SGOTM 23 - Xteam

[Dhoomstriker]

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

This approach might be an alternative to dealing with Churchill's Culture. We would essentially let Churchill have the northern squares and we'd settle outside of where his Culture would fall, avoiding direct Cultural battles with him.

We'd then focus on settling "Cottage Helper" Cities, which would work Cottages for our capital. These Cities would be settled just outside of Churchill's Culture.

The nice part about settling 1 SE instead of 1 E is that we can fit in a City 1 SE of the G Cow... we wouldn't get to work that Cow for a long time, but our City would be able to help with Cottage growth.

I placed a City located 2 S of the Fish to grab the north-west Fur and to act as another Cottage Helper City, although the exact location could be altered as we wouldn't get the Fish for a long time.

Here's a screenshot:

Spoiler :

With all of these in-land Cities, we'd go for the Engineering Lightbulb approach, avoiding taking Fishing in trade. We'd also have less of a need to rush to Alphabet as we wouldn't need Fishing, Sailing, Masonry, or Mysticism for quite some time and thus we'd get early Pottery and early Bronze Working before going for Alphabet.

Food is king in Civ, so I like going after the Cow, but we're also limited by not being allowed to move our capital. I do really like the Purple X location and I think that it would make for a strong game to play with a production-oriented capital. But, if there is hesitation on the team, we can also go for a decently-balanced capital by settling 1 SE, getting 2 GH squares this way (one of which is the 2-Commerce Wine square), while leaving room for a helper City to the north-east (1 NE of the Deer and 1 SE of the Cow) that doesn't have to compete with Churchill's Culture at all.

Settling 1 SE definitely fits in stronger with a Bureaucracy + Oxford University approach, but our empire will take a long time to mature those Cottages.

Purple X will still get multiple high-Commerce Trade Routes (say, +8 and +7) by being settled coastal and having The Great Lighthouse, which is about the same as not needing 3 G Riv matured Towns. We can also pretty much forget about having to mature Cottages and instead focus on working Farms and Mines, whipping heavily throughout our empire to help with conquesting the world.


The two approaches are quite distinct from each other, but I believe that either approach could work. I would be fine with going for either approach. I just want to make sure that we've fully considered our options before we proceed, so that there are no regrets later.

 

[Jersey Joe]

When I settled the purple X, I used the missionary to scout the west and fog bust for a bit until I build Orleans and then the missionary founded Christianity in Orleans. Also, I learned BW more to see if copper was available then to whip (though I did whip). When I learned Alphabet I knew 6 civs. Our scout had met 3 of those civs before meeting the bear that ate him and I stopped scouting.

A side benefit of settling the purple X spot is it gives us more hills (if the map is stylized Europe it could be the iron/coal region of Alsace Lorraine).

 

[Cactus Pete]

"You pretty much have to have a C:\ drive if you are using Windows; finding it just becomes the problem to solve.

Can you please clarify which version of Windows you are using, so that we might try to provide the most accurate instructions for finding a file on your computer? Windows 7? 8? 10? 7

If you open a program such as Notepad, you should be able to go to its File menu, choose Open, and then in the "File name" textbox, type in:
C:\temp and press Enter while your cursor is still in the "File name" textbox.
If that directory exists on your computer, it should get opened, and you should be able to see all of the text files that exist in that directory. Did that and found C drive with a temp file. The temp file is empty and has stayed empty, even after I went back and typed in C:\temp for a path and played a turn and saved.

Also played the test game a little. There are multiple AIs close to us (and the unlikely condition of no horses or copper nearby, making testing unrealistic), which suggests that an unsophisticated warmongering strategy merits strong consideration until there is compelling reason to think it won't work..

 

[Dhoomstriker]

As far as what I did for logging...
I opened BUFFY Options via Ctrl + Alt + o, selected the Logging tab, then entered a "Path" value of "C:\temp" (no quotation marks) and made sure that the "Use Default File Name" option was X-marked. I clicked on Exit to close the BUFFY Options.

When I loaded the test game, where our Leader's Name is Test-SG23, and I played through a single turn, a file called "Test-SG23.txt" got created inside of the "C:\temp" directory, with its full path being "C:\temp\Test-SG23.txt"

Perhaps you can launch Notepad and then try to open the file "C:\temp\Test-SG23.txt" (with or without the quotation marks should both work).

When I settled the purple X, I used the missionary to scout the west and fog bust for a bit until I build Orleans and then the missionary founded Christianity in Orleans.

Working the Deer gives us 4 Food/Hammers to the Cow's 3 Food/Hammers, so if we can expand our Cultural Borders 1 turn early by using the Missionary, we gain 1 Hammer, as well as 1 more turn of free 20 Culture on the City Centre's square and the Cow square, plus multiple more turns of free 40 Culture on those two squares.

So, we can afford to send the Missionary 1 W to the G Riv and then back toward Paris, while still making it into Paris in order to start earning 3 Culture per turn once Paris has 4 Culture in it.

4 + 2 * 3 = 4 + 6 = 10 Culture
4 + 32 * 3 = 4 + 96 = 100 Culture

I don't dare delay spreading Christianity into Paris any longer, though, if we're going to settle northward in Churchill's Culture.

Also, I learned BW more to see if copper was available then to whip (though I did whip).

With Pottery, and without GH squares to Mine, whipping makes sense. Without Pottery and with GH squares to Mine, whipping doesn't necessarily put us ahead.

The challenge with learning extra techs before Alphabet is the "one more tech" syndrome, where it becomes easier and easier to justify further detouring Alphabet due to the game having advanced further and us needing the extra techs. Each settling location will be different, but if possible, we'll nail down the minimum number of techs that our chosen settling location requires and then skip the rest of the techs until we can get them in trade.

A side benefit of settling the purple X spot is it gives us more hills (if the map is stylized Europe it could be the iron/coal region of Alsace Lorraine).

I'd call the large number of Hills the primary benefit of the Purple X location, with the secondary benefits being securing the Cow and being coastal for The Great Lighthouse.

We could certainly settle Cottage Helper Cities for the Purple X location, as well. Here's an example:

Spoiler :

Note that the western City probably wouldn't actually be able to help with working those Cottage squares until after London falls.


We could make multiple options work. We just need to pick one that we feel that we can be happy with choosing and then we'll make the best out of that choice.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Great discussion guys, am traveling at moment so will respond properly later today or perhaps tomorrow. It's a critical decision where to settle a capital that can't be moved so let's take our time and get it right.

 

[pigswill]

A couple of things to remember:
i) BSP has tweaked the map to make de jure monarch difficulty de facto immortal difficulty.
ii) Any conclusions from the test map can only be applied to the test map.

There's no guarantee that we'll have easy access to AIs for tech trading, no guarantee that we won't.

Its likely that barbarians will be more of a factor in the real game than the current test game.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

It will definitely help if people can put in the time to try out some options themselves. It makes a difference to really get a good feel for what each location entails.

Settling 1 SE on the G Riv actually plays out quite nicely. I settle our second City located at 1 SE of the Cow and save the Christian Missionary for that City. We won't really have any chance of getting that Cow, but the City can borrow the Deer when the capital isn't using it, can share the GH Riv Wine Mine when the capital isn't using it, and can work up to 4 shared Cottages later on in the game. It also has GH squares that it can grow into working.

Pros:
We can go for Pottery instead of Animal Husbandry and then also go for Bronze Working for early whipped Granaries
We get a capital with more sources of early Commerce
We get City 2 settled 1 turn sooner than by settling at the Purple X location
We get to take advantage of our higher-than-normal Happiness cap due to extra Whipping

Cons:
We won't know where Horses are located, making it harder for us to plan whether we can go for a Horse Archer rush
We can forget about The Great Lighthouse. If we find that our primary remaining sources of Food (i.e. without the Cow) end up being in the sea (say, to the south and the west), we may regret not going for The Great Lighthouse
We won't get the Cow, so we're low on Food Resources
If Churchill is on an island, it will be a long time before we'll be able to build a Galley to go after him


EDIT: Here's a theoretical Size 15 comparison. We have Villages, The Great Lighthouse, and The Colossus.

1 SE
7 Food
9 Hammers
59 Commerce

Spoiler :

Purple X
2 Food
19 Hammers
43 Commerce

Spoiler :

It's not a straight-forward comparison. It takes time to develop Cottages, time during which they aren't producing as much as we see here. Meanwhile, Mines are powerful right from the start and they keep on producing.

Paris being settled on the water could be complemented by Moai, giving us even more Hammers. We'd almost be guaranteed to be able to build The Colossus, so we could even skip building Cottages altogether and rely on improved Coast squares.

That said, Villages will also get +1 Commerce once we learn Printing Press and also have the potential, after another 40 turns, to become Towns for yet another +1 Commerce.

By not working as many Mines, settling 1 SE gives us more Food to work with. But, we could also build Farms to go with the Mines by settling at 1 E of the G Cow, using the Coast squares and Trade Routes to give us our Commerce.

There will definitely be a higher Commerce potential at 1 SE, but it will take a lot of Cottage-turns of investment to get there. How many Military Units could we be cranking out well before then by working plenty of Hills squares? Will the game last long enough for an investment in Cottages be worthwhile?

This game will require about 10 000 Flasks less than a United Nations Diplo game requires and Cottages often aren't the straight-forward answer there.

But, G Riv Cottages are definitely great, once you've improved them.


A big part of the decision rides on how many other nearby Food Resources we have. Right now, the Cow represents one third of the Food Resources that we have available to us. If many of the other available Food Resources are seafood Resources, then we'll have a tough call to make between ignoring them and going for Engineering early or just getting Fishing. It's a frustrating decision because we don't have the necessary info to make a fully-informed decision.

 

[neilmeister]

Sorry to miss half the discussion...

The cow is definitely worth chasing, I am glad I am not alone in that thinking.

While I settled yellow-X to directly pit out culture against Churchill and with half a mind that eventually we would get the fish, I really like purple-X as it directly addresses the lack of hills while keeping the best tiles.

GLH is killer in BtS.... If Churchill is on an island then GLH means we have our strategy: kill Churchill, get Stonehenge, build GLH.... profit.

edit: Settling cows also means we must learn AH, and horses are the best early candidate for rapid conquest

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Unfortunately, it appears that our test game has an extra GH square.

In our test game, we have revealed the square that is 2 NE of our Warrior, but we haven't revealed it in the real game. It's not a Hills square in the real game but is instead a regular G For square.

On the plus side, I can confirm that it is a GH square 1 SE + 2 E of the G Cow, although a coniferous Forest needs to be added to that square.

The other nearby squares look correct:
G at 3 E of the G Cow
G For at 1 NE + 2 E of the G Cow

Judging by the small gap between the coniferous trees, it looks as though this square is also a Hills square at the following location, although it won't be in our big fat cross, so it won't really matter:
GH (For?) at 1 SE + 3 E of the G Cow


16 base Hammers is still pretty good and gives us a nice Forge multiplier:
City Centre = 1
Deer = 1
Cow = 2
4 GH = 4 * 3 = 12


On the bright side, the GH For that is really a G For is in position to be worked by a Cottage Helper City to the north-east of the Purple X location.

 

[pigswill]

I had a whizz at PurpleX and was amazed (not in a good way) by the lack of commerce and the general slowness of early research.

I've had another whizz at GreenX, putting the second city 2E of wheat (1N of eastern fur) which catches a few hills for production. If we settle Xmiss in capital by T5 we get a border pop T35 which brings wheat inside (agri)cultural borders.

Building Glight and Colossus would certainly improve commerce at PurpleX. Obviously there's an issue with London's culture and we don't yet know how many coastal trade routes will be available. There's also the issue of diverting hammers into wonders which could go into rexing or warfare. Cottages only require worker turns.

It depends on the map obviously but we might find ourselves wanting to research construction or HbR instead of MC.

 

[pigswill]

Its possible to settle Green X and have a city on the north coast.

 

[neilmeister]

The choice may come down simply as:

- Cap on the coast (Purple or Yellow), GLH & conquer Churchill
or
- Don't

I also want another go at testing the alternatives, especially as I haven't tried Green X yet. No super rush as this is probably the biggest decision of the game.

 

[pigswill]

On the other hand the choice could be capital anywhere, second city on coast (north, south, east or west), GLH & conquer Ch'ill.

On monarch you have a very good chance of getting Glight before 1500bc (and a reasonable chance up to 1000bc) which is plenty of time to settle and grow a second city for Glight.

Deciding on early game strategy on t0 with very limited map information doesn't sound optimal to me.

 

[neilmeister]

Deciding on early game strategy on t0 with very limited map information doesn't sound optimal to me.

All or nothing!

Seriously though, you are of course correct.

 

[Cactus Pete]

"As far as what I did for logging...
I opened BUFFY Options via Ctrl + Alt + o, selected the Logging tab, then entered a "Path" value of "C:\temp" (no quotation marks) and made sure that the "Use Default File Name" option was X-marked. I clicked on Exit to close the BUFFY Options. Did that.

When I loaded the test game, where our Leader's Name is Test-SG23, and I played through a single turn, a file called "Test-SG23.txt" got created inside of the "C:\temp" directory, with its full path being "C:\temp\Test-SG23.txt" Didn't happen.

Perhaps you can launch Notepad and then try to open the file "C:\temp\Test-SG23.txt" (with or without the quotation marks should both work)." Can't open it if I don't know where to find it. Tried "search programs and files", and it didn't show there either. At this point, questioning whether it's worth any more effort.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Perhaps a C:\temp directory doesn't exist by default and perhaps BUFFY only works with an existing directory.

Okay, try the following:
Open up the Start Menu
In the "Search programs and files" textbox, at the bottom of the Start Menu, type in "cmd" and press Enter to select the "cmd.exe" program. You should get a new window with a black background.
In that "cmd.exe" window, type in this command and then press Enter (which will create a directory for you):
md C:\SGOTM23
If the command was successful, you won't get any output. To confirm that it worked, type in the following command, also in that "cmd.exe" window, and then press Enter:
dir C:\SGOTM23
You should see some output saying:
Volume in drive C is...
Volume Serial Number is...

Directory of C:\SGOTM23
...

If you see the text "Directory of C:\SGOTM23," then you have successfully created yourself a directory. You can close that "cmd.exe" window (click on its red X at the top right of the window to close it).

Back in BUFFY options, on the Logging tab, put in this value for your Path:
C:\SGOTM23

Confirm that the "Use Default File Name" option is X-marked, and then click on the Exit button to get out of the BUFFY Options (aka BUG Mod Options).

Play a turn of our test game, where our Leader's Name is Test-SG23.

Back in Windows, open the Start Menu and navigate to:
All Programs -> Accessories

In the Accessories folder, select the Notepad option
In Notepad, open the File menu and then choose the Open option
In the Open pop-up window, in the "File name" textbox, type in the following text and then press Enter:
C:\SGOTM23\Test-SG23.txt

With any luck, you will have just opened the recently-created log file.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Its possible to settle Green X and have a city on the north coast.

That solution is neat, but I see that our City 2 has more than a 4% per turn chance of Revolting, and that's with each of:
1. Churchill not having a Holy City, which he might, such that his Cultural pressure would be even worse than in the test game
AND
2. Using the Missionary in that second City
AND
3. Detouring to Mysticism early and building an early Monument in that City

I.e. That's with us already doing everything that we can to keep that City and it's still in serious danger of randomly being lost to Churchill.

GLH is killer in BtS.... If Churchill is on an island then GLH means we have our strategy: kill Churchill, get Stonehenge, build GLH.... profit.

I went to set up this situation in our test game, with there being an immediate jump in Trade Route income by making Churchill's area an island.

It is true that overseas, foreign Trade Routes are strong, and it is also true, as you have implied, that overseas, domestic Trade Routes are strong (and can be re-used amongst each of our Cities, unlike foreign ones, which can only be used by 1 of our Cities at a maximum). Obviously, by capturing Churchill's Cities, the Trade Routes would become overseas, domestic Trade Routes.

Yet, when Churchill's land becomes an island, the normal "Culture can't spread outside of a big fat cross beyond two squares over water" rule comes into play. Having played several Culture-flipping games, it has been bugging me at the back of my mind why we were getting swamped by Churchill's overseas City's Culture (Culture spreads overseas in Vanilla and Warlords, but gets cut off in BtS), although I'd been thinking of London as being overseas when targeting The Great Lighthouse--France vs England made for a nice little amphibious assault in a multiplayer Civ 4 Earth Map game that I played, building The Great Lighthouse by settling Paris on the water and then amphibiously assaulting and capturing London with 4 Axemen hidden on Galleys in a surprise war declaration. Yet, London is not overseas here and hence the Vanilla-like Culture effect.

So, therefore, we have two possible situations:
1. Churchill is not on an island, and there might not, in fact, be any islands in the game, meaning that there are no overseas Trade Routes, which diminishes the value of The Great Lighthouse significantly
OR
2. Churchill is on an island, in which case there will be 40 Culture per turn going into the Fish after London hits 500 Culture, but there will be 0 Culture per turn going into the Cow

We have not been playing toward either possibility properly, as we have been playing with the impression that we'll get great overseas, foreign Trade Routes from England but will also have to fight Churchill's Culture for the Cow. Yet, we can only have one of these situations. So, perhaps it is a bit foolhardy to mix these two possibilities together.

Either The Great Lighthouse will be awesome but we won't have to fight for the Cow, or we'll have to fight for the Cow, but The Great Lighthouse will be mediocre.


Thus, perhaps the discussion should shift to deciding whether or not to settle adjacent to the Fish.

We know for sure that the Fish will be in danger by Churchill's Culture, so one option is to focus on settling adjacent to the Fish, securing us a Resource that other teams might not get unless they do the same thing.

The big risk, here, though, is that Churchill is not overseas, meaning that we'd lose the Cow, would have a 1-Food-Resource capital for a long time, would be on the Coast in a game where The Great Lighthouse isn't amazing, and would have to tech Fishing in a game where The Great Lighthouse isn't amazing (i.e. we'd need Fishing for our lone Food source, but then we'd mess up an Engineering Lightbulb).

Or, we could luck out and have a capital with Fish + Cow + Fur all being workable in a game where The Great Lighthouse + capturing Churchill's City or two will make for all of our Cities having 1 or 2 overseas Trade Routes. The biggest challenge that I see is "how will we get enough production (except via Whipping) in order to build The Great Lighthouse?" I don't have a great answer to that question other than actually getting that production via Whipping, which would entail delaying Alphabet by teching Fishing, Animal Husbandry, Pottery, Mining, Bronze Working, Sailing, Masonry (maybe Mysticism before it), Writing, and only then Alphabet, which is no longer an Alphabet beeline. We don't have to beeline Alphabet if going for the other techs makes sense to go for. But, it will suck if we lose the Cow to Churchill, and the annoying part is that we don't get to work the Deer, so our Worker takes 15 turns to build and there is a risk that his only really useful job for a while will be to Camp the Fur.


Another option could be to stick with the Wheat and the Deer, but play the odds and settle 1 N.

If Churchill is on our landmass, we can plan to Axe/Sword rush him in order to give us our Cow, as we'll know that he's on our landmass when he steals the Cow from us. We can also stick with an Engineering beeline approach.

If Churchill is not on our landmass, we'll have the Cow within our big fat cross and we can settle our second City where pigswill placed it in his latest test game, getting to use the Cow in City 2 without needing a Monument or Christianity in City 2, but also getting to improve several GH squares and Chop several Forests for The Great Lighthouse being built in City 2. We wouldn't benefit from the extra Trade Routes in our capital, but our capital would be taking the Cottage-heavy approach, instead.

Either way, we'd get Deer, Wheat, Fur, and 1 GH square, and we'd get our 12-turn Worker, while still keeping our options open (having a good spot for The Great Lighthouse for City 2 or forgetting about Fishing and going for Engineering).

We'd also then be able to afford to explore more with our Missionary, at least until Turn 5 when Barb Animals will start to appear (I don't want to see him getting eaten by a two-move Wolf that we might not see, which can appear on any unspawnbusted Forested square).

 

[pigswill]

There's no reason to assume that Ch'ill is on an island and a reason ('pangea-like' map) to assume he isn't. Maybe we sacrifice a turn to cover our options, move settler N>NE onto blue X and make a final decision on capital next turn.

In the test map there's probably an option to build Glight with a second city on the south coast (either settle on fur or city to SW grabbing fish) without mucking about fighting culture.

 

[neilmeister]

These are very good points Dhoom & pigswill!

Either Churchil is on an island, then GLH is killer and we don't have to worry about the cow.
If he isn't, then we don't want GLH and therefore don't need to pit our culture against his.

I think either of these scenario's push us into settling either 1E or 1N.

@pigswill, we can see enough of the map to see what could/might be :Alps, Pyrenees, english channel and what could be the Mediterranean. Pangaea or not if England is big enough for 3-4 cities then GLH is massive.

 

[pigswill]

Two seperate issues regarding settling north: first is Glight, second is grabbing cow. I think Glight is not a major issue as we can build it anyway if needed. Grabbing cow is a significant issue as we don't have enough food in our starting location.

If we settle close to start and Chill isn't on an island we lose cow, where do we put our second city? Grabbing cow gives us at least two cities with reasonable food and we have a number of choices for a wheat city.