SGOTM 22 - Anti-TSR

[LowtherCastle]

Spy Missions
T77 Finish Alpha
T81 Spy in HC (assuming plains-hill mine)
T83 Spy in Rome
T84 SpyHC Spread Culture Mission (2ep), SpyRo moves in
T86 SpyRo SabProd (if necessary), SpyHC moves in
T88 SpyHC Steal Myst (42eps), SpyRo moves in
T90 SpyRo Steal Medit (67eps), SpyHC moves in
T91 Great Spy mission
T92 SpyHC Steal PH (29eps), SpyRo moves in
T94 SpyRo Steal Monarchy (147eps), SpyHC moves in

Conclusions:
1. Hard to build Cows settler, Rome library, spies and defenders 7+8, and grow Rome to pop8 by T85.
2. Spies cost unit maintenance.

 

[WastinTime]

CowCity

How about Cows-1E?

- it has Cow in the first ring.
- 2 wines 2nd ring.
- 4 hills

Main reason: Forests
It has 10 forests! in BFC and about 18 including 3rd ring.

Cons: farther away (but arguably closer to the AI)
can't pre-farm or share a farm, etc with Rome

 

[LowtherCastle]

CowCity

How about Cows-1E?

- it has Cow in the first ring.
- 2 wines 2nd ring.
- 4 hills

Main reason: Forests
It has 10 forests! in BFC and about 18 including 3rd ring.

Cons: farther away (but arguably closer to the AI)
can't pre-farm or share a farm, etc with Rome

Interesting idea. How do we think with this? We don't have workers or Math for the chops.

Another thought I'm having is that we'll be so close to BW+IW, maybe we should focus more on building the spies and units, and timing Rome pop8 with getting those two techs. There is that bald hill 2E of the ivory and a bunch of bald hills NW of Fish. Plus, iron can turn up anywhere in that eastern valley.

 

[Pollina]

“Got it” in case that wasn’t clear.

I need a decision on where to settle FishCity and CowsCity before I can plan out the details.

FishCity options:
- Fish-N: decent commerce & production, no trade connection
- Fish-NW (on wine): max forests , settles 1t later, no trade connection
- Fish-NE: immediate trade connection, only 4 BFC forests, can share capital mine

CowsCity options:
- Cows-E: needs 3 roads, tons of forests
- Cows-N2W: needs border expansion for cows & ivory in 2nd ring, only 4 forests
- Cows-SW: needs 1 road, can share mines with HC
- Other?

Spy Missions
T77 Finish Alpha
T81 Spy in HC (assuming plains-hill mine)
T83 Spy in Rome
T84 SpyHC Spread Culture Mission (2ep), SpyRo moves in
T86 SpyRo SabProd (if necessary), SpyHC moves in
T88 SpyHC Steal Myst (42eps), SpyRo moves in
T90 SpyRo Steal Medit (67eps), SpyHC moves in
T91 Great Spy mission
T92 SpyHC Steal PH (29eps), SpyRo moves in
T94 SpyRo Steal Monarchy (147eps), SpyHC moves in

Conclusions:
1. Hard to build Cows settler, Rome library, spies and defenders 7+8, and grow Rome to pop8 by T85.
2. Spies cost unit maintenance.

Assuming Alpha on t76 or t77 and Hindu spread in Rome (until t77), I think I can do:

Rome:
t77 library (could be finished t74, but then we’d need Alpha or Hinduism by t76 to get the spy out on t81.)
t81 spy
t83 pop8, chariot

HC: (no plains hill mine required)
t71 chariot
t79 (or later) cows settler
t83 spy

- CowsCity could be settled on t83
- No worker, unless we build one in FishCity
- Requires a switch into Hinduism for happiness
- EP bomb delayed until t92, but that shouldn’t matter if we follow LC’s spy plan

Techs:
Alpha, then what? BW? HBR? Math? Aesthetics?
Can we get Alpha on t76? (I think so. May depend on where we settle FC.)

 

[WastinTime]

Maybe after Alpha, we just build up cash. I'd hate to get Aes only to see we can steal it. Same for HBR, Math, etc.
Maybe our next tech that we actually research is CS.

I think after escorting the hindus back we need to ignore the West and ignore suggestions to explore NW. I think we should be worker stealing from Hannibal. It's Agg AI, so easy peace. Let's get a N-S road going and scout his area for worker traps, resources, and nice cities.
I see him as our first target. His land has been called crap or junk, etc. but I'm not sure why. To me he is just outside the jungle belt, which usually means a nice forest belt. More importantly, he appears to have the only cities close enough for us to attack, worker farm, and eventually keep some. And he has access to the water up there. And marble.

I predict city #5 will be one of his.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Carthage is growing like crazy--no longer crapworthy. Hannibal threatens with chariots but not axes or spears.

Other Cow options:
Cows-2E: shares farm, 3 wines, mystery bald hill and 7 other grass (possible iron or copper) tiles in BFC and ivory in 3rd expansion.
Cows-2E1S: +2 shares farms, 3 wines, grass tiles, distance 4 tiles, 5 hills

I don't like my spy plan any more. My preference would be Alpha T76, T79 Rome spy. Move the whole sequence forward 2t. My hunch is also that we need a 2nd worker asap.

Save city 4 for iron.

 

[WastinTime]

Other Cow options:
Cows-2E: shares farm, 3 wines, mystery bald hill and 7 other grass (possible iron or copper) tiles in BFC and ivory in 3rd expansion.
Cows-2E1S: +2 shares farms, 3 wines, grass tiles, distance 4 tiles, 5 hills

Maybe Mitchum can understand that perfectly (or didn't realized there was a problem), but the rest of us are thinking you mean Cows-2W, not east.

 

[WastinTime]

Maybe the barbs will settle cows for us and we just take it wherever they put it.

 

[WastinTime]

Can we get Alpha on t76? (I think so. May depend on where we settle FC.)

I think even Alpha T75 is still possible. Helps if we rush the library. I would rather delay size 8 (or hope we get a happy resource in trade. C'mon Sal!)

Tunrset tip:
Don't piss off Brennus any more if possible. Kiss his butt if you have to. We will be back to Cautious when we get +1 for OB. mad: I wish we had rushed Writing 1t). That will open up resource trades again. Essentially doubles our chances of getting a happy.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Maybe Mitchum can understand that perfectly (or didn't realized there was a problem), but the rest of us are thinking you mean Cows-2W, not east.

Great mi9nds think alike.

 

[Pollina]

Save city 4 for iron.

You're the one who talks about REX all the time..

- How much would this plan delay city #4? 12-15 turns? We'd have to wait for IW and replace all our warriors in Rome with chariots (240 hammers).
- How many workers would we need after BW? Are 2 enough? There'll be only one left for farming and chopping, if I send the other to road towards Hannibal.
- In which order do you intend to steal BW, IW and Monarchy?

That would change builds to:

Rome:
t73 library
t76 chariot?
t79 spy

HC:
t73 worker
pchariot or pgranary or pbarracks or... (26h)
t81 spy

Rome could get away with only 1 farm for much longer. So that would give us more flexiblility with regard to other worker tasks like the HC mine or roads.

 

[Pollina]

I think even Alpha T75 is still possible. Helps if we rush the library. I would rather delay size 8 (or hope we get a happy resource in trade. C'mon Sal!)

Hard to tell without running a test game. We'd probably have to settle FC at Fish-NE, if we want t75 Alpha.

Tunrset tip:
Don't piss off Brennus any more if possible. Kiss his butt if you have to. We will be back to Cautious when we get +1 for OB. mad: I wish we had rushed Writing 1t). That will open up resource trades again. Essentially doubles our chances of getting a happy.

Noted.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Barbs settling cows would be fine. I can't figure out if the barbs have already settled a city. I know they don't have pop5 or more, using Pollina's technique.

Carthage is 17 tiles from Rome. The barbs are not targeting Hannibal. There's likely another AI closer to WT's NW. Our chariot needs to backtrack 3-4 tiles to WT's NE.* From there it could go NW to find that AI. There appears to be flatland there anyway, so faster moving. Doing so will screw up 2c TRs with Sal, though.

In 4t we'll probably have resource trades with Darius. If not, is he isolated and landlocked???





*

 

[LowtherCastle]

@Pollina, good point. We settle City 4 before BW. Fuhgot about that crrrap.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Settling Cows for max iron/copper

Assuming iron/copper will be on an unforested tile (not guaranteed), we have:

Cows-E: 7 chances for iron/copper.
Cows-2W: 8 chances.
Cows-SW: 9 chances.

We could even settle a 5th city, farther northeast or southeast, before BW if we want. Maximize our chances of getting praets without having to settle another city.

Edit: I'm assuming we go for Monarchy before BW. That's one reason to get Alpha asap, to get those 3 cheap Monarchy prereqs.

.

 

[WastinTime]

If you measure to the closest city (cowsCity), then Hannibal should be quite a bit closer. And the better worker steal target assuming we want the worker to road to Cows or chop Cows. Maybe he'll even settle towards us? which puts CowsCity in 'giftable range'. That way we could gift it, settle Iron, and then recapture Cows and those forests later. City #5.

He is also closer from a maint. point of view. As you know...measuring straight north is 1 per tile and diagonals are 1.5 per tile.

 

[LowtherCastle]

If you measure to the closest city (cowsCity), then Hannibal should be quite a bit closer. And the better worker steal target assuming we want the worker to road to Cows or chop Cows. Maybe he'll even settle towards us? which puts CowsCity in 'giftable range'. That way we could gift it, settle Iron, and then recapture Cows and those forests later. City #5.

He is also closer from a maint. point of view. As you know...measuring straight north is 1 per tile and diagonals are 1.5 per tile.

I'll grant you that the AI to the NW is likely to be roughly 17 "maintenance" tiles distant. COws doesn't really get us any closer to Carthage, though, roadwise. In any case I'd rather road to the NW from Rome and then back to the NE to get to Hannibal because 1) that gives us roading to both AIs and 2) we only need to road 5 forest/jungle/hill tiles to get to those plains.

Don't forget that after BW, we can gift CIty #4 but can't re-settle it without 8 non-warrior defenders. By contrast, we can settle 5 cities pre-BW and if we're lucky enough to have iron in any culture, we can't build praets to our heart's content, without any new Rome defenders.

Edit: The key difference is that we can spend earlier hammers on praets, send them out conquering, and in the meantime build cheap defenders. Gets our praets (or axes or chariots) to the front lines sooner.

.

 

[LowtherCastle]

We could even build 6 cities pre-BW, since settlers are cheap. Bldgs. #5, #6: monument+monastery (can build a missionary for DaGift...).

Settle the entire northeast valley and the Crabs2Wines to the southeast. We'll get a ton of coins and tradebait from our 10 wineries. If we don't get iron from all that, then we wish Major Evil (TM) on BSP.

 

[Pollina]

@Pollina, good point. We settle City 4 before BW. Fuhgot about that crrrap.

ok

How much are we willing to delay City 4 for 2t earlier Monarchy and a second worker?
Worker in HC is very awkward, if we want to build the Cows settler there as well. With t81 spy, CowsCity could be settled t89/90 earliest.

I almost like the FC worker better. Almost.

 

[Pollina]

We could even build 6 cities pre-BW, since settlers are cheap. Bldgs. #5, #6: monument+monastery (can build a missionary for DaGift...).

Tbh, I'd rather capture marble with city#5 (or #6), maybe even along with some iron.