SGOTM 23 - Xteam

[pigswill]

Second city could indeed be determined by horses but we have at least a dozen turns between AH and first settler which gives time to think about roading.

Dhoomstriker has proposed a plan (#313) including avoiding contact with AIs until alphabet and no-one has yet proposed an alternative short term strategy.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

My suggestion for our goals:
1. Meet as few AIs as possible
2. Put all of Warrior 2's efforts into stealing a Worker
3. Spawn-bust with our Missionary and our Scout
4. Build a Worker while working the Deer

I agree with these as our goals.

 

[pigswill]

Worker has been built. Time for the next phase.

Who's UP?

What's the plan?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Testing showed that improving the Wheat first gives us the highest total inputs (Food, Hammers, and Commerce).

Paris is on a River, so initially I was thinking that a Road might not help much, as crossing a River onto a Road still costs you a full movement point without a bridge, as you end up wading through the River with your Unit instead of getting the movement benefit of a Road.

But, thinking further, we could do with a Road being:
On the G Riv 1 SW of Paris
On the G Riv Fur For
which, if both Road pieces existed, would save our Settler a turn of movement in getting onto the G For where I'd expect that we'd settle our western City.

Note that I'm assuming that we'll settle our western City 1 NE of the Fish and 1 N of the G Cow, to avoid needing to spread our Missionary there, and to share 5 potential Cottage squares with our capital.

Whether that western City is City 2 or City 3 does not need to be decided until Turn 28, when we need to decide what to do with Worker 1, after having Pastured Paris' G Cow.

The other main contender for City 2 is where pigswill added the "?city" sign, 1 NE + 1 E of Paris' G Cow and 1 SW + 1 S of the Fish to the north-east of Paris, as it has 3 GH squares that are unforested and which could get Mined regardless of whether we learn Bronze Working before Alphabet (assuming that no Forests grow on those GH squares in the meantime), giving us a production powerhouse City that can be used to build The Great Lighthouse and which might become our Heroic Epic City later.

Therefore, I'm going to suggest that our Worker does:
T12 Move 1 SW G Riv (1SW of Paris), partial Road, and STOP
T13 Move 1 SE G Riv Wheat and Farm
T18 Move 1 N G Riv > 1 NE G Riv Deer For
T19 Camp the Deer

We also need to decide between:
i. Turn 22 Warrior 2 and +2 Commerce (Work the Wheat on T15) and +1 Hammer going into our Settler
OR
ii. Turn 21 Warrior and +3 Hammers being dumped into a Barracks

Unfortunately, we need to make that decision now. I'm fine with either approach, but I am leaning toward option i., since Hammers and Commerce earlier are more useful than getting them later, and we wouldn't benefit from any Hammers stored in a Barracks until after the Barracks got completed.

If we go with that approach, then we need to be aware of this micromanagement step:
T15, 3400 BC Paris works Unfarmed Wheat instead of Uncamped Deer

Doing so allows our Warrior to complete on T21 with 1 overflow Hammer going into Settler 2 (or, possibly, Worker 2). By Working the Unimproved Wheat instead of the Unimproved Deer for 2 turns, we earn 1 Commerce per turn instead of 1 Hammer per turn while Paris is still at Size 1.

Option ii. would have us completing the Warrior on T20, but then the overflow Hammer goes into a Barracks and we have to spend T21 putting 2 more Hammers into that Barracks (there's little sense in picking a Warrior as the recipient of those Hammers, since if we choose to go Worker 2 -> Settler 2, those Hammers will decay into nothingness).


The goal of this turnset is still going to be to try to find a location from which to steal a Worker.


I'm assuming that on Turn 17, 3320 BC, we'll pick Fishing as our next tech.

It's pretty hard to justify skipping Fishing when either of our potential City 2 locations has a Magical Fish (a Coastal Fish) to work, allowing us to reasonably-quickly make up the cost of Fishing by the extra Commerce and Food earned from Fish squares.

On Turn 22, 3120 BC, we would need to decide between picking Mining or Writing as our following tech.


Mining could be skipping if we aren't going to settle City 2 to the north-east, having us go straight for Writing -> Alphabet. But, if we settle to the north-east for City 2, I think that we should go for the Mining approach.

If we do go for Mining, we might as well then go for Bronze Working -> do some pre-Chopping -> Pottery -> Chop and Whip some Granaries -> Writing (20% cheaper due to knowing Pottery) -> Alphabet.

Whipping and Chopping can help us to get our Libraries out within a shorter period of time, somewhat compensating for the delay in putting Hammers into Libraries by delaying the researching of Writing.

I haven't done a head-to-head comparison of those approaches yet, so that's an area of testing that's still on the table to do (Fishing -> Writing -> Alphabet versus Fishing -> Mining -> Bronze Working -> Pottery -> Writing -> Alphabet).

It's a tough comparison as we need to plan out our Worker actions, particularly Chopping for the second scenario, to see if our Chopping Worker actions and/or Whipping of Granaries and Libraries can help us to come close to the same date for learning Alphabet.

But, even a roughly-played comparison would be helpful.


I don't currently have time to take a turnset, but am happy to support whoever is playing with needed testing results.

 

[pigswill]

I'm wondering about going straight for alphabet (after fishing and mining) given the restraint of avoiding AI contact until alphabet is learned. We need to explore more to at least locate Istanbul (given the European flavour so far it should be somewhere east of Greece) and the more information we have the easier it is to plan a strategy. Early alphabet should gets us BW and pottery for sure, less sure would be sailing, IW and maths.

Its unlikely (though not impossible) that we'll get dowed this early and with nearby AIs barbs should be manageable with warrior/ scout spawnbusting.

On the other hand....

I'm still not completely sold on avoiding AI contact/exploration. I understand that earlier contact may reduce AI willingness to trade techs but this is at least partially compensated by the research bonus for number of civs that know a tech (10% per civ iirc).

In a standard monarch game we should be pulling ahead of AIs by 1ad which in itself limits tech trading because AIs won't have anything we need.

Postponing wfyabta sounds like an immortal level strategy but I'm not convinced its an optimal monarch level strategy. HA rush or cat/anything rush may serve us better by getting bigger faster and doing our own research.

 

[Folket]

We should also consider that lower difficulty mean that the wfyabta limit is higher.

 

[Folket]

How fast will we get workboats out for fish when we do not have bronze working?

 

[pigswill]

I haven't tried west coast site but for north east site WB takes 9-10 turns assuming we start by working improved cows. One issue with north east site is that it needs a border pop to get fish in culture borders. It would be faster with BW if we have a worker available for chopping.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Micro tip (I suggest trying it out in a test game first):
Select our Worker 1
Press Ctrl + 1 (the number "1" key, but not the "1" key on your Number Pad on a full-sized keyboard)
Later, pressing the "1" key (not the number "1" key on the Number Pad) will automatically select our Worker 1, even if Worker 1 has no movement points remaining to it.

You can assign any of our Units a number from 1 through 9 plus 0 using the Ctrl key. I typically reserve these keys for my first ten Workers, since Workers are the Unit where you are most likely want to reselect them in order to cancel their most recently-given command.

Have Worker 1 perform a partial Worker action, such as moving 1 square and then building a Road. Next, press the "1" key, and the Worker will be selected. Notice that the Worker has a new icon added to the end of its list of icons, called "Cancel last Mission."

You can either click on that icon or press the Backspace key (NOT the Delete key) to cancel that Worker's current action. If you want to confirm that the action was cancelled, you can either press the "1" key again to confirm that the "Cancel last Mission" icon has disappeared or you can hover your mouse over top of your Worker to confirm that its action, say, "Build a Road (2)," no longer appears to the right of its Name and its remaining movement points.


Note that the Delete key is used to suicide our selected unit, so kindly avoid pressing that key. You normally get a confirmation prompt as to whether you want to delete a Unit, but I have seen the game delete a Unit without a confirmation prompt and I'm not sure the exact scenario in which a confirmation prompt does not appear.



I do not feel that our strategy would change by finding out where a given AI is located on the map. The discussion in the Pre-Game Discussion thread made it clear that we're on the same continent as both Istanbul and the Orient. If there are 40 versus 200 squares required to build a Railroad, we won't be building 200 Workers far in advance and will instead be whipping them out in the last 20 turns of the game. 2 turns per Worker created times 20 Cities times 20 turns gives us 200 Workers with 10 minus 2 = 8 Unhappiness per City, which our empire would more easily afford at that stage of the game.

With only 1 Vassal allowed to us, we know that we're going to have to conquer much of the world.

We're going to have to be opportunistic with our wars--probably an early-game war against Germany for land, possibly an opportunistic war to grab The Pyramids, an opportunistic war to grab The Great Library, and then break out later with a tech advantage, be it older Units + Musketmen stack defenders (possibly Drafted) + leftover Catapults + Trebuchets while we finish off our teching to Railroad, or be it from techs that we get in trade from a Friendly, fast-teching AI, such as Military Tradition for Cuirassiers (or, we self-tech Military Tradition for Cuirassiers because our trading partner is self-teching Chemistry or some other tech that we'd get in trade using Military Tradition).

Somewhere in there, we'll either settle a couple of islands ourselves (there's already a Spice Girls Island) or take a couple of Cities from England.


Getting declared upon would be nice, saving us a Diplomatic hit for declaring war ourselves.


Iron Working will definitely come in trade; that's a given trade on any Standard-sized map. Alphabet also unlocks Spies, in case we want to gift a City and steal techs such as Mathematics if some of the AIs are slow in their teching pace relative to the AI tech leaders (the ones that got Wonders, or extra Cities, or other bonuses such as free Workers/Buildings) until we manage to get a fast-teching AI or two up to Friendly status. We can then turn around and Chop out The Hanging Gardens and then gift Mathematics around to any AI whom we'd like to work on researching Calendar/Currency/Construction for us, as an example, while we tech some form of trade bait, such as Metal Casting.


Piggybacking research provides a 2.5% bonus to tech research for each AI player that has been met who knows that tech (30 / 12 AIs; that number might also have to include us, so it might only be 2.3% with 30 / 13 players). This fact is a double-edged sword. Having played games where I watch how the AIs tech, I have seen AIs beeline Mysticism + Meditation/Polytheism when they are isolated, but I meet those AIs and I have learned Animal Husbandry and Bronze Working, those AIs are more likely to "chase after" my research by also teching a tech such as Animal Husbandry or Bronze Working.

Tech selection is a partial-random choice by the AIs, but they do incorporate piggyback research into their tech selections.

When you're going for an Alphabet beeline, it also hurts to meet a lot of AIs early, as many AIs will go for Writing because you did, for the piggyback research benefit, and then other AIs will go for Writing because those AIs did, leaving you without many AIs needing Writing, thereby greatly reducing your trading bait. Writing traded to get Bronze Working is usually one of the trades to count on getting with a full Alphabet beeline (i.e. if we skipped Bronze Working), but less so when you meet multiple AIs and they piggyback off of research on Writing before you can pump out Alphabet.


We aren't playing a standard Monarch game. Some AIs have been gifted Wonders, which gives them exceptionally-early Great People, which is a very significant boost to an AI's empire. We also have the power to gift techs to selected AIs, to speed up their research and to thereby change the parameters of a "standard" Monarch game.


The difference in WFYABTA between Monarch and Immortal is 1 tech for Mehmed II (whom was the AI that I tested):
Monarch is 8 techs for an AI listed as 5 techs
Immortal is 7 techs for an AI listed as 5 techs

The difference is not particularly significant, with an Immortal-Difficulty game simply self-teching one of Priesthood or Archery and then being the same.

I don't see how the strategy applies any less here.

 

[Jersey Joe]

I vote for "i. Turn 22 Warrior 2 and +2 Commerce (Work the Wheat on T15) and +1 Hammer going into our Settler"

Also, I favor going Writing > Alphabet sooner rather than later and here are pretty much the reason why:

Tech Path
If we settle by Hills squares, I think that we can safely skip Bronze Working on our way to Alphabet, using the Mines for our early production purposes. I'm even highly tempted to skip Pottery, since Granaries are less useful if you've already grown your Cities somewhat prior to learning both of Pottery and Bronze Working.

Granaries are amazing once you can Chop or Whip them, but they also have an up-front cost that we might be better off delaying paying if we have additional Mines to grow into working.

The sooner that we get to Alphabet, the sooner that we can start building everything that we might want to build... Granaries, a Lighthouse, Monuments for +1 Happiness and their ability to help against Churchill's Culture, etc.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

RE: Workboats without Bronze Working (and possibly even without Mining)
As pigswill said, settling to the north-east for City 2 could net us a Work Boat after 10 turns (City Centre for 1 Hammer + G Cow for 2 Hammers = 3 Hammers / turn for 10 turns = 30 / 30 Hammers).

Let's say that we settled there for City 2 and built 2 Work Boats, with the second Work Boat being for City 3, with City 3 settled the the west of our capital.

After building 2 Work Boats, we could build a Worker, a Settler, or a Library.

Building Libraries will be faster with Mines and even faster with Chops and Whips.

If we tried to build a Library without Mining, we could be getting first 3 Hammers per turn and then later 4 and 5 Hammers per turn as we grow into working additional G For squares. At, say, an average of 4 Hammers per turn, 90 / 4 takes 23 turns to get us our Library in City 2, which is a rather long time to wait. Until we get that Library, we won't be getting a whole lot more Flasks. Alternatively, we could grow more slowly and simply work 1 F + 2 C Coast squares to speed up how many Flasks we earn each turn. By working a Fish plus a Cow, we'd be growing pretty quickly (7 Food per turn) and only losing 1 Food per turn per increase in City Size isn't too bad, with us probably being able to work 2 to 3 Coast squares within a reasonable time frame.

So, I think that if we were to go for Fishing -> Writing -> Alphabet, we might not be able to count on getting Libraries and should instead just focus on maximizing Commerce by working Coast squares at City Size 3 and above with a north-east-settled City 2.


Alternatively, we go for Mining + Bronze Working + Pottery, allowing us to quickly Chop + 1-pop-whip Granaries and then Chop + 2-pop-whip Libraries. We'd also be able to start building Cottages.


Basically, we have these main approaches:
A] Fishing -> Writing -> Alphabet
B] Fishing -> Mining -> Writing -> Alphabet
C] Fishing -> Mining -> Bronze Working -> Pottery -> Writing -> Alphabet
D] Approach C] but with Sailing added in there somewhere before Alphabet for cheap Lighthouses and Foreign Trade Routes when combined with Writing

Each approach could have a sub-approach of settling to the north-east first or to the west first.

a) Going to the west first gives us a Worker-action shortage, as we have competing Worker tasks of building a Road on the Fur for a Trade Route, possibly also completing a Road 1 SW of Paris to speed up Settler 2's movement by 1 turn, Camping the Fur, and Pasturing the second G Cow. Having a second Worker (preferably stolen from Germany) would make settling to the west a lot easier to manage.

Once we have enough Worker actions to Pasture the second G Cow for a settle-to-the-west-as-City-2 scenario, we can then get our Work Boat built after 10 turns of working that Pastured Cow, minus maybe a turn or two for getting Hammers while waiting for the Cow to get Pastured. Again, having 2 Workers available could mean spending only 2 turns instead of 4 turns to Pasture that second G Cow, assuming that we manage our Worker actions well and have our Workers in place at the right time.

As with settling to the north-east, we could feasibly have a west-settled City 2 build a Work Boat for a north-east-settled City 3, but doing so leaves a bit more of a bitter taste in the mouth, as a north-east-settled City 3 would need to wait 10 turns for its Cultural Borders to expand, during which time it could have built itself its own Work Boat anyway.


b) Going to the east first also gives us a bit of trickiness with Worker actions--what I'd probably do is build a Road on the G For 1 NE of Paris (after Pasturing Paris' G Cow), then move to the Fur and Camp it, then spend a couple of turns moving back north-east to finish the Road connection to City 2 for 2 Trade Routes, particularly if we go with researching Mining, so that we'll be able to Mine some GH squares next. If we skipped Mining, then I'd probably send the Worker back west to build a Road 1 SW of Paris and on the Fur, saving us a turn with settling City 3 to the west. Or, perhaps if we were skipping Mining, it might make sense to complete the Trade Routes first, followed by Camping and then Roading the Fur.


At some point soon, we'll need to do some testing to compare those options against each other, so that we can come up with some quantative data for making a decision.


We still need a volunteer for the next turnset.

 

[pigswill]

Went for settler>settler (stole a worker from Germany), tech fishing>writing>alph. Got alphabet 1620bc (?T57). I'm sure there are quicker ways of doing this. Workers ran out of stuff to do early. One question is whether getting mining would build libraries early enough to recoup the beakers. Another question is whether worker stealing will be viable in the real game. Another question is do we have horses?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

One thing that Workers can keep doing is building G Riv Farms. Of course, said Farms have less value if we stagnate Paris by building Settlers (and possibly Workers) for a long time, but a G Riv Farm is still a decent improvement once we have enough citizens to work them, allowing for our City to increase its rate of growth while also earning an extra Commerce per turn.

Were you working 1 F + 2 C Coast squares with the extra citizens in City 2? Doing so is one of the "advantages" of us getting Fishing before beelining Alphabet, and is a "comparative advantage" in a case where we can't build Mines. If we can build Mines, then working GH Mine squares while building a useful Flask-earning Building, i.e. a Library, can be a better use of our citizens than working non-Lighthouse-enhanced Coast squares.

Every variable at play has a potential cost or gain.

For example, can Mining be leveraged for getting earlier Libraries and also an earlier Great Scientist? The extra Great People Points have a value, too, but only if we plan to use them to fully complete a Great Person within a reasonable timeframe.

Can Bronze Working be used to better leverage our extra Happiness by starting whipping cycles sooner so that Whipping Unhappiness wears off sooner, allowing us to whip more items over time? Can it be worth it to first Chop a Forest before we settle on it? I think that I remember the Forests that we plan to settle on not giving us a lot of Hammers... gaining 8 Hammers for the cost of 4 or 5 Worker actions may not pay off when Worker actions are at a premium.

Can Pottery with its ability to build Cottages (again, causing us to compete with other Worker actions) allow us to start maturing Cottages sooner? Or, would we simply not have enough citizens to start working Cottages yet? Can building Granaries speed up our Cities' growth sufficiently to make up for building them, plus putting us far enough ahead on growth to grow into working additional G Riv Farms or G Riv Cottages for extra Commerce? Or, does the cost to whip Granaries cost us too much in the short term? Does the 20% bonus to research on Writing from knowing Pottery help us out sufficiently?

Comparative test runs can help us to answer some of these questions, and any contribution to the testing is appreciated!

 

[Folket]

Do someone have an updated test game?

 

[pigswill]

Had another go. Settler>settler again. First city went north east, second city went south east between fur and fish and worked the fur, slow WB but extra commerce from improved fur. Went fishing>writing>mining>alphabet. Got alphabet T57.
It would be quicker to omit mining but if we want to try for Glight then having pre-built mines could speed it significantly. Didn't manage a library before learning alphabet.

 

[Folket]

If we meet more AIs we can check which techs they have researched and it will tell us if delaying alphabet makes sense.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Do someone have an updated test game?

See the attached file. I'm not as good as Jersey Joe, but I believe that I got the important squares altered.

Note that any AI which got moved after 4000 BC may not have its full production in whatever item it is building. I didn't move any AIs, but I think that we may have moved a couple of the nearby AIs after 4000 BC--if we did, then said AIs are not likely to have their free 10 Hammers from Turn 0.

 

[pigswill]

Thanks for that Dhoomstriker .

A couple of general considerations: every tech we research before alphabet is one less we can get in trade, diminshing the relative value of alphabet beeline but without techs we're limited regarding tile improvements and build options.

The sooner we get alphabet the sooner we get second tier techs.

In a couple of test runs we've met the visible AI before we've finished alphabet so there's little benefit in deliberately trying to avoid them.

With so many options testing all of them could be very time consuming.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Please note that the real game is not paused. I took screenshots from the latest turn's Demographics and Top 5 Cities screens from both the real game and the test game.

In the real game, the AIs are generally ahead in GNP, Hammers, and Food, with one exception being that in the test game, 1 AI has a higher amount of Hammers.

I would thus tend to think that once we learn Alphabet, whatever tech level the AIs are at in the test game should be fairly representative of the real game, and at least the test game is unlikely to have the AIs being further ahead than in the real game.

Spoiler :

As I mentioned earlier, meeting AIs can cause them to duplicate research on techs that we have learned (or started with, such as The Wheel), so that's another reason to delay contact with them.

One settling location that we haven't considered was over by the Sheep that have been revealed. Theoretically, we could settle on top of the western Sheep, getting another Sheep plus 2 Fish in our big fat cross. I'm not particularly sold on the idea, though, as there isn't a good square for a Worker to improve initially and we won't have Bronze Working in time to Whip a Work Boat at City Size 2, which would be one of the benefits of settling on top of a 3-Food square (being able to grow a bit faster).

Germany may settle a City up there for us anyway, so it probably does make sense to settle closer to home for reducing Maintenance Costs. If Germany doesn't settle there, it might make for a good City 4 location.


I do think that it is a very interesting idea to settle to the south-east for the 2nd Fur. What did we do while building a Work Boat? Were we working the Fur square? If so, that's what, 2 Hammers per turn (including the City Centre's square) for 11 turns (when we hit Size 2), then 4 Hammers per turn at Size 2 (while also working a GH For square) for 2 turns, giving us 22 + 8 = 30 Hammers for our Work Boat? We'd then be working both a Fur and a Fish, which are two Commerce-giving squares. How did the Worker actions work out? By the looks of it, we'd only need 1 piece of Road to connect up our Trade Routes. We also wouldn't need to use our Missionary in City 2. We'd miss out on the Sheep down there, but the Sheep could be later partnered with the Gems square in a different City.

So, perhaps that approach is worth running with...
Build Settler 2 at Size 3 after completing Warrior 2
Settle 1 E of the south-east Fur while building a Work Boat
After completing Settler 2, grow Paris to Size 4, then build Settler 3
Try to get both Fur Resources improved ASAP, and also make it a priority to build a Road between the south-east City and Paris' River (it looks like just 1 square of Road would be required, but if there's a way to build a Road to speed up the progress of Settler 2 by 1 turn, then doing so is also an option)
Skip Mining and go straight for Alphabet after Fishing


If we can find an approach that excels over other approaches, then we don't necessarily need to do a ton of testing. For example, settling City 2 by the second Fur sounds like our best Commerce-oriented approach. When City 2 hits Size 3, we could work a 1-Food, 2-Commerce Coast square to further push our way forward to Alphabet.

Another opening could be to focus on production, but it sounds like pigswill wasn't able to make Mining-only work for getting us a Library in City 2, meaning that a production-oriented approach would probably require us teching Mining + Bronze Working + Pottery. It's arguable that with that many techs ahead of us, settling City 2 by the Fur could still be a good play, getting us 2 Fur Resources' worth of Commerce to power our way through the techs that we want to research.

The only real downside is the slower growth of City 2 to Size 2, but we'd be emphasizing Commerce to get us through "the hump" of techs to Alphabet, so that slower growth might be worth it, especially since Cities settled to the west or the north-east don't offer a second Commerce square after working on a Fish square.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

What turn do we learn AH on? Obviously horses change the complexion of our settling decision.