SGOTM 22 - TTfkapr

[elitetroops]

One downside to our approach. We will only have 1 worker by 900bc.

Ice stone doesn't require one. Fish city will long term. Capital too maybe. Of course long term we will want mids sooner. 13 turns off Gspy at 900bc.

Without whipping city 2 lacks granary and light house. That is a big difference. With a second worker some of these builds could of had math chops. 2 pop whip of worker?

Makes the civic choices even harder. Delayed civic changes vs using chops instead?

Are we 100% sure on cottages?? We are planning rep and building cottages?? Bit odd. Maybe better to just use HR and grow capital into a monster city using 7-8+ mines??

I suppose fish could build a worker at some point, if we value it above exploring workboats. No need for that worker so far though. The one worker we have has been able to keep up until mids.

Cottages are our only option at this point, we don't have agriculture. Cottages are needed for maths anyway.

 

[Gumbolt]

I think we agree skipping agriculture for now. Maybe let the barbs farm the horse city? We should also consider a worker stealing strategy from the barbs. Sounds silly but saves us time building them.

Can we start putting down on paper what is best so we can draw up some initial plan here.

We might also want to think of ways to get border pops in stone city without myst. We need to take some risks. Religions? Wonders??? Caste? Hmmmm. Or do we blindly tech all the early techs???

Probability is we will get a gspy soon. If this is an adapted pangea map expect all Ai to be a boat journey away. At some point we may want to consider galleons.

I am off to bed. Knackered.

 

[yyeah]

I can play some turns toomorow i think i take this 12, only pop out settlers and leave rest to ET becosue You know how to micro it propertly, way how you did it looks best so far.

Mistycyzm wont hurt us i think. Way how i see it in long term is tech to constr. hbr and from there ..... monarchy feudalism and start vassal them, it offcourse depends can we reach ais with galleys but this is just you know somekind of long term plan at least how i see this.
And workboats are v importand not only give us trade routes but allso we will know can we reach ais with galleys so this 1 worker should be nough for now imo, we can whip another 1 after granary in fish spot.
Ok iamgoing to bed too.

 

[elitetroops]

Either that, or I could play the first part of this mids plan, until we are ready to settle stone city. I think this is the tricky part with the micro I did. Then you could take over until mids (and get the exciting part with exploring workboats ). Apart from exploring workboats this will probably be only tight micro, might even need to make spreadsheet to make sure we get this right... The decision to go slavery or not needs to be done 1 turn before stone is settled according to my micro (T61, decision determines build in capital, library or mids), so that would be a good place to switch.

However, very likely that there will be stops and changes in plan up to then anyway due to barb trouble..

Vassals are turned off in this game, we have to kill them all.

 

[shulec]

Great discussion!

I think the key to the game is expansion. The team that grows Rome fastest and expands the fastest will win.

I have to admit that I don't like the Pyramids as much as when the idea was put out there. But, I think we can make it work. I thought Fish city second is better, and you guys seemed to have figured that out too.

We can steal monarchy if we settle a give away city (Trojan Horse), 3S1E of Rome. If the AI have only three cities, they will take it.

Back to Pyramids. I hate them in Rome - let save those forests for Bureaucracy. Let's build them in Fish City. I built them on T86, 725 BC. Warrior-settler-worker-settler in Rome. Build Pyramids with two chops in 1st ring and 2 chops outside culture border (slower completion -T87, with whipped monument). Once we grow enough, use three grasshill mines. This allows Rome to build - trojan settler, archers, library. Sacrafices scouting WBs.

Representation will be more effective if we settle all GP (+academy). No cottages in capitol, but cottage Fish City. All Farm/windmill capital with GP Farm.

 

[Gumbolt]

So build mids in Fish city??? Then capital has time for library and growth. Interesting!

 

[elitetroops]

I thought about mids in some other city as well. But that date feels a bit late.. Getting close to the dates when we've seen AI build mids in a normal game, here they are a lot faster.

You still settle stone third, right? Trojan city would come quite late as we need 8 archers for that.

At the moment we don't need farms in capital. Keeping up in growth until at least 4th city is no problem at all. Military units is the bottle neck. I think getting it to pop 10 in time for 5th city shouldn't be a problem either. So in terms of immediate gain cottages beat farms. I like immediate gain. Anyway, looked at my 2nd attempt 900BC mids, seems I never even worked the second cottage I built in cap... Only one cottage needed to reach that date. Still plenty of grassland to farm.

I'd prefer to use some other city as GP farm, probably fish for academy GS. With a library in fish right after granary, they should be able to get GS out as second GP. Capital GPP pool will be greatly polluted by wonders and we cannot control what GP we get from there. Would suck if 2nd GP also is GSpy.

What I really don't like with your plan is sacrificing the scouting workboats. We need to know what the world looks like and what is needed to reach the AI asap in order to make long term plans. Finding the AI for foreign trade routes is also very important, especially if they are on another landmass. I had first WB out T69. Your WB would be 18-19 turns later, which might cost us >100c in trade route income.

 

[shulec]

Have we spotted any AI workboats or archers? How confident are we that most AI have sailing? Once they all get it, barb galleys will appear.

 

[elitetroops]

At the moment it appears 1 or 2 AI have sailing. Our current research bonus reveals this.

 

[yyeah]

Ok so its time to make some decisions i think and start palying .
I more like ealier mids, its great to have clean GE points somwhere but its just deleying mids too much imo.
Can we agree with setler start in rome ?
Reserch switch to writing ?
Road N, SW,SW ( from cap)
1 warrior on deer 1 on gems and another 1 on hills right ?

DO you want to paly now ET ? or should i do it ?

 

[yyeah]

Or nvm take it ET i dotn know how you going with this warriors...

 

[Gumbolt]

Have we spotted any AI workboats or archers? How confident are we that most AI have sailing? Once they all get it, barb galleys will appear.

None! Unless I missed them. We wouldn't get any notification is they did show up. I really don't think I missed anything.

I really don't think the Ai have stone here. A delayed mids is not a bad thing. We were all talking about taking some gambles to win here. Now we shy away from it. Hmmmm.

The trojan settler is a real issue as we will struggle to ever get 8 archers so quick. I don't think we plan to delay BW any time soon.

Let's get a general plan for mids up over the 40 turns. (Basic strategy for mids and what builds are important for each cities.) Then we can agree on micro for next 5-10 turns. I think Shulecs view now differs considerably to others.

 

[shulec]

None! Unless I missed them. We wouldn't get any notification is they did show up. I really don't think I missed anything.

I really don't think the Ai have stone here. A delayed mids is not a bad thing. We were all talking about taking some gambles to win here. Now we shy away from it. Hmmmm.

The trojan settler is a real issue as we will struggle to ever get 8 archers so quick. I don't think we plan to delay BW any time soon.

Let's get a general plan for mids up over the 40 turns. (Basic strategy for mids and what builds are important for each cities.) Then we can agree on micro for next 5-10 turns. I think Shulecs view now differs considerably to others.

Eight archers come a lot faster in Rome without Pyramids.

No one else sees the value of Mids in fish town as I do. So play on!

No workboats suggests Astro needed for trade routes, but too early to say.

 

[yyeah]

Its not like that Shulec that i dont see value of mids in fish city.
Its Great to have clean GE points witch can be used idk maybe for corps or speed up wonder in crucial moment. i just think that 700BC is a bit late and this dont setup us ahead as much.
Again its deleying our exp,scouting,techin and theres possibility that ais can get it.
Thats why iam putting less value to clean Ge points, and since we are aiming HG's that GE chance in cap isnt that bad overall.

We are using Mids here to like turbo boost with expansions, becosue we cant expand fast enough and you know that best way to win game is to be big enough, fast enough.

 

[elitetroops]

Sorry Shulec, but I'm not sure what the main benefits for mids in fish city are... We can have mids in cap 875BC with 2 chops. This leaves us with more production power left than if we chop 4 forests in fish. Also, cap has one more wonder, saving the hammers for another wonder later, which technically also puts capital ahead in hammers. So the waiting with chops until bureau argument I don't buy. The 4 forests in fish could be turned into 5 archers instead. Though I'm still hoping we find copper, 2 pop whipping axes is so much faster, and we could also upgrade warriors.

I suppose earlier 4th city is the main argument. What would be your estimated date for 4th city? Didn't do any estimation for that yet myself, but it would take a while...

If we go with my plan, I could play at least until fish city very soon. That part is straight forward.

Cap builds Settler->Settler, work pigs+4 mines.

Change research to Writing for now (mainly because more AI are likely to research sailing before we need to finish the tech, so we earn a few beakers).

Worker roads pigs, then roads wine, then cottage 1S of pigs. Could also road 1SW of pigs instead of wine, which would save us one road later, but that has him roading outside cultural borders, not sure if it is safe. There's a bear in testgame to the west from gems, is this bear in real game as well? We need road on wine anyway later, so it's not a waste of worker turns.

Warriors all head to cap, except gems warrior who stays there fortified.

Fish settled 2080BC. Only thing that can delay this is if a barb happens to be in the exact spot we want to settle fish. In that case we have to wait until next turn for barb to move away.

This part I could play any time if greened. Need to still check tile micro for the turns after that.

 

[Gumbolt]

So we settle fish first and then stone city whilst we fog bust stone city?

The big plus to Shulec's idea is we free up the capital's production. Sure some risks.

To actually build archers we actually need to tech archery. When do we plan to do this? 8 archers is 200 hammers. For each warrior we build we will have to respend 15 of those hammers for an archer.

What if we teched alphabet instead of maths and stole maths? Pretty sure this might work. Might delay math chops.

One option for trojan city is to build it before stone city? Gift it then build the third city. Then we get around having to get 8 archers. Hmmmm. Need to think outside the box here. Or build 4th city before BW.

 

[yyeah]

So ok i can paly to this fish city you are needed more to micro later.
No this bear isnt in real game i think Gumbolt didnt mentioned that theres a bear.
This road outside our borders should be safe and ineed can save us 1 road i more like to road there, allso warrior can move faster to fogbust this site.
Green ?

 

[shulec]

Don't misinterpret my concise comments to mean I am upset or pouting. I see where you guys stand just don't see further discussion to be beneficial.

Do you guys all know what I mean by Trojan Horse city? We will have a lot of useless EP points unless we steal techs. All indications are that the AI are going to be out of reach until Astro. We need to create a situation where we can steal before Astro.

 

[shulec]

Ok so its time to make some decisions i think and start palying .
I more like ealier mids, its great to have clean GE points somwhere but its just deleying mids too much imo.
Can we agree with setler start in rome ?
Reserch switch to writing ?
Road N, SW,SW ( from cap)
1 warrior on deer 1 on gems and another 1 on hills right ?

DO you want to paly now ET ? or should i do it ?

Can you post a screenshot with the proposed road path. Do we have any tiles with a road now?

 

[Gumbolt]

Only road we have is 1 south of capital.

Lets not rush these next 10 turns. It would be better to have a fuller plan. At present Yyeah and ET seem to be planning the next set. Let's take some time to sort this all out before rushing here.

One thought on AI workboats. Most of the time our units were inland. So it's possible we missed a workboat. Hmmmm.