SGOTM 22 - TTfkapr

[elitetroops]

So to build an army could take 20+ turns with 3 cities.

No way... Praets are so OP that not many are needed before we start first war. Last time I played Rome on deity I took out the first 4 city AI with 6-7 praets, no losses. On monarch I wouldn't hesitate to declare with first 2 praets in position to attack and a few more on the way. If we can have chariots out to pillage metals it makes it even easier. Only axes put up some kind of resistance.

More test game thoughts. Barbs enter my borders 2320bc.

As I said earlier, barbs can enter our borders as soon as they spawn! The immidiate surroundings must be fogbusted until we have TGW, otherwise we might end up losing the game before T40.

And what about this test save ?, You are palying real game then make same moves in test game ?

Only the active player does any moves in the real game. And after doing those moves repeats them in the test game. Everyone else can play around with test game.

Dont think about it like we have to settle 3th city, we just conquer 3th city.

Doesn't matter if we settle or conquer, we also need 6 units in capital to keep any conquered city.

 

[Gumbolt]

What I would be interested in seeing is someone doing a rush here on test game. The big unknown is if we even have iron and where it might be. I would suggest not in the jungle. Maybe 2-3 praets might be enough to start with.

Yep test game anyone can play around with. Live game is sacred. Anything we do on live save is non reversible. So only make any changes to live save on your turnset and only after your plan has been approved.

I will try some more testing in a bit.

 

[yyeah]

Doesn't matter if we settle or conquer, we also need 6 units in capital to keep any conquered city.

It is matter.
Beocuse if we conquer we dont have to bulid a settler !.

 

[yyeah]

Played some in to this
Just finished IW.
tech path Mansonry-wheel-mistycyzm-archery-meditaion-ph-bw-iw

Spoiler :

producion - finish worker-barraks-stop-GW-settler-archer-oracle-3xarcher-finish barraks-settler
2nd city worker 2 archers

no iron so rush its preety dificult
but i think i add iron somewhere and will c how it works, what units spam ai have.

thoughs GW takes forever we have a lot of time until we can start reserching bw ( after 2nd city), we can allso reserch it and just leave 1 turn settle 2nd site and finish bw.
I decided to try Oracle its a preety safe date i think for monarch or well i dont know just guessing, just 1500BC this date looks like somekind of you now below it its just not safe.

950BC prets its not too bad i think

 

[Gumbolt]

1520bc Oracle might not be guaranteed. The Ai all start with a free resource. Not included on test save. Interesting!

The big issue i have is for 3rd city we would either need to settle once we have IW or settle iron with 4th city. It would be a game killer if we had no iron. I think a few teams might rage quit.

If I had to guess 1SE of our capital settling spot could be a resource. Only tile in capital that has no river commerce. May be a coincidence.

 

[elitetroops]

It is matter.
Beocuse if we conquer we dont have to bulid a settler !.

Normally it's clearly cheaper to conquer than to build settlers, as you take many cities with the same units. Here it's not really cheaper in terms of expansion. If we have to settle 3rd city for iron, we need 8 units and 8 pop in capital to keep any captured city. Won't happen in a long time. Any early war would be more about slowing down AI by pillaging and burning down their cities than about expansion.

Let's not forget that we have no idea what kind of cities the AI has or where they are. For all we know, maybe there are no AI at all on this landmass and the mapmaker just placed scouts in the wild for us to meet the AI, like he did with the 2 southern scouts. And we have to be very picky about what cities to keep/settle early on as we will need to grab lots of important resources.

For pillaging and general harassment mounted units are far better. If we can get a single chariot to AI territory before they have had time to build a spear, this unit alone can pretty much ensure that this AI can never expand or do anything else. Later HAs can come in to take out the cities.

 

[Packers5280]

Don't forget if we get the GW, the AI will be facing pressure of their own. I've seen the constant barb pressure almost cripple an AI, especially in their expansion. Pressure from barbs plus praets is a bloodbath for the AI. It is almost guaranteed though, that the AI have metal so they can build axes for the praets. Course that means barb axes as well once everyone gets BW. But first, before we consider war, we actually need to find the AIs first. Although rushing Giggles could be very difficult with his Vultures.

Only Giggles and Darius have higher preference rates on building wonders. Both are 8/10, zara is 4, and the others are 2. So we should not discount the possibility of late wonders. And no AI are industrious, so a late oracle is a strong possibility.

Lot of "evil" leaders as well, only one "good", and 2 neutral. Darius should soak up the hate from the "evil leaders".



And yes I can play next.

 

[elitetroops]

Tried the testgame. I'd say GW is a must. Barbs start coming in force quite early.

The best to me seems to be to delay BW until after city #2. Bringing back all warriors I got 2nd city (after TGW) T48, I wouldn't be surprised if a turn can be cut off with improved micro. Built one extra warrior as one was needed spawnbusting the next city site. If one warrior is lost/left exploring, this would have required another warrior and delayed 2nd city one turn. BW can be in shortly after city #2 is settled.

 

[Gumbolt]

Lots of little puzzles here.
1. We plan for praet and have no iron. Map maker would not be that cruel?
2. We plan for Praets and find we are on an island alone. It's possible the scouts are just placed to distract us.
3. We delay 3rd city and find no iron. (Hopefully in BFC anyway.)
4. Unlikely but the Ai builds TGW. Seems unlikely as they have to tech masonry.
5. Need to fogbust over need to explore more to prove we can attack an AI.

Of course no one is forcing us to use Praets. I think if we really want more than 3 cities we want agriculture sooner than later. Monarchy too for happiness.

Then when we war we can actually capture some cities. At present we will go to war and be almost stagnant at 3 cities.

I think we agree 2nd city before completing BW. Although long terms it's inevitable to replace those warriors. Sooner better than later??

 

[Revent]

Planning for Praets straight away (with an aim to beeline it) imo is not a good idea. This is strategy not guesswork As you mentioned all the possible flaws above GB, I would not think the mapmaker is so kind as to give us Praets and let us weak havoc on Monarch difficulty. Maybe we should scout further and see if we can at least find an AI before commiting ourselves to that route.

Lack of tech trading also does mean we will need to research everything ourselves too.

 

[Gumbolt]

Skipping TGW is interesting. Main downside is you have to find another first building. It almost forces you to use monument and granary for 2nd/3rd city. Plus side is you can spam out 4 archers after you have 6-7 warriors. I had mixed results. The first attempt I forgot the monument. The second attempt one of my warriors died causing issues. Albeit I had 6-7 archers. of course knowing what barb issues I would face in 20-30 turns is another matter. The need to build extra units also impacts science. I found with 9-10 units I was losing 2-3 gold a turn.

Maybe TGW is safer with 5 warriors. It still means having other city defenders later.

In terms of scouting I was able to scout more with little or no problem. I was finding the Ai culture 3-4 turns later. This is made easier when their 2nd cities appear. Hopefully soon we will see some Ai archers. This will suggest they are reachable by land.

On test game even with more food and other resources on my test game the AI struggle to build any wonders early. (Stone henge only.)

Mines. Best to do hill SE of Rome first and do a anti clockwise circle back. The hill to west is closer but means a lost worker turn later.

2080bc second city. 1 turn from BW.

Spoiler :

If we skip TGW we could build second city earlier but defending it would still be an issue. 5-6 early archers are not a bad thing. Hmmm. The issue now is I need 6 defenders for city 3 and I have no idea where/if we have Iron . So archery may be needed. 3rd building?? Monument?

On test game where I gave babylonians stone they built great wall in 2520bc. Wow. I did give them pigs worked from start. My current tests suggests that risking barbs can be a big pain. I was able to find Antium 2200bc with 5-6 archers. I just can't say the risk which would be needed to keep the cities safe. 1-2 more warrior fog busters might of helped. Again this delays 2nd city.

Maybe best play is to play to BW and then judge if we risk IW or not? We don't have to decide on praets vs horse for now. I think most want masonry next. We should be first to the tech.

 

[Packers5280]

What do we want to build for the 5 turns between the worker finishing and getting masonry? A warrior probably? Or a settler? Either way, we will either delay GW or lose some hammers to decay. I think a warrior would probably be the best.

 

[Gumbolt]

What do we want to build for the 5 turns between the worker finishing and getting masonry? A warrior probably? Or a settler? Either way, we will either delay GW or lose some hammers to decay. I think a warrior would probably be the best.

Have you tried the test game??? Better to post a full plan. Do note where Shulec stated the barb animals were last turn. We do not want to lose a warrior to a bear. So run from bears where possible. Would be nice to get more thoughts from other players on general strategy.

 

[shulec]

Sorry for being out of touch and failing to pass on a huge bit of info. All AIs were met on the southern peninsula. I have not seen any AI units other than scouts. It is possible that all of the AI cities are on islands.

 

[Gumbolt]

If the Ai are all on islands we need workboats asap. BSP suggested this was an adapted pangea. So if we don't see any archers soon we will soon know. On this basis rushing to IW may not be best. TGW seems a no brainer really. Far too much land to fogbust with a few cities. Then perhaps beeline astronomy and use galleons? Hmmmm. Galleys might also work but lot of land on this map.

Ultimately in next 3-4 turns of exploring we should know if any Ai are present on our land mass. There are too many questions right now for us to really define our game strategy here.

What we do know is on first turn most of the Ai did not have coastal starts. It could be we are the only player on the island. On which basis after we lay mines we should think about some farms. How do we plan to deal with happiness here?? Hmmmm. Answers on a post card.

Do we still feel TGW first is best strategy or can we somehow beeline Oracle and fog bust well? Try to grab monarchy from oracle? Hmmm.

 

[shulec]

The Great Wall is a must. We will was so many hammers on fogbusting, worker turns on rebuilding pillaged tiles and lost population whipping garrison units. There is so much land that would need to be fog busted. The warriors will quickly lose to archers and/or be ignored.

I agree with building a warrior prior to TGW. Archery must come quickly. It would be foolish to delay BW. Again, I think this map will prove horses to be a bust.

I do think we need a library in Rome so we can work specialists. We will want to dilute the GSpy points. We will need the research from the Science specialists, and a granary will sure help us grow while working specialists.

If all the AIs are on islands, a GSpy may be useless. If so, we will need to build a trojan horse city to gift to an AI to steal techs from.

We need archery for scouting. We need to know if Preats will be useful or not.

I would also still not give up on the idea of partially cottaging Rome. We will need beakers to come from somewhere.

 

[yyeah]

trojan horse city to gift to an AI

Trojan horse city thats good.

I allso agreee that we need to bulid 1 more unit. Iam writing unit becouse i rather have archer then warrior.
We need archery anyway and we have a lot of time to reserch it while bulding GW, then settler.
If we going for Oracle then warrior.

 

[elitetroops]

Yes, skipping GW is not an option. It must be built asap.

Not so sure about archery though. It's 60 beakers to save 5 or 10 hammers/unit, depending on if we settle horses or not. If we do settle horses, we could build a ton of chariots and still be better off compared to teching archery and building archers. And chariots are even better for scouting than archers.

However, as all AI scouts came from the south, there is now a real risk that we are alone. Or at least the nearest AI is very far away. In that case we might be better off settling something other than horses...

But where to settle is not a question for the next turnset, I think. What matters now is teching masonry and starting GW. Maybe Packers first could play until masonry, then when we have more map info we can make a more informed decision about next tech.

 

[yyeah]

yea archers are debatable, to be honest i dont like to tech archery at all,but only thing why iam considering it is we have to bulid tones of units to support our expansions so you know 1 or 2 chariots doesnt makes a diference but 8 chariots or 8 archers makes a diference( 40 ), note that we need 1 unti befor we settle so if we want to bulid chariots we need additional warrior witch is just somekind of wasted 15
Overall iam not sure about it what is better, i dont like techin archer especialy if we going for GW this is preety ridiculous, bbut allso i more like to bulid tones of archers then tones of chariots.
Edit
This are rly small things but at this point of game preety importand.

Ok I had second thoughts out(?), chariots are better i think, good point elitetroops becouse we can kill barbs with it,gain exp or kill barb city if needed ( raze or keep), support war, we just have more options with it witch is worth it this .

 

[Gumbolt]

At this stage I agree on TGW first with a warrior first. I still think our warriors can scout in the forest areas. The warrior near the bear needs to be careful as that bear will take it out. Overall I found the turn i completed TGW barbs literally started to enter my borders.

I would suggest fish city next. Purely on basis we need to define map and fine AI. A trojan city is fine but we still need techs to steal. Stealing IW/Monarchy would be nice. At present Praets seem a dream away.

It's as I summarised from my test. There is just too much risk beelining a tech in the hope you can just crush the Ai on a map.

One issue we need to be careful is barb cities spawning on city sites we want. It will happen. Can we suggest moves for warriors for Packers??

Rome should clearly work pigs tile and build pasture on pigs once worker is complete. Masonry next tech. Packers you are way too quiet!!

Never assume we don't have copper nearby.