SGOTM 22 - Xteam

[Jersey Joe]

I like neilmeister's idea of considering space conquest, or at least settling on the coast. When I did the test game map, I made sure we did not have bronze or iron in our fat cross.
Given the restricts placed on us I think the first 2 techs we get should be Archery & Animal Husbandry (or visa versa).
Also, because of the building requirements, we might consider building Stonehenge which would gives us a total of 3 buildings.

 

[Folket]

I agree that spending 1 turn to find something better is a good idea.

People have been complaining about maps forcing paratroopers. Do they really want to do that again?

What is the reasoning behind archery?

Looking at the conditions I think getting 7 wonders might be the most difficult. We are not swiming in either food or forests. We will spend a lot of time building wonders unless we can destroy the AI first, which would be a huge gamble.

What wonders should we aim for? Stonehedge? Pyramids? MoM? Great Library? Parthenon?

Getting marble will help immensly. Building stonehedge and pyramids without stone is painful. Coastal start would also help with access to Collossus.

 

[Jersey Joe]

What is the reasoning behind archery?
.

We need to defend our Capital with troops other than warriors to build more cities (maybe we could build 1 city before Bronze working). We are not rolling in gold, so building more warriors is a waste of hammers. We can research archery and build at least 1 archer before the barbarians start roaming around.

What wonders should we aim for? Stonehedge? Pyramids? MoM? Great Library? Parthenon?

Getting marble will help immensly. Building stonehedge and pyramids without stone is painful. Coastal start would also help with access to Collossus.

We could chop/whip stonehedge or the great wall.

 

[BSPollux]

In normal GOTM & HoF, yes I would agree, but I would be staggered if anyone achieves a BC win, if they do then it will be a poorly designed SGOTM game and I don't think BSPollux would give us a poorly designed game.

Sometimes it's amazing what you guys are capable of. But I'm still trying to hit the sweet spot between "uninteresting" and "impossible". And, as always, my main goal is to force you to make decisions instead of allowing you to calculate the optimal path. You'd just do it right and and reach the goal without a scratch. Can't have that, you shall bleed at least a little bit.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Agree that AH is the obvious first tech to target, then, if Horses are available and not on a river, The Wheel might be optimal; otherwise, concur that BW is next, unless the need for early archers becomes apparent.

Thinking first player should play through AH, then pause for discussion.

Like Neil, I strongly suspect that a HA rush to Conquest has been somehow thwarted by the mapmaker; but, until we have evidence of that, a HA rush is the appropriate way to plan. We have to trust that the mapmaker is not out to ensure the defeat of optimal play, just to make the game challenging.

 

[leif erikson]

We might take one extra turn to get a warrior on the western-most southern forested hill (ON THE SECOND TURN) and another on the first western forested hill, with a thought to settling on the coast and still keeping the pig if seafood (or something unexpected like cow or gems) is available. Settling in any other direction seems to require loosing the pig, and that is unlikely to be an improvement.

This sounds like a pretty good recon plan to help us to decide where to settle. Is there any place else anyone thinks we should look before making a final decision?

 

[Htadus]

Even if we were to assume that Paratroops are needed to win by conquest, SC needs way too many techs to complete.

Specially considering that without Corps, we will be limited to no more than 12 cities, I do not see how the science output can be in the prerequisite 5k-8k bulbs per turn to learn a tech.

Each of our city sites need to be absolutely superb.

I am in favor of either settling on the hill to east or at current spot. Not a fan of site 1 because the food does not come on line for a long time.

 

[Cactus Pete]

I am in favor of either settling on the hill to east or at current spot. That puts the capital on a valuable commerce hill tile. Why do you want to do that? Thinking we would want to mine that tile early. Not a fan of site 1 because the food does not come on line for a long time.

Wouldn't you make the same argument for site #3? Why is early food critical, when we are building a worker for the first 15 turns or so?

 

[leif erikson]

The more I think about it, the more I am being drawn to neil's idea of a coastal city, if for no other reason, it makes more wonders available to us. Think one of those Warriors needs to head west, perhaps SW, NW and W along the hills.

 

[neilmeister]

Just opened the test save and noticed it is not built with BUFFY mod. (my system loads BUFFY by default so it wouldnt load)

Jersey Joe, can you confirm that you have BUFFY installed and working. If not it is linked here

edit: Western warrior to move SW twice, southern warrior to move S then SW, settler to move SW or 2SW and then wait?

 

[Jersey Joe]

Just opened the test save and noticed it is not built with BUFFY mod. (my system loads BUFFY by default so it wouldnt load)

Jersey Joe, can you confirm that you have BUFFY installed and working. If not it is linked here

edit: Western warrior to move SW twice, southern warrior to move S then SW, settler to move SW or 2SW and then wait?

I built the test file before having installed BUFFY. I do have BUFFY installed now and as Leif suggested tested it with a BOTM file.

If you want I could remake it as a BUFFY file.

 

[neilmeister]

No need to remake it, just wanting to make sure you had it. Sorry I missed previous posts about it.

 

[Cactus Pete]

edit: Western warrior to move SW twice, southern warrior to move S then SW, settler to move SW or 2SW and then wait?

Prefer just moving the settler only 1SW, as a coastal capital gives up too much production -- fewer forests and hills -- if no seafood available.

 

[Htadus]

That puts the capital on a valuable commerce hill tile. Why do you want to do that? Thinking we would want to mine that tile early.
We need a balance of food and hammer for this scenario. So gaining 2 early 3F2C tile (we can farm the wine after agriculture) while sacrificing a river grass hill I think is a reasonable exchange and we really do not loose a hill, we gain 1F. This game is about growth.

What I do not like about the hill is that we loose a future 4F1H tile(banana's) and take longer to build the worker. But Calendar is ways off from the start and can't even mine the banana until IW. So loosing the banana is not that bad since we loose 1F(later on) and gain 1F4C (10C after Monarchy)
Wouldn't you make the same argument for site #3? Why is early food critical, when we are building a worker for the first 15 turns or so?

Site 3 is a bit better than SIP since we gain a farmable wine and 2C's to go with. But the banana is useless for a long time.

As for coastal city:
If it has food (Fish), then it can be a good thing as long as we are not going to space. Coastal cities, are limited by the number of ordinary coast tiles. I know of no way to get more food from a coast tile. Of course it would be nice to get the health benefits of a Harbor.

Food is critical is because our growth is completely dependent upon the growth of the capital. I would even suggest that we go after pottery just for the granary but we can wait.

AH and TW are my priority techs too.

 

[BSPollux]

It seems the perfect announcement post is something I will never be able to do...

It was missing another tiny detail again:

No tech trading or brokering

This will be posted in each team thread now.

 

[Folket]

No tech trading makes AIs slower and useless to us. We should just kill them all at earliest opportunity.

What no tech trades does it makes later wonders easier to get for us. Earlier wonders slightly more difficult as we can't trade for techs that we skip.

 

[leif erikson]

That changes a number of things.

Seems like we should target the wonders we want and figure out how to proceed up the tech tree in order to get them.

Understand your objection to coastal capital, CP. I'm fine with inland.

Hope we can find some stone and marble, as well as some happy resources.

 

[Htadus]

No tech trading or brokering

But we can steal from them, if I recall correctly.

No tech trading makes AIs slower and useless to us. We should just kill them all at earliest opportunity. If we have a nearby AI who like to learn techs fast, we should let him grow and steal techs. All others should be killed off.

What no tech trades does it makes later wonders easier to get for us. Earlier wonders slightly more difficult as we can't trade for techs that we skip.

I do not think even early wonders are an issue. May be Oracle is out of the way but we should try and get Monarchy from it.

That changes a number of things.

Seems like we should target the wonders we want and figure out how to proceed up the tech tree in order to get them. We can also delay some of the early techs in order to get the bonus for other AI knowing the tech.

Understand your objection to coastal capital, CP. I'm fine with inland. I agree.

Hope we can find some stone and marble, as well as some happy resources.

About the wonders:
We should aim to get all the cheap early wonders. The so called useless SH is very useful on this map. Shall we learn Myst as our second tech?

 

[leif erikson]

With Raging Barbs, that will also hold the AI Civs back, perhaps we should consider Great Wall?

If we are going to attack relentlessly, Wonders like 'mids are only going to take up hammers we need for units. Unless we think we need to go farther into the tech tree. Is there any reason to think that?

Was thinking Archery should not be too far out of the initial tech list either. He says that protecting the city is important. Do not want a Humbaba taking Rome before we even get a Settler out.

 

[Htadus]

I am good with great wall and it gives a very useful GP. It never gets killed and can roam any where.

Archery may not be bad early tech.