SGOTM7 - Team tao

[Renata]

Yes we have a 19 shield Warrior or a 30 shield Archer (or Spearman). Pretty annoying.

I'm looking at some other build options tonight. Can't promise to come up with anything useful, but I'll try.

@ Keath -- I think Tao's right that we don't need sea supremacy for our invasions, most likely. The first three AI civs are only one tile away from us. I wouldn't be surprised if the rest turn out to be similarly placed (although now that I've opened the save and looked at the visible ocean to our south, it doesn't look like they're immediately adjacent to us). If they are, we'll be able to go harbor to harbor or harbor to drop-off point in one move once we're ready. The only tricky part will be assembling the galleys in one place, and we can probably work out a way to do that if we use our brains (do we have differential naval movement enabled again?)

Where I personally think naval supremacy would be most useful is in stopping or greatly slowing invasions of *our* territory -- that'd allow us more leeway in shipping units overseas without worrying about leaving our backyard vulnerable. But like I said, we'll see how it goes.

Will address your other points later.

Renata

 

[ainwood]

I don't agree. Using the Editor should not be allowed. It is a tool for designing not snooping. I'll bet I'm not the only one that thinks these utilities are spoilers. How could I find out how long it will take to research a tech? Only my experience should be at play in a game like this or in a GOTM.

Well, you can 'choose' the tech in the tech screen, then see how many turns it will take you. You can then go through each and every city, and count-up the beakers it is producing. Then, tech cost = turns x beakers.

If I recall, the only reason any of these utilities were allowed was because in a conquest game a player might trigger a Domination win. If he did, he was allowed to take the move over and rectify the situation. This produced the first of these utilities -- MapStat. I don't agree with this either.

Well, you can always count the tiles manually (or use the stats in the F11 screen against land area).

If you squeeze too hard and trigger a Domination win, tough luck. Next time you'll leave a little leeway to guarantee you don't trigger it. Being an experienced player means you might intuitively get closer but to have a utility extract that info is a cheat regardless of how you see it. And if I am that mathematically dedicated then okay give me a calculator but an electronic crutch is just that, a crutch.

But its not cheating - its simply automating the counting of tiles. If using a utility is a cheat, then so is usng a calculator.

In chess tournaments and all chess games of consequence, it's *touch move*. If you touch the piece you must move it. No take backs. I see no difference here.

Renata, isn't part of the thrill of this game in making a decision, pressing the return key and nervously waiting to see if you made the best choice? It's that unknown part of the game what makes for the real excitement. I mean if it was only important to win at all costs then why not allow players to redo whole moves if they erred? But, that is not allowed. I see no difference.

Surely making the best move with the information at-hand is more interesting? Can you tell me that you really enjoy clicking "D" for diplomacy, then clicking on a leader, then on 'make a deal' just to see what they have each turn, then repeating it for each leader? In a game with 7 opponents, thats 4 clicks / opponent / turn = 28 clicks every turn. Why not have the info on one screen?

And, I don't really care who produced the utilitiy, a cheat is a cheat -- the Emperor has no clothes.

Where?

Well, both dianthus and I have worked very hard to make sure that these give you no information that is not available in-game.

In a chess match, you are restricted by time. Sure, you can spend all the time you want analyzing a move but time is a factor. Same thing here, in a GOTM you have only one month to complete your game so there is a restriction here, too. And there is a restriction in an SG, too. You are expected to do your moves in a specific time span even if it isn't monitored.

I work. Then I spend time with my family. Should I, and people like me, be disadvantaged over someone who has more time to play each month?

If you can show me one thing that CivAssist of CrpSuite can give you that is NOT available in-game, then please tell me - I will remove it. We make every effort to ensure that these are spoiler proof and cheat proof.

 

[Renata]

I can't find anything that solves the shield overrun issue better than your plan, Furiey, although I found an alternate version that gets the same things in a different order.

That would be to, after the first settler completes on turn 1, to immediately start another. Disband a warrior in Sogut to get the missing shield. Then build three warriors or a warrior and an archer to get to size 5.5, then start in on the warrior/settler thing.

Your plan gets settlers on turn 1, 7, 11, 15, etcetera. This version would get settlers on turns 1, 4, 11, 15, etcetera. So three turns saved on our fourth town and three turns saved on anything that fourth town builds. We would lose a tiny bit of commerce due to smaller city size and lack of an MP for a couple of turns. Military units come out the same both ways, since the extra warrior in my version would replace the one disbanded. The barb risk is slightly higher with my version, though it could probably be handled by using the MPs as escort or "lighter-uppers" at the cost of a little more commerce. If it were up to me, I'd take the risk for the earlier city, but comments are welcome.

Here is the sort of dotmap I was thinking of, although it needs tweaking.

The light-blue dot is RCP-4 from both Iznik and Sogut. Iznik itself is RCP-4 from Sogut, so that sets the maximum distance for the nearest "ring" to the forbidden palace. The pink dot near our exploring warrior is RCP-7 from Sogut; that sets the second "ring's" maximum distance.

All of the orange dots are closer to Iznik than to Sogut and RCP-3 or RCP-4 from Iznik. That means that they'll all have first-ring corruption once the forbidden palace is built. The yellow dots are all RCP-7 or less from Iznik and closer to Iznik than to Sogut -- that'll make them second-ring once the FP is built.

*Before* the FP is built, we'll have three rings. The nearest is at RCP-4 and includes Iznik, the light-blue dot and the orange dot north of the mountain goats. The orange dot by the flood-plain wheat and the one farthest east are both RCP-6, as is the yellow dot north of the barb camp. At RCP-7 are the pink dot, the yellow dot to its south, and orange dot on the hill by the spices. That makes ten cities, more than enough to build the FP.

Thoughts? Tweaks? Scrap the whole idea? I don't particularly like all the river crossing in the west, and sticking that one town on the bonus grass doesn't particularly thrill me. Moving it one tile north would put it in Inzik's second "ring" instead of the first, but it would get two bgs there instead of zero. Of course, there may be goodies under the forests, hard to say. And the jungle area is a bit haphazard.

Thoughts on using a colony to grab the spices instead of wasting a settler on a cruddy town?

In any case, I think our next town absolutely has to be by the wheat -- food is power. (Unless settler timing and worker tasks make it a lot more efficient to wait for the fourth town and settle a different one first.) The town north of the moutain goats would be my next after that.

Anyway, that's all from me for tonight. Back tomorrow.

Renata

 

[tao]

One galley worth 30 shields could destroy a 30 shield galley containing 2 - 100 shield Dragoons - a 230 shield loss!

This might be true on lower levels. This is deity. And always war. We will have galleys, the AIs frigates. Our galleys will loose - it is as easy as this.

 

[tao]

I have been looking at Sogut. We build a Settler in 1 dropping the population to 4 with growth in 2 but only 9 shields.churning out units.

I suggest to build a worker in 2 next.

And asap road the tile S of Sogut to get rid of the 2 river crossings.

 

[Furiey]

I do agree we will need Galleys, we will also need Catapults to help redline AI Galleys. We will find out soon enough if we are connected in the NW, if we are and the AI starts flooding in then Galleys will do little good, although the Catapults will still be useful. So while I agree we will need them, I do not agree that they are our top priority. Once we know the lay of the land we can focus our resources on what we need. Even for invasions we could (as can the AI) start in the city, move out one tile, unload troops and move back into the city the same move. I would certainly be looking to do that. Picking off invaders before they can land where we can will be extremely useful and with a combinations of Catapults and Galleys good, but with all that coast we just can't afford enough to blockade it completely, what we can hope for is that like in the last game, where the AI kept trying to land/bombard in the same place allowing us to bombard the Galleons and Frigates on their route over to redline them. We can then have a smaller force of Galleys as we eventually got Ironclads in the last Game to pick off the redlined ships with very low losses. I know I defeated many Viking ships this way, even taking out Frigates with Galleons! The GLH gives 1 extra movement point yes, but we can already leave a city, drop of troops, return to the city. Our main force must be land based, as we have to not just defend against an AI but attack and defeat an AI that can easily out produce us. Yes, hopefully they've lost some in sunk Galleys already, but they can replace them far faster than we can once we get on their soil - we must be able to arrive in sufficient numbers. If the AI is as inefficient as ever, landing one unit at a time, then with our catapults to redline it we will just have more opportunities for leader fishing. We do need to give them somewhere nice to land though.

So to summarise as I have rambled rather: Galleys - Yes, but combined with Catapults and in numbers to pick of the redlined ships or transport our troops.

But more will be revealed as we play further.

 

[Furiey]

I suggest to build a worker in 2 next.

Building a Worker after the Settler would give us a 19 shield Worker and drop the situation back to where we will be after we finish this Settler ie: we'll be looking at a city pop 4 producing 9 shields and as such a 19 shield Warrior or a 29 shield Archer again. Once we get to our min pop 5 Warrior/Settler cycle however, if we want to produce a Worker we can change it to Warrior then Worker, both building in 1 each and returning the city to the start of the Warrior/Settler cycle ie: we could either cycle Warrior/Worker in 2 or Warrior/Settler in 4. I think I would prefer to get into that cycle first and then put in a Worker which could be done before the first Settler.

This would give 2 Warriors or 1 Archer in 3>Worker in 1>Warrior in 1>Settler in 3, delaying the Settler until turn 9, then 13

using Renata's Settler next, and disbanding the Warrior to get the Settler on 4 would give Settler in 3 with disband>Warrior in 2>2 Warriors or 1 Archer in 2>Worker in 1>Warrior in 1>Settler in 3, again delaying the end Settler by 2 turns to 13.

Renata's dotmap is looking better (a lot of the suggestions seem to be coming together now), with the 2 leftmost orange dots next. Wheat next would give more Workers, left next more Units.

Stopping the Worker on the hill and moving to the BG will only get a mine one turn earlier, so I'll probably let it finish. I agree on roading S of Sogat to remove the river crossings.

edit: updated the spreadsheet to include shields from disbands/forest chops version attached here is set for Renata's Settler next with a Worker in there as well.

 

[Renata]

In Handy's AW Sid archipelago game, the AIs never built boats after the beginning, because their build rate was such that every killed galley got replaced by a half dozen land units, and they maxed out their unit support. That's what I'd like to go for, if possible. (It may not be possible -- we will have to get any early landings under control first and that may delay the building of enough catapults to redline ships as well as invaders and enough galleys to pick off said ships. But I think it's worth working towards as a goal.) If it works, we'd trap the AIs on their home islands and would be able to take them out one by one at our leisure without having to fight off signficiant invasions as well. One smallish deity AI at a time we can probably handle.

As far as invasions go, is it true in vanilla as well as C3C that the AIs won't attack a strong army in the field? I can't remember. If it is the case, then we'd probably be best off following Handy's template for invasions as well: insert an empty army under a stack of defenders and cats on a mountaintop, survive one turn, fill the army with healthy units, retreat the rest of the defense, bring in the attackers, and go take out one town at a time. Raze all cities until the last one the civ has, to avoid giving the gazillion AI units a valid target.

Of course, if vanilla armies do get attacked in the field, all of that is moot.

Oh, and if you go by the dotmap I made -- that orange dot SW of Sogut is going to need a worker there pronto to bring water to the plains (building the wheat city would give it a floodplain to work as well as the goats), so a worker from Sogut after the first two settlers is probably a good idea. We could irrigate west from the sheep by Iznik, with one forest chop.

Renata
Renata

 

[Sabre]

Renata's dot map looks good to me. I know that armies in PTW are rarely attacked by the AI unless they are damaged or the AI has a large attack advantage. As long as I didn't use them offensively in my Rome game, the AI completely ignored my SOD and instead threw themselves at my walled in cities. I don't know if this was true for vanilla.

Sorry if I haven't been around as much the last few days - finals week (yay!) combined with overtime at work has left me drained.

 

[Furiey]

Just so you know I'm going to start playing now, if anything happens that we haven't discussed I'll let you know....

 

[Furiey]

2550 BC (Turn 0): Nothing to do but press the button…

IBT: Zzzz

2510 BC (Turn 1): Sogut: Settler>Settler; drop lux to 20%; Settler moves to N of Iznik; Warrior NE

IBT: Barb Warrior appears 2E of Iznik.

2470 BC (Turn 2): Sogut Worker finishes mining and starts roading; exploring Warrior NE – spots purple borders – so now we know where India is, but we are not joined; Settler to BG; Iznik Warrior follows Settler; Archer to Iznik.

IBT: Indians start the Colossus; Barb moves to 1E of Iznik

2430 BC (Turn 3): Iznik Archer defeats Barb; disband Warrior in Sogut to get the extra shields for Settler in 1; up lux to 40%; exploring Warrior NE; Warrior and Settler SW to incense;

IBT: Zzzzz

2390 BC (Turn 4): Sogut: Settler>Warrior; Zulu have Iron Working; Archer returns to Iznik; Warrior/Settler SW to city site; Sogut Worker E to S of Sogut; Settler S; exploring Warrior W; lux to 30%.

IBT: Zzzzz

2350 BC (Turn 5): build Uskudar on Wheat site start Worker; exploring Warrior S; Sogut Worker roads; Settler W; Archer to Olive hill again.

IBT: Zzzzz

2310 BC (Turn 6): Sogut: Warrior > Warrior (decide on 2 Warriors rather than an Archer as it’s going to be difficult to cover so many cities and workers with so few units); exploring Warrior S; Iznik Worker roads; Archer fortifies; new Warrior follows Settler;

IBT: Barb Warrior appears 2E of Iznik.

2270 BC (Turn 7): exploring Warrior SE; Settler to city site; Warrior and Worker follow; Archer to Iznik

IBT: Barb moves to 1E of Iznik; another Barb Warrior appears 2E of Iznik;

2230 BC (Turn 8): Sogut: Warrior>Worker (we’re now in the cycle); new Warrior to Iznik; exploring Warrior S; found Izmit (this is going to be confusing) start Warrior; Worker roads to connect Izmit; The Archer has slightly better odds attacking, but that will leave it exposed to the second Barb and probably injured, so decide to fortify and let it defend, if injured, hopefully the new Warrior will take the strain.

IBT: Barb attacks, Archer freeshots, but newly arrived Warrior defeats the Barb (just).

2190 BC (Turn 9): Sogut: Worker>Warrior; Iznik Worker finished roading olives and moves to BG; new Worker SW to road grass (will be used when Sogut gets to size 6); exploring Warrior S; this time the Archer attacks and loses (Barb is redlined); Uskadur Warrior to incense in case it has to defend the Worker.

IBT: Barb goes NE; Damascas expands.

2150 BC (Turn 10): Sogut: Warrior>Settler; Worker on Sogut grass roads; Ismit Worker S; new Warrior to pick off Barb before it heals.

Treasury: 104 gold +8 gpt, Writing in 21 (10%)

Post-turn: Izmit is set to a Warrior, but an Archer is probably better now as Sogut will be producing Warriors every 4 turns. The Izmit worker was going to irrigate from the floodplain.


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

The Save

 

[tao]

You decided to stick with 10% research. IMHO this will delay us learning writing/literature by at least 10 turns. But it may not be useful to start full speed now, as we will gain "only" about 5 turns. Opinions?

I'm not really happy with the workers' tasks. We won't need the tile SW of Sogut for the forseeable future. We will need more irrigated plains for Iznik. We need the incense for happiness.

IMHO the Uskudar worker should irrigate the wheat. The worker roading the bg should road the goats next to give commerce (happiness) to Iznik and next connect the incense. The Sogut worker should next irrigate plains, then merge into Iznik.

We should build at least 2 more warrior/worker pairs in Sogut. What about a granary next in Uskudar; that would give us another settler/worker pump.

 

[Tone]

I'm not really happy with the workers' tasks. We won't need the tile SW of Sogut for the forseeable future. We will need more irrigated plains for Iznik. We need the incense for happiness.

Don't we need to free up that second mined bg for Izmit by developing another tile around our capital first before irrigating plains around there? The bg will be a more valuable second tile than an irrigated plain. I guess the worker S of Izmit is getting water without upsetting the improvements made already.

IMHO the Uskudar worker should irrigate the wheat. The worker roading the bg should road the goats next to give commerce (happiness) to Iznik and next connect the incense. The Sogut worker should next irrigate plains, then merge into Iznik.

I agree with the choice of worker actions but do we need to start merging workers so early?

We should build at least 2 more warrior/worker pairs in Sogut. What about a granary next in Uskudar; that would give us another settler/worker pump.

Workers to develop Uskudar or merge to Izmut? IMO the former is preferable and keep all workers until we have developed Uskadar and got both luxes on line.

Where should our next city site be? (Or sites if we don't go for two warrior/settler pairs.)

 

[tao]

Even if we want to give the bg to Izmit, it is faster to irrigate an already roaded plains than to road and mine a gras.

I personally would merge workers whenever we have improved tiles to work for them. And since we are on min research (at least till now) we can afford lux to prevent riots.

I would go for the spices with the next settler.

 

[Furiey]

Actually we do need the grass SE of Sogut. If we want to keep our 10spt AFTER corruption and maintain Izmit as a 4 turn Warrior/Settler factory we can not give the BG permanently to Izmit. It is definitely needed by Sogut at size 5 as this is the only way to get the 11spt before corruption (10spt after for that initial Warrior in 1) and still maintain 5pft. At size 6, we already have sufficient spt, therefore the grassland only needs to be roaded (not mined) to give us commerce on that tile so that we can use it to maintain the 5fpt. Alternatively at size 6 we could give the BG to Izmit, provided that we had 2 other 2fpt,1spt tiles to use ie: another irrigated plains and the grass which would also then need mining. And yes the Worker is going to Uskadur to bring irrigation to Izmit without having to irrigate the Sogut BG - at least that was the plan.

I was assuming that the roaded plains S or Sogut would be used by Iznk which would not be using it until after it used the olives, goats and BG. It's now using the first 2 of thise tiles, but there is sufficient time to finish the road on the grass (which Sogut will be using at size 6) and move to the plains and irrigate before Iznik wants to use that tile. The plain was roaded early to get rid of the river crossing to get the Warriors to Iznik in 1 to help with the Barbabrians. Of course joining Workers to Iznik will want to use the tiles early - irrigate then join so that the tile is ready to use?

This Izmit/Iznik thing is confusing

I agree - The Worker on the BG by Iznik should definiitely road the goats next

We will get another worker out of Uskadur shortly and this city should produce a lot more. A granary will help.

Izmit - producing troops will probably be our first Barracks town.

We want the Spices yes, we also could think of Settling in the E to Open up more plains tiles to Iznik.

Sorry, I must have missed the bit about upping research, I thought we were going on min as that is what we had started. I did check, but could get it to make no difference.

 

[Renata]

The most efficient way to bring water to Izmit would be to chop that plains forest towards a barracks, then irrigate over from the sheep tile by Iznik. That gives us better tiles to work than irrigating the desert.

I don't like the idea of merging workers unless it'll help the Library get built earlier after taking into account time to research lit. The build is down to 94 turns already, and lit's still quite a way off -- I haven't calculated it exactly, but my instinct says we're more likely to have to slow the build down than speed it up.

We really do need workers for other tasks, at least until we have some sort of worker farm up and running.

Renata

 

[Furiey]

chop the forest - doh - should have thought of that....

I think we will want to merge Workers, just not before we have developed the tiles they need to use - develop then join. With more cities we should be able to research Lit quicker than we have writing.

 

[Renata]

I'm pretty sure I pointed it out in my last post before you played. But that's ok.

The thing is, joining the workers benefits only Iznik. Keeping them out in the field benefits all cities. I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise, but only with some hard data. Which I may try to acquire myself; we'll see if I have time.

By the way, have we discussed the next cities to be founded? I think we need the eastern RCP-4 town and the town by the cows, not necessarily in that order. After that, the jungle hill town. A worker could be sent to road that direction a little bit ahead of time, because we'll want that bonus grass to give to Iznik.

Renata

 

[tao]

Please don't disregard the oysters: they are 2/0/2, the same as a roaded river gras.

I would still advocate to switch Sogut to worker. Ideally, we only work fully improved tiles. And if we build worker, warrior, settler, we have one more escort against all the barbs and can go for the eastern site.

PS: We shouldn't attack barbs with warriors!

 

[tao]

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