SGOTM 22 - Xteam

Htadus · Oct 23, 2015

Jersey Joe said:
How do you suggest we capture these cities? Archers will not cut it. We would have to go with Cats and Elephants. That is a long way off tech wise. Archer and cats. I have done it before to good effort. But that is not where I was going at.

We cannot steal our way to tech parity. We can only steal techs an AI knows. That is what tech parity is. The best thing to do is pick an AI like Sal whose tech path is mostly on the bottom of the chart while we tech the top. Nearly all AI, even Darius, follow the lower path before they go after the Civil Service path. Sal on the other hand will Chase, Christianity and then Islam. Nearly every game. We should view stealing as a supplement to our teching not as a replacement. That is what I have been saying too. So we do agree on at least this matter.

Seems to me with Darius you have about 2800 eps going unused because he does not have any techs to steal. Some thing is wrong with Darius' tech path. He is learning Monarchy without Myst. Does that sound right to you? A settled spy could redirect points to another AI. true Granted if you had chosen Sal for the gift you could have used up about 800 eps stealing IW, religious techs and Monarchy I will say again, two nights ago, I stole my way up to Monarchy, math and HBR from Darius. But now it seem that he does not even know Myst.. It takes a settled spy 67 turns to earn that many eps. Some thing is off here. A GSpy gives 3000 as you verified below. Settled GSpy provide 12Ept. That mean it will take 250 turns (3000/12) for that many esp points. We need those points now, not later. The 750 bulbs is a nice bonus. The spy would have been settled for about 20 turns before the first steal so 47 turns to go, but in those 20 turns the settled spy also gives us 60 beakers which is enough to pay for teching Myst so we do not have to steal it. Further, having more spies than 2 in a city makes it likely 1 will be caught. Stealing requires several turns so the 47 turns gets closer to 30 turns need to close the gap. Also, when we start warring we can redirect our efforts and use spies to weaken city defenses.If we get this right, we would need all the available esp to stay in front.
For BtS, Normal Speed is 3,000 eps, Epic speed is 4,500 eps, and Marathon is 9,000 eps.

Thanks for the clarification. I usually avoid GSpy's so my memory is poor.
When I stole IW, it costed me about 130-140 espy at 30% discount. That is not bad for nearly 300 bulb tech. I know from past experience, I can steal a hell of a lot techs from an AI with single GSpy.

I just realized why I did not see Monarchy to steal from Darius. He was able to learn Monarchy without Myst since BSP gave AI PH. So yes, it is possible Darius in the real game may not know Myst either. But I doubt that you gave AI as juicy sites as BSP likely did.

@ Ronnie1, cow site is not close but not far either. It is a typical 3rd city site on a typical coastal capital game.

Ronnie1 · Oct 23, 2015

@ Ronnie1, cow site is not close but not far either. It is a typical 3rd city site on a typical coastal capital game.

There is nothing typical about this game.

My biggest question in all honesty for settling the wine/cow is can we even get a settler safely there in the near term?

Jersey Joe · Oct 23, 2015

Ronnie1 said:
My biggest question in all honesty for settling the wine/cow is can we even get a settler safely there in the near term?

It is not hard. Animals are gone and no barb horses, a settler can avoid bards on the flat land going to the site Htadus picked.

@Htadus, The 67 turns was how long it would take to get to 800eps which is about what stealing IW, religious techs and Monarchy from Sal would cost.

I do not think building 5 more wonders is that big of a limitation. Once we have a few productive cities Caput will be able to build wonders.

Htadus · Oct 23, 2015

Thank you for the clarification Joe.

Here is my latest test. I partly micro managed the game until learning Alpha and no micro afterwards. I met following objects.

Horses are barb free and available.
Same with Elephants.
Faster Alpha.
1 turn late GLH.
By 1AD learned everything Sal knew. As I said earlier, he went after religious route and is a poor tech stealing partner. But he did found Christianity in the gift city.

Hear is the info from Autolog.

Spoiler :

This can be improved by a mile with more chopping in second city. I had to delay the 3rd city by 4-5 turns since I did not have enough units.
Better tech rate of the real game will make theft even better. Sal took forever to learn Monarchy.
I stole all the techs without any stationary spy discounts. Only tech even without CS, we can go after Edu.

I am done testing. If anyone else want to take this set, please go ahead. Else, give more input. I know I can not improve this upto learning Alpha.
Hear is the save

EDIT: With a little planning and micro, there is a possibility that we can have 3rd city settled by the time Alpha is in. I have to try in the AM time.

Cactus Pete · Oct 24, 2015

Htadus, can you give a brief outline of your plans. (Know it's all been posted, but spread out and altered (I think) in some cases.

Htadus · Oct 24, 2015

Plan is in flux still since there is room to improve. I am looking at going for Myst first and see how that may help with settling Elephant before Alpha. My first settled city still will be Cow. I will post another test with a summary of what I am proposing.

But briefly the plan is to:
Finish this turn with cap building and archer,
Whip the archer in Cap and have the newly built archer from Rome come to the capital to get 4 defenders and pop to claim the 2nd city again.
OB and gift Rome to Darius.(His typical tech path is more suitable for us and I am positive that he has Religion techs because he has CoL as well as confu. He will want to spread his religion.)
Turn off Sci when it drops below 100%.
Grow capital to 6 and whip a Lib.
Turn on Sci to 100%.
Finish GLH.
Work on Granary.
Build Archers and start a spy.

For the cow city:

Build/chop/whip (Monument perhaps) Granary, archers, a setter and be ready to whip a spy when Alpha is done.
Start Lib. The main reason for this is to run 2 scientists in there as soon as possible. That way we can try to get a GS before the pool become really polluted in the capital.

Use 3 archers from the capital (after founding the city) to secure elephants, Horse and Gem as I did in the last test.

Jersey Joe · Oct 24, 2015

Htadus said:
Here is my latest test. I partly micro managed the game until learning Alpha and no micro afterwards. I met following objects.

Horses are barb free and available.
Same with Elephants.
Faster Alpha.
1 turn late GLH. I think waiting till 725bc is to long.
By 1AD learned everything Sal knew. By 1 AD you can learn almost everything Sal knows with a settled GS.

I stole all the techs without any stationary spy discounts. Only tech even without CS, we can go after Edu.

EDIT: With a little planning and micro, there is a possibility that we can have 3rd city settled by the time Alpha is in. See below for suggestion.

Htadus said:
Plan is in flux still since there is room to improve. I am looking at going for Myst first and see how that may help with settling Elephant before Alpha. My first settled city still will be Cow. I will post another test with a summary of what I am proposing.

But briefly the plan is to:
Finish this turn with cap building and archer,
Whip the archer in Cap and have the newly built archer from Rome come to the capital to get 4 defenders and pop to claim the 2nd city again. Similar to what I did after I finished GLH, but I had to delay moving out of Rome to defend vs barbs.
OB and gift Rome to Darius.(His typical tech path is more suitable for us and I am positive that he has Religion techs because he has CoL as well as confu. He will want to spread his religion.) CoL is tech that gives Confu. He may only know priesthood.
Turn off Sci when it drops below 100%. Agree
Grow capital to 6 and whip a Lib. Why not chop forest (not in fat cross) and whip settler overflow to archer and then build another archer before the Lib?
Turn on Sci to 100%.
Finish GLH. I think you should finish on or before 950bc
Work on Granary. What about a WB?
Build Archers and start a spy.

If the GS is not going to be settled, there should be enough time to explore some of Hannibal's territory before the infiltrate mission.

Cactus Pete · Oct 24, 2015

Thanks, Htadus. Second Joe's wkbt query.

Htadus · Oct 24, 2015

Going to test a settled GSpy version. Will build a wb.
I disagree about the GLH need to be in by 950BC since I have build them even later in Immortal games before but early GP's are better.
There is only a minuscule chance that Darius only know Priesthood. Darius having a state religion, that he founded, will try to spread it. That means he need to build a Monastery to spread it. Which means he need to know Meditation and in turn need Myst. I am willing to risk that since am confident the games AI are going to be so much advanced. The reason I am confident is that our Sal is making 2 x our 29 gpt while the real games Sal is making nearly 90 gpt. Can not make the same comparison to Darius since our game does not have enough espy on Darius.

Testing

Jersey Joe · Oct 24, 2015

Htadus said:
Going to test a settled GSpy version. Will build a wb.
I disagree about the GLH need to be in by 950BC since I have build them even later in Immortal games before but early GP's are better.
There is only a minuscule chance that Darius only know Priesthood. Darius having a state religion, that he founded, will try to spread it. That means he need to build a Monastery to spread it. Which means he need to know Meditation and in turn need Myst. I am willing to risk that since am confident the games AI are going to be so much advanced. The reason I am confident is that our Sal is making 2 x our 29 gpt while the real games Sal is making nearly 90 gpt. Can not make the same comparison to Darius since our game does not have enough espy on Darius.

Testing

I guess I am a little paranoid about losing a wonder build by a turn or 2 because our "fear" of losing the race for the GW.

Friendly reminder

you need to direct the eps at Darius.

Should we send a spy exploring to find where Darius is located? Once he has located Darius he could be used to sabotage Wonders Darius is building that we want to build.

What about gifting the city to Hannibal?
He has his UU. Therefore, he knows riding.
He will probably tech Compass sooner rather than later for his UB.
We know where he is located.

Htadus · Oct 24, 2015

^^Yes I did find out the first time around that I needed to switch the ESP to Darius. But then after the second test I stopped early again due to the realization, that a settled GSpy's 12 Ept is fine for early techs but less useful when the tech costs become greater. We do not want to wait 250 turns to get the most out of spy economy. We should be planning to steal toward possibly to Engineering. With patience, we can get about 6000 bpt worth of techs from Darius. So settling the GSpy is not the right option for us.

Darius is better than Hannibal, with the assumption that Darius is far away from us and will be slowed down by our gift and Hannibal may be our first target since he is the only one we know that we can access at the moment. We still do not know that much about this game. Other than this is a Immortal or Deity tech rate for AI and some seem to be able to access high hammer tiles. I have been wondering about the high hammer thing and believe that an AI with Stone may be building the Mids or HG or and AI with Marble is building a boosted wonder.

Ok I am going to refine my test and this time all the distractors are asleep.

BTW, this test is going to focus more on expansion.

Ronnie1 · Oct 24, 2015

Comments in blue

Htadus said:
Plan is in flux still since there is room to improve. I am looking at going for Myst first and see how that may help with settling Elephant before Alpha. My first settled city still will be Cow. I will post another test with a summary of what I am proposing.

But briefly the plan is to:
Finish this turn with cap building and archer,
Whip the archer in Cap and have the newly built archer from Rome come to the capital to get 4 defenders and pop to claim the 2nd city again.
OB and gift Rome to Darius.(His typical tech path is more suitable for us and I am positive that he has Religion techs because he has CoL as well as confu. He will want to spread his religion.)
Turn off Sci when it drops below 100%.
Grow capital to 6 and whip a Lib.I assume we are unhappy at size 6, I would rather whip another worker and overflow into some other build. I would build Granary before Library also.
Turn on Sci to 100%.
Finish GLH.
Work on Granary.
Build Archers and start a spy.

For the cow city:

Build/chop/whip (Monument perhaps) Granary, archers, a setter and be ready to whip a spy when Alpha is done.This settler should be able to be whipped from Caput with the overflow helping some other build. With our bonus on settlers, 2 turns invested in Caput produces 44-48, 2 pop whipping overflows another 40 or so into the follow along build.
Start Lib. The main reason for this is to run 2 scientists in there as soon as possible. That way we can try to get a GS before the pool become really polluted in the capital.

Use 3 archers from the capital (after founding the city) to secure elephants, Horse and Gem as I did in the last test.

Htadus · Oct 25, 2015

@Ronne1

Yes the city is unhappy at size 6 but the thing is that the science boost is about 6-8gpt. That is a big advantage to not use. I have taken the granary first route. It is too early since the capital has plenty of food, the granary's advantage becomes a hindrance.

I did ended up using the capital to whip in the test but are you sure the overflow is indeed the double? I never noticed it. Will check.

Ok here is the deal. I am ready to play the set a few turns at a time. I feel that Myst next may be the better option for getting the most out of the chops and faster cow on line. The 3 turn we need to learn the Myst will be payed back by having the Cow city run 2 scientist sooner. This will give us a starting point.

So are we a go to the completion of Myst? This also means that we settle the cow. Can I get a go on this? Also there is religion spread factor that has been taking palce. This also require adjustments to builds. Oh, we need at least 3 spys when it was time to steal techs. I lost 2.

Jersey Joe · Oct 25, 2015

Htadus said:
^^Yes I did find out the first time around that I needed to switch the ESP to Darius. But then after the second test I stopped early again due to the realization, that a settled GSpy's 12 Ept is fine for early techs but less useful when the tech costs become greater. We do not want to wait 250 turns to get the most out of spy economy. We should be planning to steal toward possibly to Engineering. With patience, we can get about 6000 bpt worth of techs from Darius. So settling the GSpy is not the right option for us.

I do not think we are going to win in less than 250 turns, so in the long run a settled spy will give us more than 3000 eps. What will hurt the settled spy gambit most is as we build wonders we have less of a chance of getting a second GS to build Scotland Yard (unless we have a city running only spy specialists).

If we are going with the infiltrate mission against Darius I would suggest the following:
a) The Infiltrate Mission does not have to be run until we are actually ready to steal a tech so the GS could do some scouting. I doubt there is an AI above Hannibal. So if you scout in a westerly direction with the warrior the GS could scout a little of the east. A bonus is if he finds Darius and he can scout more and not have to return to Gift to run the mission.

b) Since we will have 3,000 eps directed at Darius we should either leave the per turn eps going to Sal or maybe change to Hannibal and run a spy over into his territory and steal Riding. Also, if Hannibal does become our first target we can use our spies to weaken his city defenses.

Htadus · Oct 25, 2015

Jersey Joe said:
I do not think we are going to win in less than 250 turns, so in the long run a settled spy will give us more than 3000 eps. What will hurt the settled spy gambit most is as we build wonders we have less of a chance of getting a second GS to build Scotland Yard (unless we have a city running only spy specialists).
Joe, 250 turns from now, T72, is T322 which is 1902. If the game come to that, we have proven how awesome BPS's game design is. I for one have not played that late into the game ever. Again, the value of the spy economy is what we can get now, not late. Are you considering that we should go into a full espy economy?
I want to liberate MT using 2 GS and have a friendly GM to run a trade mission and upgrade as many of our surviving WE to Cuirasses and kill all the AI. If we get a GSpy, then we will use him to bomb the target of the moment and use cats and WE to take the city.
If we are going with the infiltrate mission against Darius I would suggest the following:
a) The Infiltrate Mission does not have to be run until we are actually ready to steal a tech so the GS could do some scouting. I doubt there is an AI above Hannibal. So if you scout in a westerly direction with the warrior the GS could scout a little of the east. A bonus is if he finds Darius and he can scout more and not have to return to Gift to run the mission.
Joe, we want to know where the Iron Is located asap, so we should not wait 5 turns to streal it in order to save about 60-90 esp. There are about 8 turns available in between the GSpy's arrival to completing Alphbet. So he can go 8 tiles out from we are now at max or he can go 4 forest/jungle tiles and 4 forest/jungle tiles back. Which direction do you want to go? Actually this is useless discussion. I am not going to play this in one sitting as we did up to this point. There are too many things that will require adjustments. With some luck, I intend to explore a whole lot of space toward the Ivory with the hope of finding an AI in that direction.
b) Since we will have 3,000 eps directed at Darius we should either leave the per turn eps going to Sal or maybe change to Hannibal and run a spy over into his territory and steal Riding. Also, if Hannibal does become our first target we can use our spies to weaken his city defenses.

I would prefer to keep the esp with Sal since we can keep an eye on his tech path. If we switch it now, we may end up not seeing Hannie's techs for a good while and in the mean time go blind on Sal.

So am I ok to play to end of GLH. If anything change compared to our anticipation, and it could be many at this point of the game, them I will stop. leif has been quiet.

I can play in 3 hours from this post (4 PM US east coast time).

Finish this turn, OB and gift to Darius, settle city, complete GLH. Stop. Myst>Alpha.

Cactus Pete · Oct 25, 2015

Concur that a victory will occur in less than 250 turns.

Green here.

Jersey Joe · Oct 25, 2015

Htadus said:
I would prefer to keep the esp with Sal since we can keep an eye on his tech path. If we switch it now, we may end up not seeing Hannie's techs for a good while and in the mean time go blind on Sal.

So am I ok to play to end of GLH. If anything change compared to our anticipation, and it could be many at this point of the game, them I will stop. leif has been quiet.

I can play in 3 hours from this post (4 PM US east coast time).

Finish this turn, OB and gift to Darius, settle city, complete GLH. Stop. Myst>Alpha.

When is the end of the GLH? If it is not later than 900bc I am okay with your plan.

I did not realize 250 turns was that far out I thought it would be in the 1600s.

Htadus · Oct 25, 2015

That is 1 green and 1 yellow. :lol:

I will play after my kids go to sleep. In about an hour.

leif erikson · Oct 25, 2015

Green here as well.
Good Luck! :thumbsup:

Htadus · Oct 25, 2015

Ok, things did not go according to plan except for the GLH. We bagged it.

My notes:

Spoiler :

I think this is a good stopping point and start to plan the next set. I hope no one chose to beeline to Alpha. They are going to get so far ahead. AH-Writing and Alpha.

Here is your Session Turn Log from 1120 BC to 875 BC:

Spoiler :

Here is the link to save. Please remember that it is not paused.
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/download.php?file=Xteam_SG022_BC0875_01.CivBeyondSwordSave

Here is the screen shot of Capital before settling city 2.

SGOTM 22 - Xteam

A and L's dad

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