SGOTM 20 - Misfit Gypsy Nuts

[Ronnie1]

I would like to also ask about what our new city will do once we have it? Without any way to pop borders (finish AH -> Mining -> BW seems set, so it is going to take a while before we could even think of teching Mysticism for monuments or Writing for libraries), the marble site is going to be one plains cow for quite a while. And that will be the far plains cow, meaning we have to send the worker along to improve it. Or I suppose we could keep the worker at the capital and have the marble city build another worker. Slow, but without any other tiles to improve for a while it might be an option?

Ororo pointed out how fast we could build the Oracle here at size 2. That is why I like settler 1st, etc....

I m hoping that we get a bit of help with the bear and fogbusting. If we could found city 2 around T32-33 with a worker on site we could potentially have the Oracle by T50 ish. That is pretty early.

Obviously we need more testing. I am just having to do more of it with math because of time constraints.

 

[haphazard1]

I am enjoying the memes, Pollux. Keep them coming!

Ororo pointed out how fast we could build the Oracle here at size 2. That is why I like settler 1st, etc....

I m hoping that we get a bit of help with the bear and fogbusting. If we could found city 2 around T32-33 with a worker on site we could potentially have the Oracle by T50 ish. That is pretty early.

Can we actually research through Priesthood by turn 50? Not to mention Masonry tech, to get the marble benefit? We may have a marble city, but actually getting the Oracle is still going to take a lot of effort.

Obviously we need more testing. I am just having to do more of it with math because of time constraints.

I will try to find some time today to run a couple tests. Settle marble city, try to get the techs in place for an Oracle build, see if I can fit in another settler for a third city, etc. It seems like a lot to squeeze in, especially if we keep our capital at size 1 for so long. I will see what I can manage.

 

[Ronnie1]

especially if we keep our capital at size 1 for so long.

Cap will be size 2 before we found Marble city I believe. It will grow in 5 turns once the cows are improved and we are building something that allows growth, faster than the settler can get to marble.

We would need another worker immediately after growing to size 2 imo.

We may be better off building a few warriors and growing, I don't know.

 

[adrianj]

Good discussion

The reason for fast city #2 is for the possibility we are racing Peter to the marble site. If any of the following are true -

1. Peter will certainly beat us no matter how hard we try
2. Peter will go elsewhere
3. We think our city #2 will go elsewhere
4. Impossible to defend the settler

- then we can start talking about / trade-offs.

I'm hopeful that 4 isn't an issue. Barbarians themselves are fogbusters (in terms of spawning new ones), as are Peter's units. Peter might help us kill the bear.

Would we put city #2 elsewhere? Actually, I think this would make the race to the site even worse. The longer we delay, the more likely Peter beats us to the site. It's not just about being beaten to the marble, but if he puts a city in a less-ideal place that encroaches on it.

Option 2 looks likely. Surely the furs/Rice/Crabs are more attractive to him? Is it possible to test AI behaviour in the test game if the map tiles are accurate enough?

Finally option 1... I have no idea

Trade-offs
Don't forget that city #2 should be a net positive contribution to the empire. If we settle it earlier, then the extra / from the new city could offset what is lost from the capital's inefficiency. +2 trade routes (1 per city), +1 city tile, -1 maintenance (or worse?), +2-3 in new city.

Worker time is also a significant trade-off. It's unlikely the worker will return to the capital for quite some time, ie, after road and city #2 cow pasture improved. Hence delaying the 2nd capital pasture. This might be a more significant trade-off than the reduced city size aspect.

 

[haphazard1]

The trade route bonus will require building a bunch of roads, which requires worker turns. I doubt we will have a trade route connection until a bit later. I am not sure how big the maintenance costs will be at immortal difficulty, but at least 1 gpt and maybe worse given the distance from the capital.

I don't really see a better alternative, though. Something around the burned city would be only slightly closer to the capital, but would be connected for a trade route. However it would not get us marble, although we could get elephants for happiness (and later military) after we got a border pop. (Again, a problem for either city site.) Would need hunting for the elephants, though we also need it for the deer eventually.

 

[Ronnie1]

In the settler now scenario, we can found on the marble as early as T32. To do this, the worker roads the tile E of SL and roads 1 turn on the cow (cancel orders) before AH. Pasture cow, then road through the forest 2N1W of the marble before settler moves. That turn (30) the settler will be able to move through the forest SE, T31 move onto marble.

Then the question would be what does the worker do next?

Connect the cities with a road = 4wt? Road 1t waiting to found the city and then pasture the cow asap? Return to SL and start improving the sheep asap?

It's daring, a bit unorthodox maybe, but in the test games, both h1's and my earlier one, the AI were planting there second cities about this same time.

 

[da_Vinci]

OK, had a late RL surprise, but that is taken care of.

Here is a draft template of a PPP (not much plan in it, lots of questions).

For starters are we in agreement on the turnset goals, or do we have some others.

Time to catch up on my reading here, and try out some moves in the test game.

SGTOM PPP Second turnset

Draft PPP

Goal of turnset

-Build a settler to found “All the Marbles”
-Establish local military superiority at the marble and along the path for the settler
-Optimize food, production and research during this process


Length of turnset/stopping conditions

- Complete warrior (mid course correction) which assumes any path completes warrior before settler.
- Meet any AI
- Barb attack on capital or threat to units
- Anything unexpected


Planned actions

-Tile usage plan:
-Build order plan:
-Research order plan:
-Unit movement plan:

Civics

- Any?

Diplomacy

-Any?

Miscellaneous

-

Questions to be Decided

- Everything

 

[da_Vinci]

Here is a screenshot of my first test dabble.

I used the worker to build and road in the capital for this round, obviously more roads to marble could be done instead.

Interesting occurrence is getting archer bounced out of the fort by a Vicky city #2, I think it was something like turn 22.

Settler at turn 31, cow and sheep pastured and roaded. Also road on the silver for later. Idea here was build the roads while already on the hills, in the long run it saves worker turns. But maybe saving settler turns on the move is more important?

I guess the key question is whether we sacrifice everything else for fastest possible settler arrival on the marble?

dV

 

[da_Vinci]

This is a shot of cow first, then road to marble. Settler is done on T32, lots of roads. Vicky city 2 is T24. Problem on this run is that barb warrior is blocking road. Warrior had to escort worker east as there were three lions out there.

It seems that getting the warrior out early enough to fogbust around the marble will be critical. We might even need to consider bringing archer north to assist.

Of course, I was not doing much with the scout. Just trying to time the builds.

Building a worker after settler is 6 turns in the capital. Maybe that is best idea: start worker is for Marbles, build a second worker in Silver.

Might the barbs spawn a city near the marble, and mess us up? Does fogbusting stop barb City spawn? Maybe that is a priority.

dV

 

[Ronnie1]

Might the barbs spawn a city near the marble, and mess us up? Does fogbusting stop barb City spawn? Maybe that is a priority.

Probably not and yes and yes, if founding Marble asap is the priority.

Both the scout and the warrior in the real game will be necessary to clear the site.

Interesting occurrence is getting archer bounced out of the fort by a Vicky city #2,

In the test game the barb holy city is not well protected. Vicky captures it early and allows a settler to come our way. I don't believe we will see anything like that in the real game.

 

[nocho]

Sorry about not being more active. Busy RL and when I have time I fall asleep on the couch lately.

I think we should first grow to size 2 and build settler based on 2 improved tiles. Overall yield will be higher if we grow first.

While I of course also like the marble site, I think we might have to contemplate settling somewhere along the road, say with cow and crab in first ring, and build another city near marble. Some Russian building a city in between might screw us. Then I'd rather secure multiple city sites than one super-site.

On a related note, if we have to choose between Oracle and an axe-rush, I might favour the latter. We seem to have a lot of neighbours close by, and land=power as always. MC and triremes would be all nice, but if we have to rely on that, it'll still be very slow going. We'd probably need 3-4 triremes to eliminate those barb triremes anyway, built in a coastal city without sea food. Wouldn't it be much more efficient to invest the hammers of 4 triremes and an Oracle in about 8 axes?

I'd like to recall at this point that as compared to other teams we were pretty late in capturing Constantinople last game. Maybe we should have expansion by force as an even earlier focus this time around.

 

[da_Vinci]

Sounds like we are not sure we want to bet all the marbles on settling All the Marbles.

That is fine, but if we drop that plan, it should be for a clearly defined alternative. So what might those alternatives be?

Maybe it is time to trot out the famous dot maps. So to get us started, here is one looking at what city placement could look like if we do settle all the marbles.

Also, are there a certain next 3 or 4 turns that we play the same regardless of settling plan? If so we could get those done while we decide.

dV

 

[nocho]

Knowledge of horses would be good for more definitive settling plans. So what is the plan for next 3/4 turns? Grow asap (ie work cow) and prebuild warrior with the idea of settler switch upon hitting size 2? I'm assuming current warrior going towards settling site.

 

[haphazard1]

I worry about making earliest settling of All the Marbles our top priority, because it will not be all that strong a city until we can pop its borders and also clear the seas for seafood. And I am not sure marble will actually help us in time for the Oracle, assuming we go for the Oracle rather than a stack of military.

To get marble for the Oracle we need: finish AH -> Mining -> BW -> Mysticism -> Masonry -> Medi/Poly (one of) -> Priesthood

How long is it going to take to get all those techs? Can we realistically get them all in time to finish the Oracle before an AI does so? Even to build the Oracle in our capital without marble we need everything in the list except Masonry...so maybe Masonry moves to the end of the list in case we can't get it in time?

Has anyone tested to see when the AIs might finish the Oracle? To build it in time I think we need more commerce to speed research, so getting the capital larger sooner so it can work the silver might be important.

dV, I like some of your dotmap (marble city, yellow dot) but I am not sure about your pink dot. What would this do to placement of a city to work the wheat? And also for a city to work the deer? I had been thinking about the burned city location, grabbing the fish in addition to one elephant and the wheat. But maybe further south would be better, maybe 1S of the fort to grab both elephants and the wheat? Then we could leave your pink dot site until later, once the triremes have been dealt with? Pink dot would not have anything but seafood, so it would have to wait.

Or...hmmm. Maybe SE of that? Grabs wheat, both elephants, gems, and banana. Lots of jungle of course, and we would probably lose the banana to Suleiman's culture. Not sure.

Maybe we really would be better off building a stack of axemen? The best city sites available are probably Moscow, Moscow, and Istanbul. That assumes we have any metal to work with for axes...or horses. It is tempting to grow the capital working the cows, and play at least three turns so we can learn if there are horses available. That would discard any settler at size 1 plans, but I am not sure I like those plans anyway.

 

[Ronnie1]

Has anyone tested to see when the AIs might finish the Oracle? To build it in time I think we need more commerce to speed research, so getting the capital larger sooner so it can work the silver might be important.

We would need to set up a very specific test, with all the religions prefounded to see how the AI might tech. On a "normal" immortal level game, building the Oracle by T70 is usually safe, T80, maybe, T90 lucky, imo. Not sure in this game how it will play.

As far as the next 2 turns, there is very little to decide.
1) What does the worker do 1st? I say road 1W of SL
2) What to build next? If we go away from immediate settler for fastest Marbles, then warrior next.

EDIT: We really need to decide which tile we want to improve first I guess. If we pick riverside sheep, we go road on the silver now imo.

 

[nocho]

^ I'd certainly go cow first and hence road 1E now.

 

[Ronnie1]

^ I'd certainly go cow first and hence road 1E now.

emphasis added

Reasoning please?

 

[nocho]

It's the highest yield tile, at least short term the extra hammer outweighs the 2 commerce imo. I'd say the road east is also more useful short term than the road west. Also, since cow is flat we don't need an extra workerturn to get onto the tile. However, sheep will be next tile to improve of course after cow anyway, so it won't be that big a deal. The extra hammers do it for me (earlier extra warrior etc).

 

[haphazard1]

I agree with nocho on improving the cow before the sheep. Max food-hammers is usually best at the start, since even 1 extra can speed production of settlers and workers.

For testing, the latest version of my test game does have all religions pre-founded in barb cities. I also gave the barbs all the religion founding techs, to try to make sure nothing weird happened with "extra" religions being founded. (I have seen odd things before with world-builder-created holy cities.) So we should be able to test the Oracle scenario.

 

[da_Vinci]

dV, I like some of your dotmap (marble city, yellow dot) but I am not sure about your pink dot. What would this do to placement of a city to work the wheat? And also for a city to work the deer? I had been thinking about the burned city location, grabbing the fish in addition to one elephant and the wheat. But maybe further south would be better, maybe 1S of the fort to grab both elephants and the wheat? Then we could leave your pink dot site until later, once the triremes have been dealt with? Pink dot would not have anything but seafood, so it would have to wait.

I was just working off a screenshot at the time, so the pink was just the place that gets the other two seafood if we don't do the yellow dot.

It is possible that settling on the marble makes other city decisions trickier ...

dV