SGOTM7 - Team tao

[Tone]

I couldn't resist a fast peek on coming home. Sogut is founded on the spot and there is a 3rd sheep. This means we can build a 4 turn settler factory pop 4-6.

Am I doing my usual trick of posting when a little tired or have we got a four turn warrior/settler factory on our hands? If we start the cycle on the turn when we are about to grow to size 5, we gain 10 shields for a warrior and that's with only using one mined bg (and an irrigated plain or unmined second bg if we chop the forest) with the three irrigated sheep. 3 more turns at +5 food and +10 shields gives us our settler and then we repeat.

I haven't given the opening sequence any more consideration (i.e. what we do before this) as I've been trying to clear the decks of other SGs.

 

[Sabre]

Playing around with Offa's Excel sheet and the best setup I could come up with so far is using the three sheep and the shellfish for a slightly inefficient (2 lost shields each build) 4-turn Settler factory at pops 3 and 4 with the first Settler at turn 26. Once the three sheep are irrigated and a BG mined we could have a Settler/Warrior 4-turn combo at pops 5 and 6.

My build order was:
4 - Warrior
8 - Warrior
19 - Granary
23 - Settler
27 - Settler
32 - Barracks
33 - Worker (to adjust the pop)
34 - Worker
35 - Warrior
38 - Settler
39 - Warrior
42 - Settler (repeat as necessary)

I could post the worksheet if anyone would like to check it over.

(edited because Tone's post reminded me we don't need that 2nd BG mined, saving us 6 turns)

 

[Sabre]

With the above build order we would need to research Pottery at max or get lucky with a contact. Using Tech Calc, Pottery would take @18 turns at max which would be in time for our Granary. Getting the factory going promptly outweighs knowing where the iron is this early in my mind, and until we get sailing we probably won't have many early trade opportunities to get Pottery or trade away Iron Working.

 

[Renata]

I think I agree on pottery. And probably plan to go max research all the way, unless the first two warriors do find signs of someone nearby, or if we see borders across the water. (We're allowed to avoid contact in the sense of staying away from visible borders, just not allowed to avoid talking to someone who's on our diplo screen, so if we do spot borders, we could always cut back on research to save up cash if we thought it would help.)

Given the nastiness of deity starting units and the fact that mad-bax has said it wouldn't play harder than AWE (whatever that means ), I'm willing to take the risk of going low military for the first 20 or so turns, given the potential payoff. Once we have the necessary tile improvements, we'll be able to build a warrior every turn if necessary, so we can make up ground on military in a hurry if it proves to be necessary.

All depends somewhat on what Tao finds in the first ten turns or so, of course.

Renata

 

[Keath]

Hi everybody! I spent the weekend cleaning out the attic and on Monday was at the dentist so it was a happy surprise to find it's *game on*, download the save and read the posts.

I agree about having a good think about our opening position and strategy and I even found my old thinking cap in the attic. I should have it fully operational sometime today. At the same time I've been doing some Tiger Training on my Mac so I have the old whip out, too.

In the mean time, there are two strategies for openers. a) we can send out an explorer warrior to find our first victim or b) we can hide. On a small map we won't stay hidden for long unless we're isolated.

And if we do go exploring and find a neighbour immediately, we trade, declare and then we have the same question: Do we continue to explore with the higher possibility of finding another *victim*. Where do we draw the line? The AI can gang up on an easy target like we will be.

If this were a randomly generated game, I'd suggest hiding but with this being an M-B game I think we should go forth and find an early victim, trade what we can then settle into building the units necessary to defend against the early AI attack and plan a counter attack.

But, as many have pointed out, we need a look around first. Still I'd hope that we could trade for pottery. Surely our first trade should allow us that much with so many civs starting with pottery. It should be cheap.

Beginning with BW means we can go for IW and if we miss the first trade exchange, we should have a good commodity for trade when it comes available some 40 turns down the road. I guess the question is "Do we go for pottery in 18 turns or hope to find a neighbour during that time?"

Consider this, if we find we meet an early neighbour we should be able to get pottery in a trade. Then our gambit to go for IW may pay dividends by allowing early iron units. If on the other hand we fail to find anyone, we could still have pottery in less than 58 turns as the worst scenario. We could build a couple of settlers in the mean time.

On a small map we are not likely to be able to get more than four or five townsites anyway so pottery might not be such a deciding factor. Which is quicker, building a granary at 60 shields or building 2 settlers with those shields? We do have a nice starting position so is pottery a game breaking tech?

Oh, and the only experience I've had with AWD is to play a few starts as the Ottomans using BlueBox's scenario file. Very scarey!

 

[tao]

0: 4000BC: Sogut founded on the spot; see another sheep enabling 4 turn settler factory. Work bg for 2 turns, sheep for 2 turns to build warrior in 4 plus rake in 2 extra commerce. Start max research on pottery. Worker goes irrigating and roading NE sheep.

2: 3900BC: now work sheep

4: 3800BC: Sogut builds warrior starts next; warrior goes SE

5: 3750BC: worker goes to 2nd sheep for irrigating and roading; warrior E

6: 3700BC: warrior one more tile E

7: 3650BC: warrior goes S

8: 3600BC: Sogut builds warrior s Colossus as granary pre-build; warrior S on hill sees goody hut

9: 3550BC: no risk, no fun: warrior pops hut and Happaran tribe tells us Ceremonial Burial. And we see 2 spices. I further assume that we are on a peninsula (at most) because north and east seems to be a canal. Another isolated start?

10: 3500BC: worker goes to bg, warrior on hill SE

11: 3450BC: warrior south sees purple border across the sea; worker mines bg

12: 3400BC: warrior sees another goody hut in the jungle; and there is a yellow border across the canal in the east

13: 3350BC: one risk is enough: I don't pop the hut, because of the risk to get barbarians after out lucky first punch
we now need 10% lux to keep our citizens from rioting

14: 3300BC: warrior west

15: 3250BC: warrior N sees flood plains, desert goats, and 2 incense

16: 3200BC: warrior west sees flood plain wheat and is just next to a barbarian; alert; adrenaline!
worker moves on 3rd sheep to irrigate and road

17: 3150BC: barb attack, we loose a hit point, but win and promote to veteran
research down to 80% still pottery next turn; warrior heals

IBT another barbarian appears across the river

18: 3100BC: learn pottery; switch via big picture: Colossus -> granary finishes this turn; start settler; Sogut grows and needs 20% lux; min research on iron working
combat calc says: fortifying on flood plain, attacked across river: 92.4% in our favor; if we move on the hill and fortify, our chances are 93.9%; thus we just fortify

IBT barb attacks and dies

19: 3050BC: worker starts road; warrior heals

IBT Indian warrior appears north of Sogut

20: 3000BC: warrior goes west and sees another goody hut on mountain next to goats
we contact the Indian warrior: they have founded Bombay and Madras, know alphabet, lack masonry, but don't want to trade even if we include all our cash

I leave it to the next player to declare war and end my turns peacefully. We have a prime site for our next cities and may do some dot maps now (or in 2 turns when the warrior has revealed more of the west?).
The desert goats are 2/2 and won't profit from either irrigation nor mining (in despotism); just slap a road on it if necessary. I'm happy to note that I beat Sabre's schedule by one turn.

We must declare war on India before hitting return!

Sabre (up now)
Furiey
Tone
Keath
Renata
tao (just played)

 

[Renata]

Yellow Zulus, pink Arabia? If so, that'd be pottery/warrior code and pottery/CB for starting techs. Contacting Zulus might be nice as we might be able to trade for warrior code. I don't see the benefit for Arabia right now -- at least until we know if we're isolated by water or not. (If we are, I'm all for making every contact possible.)

I'm not sure I agree with min research. The odds of being able to get anything for IW in 40 more turns are pretty low at deity, and if we can't trade (remember we *cannot* pay gpt, so if we lack the cash to buy outright, we are plain out of luck), all we've done is waste time. We have no other use for money except for upgrades (and if we're alone we won't even want to take time for that -- we'll want to expand expand expand). And can we still research alphabet/writing/lit (not to mention the necessary military techs, because you *know* the AIs are going straight to mapmaking) in time to get the Great Library if we detour 40 turns to IW now?

I'm not going to be completely hard-nosed about this, but I want it discussed at least before we play on.

Renata

 

[Sabre]

I've got the save, but I'll wait a bit to play so we can get some more input in. Looking at the map, I think it's safe to say there is no connection to the eastern civs and so I'd really rather contact them and get them building lots of Warriors, Archers and Spears. Diety AIs get a large military support budget and it would be good if we got them filling that budget now so when they get to Knight-capability they won't have the budget to build masses of them.

Tech-wise, I think our choices are to either research IW at minimum or something else at max. IW at max won't get there much faster than at min. In the case for Literature, how fast we want it will depend on how fast our Library prebuild is ready. I think before we make any further decision we should decide where we want our initial towns and which one to place the Library. This would give us a turn goal for Literature and help decide if we have time to get IW. Getting Lit too early only cheapens the cost for the other AIs.

 

[Sabre]

Another thought. If we are going to be getting the Library, how much trading do we want to do? I'm guessing the civs will be a bit more isolated so they won't be trading around techs as much as normal. This means they will be doing a lot more of their own research. Every tech we trade them saves them at least 10-15 turns and the techs we get in return would be gotten with the Great Library anyway. The only tech we really need right now is Alphabet and I'm not sure we'll be able to get that without IW or more gold (read - min research) unless we come upon 2-3 civs that have Alphabet. So I guess when we decide on a Library-build goal, we'll have a better idea on whether we want to trade techs with the AI. Personally, I think we have a great prebuild site to the south and that if we really want the Library we can get it.

Keith - Getting ganged up on is not fun at all. In my Rome GOTM AW I was handling Egypt's attack just fine. It even gave me several early Leaders. But once I met and declared on Carthage and Greece at nearly the same time (they contacted me - I was turtling until I had a force to take on Egypt) my lands were flooded with attackers and pillagers. The pillagers were by far the worst as it's hard to take out Mercs and Hoplites. And that was only Emperor, this game would be even worse. Luckily it's very doubtful we'll have more than one neighbor here, if that. Hopefully we are completely isolated and can dictate where the fighting is.

 

[Renata]

Due south of the worker looks decent for a Library site, especially if that one shaded grassland tile turns out to be a bonus grass. (What are the bonuses for olives and (I assume that's) goats by the way?) I think we need a town on fresh water, so it can grow past size 7, and the flood plains don't have much production. Flood plain towns could provide the Library town with workers to get it up to size fast if we have the breathing room to build them. We'd want a town beyond the Library town (on the nearer spices?) to pull in that one bonus grass without needing culture.

Definitely agree on contacting the Zulus -- we'll need to post a warrior on the coast over there. Arabia: agree wholeheartedly if a couple more turns show no obvious connection to them. But that contact will be harder to get, anyway, unless we get lucky.

I might take a crack at a dotmap tonight, but I also might not have time. Trying to design the map for COTM13, and on top of that the fiance may commandeer the computer in service of his MBA class.

Renata

 

[Keath]

If you check the Submissions page you will see that the teams who have gone beyond 3000 bc have had their progress slowed. The question is why? Could we have the Persians as neighbours?

Nice site for the Library and going for it is a great strategy but will we have the luxury to do that if we run into a nasty neighbour? Just a thought.

@ Renata - Olives on hills are 2/1/1, 2/2/1 if mined.

 

[Sabre]

I would think the score will take a dip once we get our first Settler out. Losing two citizens for 3-4 turns will slow our score a bit. Also, the bonus food tiles are close and quickly utilized so our initial turns will see a quick boost in score (mostly pop this early in the game) which will slow as subsequent worked tiles provide less food. I think if we actually meet a civ on this island we would have to rethink a few things but so far the evidence leans towards us being alone. Small, archepelago lends towards smallish landmasses and if there was someone else here we'd probably have seen at least a unit by now. The Diety AI starts with quite a few units and they'd be out exploring the landmass, meaning we should have encountered someone by now. It's possible we have a neighbor, but my money's against it.

 

[Renata]

I think we'll need to try for the Library. With the number of units we'll be carrying, we'll have a hard time staying even remotely current in tech without it. Remember we can't trade, and it's doubtful we'll have the luxury to build many libraries, considering any overseas AIs will start landing about that time.

I'm not sure, but I don't think the drop-off in the score graphs is significant. Building settlers doesn't pay off in score right away. You take away two population to gain one, and there's a delay before that population is regained. Also, in the first 20 turns, territory goes from 0 to 21 tiles. New towns each only add about a half-dozen more if they're built CxxC, so it takes a lot of new settlers to keep the territory portion of the score rising at that rate. Not to mention worker builds.

Renata

 

[Keath]

I think we'll need to try for the Library.

I agree. Now the question is do we have time to get IW first? Our UU is a beefed up cavalry so should we go for horses which can be upgraded. AND, we don't even need iron for our UU!

 

[Sabre]

I agree on the Great Library. In my Rome game I was falling behind in tech pretty fast and was drowning in unit costs. Of course, about half that was defensive units trying to preserve my worked tiles - something I hope we won't need to worry about.

Here's a quick RCP pic with a possible first three locations focused on getting production up on the Library. Town 1 would be the prebuild, town 2 would bring the goats and their 2,2 production while producing Workers and town 3 would bring the bg and a connection to a 2nd lux. After that, we could start filling in the rest of the RCP4 sites and begin our military buildup. I chose RCP4 as the RCP3 sites weren't that appetizing. Anyone have other ideas?

 

[Sabre]

Keith - Once we've agreed on where to put the prebuild, we can determine how many turns it'll take to build and then figure out what we can research in that time. Ideally, we will want to get Lit at the last moment so as not to cheapen it's price for the AI. The AI generally doesn't go to Lit right away, especially if they aren't trading techs among themselves because they are isolated.

 

[Renata]

I agree. Now the question is do we have time to get IW first? Our UU is a beefed up cavalry so should we go for horses which can be upgraded. AND, we don't even need iron for our UU!

This is an excellent point. If we are alone, might we be able to hold off landings with archers and chariots until we get the library? I'm guessing mapmaking will turn up earlier than literacy, but possibly not by more than ten or twenty turns. It's hard to say exactly.

In other words, do we want to go for the Wheel now instead of iron-working, and use primarily horses for military after the Great Library kicks in? (Somebody still needs to do the math to estimate research speed. ) Chariot upgrades are cheap (even if double the cost to build), but we'll frequently have towns that are making 6-8 shields: aggravating as heck to build only warriors with, and archers don't go very far.

ugh. More comments'll have to wait (and you should probably ignore half of this one) -- my blood sugar's plummeting and I can barely type, much less think. Need food!

Back later.

@ Sabre -- looks pretty good.

Renata

 

[Sabre]

Well, some rough math shows us founding the town and building up 400 shields in around 72 turns. I'm sure that's not 100% accurate but it should be close. Would someone else like to doublecheck this? I've got to head out for work in a bit so I won't be able to get to the game for at least another 8-10 hours. I think this build could be slowed down some as I don't think we could research Lit that fast even if switched to Alphabet right now. Getting Alphabet in trade would help out a lot as getting Writing/Lit in 70 turns seems doable.

 

[Furiey]

RCP of 4 worked well for team tao in SGOTM3. It allowed us to move troops from one city to the next in one turn, but still gave enough tiles per city to get them productive. I must get some sleep though so further comments will have to wait until tomorrow.

 

[Renata]

What was SGOTM3?

Renata