SGOTM 22 - TTfkapr

[shulec]

I will work on the test game when I get a chance.

I am finished. Who is up next???

Note that three of four warriors have their next move.
The warrior up north, George, killed a panther between T11 and T12. There is still a panther south of him that was there on T11. HP 1.7/2.0, He still has his move. HEAL!!!
The warrior to the east, John, has a bear NW of him. He still has his move.
The warrior to the west, Paul, has not seen any animals. He still has his move.
The warrior to the south, Ringo, has not seen any animals. He no longer has a move.

 

[elitetroops]

I tried downloading all the demographics screenshots to easily flip through them, but for some reason all but T2 and T3 don't work. Says files are corrupt when I download them. Could you possibly put all demos screenshots in a zip and attach?

Some tough decisions here about when to settle what. I think we definitely want horse and we also want stone. But horse first. When to settle stone is the question. Or perhaps we can find some better stone somewhere else? That stone is actually in a really crappy spot. How many other of these close spots we can settle is the question. Do we build a compact empire and head out from here to kill everyone, or do we settle just a couple of more cities, then keep AI capitals as we capture them? 2nd option is actually quite hard, as we would need a ton of units in our own capital whenever we capture a good AI city..

Lots of elephants is nice, that should be quite enough to kill anything we want to kill for quite a while.

 

[Packers5280]

That's a dry corn by the horse, so its a bit food poor pending on if there's any fishing resource. I do agree the stone spot is pretty terrible, but stone would help with several wonders. If we went masonry>sailing we could plant a city on the stone and get a faster GW if we want, but I think according to the rules we will need 2 chariots in the capital before we settle another city. Which means we have to wait for BW or IW I think to settle another city. I don't think archers would trump chariots. Nevermind, the rule says axes, spears, or swords trump warriors, not chariots over warriors, so we are good I believe.

And phants mean SoZ should be obtainable.

 

[shulec]

Remember that crappy city sites aren't a huge deal since we all have the same crappy city sites.

I like the fish site with the forested hills. There is a river NW of the grassland cows to and lots of hills and forests.

Yes, dry plains corn is the same as dry plains wheat.

 

[soundjata]

There are currently 6 lvl 1 cities barring the road to a conquest victory.

We don't necessarily need to grow Rome or expand or anything.

We need to search and destroy.

Chariots are a fine early game searching tool.

 

[Gumbolt]

Duplicate

 

[Gumbolt]

We have revealed over 240 tiles now. Still no Ai culture in sight. With all the jungle here we could struggle to quickly take them out with chariots. The chariots will pretty much be limited to 1mp. I would suggest 10-12 tiles away should eventually reveal an AI. Do we risk pushing further out?

We could build the horse/corn city. BW to whip/chop chariots. Chariots to keep 2-3 Ai limited to 1-2 cities. If not take one out. Chariots would allow us to switch Rome's defenders from warriors and tech BW. Ultimately distance for a chariot rush could be an issue. HA/phants long term would be better.

Barbs! Very difficult to fog bush NESW with so much empty land. We would need TGW or 2-3 more warriors to do it effectively. Even then the open land we would struggle to fight off archers.

Short term strategy? TGW? Oracle for HBR/Alphabet? HA/chariot rush could be pretty strong here? Chariots to pin down AI/steal workers. HA to wipe them out. Great spy would be great for exploring. Otherwise try to capture great wall asap?

Next tech??? TW for chariots? Masonry for TGW? Myst for Oracle? I think masonry maybe?

 

[shulec]

Chariots are going to have a difficult time with raging barb archers in forests/jungles/hills. There is a good chance that the AI capitols will be on hills. Without more information, I like a rex with cat/elephant war.

 

[Gumbolt]

How bad is raging barbs on Monarch level??? If we use enough fog busters they should all but vanish? It's not immortal/deity level. Plus at some point the barbs will die down as barb cities spawn. We do know none of the AI cites were presettled. No idea if there were any barb cities at the start.

What we learned from previous games is TSR will go out to pin down the AI early on. If we want phants maybe we should consider a GS strategy to bulb maths? I still think TGW early on should work best. Oracle would of course be great too. 2 early wonders would seem a big ask without BW.

On a plus side. Now we have met all AI a lot of techs could be cheaper. PH should get a discount. Myst too?

Have we an updated test game? We know all the Ai and we know our exact starting position.

 

[yyeah]

Raging barbs are anoying, we can fortify warriors but like so waht if barb decide that he dosnt care about him, and he will be walking around and derstroying our improovments.
Becouse of that with 1st exp we should secure strategical resource ( stardard ), with horses we have, barb def, we have option to take some1 early on if we deciede to do this, and another reason why iam opting for this spot it just, i dont want to see any barb city there this meens that we have to fog bbust but how to fog bust if we need our troops inn capitol or if our warrior somekind die to wolf and then barb city spawn ... so tahts why in myopinion we shoudl go for this spot asap.
But this is preety far away we need to bulid road, def against barbs will force us to produce a lot of untis early on , and def against barbs will be harder and even more anoying.
Thats a good resons for GW on top of it no tech tradeing meens that, what i belive shulec, mentioned, GS is rly valuable.
Thats my thoughs about this start.
tech path AH-wheel-Mansonry i think.

 

[soundjata]

Chariots are going to have a difficult time with raging barb archers in forests/jungles/hills. There is a good chance that the AI capitols will be on hills. Without more information, I like a rex with cat/elephant war.

Rexing seems tough. For city number 4, we need Rome at size 8.

Elephants Rome has Praetorians!

I'm starting to get convinced that there's no reason Iron isn't around.
There will be a team beelining IW and every other team will be they didn't take this obvious route

It's a gamble with huge benefits and some risk for sure, like having our mines pillaged

What do you guys think of The Wheel > BW > IW ?

1. Settle city #2 near horses (We'll need 6 chariots in Rome when we settle next city)
3. Settle city #3 near iron
4. profit

Alternatively we could tech Archery and avoid settling horses, build 4 archers instead of 6 chariots and settle city #2 near iron.

This strategy will work if:
A. Iron is in reach. I believe in this
B. No barb city blocks us from settling the iron. This is quite tricky but not insurmountable.

 

[Packers5280]

With as much space we already have around us and no AI capitals in site, I think there's no way we can spawn bust all that area. And the Gspy would be invaluable to steal techs. I don't know if exploring would be the wisest unless we want to settle it in an AI city.

With all that jg, I don't know if chariots would be the best explorers. They would just be 4 1 movement units in the jg, and no 50% defense bonus. Warriors would almost be just as good, archers even better. But for sure chariots could go east. And with the jg, again worker stealing would be tough as the worker would need an escort, maybe at least 2 units.

 

[yyeah]

For scouting i wanted to mention it ealier but just forgot, looks to me like best will be warriors WM2 guys since they will be useless later
Pert rush ... well its great but theres only 1 problem with it... i dont see any1 to rush .
Edit.
Seriously, i think we need a little bit more info about where ais are to plan war.
In other hand we can just like dont settle cities at all (maybe 1) and just take cities from ais... but again we need some more scouting info.

 

[shulec]

Elephants Rome has Praetorians!

I'm starting to get convinced that there's no reason Iron isn't around.
There will be a team beelining IW and every other team will be they didn't take this obvious route

It's a gamble with huge benefits and some risk for sure, like having our mines pillaged .

I completely forgot about Preats. I never play as Rome because of them. Great point.

I do think an early rush won't be possible. But we don't have that knowledge yet.

 

[soundjata]

I've edited my previous post with more details...

We need to run tests at this point. How soon can we get to IW?

Is it better to detour through:
- Masonry ?
- Pottery ?
- Writing ?

 

[yyeah]

If prets i would sugest go for wheel, mansonry, BW, IW.
Include GW, if we rush we dont want to deal with barbs with our initial stack, especially that can be long road or at least preety long.

 

[soundjata]

Very quick test:

Archery (T19) > BW (T32) > IW (T49)

Built 1 warrior + barracks + 3 archers + 1 worker + 1 settler (300 hammers total)

Worker 1 has been idle since T39 after having built 4 mines. He could have been pre-chopping instead. Worker 2 has been idle for 4 turns.

No maintenance cost until this turn (we have 10 free units apparently on monarch)

Spoiler :

 

[Packers5280]

I do agree there's got to be Cu or Fe around. It would be impossible to play without either in at least the 3rd ring because if we have BW but no Cu, we would not be able to settle another city, and I don't think BSP would do that. Unless we could get by if we upgraded warriors to axes on that turn and we settle on the metal.

And I do think we should get the GW along the way to IW should we do it. If we get the GW it counts towards wonders and buildings new cities. I like the masonry along the path to IW. Pottery isn't really necessary right away as we won't cottage Rome, and writing isn't that useful with the AIs a country mile away from us. Getting a library and a granary up would be nice, but not necessary right now.

 

[soundjata]

I do agree there's got to be Cu or Fe around. It would be impossible to play without either in at least the 3rd ring because if we have BW but no Cu, we would not be able to settle another city, and I don't think BSP would do that. Unless we could get by if we upgraded warriors to axes on that turn and we settle on the metal.
Incorrect. Archers and Chariots can be used as city defenders after BW.

And I do think we should get the GW along the way to IW should we do it. If we get the GW it counts towards wonders and buildings new cities. I like the masonry along the path to IW. Pottery isn't really necessary right away as we won't cottage Rome, and writing isn't that useful with the AIs a country mile away from us. Getting a library and a granary up would be nice, but not necessary right now.
Well TGW certainly has its uses. On the other hand it could delay the settling of Iron city.

In any case, I believe we need at least a second city on the road to IW. Could be on the wine east for optimum commerce gain (+4 /t)

 

[yyeah]

I was thinking about this a little bit more and if we want to win, probably we need to start war asap.
Chariots ? maybe but they are just too weak Prets op but slow, HAs 2ms we could use archery as well for garnizons, they are strong and fast and we porbably can get them faster then prets.
Problem with HAs is that uf Ai start with metal it could be though but overall this is just monarch ...
Or we can try something what i was intended to do in 1 of my games witch was like axe rush in to HAs( we can switch axes with prets but it will be slower but stronger i dotn think that we need more then this if its Pangaea).
So start rush with metal untis and use HAs for support ( they can rech our initial stack a lot faster) and just weak defenders with HAs then go for kill with CR(3) metal guys...