SGOTM 9 - jeffelammar

[Paul#42]

Great work on Carthage (Cato's "Delenda est Carthago" is a quote we don't often get to use very often).

Did he say that?
Maybe he was still confused about the popularity of his last quote that he did not take more time to make that one a stroke of genius, too.

I see Sabratha, but where is the other Carthaginian city?

Funny, the capital city (Utica, size 8, S of Sasbratha) has no label. Our forces who were bored by carthaginian "resistence" in Carthage are waiting "ante portas". The SoZ-City Sabratha (new AC due this or next turn!) will take a turn more to be conquered due to my bad troop positioning.

 

[Paul#42]

No discussion going on here during my daytime

Next time I will insist that I'm not the only European (or African) in my group. Or more students who do the night shift over there!

This is so boring - I can only concentrate on working

 

[Jove]

Poor Paul#42!
This is almost off topic, but I hope it helps.
Here's a quote from the 12/12/05 issue of The New Yorker. It's from an article about chess AI programmers. The gist is these guys use supercomputers to evaluate millions of chess moves, and the computers evaluate their own progress with various indicators which show up as 'evaluation bars':
"I call it Chrilly's Law: every ten moves, at the most, in complicated positions, even the strongest player will commit a slight inaccuracy-the second best move when only the best will do. He doesn't even notice it, but Hydra [a chess-AI program] does. Its evaluation bars start growing, a little taller with every move. By the time the grand master realizes the problem, it's already Game Over."

I think it applies to Civ as much as chess. The AI is a pushover, but our human opponents aren't at all. It's why I think little production tricks are so important. Maybe it's good for only 1 shield, or 1 turn on growth. Well, 10 turns down the line it's magnified, and so on, until it turns into an advantage. I guess it's late for this now, but are there any little production tricks we're missing? Maybe they can still give us a boost.
For example, I like to buy workers from size=1 corrupt cities that will grow in 1. If there's just 1 food bonus, the rate of growth stays maximized, and the worker gets going 1 turn sooner. If the other guys aren't doing this, it's a small edge.
...That kind of thing. Sorry if this seems remedial or not helpful What do you want to discuss?

 

[denyd]

There is something I'd like to consider.

Invading the other island and razing all AI cities as we pack cities on that island in an ICS style layout. (ie: XOXOX and irrigate & rail all the X's) so that we can get as many scientists as possible. We could start this immediatly. When we get close to the domination limit, we could gift India a NW city and let him start expanding towards our core taking land on the New continent as he takes cities on the old one. As long as we keep him away from the Ottomans and keep the Celts busy on their own island we should be ok. At some point it would be necessary to switch to communism (and build the SPHQ). Any thoughts on this idea?

 

[Jove]

I am concerned about what to do with India and how to get them to grow, build spaceship parts, etc. Following your ideas, we'd want to landlock Otto as far north as possible...

-Does India need to command the whole continent? If the tech elevator works, maybe a dozen cities is all they'll need. Or will vacating the whole area make them more likely to work on space projects?

-ICS isn't necessarily the best way to maximize specialists. The idea is to maximize grassland/bonus tiles. Irrigated and RR'ed, they're 4 food apiece. City centers (preferably on deserts, hills, plains) give 2 food. So, worked grass can support 1 specialist per citizen. We don't want too much crowding gobbling up the food.

-Communism...hmmm, I don't know. Do we have to be communist to build the SPHQ? Or just get the tech? And, would communism net more gold than Monarchy?

 

[CKS]

Here is the save:
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm9/Jeffelammar_SG009_AD0650_01.SAV


Turn 0: Retreat workers from MI, rush settler for Ottoman’s prison town, drop lux to 0% to get Magnetism in 3, switch unhappy citizens to scientists in Karistad (will starve) and Oslo.

IBT: Carthage’s MI moves south, a NM moves east from Utica. Karak. worker to marketplace, Hareid library to university, Svolvaer settler to market.

Turn 1: Bomb Utica. 4/4 Berserk to 3/5, kills NM. 4/4 to 3/ 4 Berserk kills NM. 5/5 to 2/5 Berserk kills 2/3 NM. 3/3 Berserk dies to 3/3 Longbow. 4/4 Berserk to 5/5 kills longbow, takes Utica. 4/4 knight retreats from 2/3 MI, 7/9 army kills it. Move on Sabratha.

IBT: New ancient cavalry kills pike, Theveste revolts. Oslo market to university.

Turn 2: Knight retreats, knight dies, MI kills NM, MI kills NM, horse kills 1/3 NM, takes Sabratha, Carthage is gone. Reposition for Ottomans. Science to 90%, magnetism this turn.

IBT: See longbow. Magnetism to metallurgy. Bergen harbor to bank, Molde university to bank.

Turn 3: Trade luxes: Celts: wool for dyes, incense, silks, and ivory. Spain: furs for banking. America: Theology + 20 g for wines. MM to get metallurgy in 4.

IBT: Celts start Newton’s University.

Turn 4: Build Sarpsborg 2 W of Leptis Magna for the Ottomans.

Turns 5& 6 Moving. Risor aquaduct to university.

IBT: Indians want peace. We learn metallurgy.

Turn 7: I investigate a few cities – mostly 2 regular spears, except Edrine (3 spears) and Istanbul (4). Lots of longbows are running around, but I’ll ignore them for now. Gift Sarpsborg. Gift into industrial age. Only one city is big enough to draft, should they get nationalism, and I plan to take it immediately. Ottomans get medicine, we continue to study steam power. Ottomans don't know anyone else. Declare war.

Bursa: 5/5to 2/5 berserk kills spear, 5/5 to 2/5 berserk kills spear, takes town.
Edrine: 4/4 to 3/ 4 berserk kills spear, 4/4 to 4/5 berserk kills spear, 3/3 to 2/ 4 berserk kills spear, takes city. 5/5 MI kills wandering longbow.
Iznik: 5/5 berserk kills spear, 5/5 berserk kills spear, takes city.
Izmit: 3/ 4 berserk kills spear, 2/4 knight kills spear, takes city, spear takes worker.
Uskudar: bombard, 2/5 berserk kills spear, 4/5 MI kills spear, takes city.
Istanbul: bombard, army 4/9 vs 2 spears, knight retreats, 3/ 4 knight kills spear – 1 2/3 spear left, plus 3 loose longbows. Kill one LB with horse.

IBT: Longbows kill 4/5 MI, 3/ 4 horse. Carthage settler to courthouse.

Turn 8: Army takes Istanbul, 2 berserks and an MI kill the longbows.

IBT Stockholm aquaduct to university, Hippo worker to library, Stavanger harbor to worker.

Turn 9: zzz

IBT: Stavanger worker to barracks, Haugesund worker to marketplace. Celts learn navigation.

Turn 10: zzz

India still doesn’t know writing, mysticism, or horseback riding.

A bunch of builds need to be changed based on what we decide to do next. If we are going to invade, we'll need some military.

 

[CKS]

And a picture, though it isn't all that interesting.

 

[denyd]

Nice work on Hannibal

Jeff: Since you're pressed for time do you want to switch places?

What's next?

1. We can head for the other island and take on either Spain or America.
2. We can push the infrastructure and fully develop the home island.
3. We can do both.

As for Communism, it's quite powerful in C3C, though I'm not sure about what the Anarchy period would cost us. The SPHQ only works when you're in Communism and works like an FP, so we can have OCN X 3 before corruption kicks in big time and the distance part of corruption is removed. There is no WW. We also would get veteran spies (more effective stealing) and increased unit support (6/6/6 vs 2/4/8 for Monarchy).

We can probably add a pair (or more) of cities on old Ottoman lands (dotmap anyone?).

With India still without Writing he's a long way from Map Making, so AlanH's rule change will come in very handy. When do you guys think we should gift that city to India (and which one)?

With Steam Power due in four what's next? I like Electricity then Replaceable Parts (Infantry, Faster Workers & Civil Engineers). When do you want to bring the Celts to the IA? He'll probably go Nationalism and then either Communism or Steam Power. We should be able to trade Steam Power for Medicine once the Ottoman are ready to talk peace. BTW: we managed to escape facing Siphai

Edit: Just an added thought. We might want to take on Spain instead of America. Once we reach the Modern Age and get the Ottoman tech, if it's not Rocketry, we can gift America to the MA and he'll probably research it for us as it contains his UU.

 

[Paul#42]

Poor Paul#42!
This is almost off topic, but I hope it helps.
[...]
For example, I like to buy workers from size=1 corrupt cities that will grow in 1. If there's just 1 food bonus, the rate of growth stays maximized, and the worker gets going 1 turn sooner. If the other guys aren't doing this, it's a small edge.
...That kind of thing. Sorry if this seems remedial or not helpful What do you want to discuss?

Yes, kind of that stuff

You are completely right, small improvements grow exponentially. But the problem is to tell which is the best improvement because in most cases it's a trade-off and there are concurring improvements. You invest 4,8,12g to get the worker 1,2,3 turns earlier - it depends on what he is doing next. Maybe you'd rather use those gold pieces for something different, maybe three turns later you could spare a whole turn of research by running 1g deficit... And maybe the worker hooks up a luxury which enables you to spare the same turn of research...

IMO it's important to be aware of those oportunities and use them if a resulting advantage is sensed. You can't calculate every situation on a spreadsheet, you have to use (and develop) your intuition if you want not to lose the fun in gaming.

 

[Paul#42]

I am concerned about what to do with India and how to get them to grow, build spaceship parts, etc. Following your ideas, we'd want to landlock Otto as far north as possible...

Don't forget we are only allowed to gift a city to India in Modern Times! That will be the same turn we will eliminate the Ottomans.

-Does India need to command the whole continent? If the tech elevator works, maybe a dozen cities is all they'll need. Or will vacating the whole area make them more likely to work on space projects?

If there is an enemy on the same continent India could feel driven to rather build more military than space parts. I would feel best to be save on another continent blocked by workers and scaring away their ships with bombers and artillery...

I'd prefer to take out America (or Spain) next and eliminate the Celts later after India got The Great Library and all techs Celts and we had. Spain (or America) could survive to buy Indias techs with our money.

-ICS isn't necessarily the best way to maximize specialists. The idea is to maximize grassland/bonus tiles. Irrigated and RR'ed, they're 4 food apiece. City centers (preferably on deserts, hills, plains) give 2 food. So, worked grass can support 1 specialist per citizen. We don't want too much crowding gobbling up the food.

Good subject! Just an example to help imagination:
In ICS you have ideally 4 tiles for every town. Given three grass tiles (i&rr) that's 14 fpt. That can support a size 7 city (river or aqueduct given). 4 of those 7 people are scientist, making 13 bpt. that's 3.25 bptt (beakers per turn & tile).
In loose placement you have eg 9 tiles per town, makes 34 fpt. That city is size 17, 9 scientists supported, 28 bpt generated, evalues to 28/9 = 3.11 bptt, slightly worse to ICS.
Plus it takes more time and buildings (aqueduct + hospital). So ICS would be slightly better. Any mistakes in my calculation?

Of course we should not waste flood plains and other bonus tiles for city centers if possible.

 

[Paul#42]

At CKS: Great work on Ottomans! About 27-5 as kill record is really nice considered the pace
This effort is awarded a dancing banana!

I'd like us to insert another town SE of Ottoman exile to keep them off fertile soil. That (and other towns around) could need some culture.

To prevent flips we should rush some settlers or workers in Ex-Ottoman towns and priorize them on growth till our people are at least pari. Considered our overall culture that should do the job.

 

[Jove]

@Paul#42: Well, ideally, a city can command 19 tiles, plus center=20. If they were all grass (or the equivalent in a nice spot), that'd be a population of 39.
How much science? 19*(gold per tile) + city center gold = A
Science from city = (A + .5A for market + .5A for bank + .5A for Stock Exchange +(is this how this works exactly?) .5A for Library +.5a for University + .5A for Research Lab) * corruption rate (court + police station = 70%)
+ specialist science (we'll want pretty much all science until the Age of Science is over) (20*3=60)
=
well, the exact numbers aren't important. Around 120. Preliminary, I could be using commerce improvements wrong, multiply it out times our land tiles plus about 1b per corrupt coast... The point is, the land can potentially get maxed with less improvements. It looks like more to me this way, but without being paid I can't guarantee winning this argument.

Anyway, it's already mixed up, without abandoning any cities we can just consign some to population pumping the rest, whatever else we decide.

So, if invading looks doable, go for it. Might as well buy a few granaries at home too. So,

What's next?

1. We can head for the other island and take on either Spain or America.
2. We can push the infrastructure and fully develop the home island.
3. We can do both.

IMHO, #3.

If we had some privateers, they could sell maps of the ocean for 5g/trading civ/turn. Tedious, say there's only 2, that's 10g*(~# of trading civs)/turn. And surely they'll get the chance to sink a boat.

 

[Jove]

Don't forget we are only allowed to gift a city to India in Modern Times! That will be the same turn we will eliminate the Ottomans.

Yeah, and whatever city we gift them can/will become their new capitol, if it is their second city and we capture Delhi.

We can control their growth with defenders. We should plan on gifting the city in the first turn of the MA. If we're running 4-turn science at 80%, maybe we ought to go ahead and let them grab a couple of core cities, as long as they don't get education before the Great Library...

 

[Paul#42]

Yeah, and whatever city we gift them can/will become their new capitol, if it is their second city and we capture Delhi.

We can control their growth with defenders.

We can also control their "choice" of the capital by chasing them - not only conquering Delhi but also the gifted city after we directed them to a city we'd like as their capital.

 

[Paul#42]

Looking at the graphs we are still doing well culture (=research capacity) wise and improving in territory.

But Teams Klarius and Hagar seem to have conquered distant lands already. I wonder if all teams have the same strategy with GL? I cannot imagine any other...

After gifting India the town, they will build some defense for some time before (hopefully) conquering our country. Is there any chance to let them get to MM earlier? Maybe they deeply distrust the sea after watching the fate of thier first curragh...

Has a gifted town its granary still filled (if before)? Otherwise people will be starving when India has only initial 8 tiles to work... Richt now I favour gifting Stockholm because of its central position.

We should also be prepared for the possibility that our continent lacks some strategic resources India needs for space quest. In that case we would have to find a way to let a surviving civ have two sources connected and let them trade one of them to India...

 

[CKS]

I'd like us to insert another town SE of Ottoman exile to keep them off fertile soil. That (and other towns around) could need some culture.

To prevent flips we should rush some settlers or workers in Ex-Ottoman towns and priorize them on growth till our people are at least pari. Considered our overall culture that should do the job.

We also need a town NW of the Ottomans, to keep them from the lambs. The settler for that is already on one of the lambs, he just needs to move one more step before settling.

We do want to be careful of flips, but the risk is pretty low right now. We have rather a lot of land to fill in, so rushing some settlers out of old Ottoman territory could help us along with this. Plus we need to do a lot of railing, so more workers, even if they are slow ones, will help.

As for what's next: I vote against denyd's choice 1. We need infrastructure at home. While a few cities have libraries, universities, and marketplaces, a great many do not, even reasonably non-corrupt cities. We are a long way from 4-turn research now, although we managed to hold it through the end of the middle ages.

If we want to carry out an invasion at the same time, using troops from the cities that have their primary improvements, that is okay with me. We have deals with both Spain and America, but in each case they are paying us luxes for techs we gave them, so declaring war shouldn't cause us any problems even if we decide to invade before the deals are up.

After steam power, I like industrialization before electricity and replaceable parts, because I want to get factories and coal plants.

 

[Paul#42]

As for what's next: I vote against denyd's choice 1. We need infrastructure at home.

But we have quite some hungry berserks waiting for action and a couple of MIs at home (railroaded soon) will do the MP job. We could check strength and inspect some towns to estimate who's the weaker opponent and just try to beat them carefully with what we already have (plus some new built units from well-stuffed cities).

After steam power, I like industrialization before electricity and replaceable parts, because I want to get factories and coal plants.

I doubt the benefit of coal plants. Even in hooverdam-town (eg base production 30 spt, with factory 45, with plant 60) it's 18 turns with plant (4 (160 / 45) plant +14 (800 / 60) dam) compared to 18 turns (800/45) without plant. It doesn't really pay off.

Also: base production 40 (60 / 80) it's 13 turns (160/60 = 3 + 800 / 80 = 10) vs. 14 turns (800/60) not too much a benefit compared to the costs and risk of polution. Any calculation errors?

 

[CKS]

I don't have any objection to choice 3. It is just the invade but don't work on infrastructure option I don't like.

I like factories everywhere that isn't corrupt, and we'll need them for India, but a coal plant only where we'll build Hoover Dam. If we won't be able to build the Dam immediately, though, then there is no reason for the coal plant. If we will be starting it immediately, the idea is to short-rush the coal plant (and the factory). Two turns and a hunk of cash doubles our production.

 

[Jove]

Nice job on conquering the rest of our continent! I especially enjoyed the Otto blitz.

After steam power, I like industrialization before electricity and replaceable parts, because I want to get factories and coal plants.

I like the idea of setting up factories for Ghandi to use later. The best cities will probably build more than 1 SS part, so, say, 6 factories and Hoovers?

I think Rep Parts is better than Industrialization for a 1st choice though. RR's take 6 turns as it is, that shrinks to 3 with Rep Parts. If we have 60 workers, we rail 10 tiles/turn before Rep Parts, and 20 tiles/turn after. Really a huge boost in food and shields.

And, if we really want to try to maximize some corrupt towns, don't forget about forestry. It's 9 turns to plant, 4 turns to chop, 4 to irrigate again for 10 shields. 17 worker moves in all. Shrinks to ~9 after rep parts. With intensive forestry, we can decide what is the best 1-2 improvements for totally corrupt towns and chop them out, saving money for other things... More rails = more food = more workers = more of this.

With rails, a granary and an aquaduct, it looks like Stockholm could become a 1-turn worker factory. Fauske might be more profitable with a granary instead of a university, pumping workers. And, the area around Leptis Magna has 11 floodplains, that's 55 food/turn. Might as well cram in cities and pump workers there...


4-turn research? It could be tough to maintain. We have to do the best we can. Just playing with the save, we can do 4-turn Steam Power at 90% moving some 1-coin citizens to the coast in Stavanger. More mm might help, but still, we're about 250bpt shy of 4-turn research. I really don't think CKS can be blamed for missing a mark like that!

We have prebuilds going in Trondheim and Channel City. I think we want Newton's in Channel City. Wouldn't kill us in Trondheim though... I think people mostly want ToE at the beginning of the Modern Age. Should we switch? What should we do with these builds?

But we have quite some hungry berserks waiting for action and a couple of MIs at home (railroaded soon) will do the MP job. We could check strength and inspect some towns to estimate who's the weaker opponent and just try to beat them carefully with what we already have (plus some new built units from well-stuffed cities)

Spain looks like the juciest target. Their land is all grass, they're on an island, they're backwards, and they're hardly worth any gold at all. I bet we'd be facing a lot of spearmen there. Celts are giving us a lot of gold, if we cleared America for them, they might give us even more. They ought to be good pals for awhile.

 

[denyd]

I'll let Jeff claim this and play if he can. He posted he'd be out from 12/22-30 so I'll wait until tomorrow to claim it.

I like the idea of going after Spain with out existing troops while improving the homeland.

I'd like to research Electricity next unless there's any objections. Are the Celts in the IA yet? Should we gift them into the IA if not?