SGOTM 20 - Misfit Gypsy Nuts

[haphazard1]

If we are up against the Western Wall (mountains), then there are only two spots to settle one further east: SE-SE or E-E (on the forest hill) that save the use of the seafood. Settling 3 east makes no sense, of course unless something miraculous is found there).

The idea behind settling further east is to allow more room for a second city that grabs the sheep and silver. 3E1N could also work -- the seafood would be second ring but capital culture would pop borders well before the first work boat was finished. When we move the scout we may want to consider moving NE, then pausing to discuss before making the second move.

For a second city west, if there are mountains (which seems likely), 1N of settler or SW of settler (if the deer beats the sheep) might both be possibilities.

SW is interesting, although we could orphan the second sheep depending on what is to the north. It would be a +6 food capital, though, which is not great for growth. Especially since we would want to work the silver, so +5 food.

A capital with both seafood would be +7 food with just work boats, +9 food with a lighthouse. Yes, we have to invest some hammers up front to get that food, but I like +9 food a lot more than +6 food.

In fact, I we have to squeeze two cities in between wall and water, would we want to put capital N or SW (if we don't like the seafood capital)? Ororo says the forest grassland hill deer is strong, and we could camp it just with a hunting research, so is there any reason to consider SW capital? It does put 3 useless mountains in the BFC so maybe not.

The deer will be equivalent to a grassland cow -- 4F2H. It will have the forest for a tiny bit of extra health, but basically it is a grassland cow. A nice tile, but not really something I want to build my capital around if more food is available.

Map thought: see the attached topographic map.

The map is a modified pangea, as I recall. Could we be in Bulgaria, north of Istanbul, with mountains to the west, and the Black Sea to the East? Has a roughly accurate map of Turkey been generated for this game?

Just a thought.

And a very interesting thought it is, dV! No idea if it is true, but something for us to be looking for confirmation as we explore.

I will take a shot at building a test map tomorrow (assuming no one beats me to it), using what little we currently know. But it will give us something to sim with and try out alternate starts.

 

[Sleepless]

Mmm didn't think of the forest sheep. So agree 1E seems obvious as an initial city unless something nice crops up in the meantime.

 

[nocho]

A macro scale question, thoughts on limiting factor? Is this a science race? How deep into the tech tree do we need to plan an economy for? A production play? Can we just steamroll these weak AI. A Diplo, Religious or otherwise game? Could we conceivably tech Poly > Mono > 3rd religion to meet the requirement very early?

I think poly and mono are pretty much out of the question on immortal with 9 (!) opponents. However, I'm thinking we might try to bulb theo from Oracle GPr points, be first to CoL (through Oracle) and bulb philo. That could be doable before/by 0AD.

With the large number of opponents, large map (or has it in the end been toned down to normal?) and meeting all civs one possible requirement for unlocking the objective, I would assume astro is needed to meet them all. So quite probably an astro beeline (Ororo, you were good at bulb paths, right? ) is called for, although with the 3 religions we still would unlock the objective. But meeting all civs is likely important to win the game anyway (having to capture all holy cities; if we want to win AP/diplo).

If we could catch those 3 religions, steamroll 1 or 2 close neighbours (if we have them) to work our way to a city count of about 25, and get astro relatively quickly, possibly AP would be quickest path to victory. Evidently playing for a theo bulb works along nicely with this. I just hope the secret requirement doesn't completely ruin this setup, but if it's a bit of a balanced objective I would assume it won't be all that hard to accomplish (suddenly something like "research Future Tech 1" would be unlikely; likely it's something religion related given the theme).

 

[Ororo]

I have double-checked and here is what we need for the fabled Astronomy beeline: (Btw. Astro is not only great for all of the intercontinental trade routes and access to overseas AIs but it also helps a great deal with the logistics while at war)

A) 2x Great Scientist. Astronomy is an expensive tech and a single GS is not enough to bulb it. That is of course, unless our tech rate is stellar and we can easily tech the second half manually.

B) Avoid Drama and CoL or avoid Meditation. Drama and CoL are alternative prerequisites to Philosophy, meaning you need at least one of these to unlock it whereas Meditation is a mandatory one. Philosophy is a higher priority tech in the Great Scientist bulb preferences list so unlocking it can screw our Astro beeline completely.

C) Avoid Theology and Civil Service. These are alternative prerequsites to Paper. Paper is just one place before Astro in the bulb preferences list and we must therefore avoid unlocking it as well.

D) Research all of the Astronomy prerequisites. We already start with Agriculture,The Wheel and Fishing so the minimalistic approach would be to research these 13 techs:

Mining, Sailing, Pottery, Animal Husbandry, Bronze Working, Writing, Metal Casting, Iron Working, Mathematics, Compass, Calendar, Machinery, Optics.

Add maybe Hunting, Mysticism, Masonry, Meditation, Priesthood, Alpha, Monarchy, all of which are crucial early game techs and it sums up to exactly 20 techs, which we need to research before we can bulb Astronomy. We can reduce that down to 19 if we get the Oracle or 18 if we also bulb Optics with a Great Scientist (highly unlikely with a non-Philo leader).

 

[BSPollux]

I have double-checked and here is what we need for the fabled Astronomy beeline:

Spoiler :

(Btw. Astro is not only great for all of the intercontinental trade routes and access to overseas AIs but it also helps a great deal with the logistics while at war)

A) 2x Great Scientist. Astronomy is an expensive tech and a single GS is not enough to bulb it. That is of course, unless our tech rate is stellar and we can easily tech the second half manually.

B) Avoid Drama and CoL or avoid Meditation. Drama and CoL are alternative prerequisites to Philosophy, meaning you need at least one of these to unlock it whereas Meditation is a mandatory one. Philosophy is a higher priority tech in the Great Scientist bulb preferences list so unlocking it can screw our Astro beeline completely.

C) Avoid Theology and Civil Service. These are alternative prerequsites to Paper. Paper is just one place before Astro in the bulb preferences list and we must therefore avoid unlocking it as well.

D) Research all of the Astronomy prerequisites. We already start with Agriculture,The Wheel and Fishing so the minimalistic approach would be to research these 13 techs:

Mining, Sailing, Pottery, Animal Husbandry, Bronze Working, Writing, Metal Casting, Iron Working, Mathematics, Compass, Calendar, Machinery, Optics.

Add maybe Hunting, Mysticism, Masonry, Meditation, Priesthood, Alpha, Monarchy, all of which are crucial early game techs and it sums up to exactly 20 techs, which we need to research before we can bulb Astronomy. We can reduce that down to 19 if we get the Oracle or 18 if we also bulb Optics with a Great Scientist (highly unlikely with a non-Philo leader).

To the pile'o'posts it goes!

 

[nocho]

Ok, so basically we can't pick up those 3 religions I mentioned and keep the astro bulb enabled. It was a nice idea while it lasted. Maybe we should then aim to lib astro instead? Or just capture all those Holy Cities and go for astro bulb?

Who is going to do the opening moves and post a bunch of screenies? The save will be available tomorrow, right?

 

[adrianj]

I think that if we can found our own religions, then that could make the end game much simpler, for example, not needing to travel the entire way across the globe to conquer a single city. I would rank founding Confucianism + Taoism + Christianity as a higher priority than bulbing Astronomy.

Taking Astronomy with Liberalism is appealing to me.

Bulbing Theology in the Oracle city makes sense to me. We could also build a temple here and run a priest specialist for a short while, hastening our GProphet. Call that the 100 great person.

200 great person could be a Great Scientist from a different city with a library. Preferably the future GPFarm candidate. Use that to bulb Philoshopy.

After Philoshopy, we might consider a detour to Literature. We can then build National Epic in GPFarm. With a switch to Caste System around about here we can hope to generate another 2 Great Scientists in quick succession to bulb Education.


Opening moves: Keep it very simple for now. Does this sound about right?

1. Move the archer 2S
2. Move the warrior 1NW
3. Check ALL adviser screens for anomalies
4. Post screenshots BEFORE moving scout or settler.

It doesn't matter who plays them. Anyone think they will be available shortly after 00:00 EST (UTC-5)?

 

[BSPollux]

Just make sure you dont do it twice at the same time

 

[haphazard1]

The proposed moves sound good to me, adrianj.

I am still concerned that some (or all) of the holy cities may already have been founded. So checking the advisor and info screens is a critical early step.

I have also been thinking about our geography a bit more. If we have a wall of mountains to our west...and are already near the northern map edge...and if the coast to the east continues north-ish as my fog-gazing seems to see.... Then our only open path for expansion may be to the south. This would lead us back to the rumoured to be dangerous capital, and quite possibly (depending on the Evil Map Maker) through a tough AI or two. Probably AIs with aggressive and/or protective traits plus strong early UUs.

Well, not too much longer before we find out. I was unexpectedly busy yesterday, but intend to finish my test map today so we will have something to sim possible starts.

 

[haphazard1]

OK, here is my attempt at a test map. Obviously lots of things will need to be changed as soon as we make our initial exploration moves, but it should provide a basis for testing. Please let me know if you spot anything that is incorrect.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/42963317/MGN SGOTM20 TEST v1_0 BC-4000.CivBeyondSwordSave

If no one else is available when the saves are released, I would be happy to make the initial moves suggested in adrianj's most recent post and then post some screenshots. But if someone else wants to start us off, that is fine with me as well. I will just be happy to have fresh information to discuss.

 

[haphazard1]

Grabbing the save! Will be back shortly with screenshots after moving the archer and warrior, and checking lots of info screens.

Edit: And...did even less than expected.

First, general information. As I suspected, all religions have already been founded:

Spoiler :

Gaining control of holy cities is not going to be as easy as researching some techs. Note the different influence levels...wonder why they are different? A bit more than 5% per city for influence, which implies maybe 18-19 barb cities on the map? I guess we know what has become of the old empire....

A quick check of demographics:

Spoiler :

Doesn't look like any cities have been founded yet by the AIs...which implies all the holy cities are controlled by barbarians? The only real info is only military power. We are weakest of course, this being Immortal. But does the 20K top power tell us anything?

Everything else looked pretty normal, at least nothing jumped out at me. So I moved the archer S, nothing much, S again to the hilltop, and...uh oh.

Spoiler :

I stopped here, in case we need to move the warrior for reasons other than exploration. Each of the two barb warriors is default, no XP or promotions. Note the jungle in the fog.

Also note that our warrior, archer, and scout all have 1 XP. Warrior and archer have CG1, scout has Medic 1.

Can we upload the save on turn 0? I seem to recall there was once an issue with that. For the moment I am just holding on to it.

What do you think about the barb threat? Looks like the old empire si not faring well....

 

[nocho]

All yours!

 

[Sleepless]

Well I'm going to have a lot more civ time from the end of this week so I'm happy for you to go ahead haphazard1.

Mmm seems you've already played a bit. At leat our first city when settled won't suffer from barbs for a couple of thousand years..

 

[haphazard1]

Please note the edited post above -- I didn't think anyone had responded, so I edited rather than make a new post. Should have known better.

So we appear to know the following:

- All religions have already been founded
- Approximately 19 cities exist on the map (from religious influence increments appearing to be a bit over 5%)
- None of our AI rivals have a city (or at least no production or food shows up in demographics, but maybe that is because it is turn 0?)
- We have two barb warriors immediately to our SE, apparently having burned a city

Things are getting interesting already. What to do with our warrior and scout? The archer would have good odds on the hill due to its inherent hill bonus, or we could play things safer by falling back and garrisoning the capital. Where there are two barbs, there could be more.

Edit: Don't City Garrison promotions also apply to forts? Moving the archer to the fort in the river bend could be useful later, assuming he survives.

 

[da_Vinci]

With Barbs from turn 1, maybe seafood capital is not so bad ... the warriors can't pillage the seafood.

On the other hand, are the barb galleys also already out on the high seas? And do we have to worry about barb galleys filled with land units? (Hmm ... why is dV thinking about that ... )

I think we might want to have the warrior and archer stacked with two barbs that close to us and each other. Too easy for a stack of one to get killed by a tag team attack.

Maybe those mountains west and water east will be a fogbusting godsend? Although presumably these are pre-formed (worldbuilder) barbs, and spawning will be ususal?

Might we have to contemplate warrior as our first build?

dV

 

[haphazard1]

Barb galleys are definitely a very nasty thought. Unless we see some, I think we have to proceed assuming that only normal spawns will happen. Fog-busting our coastline to prevent random spawns will be important to protect our seafood.

I agree we should probably keep the warrior and archer together, maybe even with the scout for healing. Of course this would mean no exploration.... With the free CG1 promotions for the archer and scout, we could have them stay in the capital (wherever we end up founding it) and would be quite safe from barb warriors.

We do not know what scripts those two barb warriors have. Normal barb spawns would not advance into our culture at this stage of the game, but these may attack. Settling 1E would have the advantage of river defense against enemies coming from the south.

I think we need to wait for the inter-turn and see what the two barbs do. My guess is that they will advance on the archer. We could move the warrior SE so he would be in position to join the archer on the hill, if we want to be bold. If we want to be more careful, we can plan to retreat the archer into the capital -- in this case maybe we can move the warrior NW still as originally planned, then retreat it to join the archer later.

We need to decide what to do with the warrior, scout, and of course the settler. We have not seen anything special to the southeast, but it is grassland and some of it riverside. We could move the settler to found 2S2E, keeping the seafood and leaving more room for sheep/sheep/silver or deer/sheep/silver cities. This would certainly get more water tiles than 1E (four more, if my fog-gazing is correct) and would be more threatened by the barbs. We could still get the archer and warrior both in such a capital before the barbs could attack.

I would like to know what is northeast before deciding on the settler. I propose moving the scout NE, then posting another screenshot. Do not move the warrior yet, as we may need to move it to cover the capital/join the archer. Do not make the second move of the scout until we see the results of the first move. Obviously do not move the settler.

Thoughts?

 

[haphazard1]

OK, I saw that Phoenix Rising had uploaded their save still on turn 0. So I have done the same. Please feel free to check the save and see if you spot anything I have missed.

 

[nocho]

I had a quick look at the save. I would still move the warrior NW and scout NE-SE. Both archer and warrior would be well on time to get back to our likely settling spot 1E if those barbs would advance. I'm not really sure they will though, would agree to wait IBT to see what those barb warriors will do.

Indeed there's the vertical mountain range in the west. From the graphics the river does seem to end in the sea however, 1NW from the southern sheep. That's why I'd also like to check it out with the warrior. Maybe a crammed second city in between the sheep next to the silver for water access to the west?!

Regarding the religious percentages, doesn't that go by pop, or is it by city count? If pop maybe it's just 7 barb cities with populations between 1 and 4.

 

[da_Vinci]

I think we are settling south of the fish, NW of the fish, or N of the fish. Or 1N 3E of settler, I suppose.

The only move that keeps the silver in the capital is NE of the fish (the 1E settle). The river adds some defense bonus from two directions. Warrior and archer easily get to city for defense before the barb warriors do. This may limit second city options.

N of fish (the 2E settle) loses the silver, loses a forest chop, but adds a hill for defense. Seems less desirable unless scout finds more booty east. Although it does make room for a second silver/sheep/deer city.

South of fish also loses silver, loses any terrain defense, and moves closer to the barbs. If the barbs move north on turn 0, they both can attack on turn 1 (the turn we settle there) due to the road. This means that if we settle SE-SE, then we should have the warrior in a position to move into it when founded. Unless we want to take a gamble on turn 1.

What is the yield on that farm near the fort? Is it a dry farm? Does that tempt us at all to the south of fish site?

1N 3E of settler is looking better, I think. Of the three choices for leaving second city room, that suddenly has appeal . Unless it is too much water, and too few hills.

If 1E is out because of no second city, and 2E is out because of loss of hill and forest, then maybe the choice is 2SE and 1N-3E. And that choice depends on what scout finds NE (assuming it is not more barbs ). As long as city site is undecided, warrior can't move west or north.

If no civ has founded a city, and all religions are founded, there must be a barb "civ" our there ... does that make Great Wall a priority?

dV

 

[adrianj]

I think we continue as planned: Warrior NW, Scout NE-SE. Then we will have all the information to discuss settling.