SGOTM 22 - TTfkapr

[yyeah]

I dont know... To be honest i dont see any good reason to settle more cities. With this restrictions its just not worth it.
This land is bad.
We are blocked by jungle in north developing this land will take forever on top of this these cities would help us to develop only after expensive Calenar.
Ais have juicy and developed land.
Imo we should seriously consider Construcion and just choop and whip army.

 

[yyeah]

At least we will pick up gems happiness eventually.

It can produce great scientists too. Good with Rep.

Disagree shulec to get this gems we need 3 border pop this is seriously about "100 turns",
And allso this isnt good GP farm, it only have one 5 (eventually 6) tile and 3 tile if you want to work this Iron too how many GPs you can run ... 2 ?

 

[Gumbolt]

The key thing here is to hook up a military resource. Maybe TSR went for phants over Praets? Their power rating has now shot up.

If we intend to war we will need iron. We may yet be able to gift away the iron city once we find a new source of iron. For now with only archer if Brennus or Zara attack us we are in huge danger.

I know Shulec likes to ignore these red fists but on a game like this I would not. Brennus has had many turns to start build his stack. I also don't know which turn these fists appeared. Can Elite confirm this?

 

[elitetroops]

Sorry, lost all the autosaves updating the testgame... Can't believe I didn't look at the fists. Checked diplo screens and lots of other stuff every turn, but didn't glance at scoreboard... Fist already there last turn at least, as screenshot shows.

I think we need to test both iron and elephants as 4th city. Iron is far away and not a very good site. There's plenty of better elephant sites, but they are all covered in jungle. Maybe 3N1E of capital. Immediately connected, doesn't need escort, can share tiles with cap so could have something preimproved. Requires calendar for food though..

TSR definitely in war mode now. Could have elephants already and planning to take out whole map with those. They didn't build pyramids, our culture is rising faster than theirs.

 

[shulec]

The key thing here is to hook up a military resource. Maybe TSR went for phants over Praets? Their power rating has now shot up.

If we intend to war we will need iron. We may yet be able to gift away the iron city once we find a new source of iron. For now with only archer if Brennus or Zara attack us we are in huge danger.

I know Shulec likes to ignore these red fists but on a game like this I would not. Brennus has had many turns to start build his stack. I also don't know which turn these fists appeared. Can Elite confirm this?

I only like to ignore them when I know the AI won't attack - just like Darius this game.

 

[yyeah]

I think we need to test both iron and elephants as 4th city.

We need to settle that Iron, this is crap city, but we need metal immediately.
I dont like def, we even dont know are we able to def with just archers if some1 else decide to attack us.

Its definetly possible to take out this map with WE's and Prets.

 

[Gumbolt]

Ivory is too far off for me. If we go HBR and construction that is nearly 10-15 turns off. Worst case scenario we could soon be at war with 3 AI. Best case scenario they all declare on Darius or another AI. The great spy should pick up on any Zara units. It's Brennus who we are blind to.

Unless we decide to use HA as defending units for now? Still think Praets or phants work better. Testing at this point misses so many variables. No Darius attacking. No Ai in war mode.

 

[elitetroops]

Rome should finish library in 1 turn, then settler build is 5 turns. After that, 6 turns to walk settler, 6 turns to build mine and 3 turns for road. 21 turns until iron is online. Settler and worker could be shipped by galley, but Rome still needs to grow after settler build, which takes 5 turns if we work mines. Could be less if we build a farm, but then we run into archer trouble. A galley from Horse means less archers. If settler walks, I can get 4 archers from horse in time for settling with chops, only 2 if we build a galley. Farm in Rome would mean less chops in Horse as well. But on the other hand, walking a worker to iron is a ton of lost worker turns. If we ship them by galley, the worker could at least start building the road already before we settle the city.

As long as we are at war with Darius we cannot withdraw all archers from fish, so we most likely need more than 8 total.

The fastest way to get stronger units would be HA. Archers can handle city defense very well, we just need something that can take out wounded units in the field or possible pillaging parties. HAs would also be great defenders vs the immortals.

 

[justjohn]

The plan was me playing next, but I have a warning. I am gone for a whole week and will not really be able to do much until after November 9th, unfortunately. It will be a long wait, so if we want to move on vefore that, I suggest someone else take this turnset and I can take next.

 

[Gumbolt]

In that case Packers or me is next. JJ can slot in afterwards. This next turnset could prove quite difficult if things go badly.

Maybe HBR next would not be bad? It's a shame to have fully teched IW to change plan now. At some point we want alphabet. As we could of stolen a lot of these techs. More we delay alphabet the less techs we can steal We know the Ai have both HBR and construction already.

Perhaps we should of just played the map from what we could see early on. Stuck with the old PR faithful of HA.

 

[Gumbolt]

No sign of Packers so looks like I am up. He has not posted in last 3 pages anyway. I need to look at save and decide if our direction is good here.

Current rota then

Gumbolt
JJ
Packers
Yyeah
Shulec
Elite

I think Shulec has done 2 turnsets. The rest one. I have not been a great scribe so far. Will try to update things better in future. Better to have a more casual rota. I will try and update our turnset reports on fronnt page if I get a chance.

 

[elitetroops]

I tried settling elephants instead of iron and I must say that felt much better to me. Settling the elephants I managed to get 8 units in capital by the time it grew to pop 8 while keeping 2 archers defending Fish all the time. There's much less lost worker turns and the new city can have a farm preimproved to work immediately. Hooking up ivory will raise happy cap to 9 so we can grow cap to pop 10 for 5th city.

Another big problem with iron is that it is in the wrong direction. We want to eventually kill all AI, settling away from them does not help with that.

We could tech alpha and HBR, then there's a good chance we can steal Construction. 2 AI have it so far, Zara+someone else. Sal should get it quite soon. Only Gilgamesh has HBR, might be a while until Sal gets that.

 

[shulec]

I dont know... To be honest i dont see any good reason to settle more cities. With this restrictions its just not worth it.
This land is bad.
We are blocked by jungle in north developing this land will take forever on top of this these cities would help us to develop only after expensive Calenar.
Ais have juicy and developed land.
Imo we should seriously consider Construcion and just choop and whip army.

Disagree shulec to get this gems we need 3 border pop this is seriously about "100 turns",
And allso this isnt good GP farm, it only have one 5 (eventually 6) tile and 3 tile if you want to work this Iron too how many GPs you can run ... 2 ?

100 turns with +1 , much quicker with library and religion.
Iron city will have plenty of food. Deer get 4. Fish 6.

I think you guys are insane to be considering HBR??? If we are in a dire situation, we settle on the iron, bank gold, an upgrade warriors to axes.

We currently have IW, but don't have HBR. HBR is a bit of a dead end tech (for quite a while). Preats are dramatically better than elephants. They get a much better promotion for CR1 vs Combat1 of elephants. CRII and CRI is so much better than CombatI and CombatII or shock. Preats get defensive bonuses, elephants do not. Iron allows a cheap defensive counter to mounted units that gets defensive bonuses (spear). The counter for Preats gets a 50% bonus, the counter for elephants gets a 100% bonus.

Iron all the way.

Chariots are not much worse than HAs. They cost 7.5 per hit point. HAs are 8.3 per hit point

 

[Gumbolt]

Afternoon Elite.

Your testing sounds good.

Looking at live game a few decisions.
Horse city. I don't really think 5 turns for a mine is worth it. It already has a 3FPH for 3 hammers. 1 extra hammer with limited growth seems silly. I would also like to consider 2-3 archers or a chariot there now. Do we risk a Brennus attack? Chariot could scout out brennus stack? I am 90% sure we are his target. I think Agg Ai target lower power ratings. We might consider some hammers into a wall?

Capital - Agree finish library. Archer, Settler. Again on a defensive thinking. Edit - Library, settler?

Fish city. Shulec wants granary to S3 then worker. Then chop finish granary. No idea what Persian units might be around at time of chop.

Capital gets a border pop soon but does not cover the ivory. 3N1E would give us ivory. Main issue with 3N1E site is at S1 we are at health limit. 3/3. So it will be stuck at S2 for a long time without farms or trading for a health resource. Not much we can do here.

Science. I suggest 0% science till 70-80 gold. Give us chance to consider tech options.

So our plucky worker. Best to send him for a farm now or chop for a archer/Chariot first in horse??

How safe do we want to play these next turns? Do we play assuming Brennus and Zara won't attack us or do we play defensively to save our blushes???

Edit - Settling on iron would save a lot of worker turns? With a border pop would have deer and fish. Wouldn't be much worse than ivory city.

 

[Gumbolt]

So iron vs ivory.

If we plan to settle on iron then the worry about worker turns is removed. Saves worker turns improving the ivory too. Sure 1 less happiness. Border pop in 3 turns covers most of it.

7 turns to settle iron site. No worker turns required. (5 turns to grow Rome anyway.)
Ivory. 3 turns to settle plus 5 or so turns to work ivory.

The big plus with iron is we can skip HBR and steal it. On this basis we could tech construction or alphabet next.

We would also directly build the settler or complete library?

@ Shulec. Only just started testing here to see what is best. Been away for 9-10 days.

 

[elitetroops]

The thing is, our window of opportunity for effective offensive warfare with Praets would be over before we can even begin. 20 turns to hook up iron and another 15-20 turns to build an army and walk it over to some suitable target. They'll have longbows by then, possibly xbows and not far from maces. So settling iron at this point would serve only a defensive purpose. I think we can handle defense even without. By the time we settle 4th city we can have 10 archers and the ability to emergency whip more. These are still monarch AI, they won't send any stacks that can seriously threaten us at this point of the game. I'm not saying that we should tech HBR or build elephants for defense either. We could tech alpha->construction and build a few catapults to soften up any stacks that look too threatening.

Our main problem is that we are severely underdeveloped. Building those early wonders and settling crap tundra city only to gift away, and the DoW from Darius, has set us back a lot. Settling another slow to develop city in the tundra won't help us with that. Especially settling on top of iron would be way too slow.

@Gumbolt: I'm guessing you didn't connect the ivory city to capital if it's getting unhealthy at pop 2. Need road on wine, there's a gap in the river. Note that corn isn't connected yet either. With granary and corn connected, that city would be healthy still at pop 5. By then more jungle would already be removed and we should have bananas online as well.

 

[Gumbolt]

Well from what I can see the difference between ivory and iron is small. As long as we settle on the iron. Yes mace would be a big risk for Praets.

I agree whichever option we choose we still face a long trek to whoever we attack. Makes me wonder if TSR somehow managed to bulb astronomy.

Yes we have played this far from perfectly. Some events have not really gone our way such as Persian DOW. We can at least try to aim for silver still.

If we play defensively now what do we do?? Build cities towards the AI? Mostly junk cities on jungle? Build roads to the AI? 3 turns a road. Or just accept we will have to heavilly spam units to take down the AI? Otherwise galleons and troops by sea looks best. No +1 bonus from circ bonus.

The Ai will be quicker than normal monarch AI. Looks like Saladin started with some juiced up land. 2x 4 food land. Other Ai with hammers/food early on.

We do face the challenge of several Ai perhaps attacking us soon.

Yes it's unlikely I built the road. I only test settled the city. No more.

 

[Packers5280]

If we go Fe, why not settle on the Fe itself? Yeah, it needs a border pop to be truly useful. But it would give us instant access to it, saving us the turns to road and mine it. Depends on how fast we want the Fe.

 

[yyeah]

I didnt test it.
But at this point my plan for a game would be tech Alpha->Curancy->CS
Steal HBR Construcion.
Settle Iron.
Bulid army of like 5-8 Prets ( depends how fast can i have Construcion and HBR),5 WE's 5 Cats,
with this army i dont rly care about Longbows, X-bows, Maces could be problem but in otherhand, with all this bonuses what ais have here they are still monarch they unti spam is low ... no way that they can stop this power.

Edit.
Btw i was winning wars on Diety with Prets and We's against Longbows , and X-bows with no problem, Maces was stop but that was Deity.
We's defends everything and weakened x-bows arent huge problem for CR Prets usefull here are GG Prets if you have liek C2CR3 Prets he can ezuy take out x-bow, and on monarch how many x-bows ais can have in city ??? max 2 i supose.

 

[shulec]

I didnt test it.
But at this point my plan for a game would be tech Alpha->Curancy->CS
Steal HBR Construcion.

I think now is a good time to talk about Tech. It was commented that we could have stolen some techs by now. While this is true, I don't think that would have sped up things.

I still feel that we should prioritize Philosophy to maximize tech stealing. This will be most profitable if The AI Saladin is able to maintain a high tech rate. He has a strong commerce Capitol already.

If there is a military tech to focus upon, I imagine it is Engineering, which has a completely different tech path.