SGOTM 23 - Xteam

[Noble Zarkon]

Green from me.

 

[pigswill]

Moved as per plan:



More coast it seems.



Gems (and a light blue border 1E of gems). Looks like mountains north of sheep.



Latest save:http://gotm.civfanatics.net/download.php?file=Xteam_SG023_BC3920_03.CivBeyondSwordSave

 

[pigswill]

Next moves seem fairly obvious:

Warrior E. Missionary S>SE. Pause, post screenshot, discuss scout move/ spawn-busting dependent on situation in south west.

In a slightly longer time frame there are two isses. First is how many spawnbusters do we build before first settler. Second is next tech. While AH seems a 'no-brainer' we could also consider mining>BW>AH if we go worker>warrior>settler at pop2 (working deer and wheat). I suspect we'll end up going AH next but its worth considering an alternative.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Feel free to pump out a test run and showcase its results, such as when Settler 2 comes out, when Settler 3 comes out, what benefits we get from pursuing a certain tech path (growing to Size 4 and 2-pop-whipping a Settler or a Worker, or perhaps Chopping sooner by going for early Bronze Working being one such example).

My testing showed that a Size-2-built Settler couldn't compete with a Size-3-built Settler, but maybe I didn't do things optimally for a Size-2-built Settler approach, and anyone is welcome to showcase their results.

Similarly, with 3 Food Resources, it may make sense to grow to Size 4.

I am dubious that whipping down to Size 2 will be ideal... whipping is great when you whip away a G For square, but not so much when you whip away a Pastured G Cow square. But, if, at the time, the G Cow square hasn't been improved, then maybe it would make sense to whip that citizen away.


Early Math will make Forest Chops more powerful, but we'll probably have competing tech goals (Alphabet -> Currency? Early Sailing -> Masonry? Something else, like early Metal Casting?) that may make Math get delayed.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Next moves seem fairly obvious:

Warrior E. Missionary S>SE. Pause, post screenshot, discuss scout move/ spawn-busting dependent on situation in south west. Concur. Green to go.

In a slightly longer time frame there are two isses. First is how many spawnbusters do we build before first settler. As you say above, need to know lay of land in SW.Second is next tech. After Hunting, presumably. While AH seems a 'no-brainer' we could also consider mining>BW>AH if we go worker>warrior>settler at pop2 (working deer and wheat). I suspect we'll end up going AH next but its worth considering an alternative.

Think Dhoom is correct that we don't want to whip early, so AH next certainly looks optimal, and like to know about horses. Not sure testing is needed.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Warrior E. Missionary S>SE.

I'm fine with those movements.


Deselect the tech, too, please, if it wasn't done already.

discuss scout move

Is there much to discuss, now that we've committed to having gone 1 E? Aren't we going back 1 W immediately? Or, do you have another idea to propose?

(Note that I do not favour meeting a lot of AIs early on, so I'm quite content not to meet that light-blue-coloured AI until after we've learned Alphabet and have made some tech trades.)


I'm okay to wait for testing if someone wants to do it to see what other tech to go for. Without starting with Mining, going for Bronze Working first doesn't seem strong compared to Hunting, and Hunting -> Mining -> Bronze Working *seems* like it will be a long time to wait with only 2 "power squares" being improved, but test away and I will be happy to be amazed.

Otherwise, we do need to pick up the pace soon; once we've got our spawn-busting positions nailed down, it shouldn't take long to get us up to when our Worker gets built.

After that, we just need to decide between a partial G Riv Farm or a partial G Riv Road on the way to improving the Wheat.

The other decision to make is whether to grow on the Deer or the Wheat while building the Warrior, but I believe that I let the City Governor decide to go with the Deer until the Wheat got Farmed, which gave us our Warrior on the way to Size 3.

Perhaps we end up with too many Hammers and have to dump them into a Barracks, so testing could show that maybe we should take less Hammers and work the Wheat sooner for the +1 Commerce.

In general, early Hammers are more important than early Commerce, with Commerce only being important if it can get you to a critical tech 1 or 2 turns sooner. I don't recall having to wait for techs to arrive and it was our Worker who was behind, but if we feel that we won't build a Barracks for a long while, maybe we could micro the Barracks Hammers into Commerce by working the Wheat for a (currently unknown) number of turns after completing the Worker (i.e. testing would be required there).


Longer-term, we need to be thinking about how to keep the tech pace high... Chop a Library and hire 2 Scientists in a couple of Cities each?

Or, could it be better Chop + 1-pop-whip a Granary and work 1 or 2 Food Resources in each non-capital City and hardcore whip Archers/Axemen/Chariots every time that we hit City Size 2 or 3, then gift the Cities away, recapture them, remove the Whipping Unhappiness and have ourselves an army without the Unhappiness penalty, and can then regrow our Cities to their Happiness caps and/or large enough to hire Scientist Specialists? (I tend to favour "get an army and then hire Scientists afterward" instead of the other way around, so that we can capture AI Cities and put them to work for us, but one City hiring 2 Scientists for an early Academy is also a worthwhile investment.)

Or, focus our Hammers on whipping early Settlers and gift a City to an AI that will be located close to our capital so that said AI will build a Road directly to us?

Or, plan to build 2 to 4 Settlers for gifting purposes, settling Cities near to a fast-teching AI (I'm thinking Mehmed with The Great Library) so that we can get said AI up to Friendly status early on for Mansa-Musa-like tech trading?

Are there any unorthodox Wonders that we'd want to target building, such as Shwedagon Paya, for early Pacifism (efficient Great Person production, so long as you have your State Religion spread to your Specialist-hiring Cities) or early Free Religion (+10% bonus to Research)?

Let's try to keep the longer-term discussion going concurrently with testing and with short-term unit-movement discussions.

 

[pigswill]

BW allows chopping as well as whipping. Not sure if it will be better to go BW but if we don't experiment we won't learn.

I did a quick test run (pop 2 settler) and settled NW. A short term problem is that Ch'ills culture popped t40, blocking access to the fish tile (hopefully we get open borders w Chill after writing).

The earlier we build a settler the sooner we found a second city obviously. We'd certainly finish one warrior before pop 2 settler; if we want more than one warrior then city would grow while building warrior #2 (maybe#3) so in terms of micro-engineering different tile improvements and different worker sequencing (eg wheat before deer or deer before wheat) will give different outcomes for hammers, growth and commerce and we'd have to find which is optimal in terms of different outcomes. We do imho need to decide the outcomes before deciding the method to achieve them.

Its likely that we will need scout spawn busting south or south west so I'll move him back.

PPP T3: deselect hunting, move warrior E, scout W, missionary S>SE.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Sounds good to go.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Green from me.

I strongly favour AH next but happy for alternatives to be tested.

 

[pigswill]

I'm sure that hunting is the obvious first tech, I strongly suspect that AH will be next. However let's get to T5 when we can decide on spawn-busting, update a test map and then play around with options for a couple of days.

@NZ (and other cogniscenti). You advised lots of Bug settings, do these get saved with the save or does every player have to select them individually?

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Agree re getting to t5 and then testing.

You have to set them individually I am afraid [emoji19]

 

[Jersey Joe]

Green from me on the next turn's moves.

 

[pigswill]

Another turn played as planned. Nothing unusual happened.

Warrior went E:



Nothing new revealed.

Missionary went S>SE:



To reveal surf n turf and the Pyrenees.

Scout went west (no screenshot).

For some bizarre reason I can't take screenshots of screens like demographics and city. Don't know why so don't know how to fix it.

Here's the save: http://gotm.civfanatics.net/download.php?file=Xteam_SG023_BC3880_01.CivBeyondSwordSave

 

[Dhoomstriker]

For some bizarre reason I can't take screenshots of screens like demographics and city. Don't know why so don't know how to fix it.

Taking screenshots is best done when the game has been paused, and has been saved as being paused, to avoid misclicks causing our units to move and so that you can Exit to the Main Menu after taking those screenshots.

Alt + Print Screen (aka Prt Scr, depending upon your keyboard) will capture a screenshot of the current window to your Windows clipboard, meaning that if you open up Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Paint, you can press Ctrl + v to paste the screenshot there.

I did a quick test run (pop 2 settler)

In order for us to have comparable results, try to record the important details. For example, on which turn was Settler 2 built? When was Warrior 2 built? How many Hammers did you have on a certain turn? We were using Turn 22 and Turn 32 for comparison turns earlier, but if you have a good reason to suggest a different turn, we can do so.

If you follow the same tech path that we did in previous test runs (Hunting -> Mining -> Bronze Working -> Pottery) and you use the World Builder to avoid meeting other AIs besides Churchill, how many Flasks do we have in the current tech? Note that if you need Animal Husbandry for Pasturing, just give that tech to yourself in the World Builder.

Note that for test runs, to ensure that I'm in a test game instead of in the real game, I find it a good practice to ensure that I can open up the World Builder before playing forward--it's a nice double-check that one has the correct saved game loaded in addition to looking for the "Test Game" Barbarian signs.

Its likely that we will need scout spawn busting south or south west so I'll move him back.

Where are you proposing to send the Scout to spawn-bust the south-west?

As it is, I don't think that we have time to make it to anywhere other than our southern GH For square (3 S of the G Riv Wheat), while exploring the square 2 E of there (1 SW of the Fish) on the way there.


EDIT: For unit movements, I only really see us having:
T4 Select a tech, then deselect a tech
T4 Missionary 1 S G > 1 NE G For (2 S of the G Riv Fur)
T4 Scout 1 SW G > 1 S G (1 SW of the Fish)
T4 Warrior Go Worker-hunting... I don't really mind exactly where he goes

T5 Select Hunting as our tech and leave it selected (unless testing shows a stronger alternative)
T5 Missionary 1 N G (1 S of the G Riv Fur) > stay there spawn-busting
T5 Scout 1 W G > 1 W GH For (3 S of the G Riv Wheat)
T5 Warrior Continue Worker-hunting


One point to keep in mind: It helps if we have saved games where the last unit has not finished its turn. So, for example, on T5, if we don't skip the Missionary's turn but instead leave him with a half movement point, then the "Press Enter to End the Turn" message won't flash on the screen. What's dangerous about that message is that by pressing either Enter or Spacebar, you advance the turn.

So, a wayward hand on the keyboard hitting the Spacebar can accidentally advance the turn, which means that someone can accidentally advance the turn forward. If, on the other hand, a unit still has a movement point remaining, such as our Missionary, and someone who is looking at the saved game accidentally presses the Spacebar, the Missionary will simply Skip its Turn, which is an undoable move and thus BUFFY won't log an action as having occurred, giving a player a chance to Exit to Main Menu without having performed a step that results in a change to the game's status. If the game's status changes (i.e. if we perform an action that cannot be undone), we have to live with whatever move we did and upload that new saved game, even if it wasn't the Active Player who made that move. It's not always possible to leave a unit with movement points, but that's one reason in favour of not Fortifying our spawn-busters; From T5 onward, we can take the time to Skip the Turn of the spawn-busters only when we're ready to advance the turn (Spacebar is the shortcut key to Skip a unit's Turn).

Of course, pausing the game before saving it adds yet another layer of protection against accidental misclicks or miskeypresses. If someone doesn't know how to pause and unpause a game, please ensure that you are using a test game and then play around with how pausing and unpausing works by using the Pause / Break key on your keyboard.

 

[pigswill]

On the other hand we can completely spawnbust the west and southwest by going:
Missionary S>NE + N>N ending on western fur.
Scout: SW>SW + NW>W ending 2S1W of wheat on fgh. No beasties can come from south or west, only from the east.
Warrior: SE+fortify.

Scout going SW>SW reveals fewer tiles to south east but more tiles to south west.

Warrior#2 heads south east to spawnbust there, protecting scout from human barbs.

 

[Jersey Joe]

I just noticed that in the real game settings New Random Seed on Restart is in effect. I do not know all the SGotM protocols, but I assume it would be an abuse to take advantage of BSP's oversight by continually reloading a game until a forest grows or we have a resource generated under a mine. I also send BSP a pm about this.

Unless requested, I am not including this feature in any revised test game.

 

[Jersey Joe]

Here is a test game as of 3880BC.
I included the new map features and moved Athens to provide the Border we see. Also, the Oracle is now in Athens.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

On the other hand we can completely spawnbust the west and southwest by going:
Missionary S>NE + N>N ending on western fur.

My textual explanations have failed, so let me try a picture to see if I can better illustrate how we don't need to go that far north. I have reversed the roles of England and France:

Spoiler :

Can you see how England has got our butts covered such that we don't need to go any further north than 1 S of the G Riv Fur?


Thanks for the updated test game, Jersey Joe! Using that, I think that the spawn-busting and Culture-busting picture should be easy to illustrate:

Spoiler :

No gaps for miles around, leaving our Warrior free to go AI-Worker-hunting.

In fact, the Missionary could stand 1 W of there on the G For (1 N of the G Cow), but we'd have to be paying attention every turn to watch for Wolves appearing in the south and coming northward. If we can commit to this level of discipline, then we can put the Missionary on the G For that is 1 N of the G Cow, to increase the chance of Forest growth. But, if we'd rather not take that risk, our Missionary can stay safely inside of our Cultural Borders, to take the pressure off of the Active Player.


Turn 3, 3880 BC Demographics and Top 5 screens
Normally, Demographics get interesting on this turn as you can tell how many Creative AIs are out there. With Wonders and Religions being out there, we'd have to do some more math to make sense of some of these numbers.

I think that there's a way to tell how many Charismatic AIs are in the game by looking at the Approval Rate value, based on seeing a similar number of Charismatic opponents in a test game and getting the same number. I'm not sure how AIs having extra Cities may throw off such a number, though.

Spoiler :

It is interesting to note that our GNP is in last place. So, getting techs from the AIs may be a high priority.

continually reloading a game

Without getting into details about the anti-cheating part of the Hall of Fame Mod, which is a part of the BUFFY Mod, rest assured that the Hall of Fame Mod (HOF Mod) is smart enough to detect any type of reloading, regardless of which game settings are used. Anyone who did reloading would be immediately red-flagged for the staff to investigate.

We don't need that setting in the test game--that setting being on or off in the test game would have no impact on our testing.

 

[Jersey Joe]

To get the approval rating numbers, 3 AIs have to be below us (at least 1 with 83%) 8 AIs are tied with us at 85% and 1 is at 88%

Based on Population, 1 AI has 3 cities, 1 AI has 2 cities and the remainder have 1 city.

If we had used the missionary and adopted Christianity as our state religion, would not our GNP be higher?

If all the AIs, like Churchill, adopted a religion that would boost their GNP. I believe most of the extra GNP is owing to the Great Wonders, Holy Cities and the 3 extra cities. Further, I think that the AI with a 44 GNP has 3 cities, a Great Wonder and at least 1 Holy City.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

To get the approval rating numbers, 3 AIs have to be below us (at least 1 with 83%) 8 AIs are tied with us at 85% and 1 is at 88%

What about for an earlier turn, before the AIs would have adopted a State Religion?

If we had used the missionary and adopted Christianity as our state religion, would not our GNP be higher?

Yes, Culture should be a part of GNP, but we would get the Culture by spreading Christianity with or without adopting a State Religion.

I believe most of the extra GNP is owing to the Great Wonders, Holy Cities and the 3 extra cities.

Makes sense. There's also The Great Library providing raw Flasks.