SGOTM 9 - Smurkz

[CommandoBob]

I am in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metromess, er, Metroplex, living in Arlington.

 

[zyxy]

Roster looks good to me.

Thoughts on the opening moves:

Definitely scout E-E. IS there something in the forest S-S-E of our starting position? furs maybe?

The main advantage of settling on the incense would be that our capital cannot culture flip. That being said, I would still highly favor settling near the cow, as the incense area is low on food (no 2 food tiles in the first 9 it seems) and early on food is always key. The two bg's are good tiles and I would prefer not to settle on them, maybe move 3 tiles if needed. Hopefully there's fresh water and another food source so we can have a 4 turner.

It would be good to do a spreadsheet or teststart to find an optimal opening once we know a bit about the area, i.e., after first or second scout move, but I will not be around to do it - unless you wait until Monday.

Depending on the situation, the build order could be scout - warrior or archer - granary, or leave out scout and/or military. But we have bad experience with undefended cities , and I don't know how bad roaming barbs are.

I would go full speed research. Our starting techs are pottery and warrior code?
Goals: Literature for faster libraries, Mapmaking in case the continents turn out to be small (the GOTM staff would call the Indian start a continent ), and either Monarchy or Republic. That means start on Alpha->Writing at 100%.

I think it should be possible to run a republic at 100% WW, provided we have enough luxes. Sistines + cathedrals help too (6 happy faces for 2 gpt!), as do Bach and Hanging Gardens. We do not have to decide this yet, and I may have some time to test this in a couple of days.

I remember having captured cities with barracks, harbors, banks, markets, factories, power plants of various types and probably other improvements as well. Sometimes you get the bank but not the market . Great Wonders, aqueducts and hospitals always stay apparently, culture buildings are always lost. I think small wonders are lost as well.

Btw, thanks Methos for the links. I'll start reading .

 

[ControlFreak]

Hey, I'm in Texas too! Houston to be exact.

I am in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metromess, er, Metroplex, living in Arlington.

At last, a couple of GOOD things to come from Texas.

I'm not from Ohio, I just live here. I grew up in New England as you might guess from my previous statement.

I agree with zyxy about food being important but I also think with the expansionist trait, we don't want to walk 3 turns before settling and starting our scout. Not to mention that the minimap implies the other civs are N rather than S. I think we should scout as you say E,E or E,SE and then decide based on what we see which way the settler should go.

I do remember your barb incident (lost the granary progress ). In my test play yesterday it worked out well to build a scout and send him the opposite direction from the first, then build a warrior to scout locally. He can run home if needed for defense of city or worker. Roaming barbs don't appear that tough in the early game.

It's been a long time since I've selected Monarchy so I don't really know how bad researching in it is. My guess is we'll either end up with so many units that our research is slowed in Republic as well because of upkeep costs and happiness problems.

I recommended no research on Alphabet because we're going to end up buying it, and slow research on Writing to maximize the amount of time we have to pop the techs needed for Monarchy from goody huts. I admit this is a gamble, but if it comes to a choice of popping Philosophy or Monarchy from a hut, which would you rather have? I don't think slow research on Writing is going to cost us many turns in the long run. And if we get to Monarchy fast it could pay off by being out of despotism for the extra turns it would have taken to get to Republic.

 

[Methos]

Wow! Couldn't check the site this morning (internet was down) and look at everything I miss!!

From my understanding any building that provides culture is destroyed during capture. So there goes libraries and universities. The one thing I am a little worried about is India razing some of our "gifted" cities, but thats something we're just going to have to chance.

One thing I was thinking was in the later stages of the game when India may be low on cash is a way of donating cash to her. Recall that when you capture a city you earn gold. From what I recall that gold amount is taken from the average of your cities divided by your total gold amount. I believe, I could be mistaken here. Anyway, if we bump our treasury up and "gift" India a city they'll gain gold from our treasury.

My main reason for this is if India is buying techs in the late game they may be running low on cash and end up lowering their economy.

Another plan is we're going to have to send combat workers in to keep India's land improved. The AI has never been very good at improving their territory.

Most of the other ideas I had have already been mentioned.

I'm really looking forward to this variant. It'll defnitely be an interesting game. Totally oddball compared to most games thats for sure.

Roster is fine by me too. I'm also in the US (Missouri) but my timeframe is off. I work graveyard shift and sleep during the day. Weekends make it interesting as its hard to sleep at night. Perfect for civ playing!!

 

[Niklas]

Whoa, look at our post count go! I'm proud of you guys!

I'm nearly working around the clock these days, my schedule is crazy up until Dec 10 or so when this semester ends. That doesn't mean that I can't squeeze in a turnset now and then though.
As we learned in the last game, playing slow and deliberate is the key to success. So yes, lots of discussion awaits, and time zones matter less.

As mentioned I have a lecture tomorrow morning (or today in a few hours actually... ), after that I have some time to spare and join the discussion for real. Keep the good thoughts coming!

EDIT: 500 posts!

 

[zyxy]

I agree with zyxy about food being important but I also think with the expansionist trait, we don't want to walk 3 turns before settling and starting our scout. Not to mention that the minimap implies the other civs are N rather than S. I think we should scout as you say E,E or E,SE and then decide based on what we see which way the settler should go.

I guess we have different playstyles . Good, that will give some discussion material.

Of course we don't want to walk too far with the settler. But to get the cow in the first 9 and not settle on a bg we have to move 3 tiles. If that bg is the difference between a 4 turner or not, then I would gladly give up the 2 extra move turns. I guess we'll need to see what the scout finds before we can decide.

On popping huts: obviously it's nicer to get expensive techs, but there are a lot of techs before monarchy. It depends much on whether you can trade for all the cheap ones, and then get lucky popping monarchy. I don't think I ever succeeded doing that. EDIT: but I didn't try very hard either...

-----------------------------------

War Weariness: Monarchy does not suffer WW, can use military as MP, and has extra free upkeep. The highest level of WW in Republic is 1 "unhappiness point" for each citizen. These can be countered by improvements, lux tax and luxuries. A republic brings in 1 extra gold per citizen compared to a monarchy (and also 1 per city center?). This gold is modified by corruption and improvements (lib, market, etc). We only need to consider cities with low corruption, so it's safe to assume that each republican citizen brings at least extra 1 - 1.5 gold piece after modifiers. This would mean that a republic will pay off if we can pay for the military and unhappiness for less than 1 gold per citizen, say. Military should be a fairly small sum (1 gpt per unit), so it largely depends on how many luxes we can get. For example, a size 12 city would need 22 happy faces under republic, and 10 under monarchy (partly perhaps by MP). So in monarchy a Market + 5 luxes + 1 MP would do the trick, whereas a republic would need for example Temple + Cathedral + Sistine's + Market + 7 luxes = 1 + 6 + 16 = 23, using 3 gpt to pay for upkeep (of temple and cath). Getting that many luxes is probably going to be a problem, so perhaps Monarchy is better? Otoh, WW with India should be low for a long time, because we'll just have to kill the occasional landing. So there's some time to get luxuries.... There will be 9 luxuries probably (there were 9 in SGOTM8).

 

[Methos]

I guess we have different playstyles . Good, that will give some discussion material.

Definitely agree. IMO a team is much better when the players have different playstyles. Also a great way for us [read: me] to learn new tactics.

Of course we don't want to walk too far with the settler. But to get the cow in the first 9 and not settle on a bg we have to move 3 tiles. If that bg is the difference between a 4 turner or not, then I would gladly give up the 2 extra move turns. I guess we'll need to see what the scout finds before we can decide.

Thinking on this, I suggest we move the scout first and than see if we can get a team decision on moving the settler.

I wonder, would it be totally against the rules to move the scout, save the game so the team can discuss where to place the settler? I realize we're supposed to play in hour sessions but was curious.

 

[WarDance]

I wonder, would it be totally against the rules to move the scout, save the game so the team can discuss where to place the settler? I realize we're supposed to play in hour sessions but was curious.

It's my understanding this is completely legal, and probably expected.

Edit: Does everyone know how to post screenshots?

 

[Methos]

Just in case, I pm'ed AlanH to make sure. I hated for us to be disqualified in the first turn.

Basically my suggestion is for the first player to open the save and move only the scout. Than take a screenshot and exit out. This would definitely be less than the hour minimum. But at least we could have a group discussion on where to the best spot is for our settler.

 

[Methos]

That was quick... Hope you don't mind Alan but I figured it'd be easier to just quote your reply.

Is it allowed to open the game file, move the scout, take a screenshot, and than stop the game so that the team can discuss where to move the settler too? As I recall we are supposed to play hour sessions and this wouldn't be even close?

Sure, you can do that. If I were doing it I'd leave the game running until the team had discussed it and then play on. But that may not be an option for you. Windows machines are often not that stable

The one hour session recommendation is for single player GOTM games, where lots of short sessions cause us problems in deciding whether a player is reloading to change outcomes or just because he can only play one or two turns at a time. SGOTMs are played in sessions of 10 turns, or even less, so it's not quite the same situation.

 

[WarDance]

I agree with sending the scout E,E and seeing what's there. I feel we should settle near that cattle and get it improved quickly for rapid growth.

It sounds like Republic might actually be doable with zyxy's analysis. Does war weariness increase as time passes though?

 

[Methos]

Does war weariness increase as time passes though?

I don't believe so. In Dar01 "The Sun Never Sets" the variant was we had to immediately declare war on America and couldn't sue for peace until the modern age. Very early on America became an OCC on a one tile island. We never seemed to experience any increased ww over time, though we also didn't have any further military contact with them.

Note: Dar01 is located in my sig if you're curious. Also note that corruption was modded in that SG but as far as I know ww wasn't.

 

[WarDance]

So our biggest problems with war weariness will come if/when we start leaving developed cities undefended for India to capture. I was thinking about worker tasks... we may need extra workers to develop land for India. I don't think we can improve tiles inside their territory because we'll be at war with them (I think you need a ROP for that). But it might be a good idea to improve land where we want them to settle.

A tactic that helped me in a recent game that we may or may not employ: forestation and road pillaging. I had a long border with two other civs that kept declaring war on me at random times and I had no interest in taking them out. So in many places where there were plains and grassland on the border I planted forests, and I used cavalry to step across the border, pillage a road, and step back. This way none of their fast units could reach me. They got stuck in the trees and I just bombarded them and then took them out. This would be useful later in the game if we share a border with India and they start getting enough production going to send lots of units our way.

 

[ControlFreak]

One thing I was thinking was in the later stages of the game when India may be low on cash is a way of donating cash to her. Recall that when you capture a city you earn gold. From what I recall that gold amount is taken from the average of your cities divided by your total gold amount. I believe, I could be mistaken here. Anyway, if we bump our treasury up and "gift" India a city they'll gain gold from our treasury.

...

Another plan is we're going to have to send combat workers in to keep India's land improved. The AI has never been very good at improving their territory.

I forgot about the treasury thing, but you're right. All Cities get a nearly equal percentage of our treasure. If we have a lot of cities, then the percent of the treasury India gets will be small, but they will get some gold in addition to the city. Good Idea!

I agree we're going to have to improve India's land for them.

I'm glad that AlanH agreed we could discuss after the first scout move. It's very important to know if: 1) There is another food bonus near the cow, 2) if there is another BG near the cow. We also need to know if the water to the NE is fresh but we can all tell that from the opening save.

So in monarchy a Market + 5 luxes + 1 MP would do the trick, whereas a republic would need for example Temple + Cathedral + Sistine's + Market + 7 luxes = 1 + 6 + 16 = 23, using 3 gpt to pay for upkeep (of temple and cath). Getting that many luxes is probably going to be a problem, so perhaps Monarchy is better? Otoh, WW with India should be low for a long time, because we'll just have to kill the occasional landing. So there's some time to get luxuries.... There will be 9 luxuries probably (there were 9 in SGOTM8).

I've seen a lot of discussions between Monarchy and Republic, but yours is the most concrete. I concur with your conclusion that Monarchy is a little better in our situation. It would definitely be better if the Republic upkeep is 2gpt/unit like in the recent GOTMs, but I don't think that rule change is in effect. (AlanH? )

There is this description of War Weariness in the War Academy if you want to brush up on what causes it. Basically, we accumulate points if a defensive unit is attacked (even if it wins), if we have units in enemy territory, if our attacker loses a battle, and if we lose a city (big penalty). We can somewhat offset this by war happiness if we can convince an AI to declare war on us.

There are so many good post from you guys to respond to, forgive me if I miss one.

 

[WarDance]

One thing we all should do, especially later in the game, is run civassist2 or mapstat to make sure that neither we or India get too close to the domination limit.

 

[Niklas]

There are so many good post from you guys to respond to, forgive me if I miss one.

I must say the same.

Overall strategy

Our objectives are:

1. Get India the techs to build a spaceship.
2. Get India the production power to build a spaceship.
3. Prevent India from winning by other means.
4. Prevent all other teams (including ourselves ) from winning
5. Keep India in the game.

And do all that as quick as possible .

I think this sums it up quite nicely, and clearly it is 1 and 2 that will be deciding for this game. The rest shouldn't really be a problem if we don't mess up majorly. But what's most important to me is the final comment - we need to do this as fast as possible.
I'd like to rephrase the list of important objectives as:

1. Research up to spaceship parts.
2. Get all the techs for spaceships to India.
3. Get India the production power to build a spaceship.

Of these three points, I see 2 as the easiest. I don't think getting the techs across to India via proxy is going to be that much of a problem even on Monarch with low AI-AI trade, if only we play our cards right.
So IMO the deciding factor of this game is a balance between 1 and 3 - research like crazy up to the MT, and be sure to get India a nice core to work with.

I envision a game with three different phases:

1. Initial build-up. This is what you see in all tech games - get out of the AA asap, get a grasp of the strategic situation and the map, build up our own core.
2. All-out warfare and imprisonment. This means we go kicking everyone's butts. Berserkers could help, and they come at the proper time. I'm not so sure that we will not be better off with a normal Knight/Cavalry approach though, depending on the map that might be much faster. We should keep everyone alive, as weak as possible. This phase should correspond roughly to the MA.
3. Infrastructure. Once we have everyone in check, we can turn our swords to shovels and start building up our own core for real, and the one for India. The only military we will need after this is to keep India at bay, and the prisoners hedged in. This phase should start at around the time we get Steam Power.

Government
Monarchy certainly seems the way to go. If we have trouble getting 4-turn research we could consider a switch to Republic late in the game, in the Infrastructure phase, assuming we have acquired enough luxes and don't need that much troops around.

Getting techs to India
As I indicated earlier, I don't think this will be that hard after all. There are 8 civs in the game, and if we can imprison 6 of them and just gift them with techs, that means India's cost for each tech will be 1/8 normal price. They will be the second largest civ around, they should have no problem buying, self-researching, or just outright extorting techs from our poor proxys. I really like the idea of signing MAs and gifting towns for the Indians to take.

Regarding the Great Library donation, it's a really clever idea. However, I think it's too risky to try, the benefits are not proportional to the risks in my opinion. Here's why:

• Even on their one-tile island (or perhaps because of it) India will be an early research contender, and I strongly doubt we could keep Gandhi from Education that long.
• I also suspect that India is indeed in an ocean, which will make isolating them very hard.
• We would have to build the Great Library somewhere where we can let Gandhi capture it - which means outside our own core, somewhere where corruption is high (I don't think we want to waste a possible MGL on this).
• If we try and fail, i.e. India gets Education before we can get them the Great Library, we'll have quite some road to catch up.
• Perhaps the most important point, as I've said before I don't see getting the techs to India as the main problem. Proxies will do the trick, and in either case we could only get them so far up the tech tree with the Great Library, after that we'd have to start using the proxy method anyway.

Research
Reseach is the name of the game. I very much believe that the team that reaches the MT first is that team that will win the game, assuming of course that that team has also been able to get India a favorable core. If we have a tech, it will propagate to India before long.

I will vote for early all-out research. Sure, popping expensive techs is nice, but I don't believe for one second that we can rely on it. This being a tailored game, I don't think there will be all that many huts around (to reduce the luck factor). In particular considering that the Vikings are not expansionists in C3C. Research path should be tailored at getting out of the AA as soon as possible. One interesting tactics would be to go for CB-Myst-Poly-Mon. Monarchy because we want it, and Poly since that's a tech often overlooked by the AI, and researching it ourselves could mean a faster AA exit. Then again this is Monarch, so we'll probably have to research several of the late-AA techs ourselves in any case. Perhaps straight to Literature is the best way to go after all.

For the late game, WarDance said it all: Scientists!!! We'll have lots and lots of empty land to settle after we imprison our other contenders, even discounting the land we will set aside for an Indian core. We should go for the food-high land and irrigate/railroad for lots of specialists.

Early moves
Scout 2E isn't much to discuss. I don't think putting the capitol on the incense is a very good idea, it will take 5 turns until we have the plains tile irrigated for even +2fpt. Even the guaranteed 6-turn factory near the cow is powerful enough to make that first priority IMO. I'm not beyond another farmer's gambit (no raging barbs in this game), with a scout or two thrown in.

WarDance, assuming the game is released tomorrow (Friday) as indicated in the sign-up thread, could you play the first turnset or should we make a change in the roster? Perhaps you could play the first 3 turns or so until we have found a place to settle, and then take a break to allow for some further strategy discussion and spreadsheet construction?

Btw, I'm glad that the move-post screenie is an allowed tactics since I used that in the last game.

 

[ControlFreak]

I guess we have different playstyles . Good, that will give some discussion material.

Definitely agree. IMO a team is much better when the players have different playstyles. Also a great way for us [read: me] to learn new tactics.

Sometimes, I'll agree with you but play devil's advocate and argue with you anyway.

I'm not rolling over, but I am agreeing that I am 99.9% sure I want the settler to move East and not to the barren insense area. Where we might get into discussion is if we want to settle on the BG. Like I said, I hate walking the settler.

I agree with Niklas's thoughts on almost everything.

Don't rely on huts. (agree)
I played the starts of two viking games with Roaming Barbs. In both games I had trouble popping my way to Mystism, let alone Monarchy. The barbs cause my scout's problems after the first 40 turns but never really threatened my towns. (On a side note, I got a free settler from teh first hut in both games. )

Monarchy is definitely the way to go (disagree)
I purposely allowed a war between India and me to develop and never saw bad war weariness in the QSC period. If there are any luxuries around, I think we could shoot for Republic first and try to stay in that. If we were thinking about building the GL, we could definitely build the Hanging Gardens instead. India can do NOTHING to cause us War Weariness until they know Map Making. That should be plenty of time to have enough archers/swords/horsemen around to prevent our defensive units from being attacked.

That coupled with the fact that we will have relatively low populations in the early going, I think we could start out in Republic and stay there for a while, trying to prepare for the eventual war weariness by connecting/trading for resources, getting some good wonders and even building Temples, etc. Besides, we would rather have all the other AI in Republic, so if we can get there first and gift/sell it to them, they will be more likely to switch to Republic than Monarchy.

All out research from the start (disagree, kindof)
I think we can still start on Alphabet at 0 and then go for Writing at Max. The extra gold was nice to have in my test games. I also found that I sped up the AI research by buying techs with gold and gpt and gifting techs away as soon as I got them. I wouldn't have been able to do that if I had been at 100% science from the start. In the long run, I was ahead by NOT researching the initial techs I could trade for.

As far as the CB->Monarchy approach, I think that the AI are likely to have CB, and pop or research Mysticism. I agree if both are available, researching Poly at full speed is a good idea, but in general, since I want to shoot for Republic first, I would prefer to prioritize researching up the writing path.

I wouldn't worry about getting behind by not getting enough in return for techs. We'll catch up quickly. This is Monarch.

Initial build-up, then war (maybe put it together)
The Vikings are a good candidate for at least a limited archer rush. They have cheap barracks and archers actually upgrade to something good (although Berserkers are expensive). Depending on our other neighbors and the lay of the land, it might be benefitial to CLAIM some early land rather than building all of the towns with our own people. And if Persia is nearby (like in both of my test games) we would want to keep them in check.

The first couple of moves
Scout E,E then discuss...

I will probably get up before my wife on Saturday so I could check-in with the thread then (~7-8AM my time). If the save comes out tomorrow morning, I will be on the boards during the afternoon.

Depending on how fast or slow we rotate through, I wouldn't mind getting moved ahead so that I could play during the early part of next week and possibly again on the 21st before I leave. But I have no problems with missing a turn if the schedule doesn't fall right.

I can't wait!

 

[ControlFreak]

BTW, In one of my test games, an enemy warrior came out of the fog into a forest near my town. The closest military unit was a veteran archer that was 1 turn to late. I moved my scout next to the enemy hoping to sacrafice the scout as a lure to keep the warrior from my undefended town. After hitting the spacebar, I watched in amazement. He didn't kill the scout like I expected. He didn't move next to my town which would have been indefensible. He attacked the archer, and lost taking only one HP.

Weird.

Screen shot from the turn after. Note that if he had moved to !!! I would have lost the town in the IBT.

 

[WarDance]

As for research, I'm leaning towards getting writing ASAP, with literature soon after and maybe even map making, and then going for Republic. In PTW I usually find the AI researching monarchy for me and I only go for it first if I'm starting with CB.

ControlFreak is right about getting the other civs into Republic quickly.

As for opening turns, I think the saves will be posted tonight so I can definitely get us started if no one objects.

 

[ControlFreak]

I just finished work and need to sleep for four hours before going in again. The save will probably come out five minutes after I shutdown.

Goodluck War Dance, I hope to see our scout move in 6hrs from now.

As far as Map Making, I think Code of Laws may be better. The AI with writing first usually prioritizes MapM or Philosophy. Unless galleys are extremely important, I'd rather get to Republic quicker. Librarys are good to get Republic faster if we're in a position to put in 80sh to each town. Otherwise, straight to Republic is better, using the added gold and sheilds to help build lit and the libraries.

Post 'ya later!