SGOTM 23 - Xteam

[Cactus Pete]

On Eastern Standard time here.

Worker stealing could help a lot. It might be less useful to do if:
i. The AIs are far away, and we apparently have a lot of room around us Concur, but I proposed early stealing as a likely priority because there are 12 AIs on a standard Pangaea map, so there shouldn't be much room around us, unless the map maker has created it.

I would tend to think that stealing 1 Worker for the sake of stealing a Worker is going to be a questionable tactic. But, going all-in, say, with a Woodsman II Axeman, where we'd capture multiple Workers, would almost certainly be a tactic that we should be using/abusing. I'm proposing a worker steal ASAP, long before an axe is available or trading has come into play. An early worker steal might pose some risk of a counterattack, but taking calculated risks is likely necessary to win. At least in Vanilla, most AI start with a worker (plus a settler and two archers), so if an AI is close, a worker could be available to our warrior very early. In Vanilla, the worker is not likely to be protected by an archer, and a worker would likely be extremely helpful (and would set the nearby AI back for follow up conquest, so diplo hit might not be a consideration). Are workers protected more in BtS?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Workers are randomly protected in BtS. Basically, a "patrolling" AI Military Unit has to randomly choose to wander next to where a Worker is located and then will decide to guard that Worker for as long as the Worker remains within range. If, for example, the Worker moves 2 squares away but the escorting Military Unit can only move 1 square, it will cease to guard the Worker at that point in time. The Military Unit might also get assigned another mission, such as "go form a Settler Party with this new Settler that we just built."

AIs who have been declared upon will tend to have more of these "patrolling" Military Units and thus once may incorrectly conclude that after a war, an AI has "learned" and will "guard its Workers better." Instead, said AI just has more "patrolling" Military Units available and thus has a greater chance of accidentally guarding its Workers.

In BtS, AIs will also actively delete Workers if it feels that the Workers are trapped inside of a City and have nowhere to which to safely escape. So, catching Workers "in the wild" does become more important than in Vanilla, where the Workers will cower inside of a City until you capture that City and the Workers along with the City.

More info can be found here.


"Your homeland is beautiful and rich. Use this gift to build up your civilization..." I interpreted this quote to mean that we have some space around our capital into which to expand without nearby AIs gobbling up the terrain, but I admit that the land could both be good and populated with AIs.


Using Jersey Joe's test game, on T11 several of the AIs have completed their first Worker, but it is only on T12 when that Worker has moved out of the capital for those AIs.

Other AIs started off by building Archers.

There may be Creative AIs nearby, AIs with Cultural Borders expanding due to owning Wonders, or AIs who will be improving Resources that are not easily accessible--if the map maker wanted, he could easily have made it hard to steal a Worker early on.


Jersey Joe's map certain presents an interesting dilemma--settling 2E of the Settler, which is a location that grabs 3 of the visible Resources plus a couple of Hills squares, also causes us to ruin the chance to work a Fish Resource.


Another thought is that the map maker could have intentionally placed the Warrior so that we'd send the Warrior in a direction away from the best Worker stealing direction... he's been known to do tricky things like that before, so it MAY be worth our while to out-guess him and send our Warrior to the opposite side of our Settler.


The settling locations that interest me the most are 1N on the G Riv (1W of the Deer) and 2E on the G Riv (1 SE of the Deer). Working the Deer allows for a 12-turn Worker, so it would be preferable to settle adjacent to it, unless we'd otherwise have a chance to have a 3-Food-Resource capital, which would be even stronger.


Here's another neat point learned from Jersey Joe's test game: the River for the Fur Resource doesn't do anything for us!

G Riv Fur For Camp = 2F + 1H + 4C
G Fur For Camp = 2F + 1H + 4C

We only see the extra Commerce from the River if we give up the base 1H by Chopping the Forest.

G Riv Fur Camp = 2F + 0H + 5C (Forest Chopped)
G Fur Camp = 2F + 0H + 4C (Forest Chopped)

 

[neilmeister]

Checking in.... GMT +10 here. The sun never sets on X-team

With 12 AI... on Monarch... I can't help but think we should be stealing the first Worker our first warrior sees.

I'm not going to second guess the mapmaker. I have made these games and the mapmaker would not deliberately send us in the wrong direction.

From the initial view, my only opinion is that we want the GH, Deer & Wheat. This could be done in a variety of positions.

On t0 we have 3 scouts, lets move all of them to maximize what we can see RE: settling locations with the GH, Deer & Wheat tiles.
- Warrior NE
- Scout 2S2E
- Missionary NW then NE

I personally don't want to waste time on settling scenarios before having this vital info (but I will waste plenty of time after that )

 

[Cactus Pete]

Neil, you don't think the beaver is critical?!

 

[BSPollux]

Hi there lovely players, warm greetings to you!

I hope you will enjoy playing my little scenario as much as I enjoyed fantazing about you cursing me while I made it! As allways,I will try to read all your team threads, but if you have an important question you need answered quickly, PM is the way to go.

Please concider posting screenshots in this thread regularly. It's fun for us lurkers and it's fun for those other teams that want to see what you did after the game is over. And obviously it helps your discussion as well.

OK, lets see who gets the John Henry reward

Enjoy!

(And as allways: Don't try to read my mind!)

 

[Noble Zarkon]

What is EP an acronym for? If its Espionage Points, why does that need to be checked every turn?

Yes it is, advanced players can glean a lot of information e.g. the fact that an AI is building a Wonder.

Where do I find the Buffy log, how do I go about enabling and posting it, and what information might it provide that the turn log does not?

Ctl-Alt-O, select the Logging tab, choose your location and click "Start automatically". The turn log from the upload isn't very detailed. I agree with Dhoomstriker that a summary written by the player is preferred but I like to have both logs submitted (typically in spoiler tages) in case we need to look back at anything.

Having, under the scoreboard tab under "Power Ratio", set the ratio decimal places to "3", what have I accomplished?

Advanced players sometimes like to calculate the odds of an AI war declaration etc and more precision helps with this.

Where (and what) is my ini file, and how do I set the autosave interval to 1?

Typically C:\Users\ZZZ\Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword where ZZZ = your user name.

Here are my settings:-

; The maximum number of autosaves kept in the directory before being deleted.
MaxAutoSaves = 1500

; Specify the number of turns between autoSaves. 0 means no autosave.
AutoSaveInterval = 1

 

[Noble Zarkon]

EDIT: I should clarify that I am in no way suggesting that anyone else follow this method of describing squares; I have found this approach to be understood, but I can equally understand many other ways that people refer to squares and directions in the game and I'd actually prefer not to impose a given procedure for describing things on anyone.

That's fine - we just need to be absolutely clear which squares we are referencing.

I'm with neilmeister on initial scouting - barb animals won't appear until t5 so we can utlise our units for scouting until then. I really want at least one hill in our BFC.

Thanks for the test map Jersey Joe.

I wonder why we have a Christian Missionary? Interesting choice of unit to give us!

With Raging Barbs and wonders pre-built I reckon the Great Wall will not be an option for us.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Game Settings

This point only works if you also ask people to go with the default BUFFY option of:
Logging tab -> 4000BC is Turn 0 (instead of Turn 1)

I'd also recommend:
Enable Show Health Bars, so that we can be alerted to the strongest Strength of a Unit in existence in the game at any given time (the strongest Strength unit that exists will cause all weaker Strength Units' Health bars to shorten).

Also, on the Scorboard tab, I suggest that in the General section, for the Display Name, select "Leader / Civ," in order to show both values on the Scoreboard. With 12 AIs in the game, this point is going to be even more important than usual.

Good points.

Winning the game, once we turn off Research, could come from an Espionage Cultural Victory (which is easy to pull off with an established empire that doesn't need its Commerce for Research anymore) if we find that we aren't anywhere close to Conquest or Domination at the time.

Domination is turned off in this scenario. An Espionage victory is an intriguing idea, I've played a few of these.

EDIT

"Your homeland is beautiful and rich. Use this gift to build up your civilization..." I interpreted this quote to mean that we have some space around our capital into which to expand without nearby AIs gobbling up the terrain

I agree with this, I don't expect any nearby neighbours.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Aggressive AIs

I don't see this option listed in the scenario but we have it in the test game, did I miss something?

 

[Jersey Joe]

I don't see this option listed in the scenario but we have it in the test game, did I miss something?

In the scenario write up Alan wrote "In some areas the AI is stronger then a normal monarch AI, but the scenario as a whole is far from the last game in difficulty." I do not know what is meant by that, but I figured I would simulate that statement by using "Aggressive AIs".
I am providing same test game except it has Normal AIs. Please let me know which test game should be used as the basis for future test games.

Here is the same test game except it has Normal AIs:

 

[pigswill]

Checking in.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Checking in.

Hey, good to have you onboard again.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

In the scenario write up Alan wrote "In some areas the AI is stronger then a normal monarch AI, but the scenario as a whole is far from the last game in difficulty." I do not know what is meant by that, but I figured I would simulate that statement by using "Aggressive AIs".
I am providing same test game except it has Normal AIs. Please let me know which test game should be used as the basis for future test games.

Here is the same test game except it has Normal AIs:

Thanks for this, I think Agressive AI will change the AI behaviour too much.

To ensure an equal playing field, the AI capitals have been pre-founded and some early wonders are already constructed. You might find some more little adjustments once you are ingame. In some areas the AI is stronger then a normal monarch AI, but the scenario as a whole is far from the last game in difficulty.

It's hard to know exactly what this means but I expect something along these lines:-

1. Religions pre-founded (we have a Christian missionary) and probably Shrines as well
2. The Great Wall already built, probably also Stonehenge and the Pyramids
3. Those Wonders will be far from us, so unlikely to capture early

 

[pigswill]

While the nominal difficulty is monarch I suspect that the de facto difficulty will be closer to immortal (as opposed to monarch de facto deity in last SGOTM).

I would also suspect that to make raging barbarians significant there will be a spawning area near us, either tundra/ice or desert.

Its likely that Gwall and Oracle will be pre-built elsewhere, maybe Stonehenge. probably a couple of religions already founded. Chrisitian missionary is an odd one to include.

I would also reckon that conquest victory will be made more difficult, possibly isolated AI with some means of cancelling teleportation.

But this is all guesswork at the moment.

 

[Folket]

I'm here. The starting date is not great for me. Leaving on Wednesday and will return for 5 days next week and then gone again for two weeks.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I'm here. The starting date is not great for me. Leaving on Wednesday and will return for 5 days next week and then gone again for two weeks.

Good to have you on board, even if your availability is limited at first.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Appreciate the effort to educate, but you're dealing with a slow learner whose already behind the class here.

Yes it is, advanced players can glean a lot of information e.g. the fact that an AI is building a Wonder. Curious how that's done.

Ctl-Alt-O, select the Logging tab, choose your location Don't see any locations to choose from. Please clarify. and click "Start automatically" Did that..

Advanced players sometimes like to calculate the odds of an AI war declaration etc and more precision helps with this. Understood, but not sure when that much precision in odds would be helpful.

Typically C:\Users\ZZZ\Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword where ZZZ = your user name. That doesn't get me to a Settings file, just to Saves, Mods, Screen Shots, etc. What am I missing?

Here are my settings:-

; The maximum number of autosaves kept in the directory before being deleted.
MaxAutoSaves = 1500

; Specify the number of turns between autoSaves. 0 means no autosave.
AutoSaveInterval = 1

"Using Jersey Joe's test game, on T11 several of the AIs have completed their first Worker, but it is only on T12 when that Worker has moved out of the capital for those AIs. Thanks for that info, Dhoom. In Vanilla on Monarch, all AIs start with a worker.

There may be Creative AIs nearby, AIs with Cultural Borders expanding due to owning Wonders, or AIs who will be improving Resources that are not easily accessible--if the map maker wanted, he could easily have made it hard to steal a Worker early on. He certainly could have and/or we could be isolated in some way, but until we have some evidence of that, urge that we try to put ourselves in position to find and steal a worker quickly if one is available. Missing out on a possible worker steal would put us behind from the beginning.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

monarch
+2 health
+4 happy
4 free units
–1 AI attitude
AI starts with 1 Archer extra
Huts:
20% low gold
10% Warrior, technology,
experience, maps
5% Scout, healing, high gold
10% strong barbarians
15% weak barbarians
multipliers
research ×1.15
unit cost ×0.70
distance maint. ×0.90
civic upkeep ×0.95
inflation ×1.00
AI costs ×0.90
90% animal attack probability
animal strength: –20%
barbarians in 25 turns•••
barb. city creation prob.: 70%

Original here

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Yes it is, advanced players can glean a lot of information e.g. the fact that an AI is building a Wonder. Curious how that's done.

Basically by looking at the "sabotage" value, I'll see if I can find a detailed explanation.

Ctl-Alt-O, select the Logging tab, choose your location Don't see any locations to choose from. Please clarify. and click "Start automatically" Did that..

In the blank box next to path you need to enter a location there, e.g. I use D:\Logs. (As per Jersey Joe, if you leave this blank the log will be at The Buffy Autolog is at: ~\Beyond the Sword\Mods\BUFFY-3.19.003\Autolog\ ).

Advanced players sometimes like to calculate the odds of an AI war declaration etc and more precision helps with this. Understood, but not sure when that much precision in odds would be helpful.

I'm not sure either but one of the better players in a previous SGOTM asked for this setting.

Typically C:\Users\ZZZ\Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword where ZZZ = your user name. That doesn't get me to a Settings file, just to Saves, Mods, Screen Shots, etc. What am I missing?

Once you get there you are looking for CivilizationIV.ini which is the file you need to edit - I ommitted this bit, apologies.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Basically by looking at the "sabotage" value, I'll see if I can find a detailed explanation. Thanks, but don't worry about it unless it's very easy to do.

In the blank box next to path you need to enter a location there, e.g. I use D:\Logs. (As per Jersey Joe, if you leave this blank the log will be at The Buffy Autolog is at: ~\Beyond the Sword\Mods\BUFFY-3.19.003\Autolog\ ). And where will it be if I type in D:\Logs?

Once you get there you are looking for CivilizationIV.ini which is the file you need to edit - I ommitted this bit, apologies.

Done. Thanks.

" with neilmeister on initial scouting - barb animals won't appear until t5 so we can utlise our units for scouting until then. I really want at least one hill in our BFC." Concur. First things first. Neil's suggested moves will show us whether there is a hill 2S1E of the one already visible and whether there are additional resources to the SE that would make settling 1SE an option. Agree with moving the missionary 1NW, but not sure why he should then move 1NE.

"Thanks for the test map Jersey Joe." Yes, indeed.