SGOTM 23 - Xteam

[Noble Zarkon]

Moves made and save uploaded.

We met Churchill to the North of us across the water. He is Protective and Charismatic and starts with Fishing and Mining. I've put our EPs on him for the moment.

All the scout revealed was Grassland tiles but it looks like water to the South-East and probably to the East as well.

Spoiler Starting Area :

[SPOILER="Possible sites for first two cities][/SPOILER]

 

[pigswill]

It looks like mountains immediately east of wine hills. Settling 1E on forest looks the obvious move despite losing a turn.

Its premature to be thinking about any other sites based on one turn of exploration.

Churchill has Stonehenge.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Settling on the forest does not yet seem entirely obvious. Concur with moving the settler onto the forest this turn, but before settling would like to move warrior 1E onto grass hill and move scout 2NE onto riverine wine hill to make sure there are no additional resources to the east that we could utilize by settling 1E of the forest. Even if there are no resources (which, of course, are unlikely next to wine), by settling 1E of forest we retain that forest for chopping. Actually, that site may be the obvious one and we can move the warrior and scout elsewhere.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Its premature to be thinking about any other sites based on one turn of exploration.

The main reason I do is just to make sure I don't settle somewhere that interferes with another good city site without realising it.

Churchill has Stonehenge.

Well spotted.

Settling on the forest does not yet seem entirely obvious. Concur with moving the settler onto the forest this turn, but before settling would like to move warrior 1E onto grass hill and move scout 2NE onto riverine wine hill to make sure there are no additional resources to the east that we could utilize by settling 1E of the forest.

I agree with the further scouting - I think it's going to be water and we're going to end up settling on the forest anyway but yes we need to see.

 

[pigswill]

As you know if you zoom in as much as possible you can see the edges of tiles that are currently unexplored. When I did this I saw what looked like mountains east of the wine hills. Its worth double checking because I could be wrong.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I forgot to look with it fully zoomed in and yes I agree those are mountains to the East of the wine hills.

 

[Jersey Joe]

Here is a test game. Based on settings shown in the screens (e.g. no raging barbarians).
It is not based on the previous test game, except it has all the same AI's except the one replaced by Churchill.
It is a standard size game to which I added land tiles.
All AI's are settled and each only have 1 city of population 1.

All 7 Holy Cities have been founded and every AI has a religion in their city.
No Shrines have been built.
Number of AI's with each religion is:

• Christianity -3
• Islam - 3
• Judaism -2
• 1 each in the other 4 religions

I am somewhat close to the percentage in each religion, but I need to play with numbers more since it must be based on something more than city size.*

I do not know how the top 5 cities are determined and decided to post this game without getting the Oracle and Stonehenge in the top 5 and excluding the other 2 Wonders. First time I tried none of the Wonders showed up.*

The Wonders are in the following cities:

• Oracle - Delhi
• Stonehenge - London
• Great Library - Istanbul
• Pyramids - Thebes

I will continue to work on refining the test game.

Please let me know of any changes you would like made or any tiles I got wrong.

* I would appreciated it, if anyone can explain, or point me to an article/post about how the Top 5 cities are determined or the religious percentage is determined.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I'm not sure that I'd settle 1 E. I'd at least like to see some test games played out before we move the Settler. Settling 1 N for the Cow might be the stronger play, getting the 6-Food/Hammer square in the capital. The Fish would still be settleable and we have plenty of Food not to need to settle non-capital Cities on Rivers. Levees come after Railroad, too.

Our starting area is known to be rich... what if we delay the Fish City for a while due to finding better locations for Cities 2 and 3?

 

[Cactus Pete]

Our starting area may be rich, but on the forest or 1E of the forest is an excellent capital site and the cow gives us a fine second city site (where the missionary stands) with good commerce in a tech-bottleneck game. Perhaps we shouldn't get greedy. Dhoom, do you have any objection to moving the warrior and scout as proposed before we discuss this?

 

[neilmeister]

1E is indeed looking sweet, but agree with Dhoom that we should test it before moving. I think we have more than enough info to have a real crack at testing settling locations.

BTW, I think we should remove the EP's on Churchil. We have met no one else so they will all go on him regardless but he can tell if we increase his EP ranking, which might make him put his EP's on us. I may be wrong on this, but it is buried in the back of my mind from long ago.


edit: I think 1SE might also be a strong candidate for settling

 

[neilmeister]

I do not know how the top 5 cities are determined and decided to post this game without getting the Oracle and Stonehenge in the top 5 and excluding the other 2 Wonders. First time I tried none of the Wonders showed up.*

The Wonders are in the following cities:

• Oracle - Delhi
• Stonehenge - London
• Great Library - Istanbul
• Pyramids - Thebes

I will continue to work on refining the test game.

Please let me know of any changes you would like made or any tiles I got wrong.

* I would appreciated it, if anyone can explain, or point me to an article/post about how the Top 5 cities are determined or the religious percentage is determined.

Top 5 cities is purely based on Culture. Not sure of how tie-breaks are determined, probably settling order. Will see if I can find an answer

 

[Cactus Pete]

If that's so, then wouldn't it take a turn before the culture added by a wonder would manifest itself?

"(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\ )." Tried this. I can get to Beyond the Sword\Mods\BUFFY-3.19.003, but when I click on the file labeled 3.19.003 (which is the only thing in the window to click on, other than the execute file), it just directs me to install Buffy again. (And, Joe, I have played one of your test games, so I presume there should be a log somewhere.)

 

[neilmeister]

On t0 all cities would have the same culture, so the 'tie-breaking' mechanism would be used to order them. I didn't find anything, but it will be either settling order or simply the turn-order of each player.

 

[neilmeister]

Testing is ugly... Churchill's culture swamps the north coast very quickly.

We will need to somehow counter it, or settle on the north coast immediately

 

[neilmeister]

Here are some saves for comparison. Micro is reasonably optimised (these weren't my first attempts at each location)
The tech path was:
Settling 1E : Hunting->Mining->AH->Writing->BW.
Settling N coast: Hunting->AH->Mining->Writing->BW.

Writing to get Lib's, BW to whip/chop them

Settling 1E gets us off to a faster start, but at the price of effectively ceding the north coast to Churchill, by the time the first settler is out we must settle 1E of the cows, and it was a coin toss if we lose the city completely to Churchills culture (happened 2 out of 4 attempts)

Settling immediately on the north coast (1W of Cows) effectively pits our capitals culture against Churchills.... If we use our missionary (we don't have to switch to Christianity, its the same result either way) we always keep the Cows, if we don't use the missionary we lose the Cows before the library is finished but get them back a bit later. If we do switch to Christianity, Churchill invariably hates us.

City 3 is located simply to show the only place it could go on the N coast by the time we get the second settler. I dearly hope we have a better candidate location


edit: Without knowing if there is more good land elsewhere, I would be inclined to settle the north coast to stake our claim to it.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Thanks for the testing Neil. Did you test settling where the Missionary is now so we get the health benefits of the river? I guess we also lose a hill that way, hmm.

I'm thinking this testing means our Scouts need to head West on t1 to see what else is out there. I think 1E is a cracking capital site but we don't want to concede the coast. An early rush against PRO Archers won't be fun either ....

 

[pigswill]

Another option. Settling 1E and ignoring north coast.

 

[neilmeister]

Yes of course, I admit I was focusing on how to best settle and claim what we can see.

 

[pigswill]

Fighting London culture looks very challenging (SH 8cpt@4000bc, 16cpt@3000bc, 24cpt@2000bc). Mabye take a chance there is a better option, obviously we don't know this at T0 but a strong capital is a good thing.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Especially when we can't ever move it in a game we need to get to at least railroad!

The more I think about it the more taking out Churchill appeals - but no doubt London is on a hill with walls and a castle!