre]

temple builds could be a factor failed

tested on WB and checked on save: no AI have cities -> only barb cities.

could modelised with the 20 %, couldn't reach 21 % with small tweaks like temple and such -> there could be lots of barb cities around.

if we are going to invade lots of barb cities -> BW and AH are top priorities

 

[zbgayumn]

Well, I may try digging through the code, but I am not a coder so I doubt I'll be able to make sense of it.

For now, we should probably focus on opening moves. Archer first is a good idea. Unless there's something really out of the ordinary after moving 1S, you should probably just continue to the hill.

The only scenario I can think of where the warrior might follow the archer is a barb city defended by a single warrior. Anything tougher than that we wouldn't be able to handle.

 

[zbgayumn]

So yeah, the code didn't do me any good. However, I figured out that we're not restricted to using whole numbers. That's because when there are two or more religions in a city the population gets split between them rather than counting as the full pop for both.

The problem with that is that you can now come up with endless scenarios for the number of barb cities and their populations. The only one that can't divided is NSR at 19%. The smallest fraction that equals 19% is 3/16 (if you round up) or 4/21 (almost exact). So, 21 pop points of barbs seems like a realistic projections. I would guess that the holy cities are all separate and therefore there are at least 8 barb cities, but we can't be sure about that.

 

[shulec]

I moved the archer as recommended by Astre. Here is what he sees:

Spoiler :

I will move the warrior 1N1W, then the scout 1N1E. I will do this in about 22-28 hours. Then we will decide where to make the second move for the scout.

 

[astre]

agreed for movements.

the 2 wariors are interesting. with archer, do we countinue to explore hiden in the woods or do we just fortify there?