SGOTM8 - Durkz

[Durkz]

I've been thinking a bit. It is clear that this game will not be won before the Modern Times, which means that to win this game faster than the competition will probably not be so much about military strategies as it will be about fast research. We all knew this before, but I think we should actually emphasize research in absurdum. Here's what I'm thinking:

To get out of AA we should go for fast research at all costs, road before mine/irrigation, work commerce high tiles instead of shield high, etc. Our towns should still produce units, albeit at a slightly lower pace.

With our neighbors at war they will be weakened enough so we should be able to rule our home island fairly easy with knights, even when we don't emphasize unit production. The conquered lands will be rather unproductive being so far from the core, so we should labor to set up a second core in the northern parts of our island. There's really no point in waiting to set it up somewhere else, and we will need the research help.

As part of the greater scheme, I think Literature should be the first tech after Republic, with a few library prebuilds going. What do you think?

You are right about this one, im bad MManager and builder(though i was a builder when i started playing civ). So i'l just say "yes NK you are right" , "offcorse Nk" and so.

About the second core:
We should try to get a leader from china/greece conquest to rush FP in their lands. If we dont get it we should build FP in our current core and jump palace to the greece/china land.

 

[The Adjudicator]

2350 cont'd. no trades possible. we only have 10 g to offer.
2310--settler in position for site D. wurkzer roads bg, niklas completes road to new niklas, moves to olives. scoutzie continues north and sees hut close by.
2270--boston built, begins archer, working roaded grassland rather than bg. niklas roading olives. scout moves towards huts, damn there is a barb! he will get me first
2230--boston working bg now, wurkzer mines. barb kills scoutzie.
2190--settler built, moves towards C. niklas finishes roading olive, moves back to irrigate fp. slider to 0.8.2, writing in 5
2150--settler in place for site C

Wardance you are up. We are close to getting writing, and may be able to trade for it with gpt now, but I'm not sure its worth it. It would only be good if we think we wil lhave to do min research for COL, which I doubt.

The factory has the following instructions: when you build the settler, you need to make sure to move the laborer from the forest to the FP and lower lux to 20. When you grow to size 6, move the laborer from the forest to the irr plain and up the lux to 30. I'm not the most dilligent MM person, so the notes were of help to me. I hope they help you.

I think we should build a new scout, too, and try to get those huts up north. We also need to explore East, as I'm not sure we can see all of the land near us.

I am all for going to Republic and then to Lit. for libraries. Since we are not seeing others, perhaps we should think about the GL as well?

 

[WarDance]

I agree with Niklas on the research pace of this game. I did a much similar thing in the current COTM... roading as much as possible for the extra commerce. It worked out very well for me. This will be easier though being industrious. Once we get more workers out I suggest putting them in teams of 2 for quick roading.

Oh, and "got it"!

 

[Methos]

In my XOTM attempts I was never that competitive, just hoped to win the game. In other words, I'm not that experienced in shaving off a turn or two.

What Niklas proposes sounds good so I'm willing to give it a try. By this than we need to go all out on research. No minimum research at all. Sounds fine too me.

 

[WarDance]

I probably won't be able to get to this until sunday night, so if someone else wants a go at it be my guest. Saturdays are super busy for me.

 

[Niklas]

Once we get more workers out I suggest putting them in teams of 2 for quick roading.

Oh dear no, don't fall into the worker gang trap!
Two workers roading separately can road 2 tiles per 3 turns. Two workers in a gang can road 1 tile per 2 turns. You only gain the very first road a turn faster, but every road thereafter will be delayed. The only reason for roading in a gang is for long connecting roads where you can't send a worker to the next unroaded tile in line unless the one before that is roaded first.

I agree with TA that a new Scout is a good idea. New Niklas (nice name ) can build it before a worker, it would be good to let it grow anyway. The commerce from growth will outweigh the gain of an extra worker at this point, Niklas and Wurkzer should be able to handle it a while longer.
I think that scout should run north again and scout out the rest, and try to get that hut up there. The archer from Boston (boring name ) can scout to the east since we know there are barbies close.

 

[WarDance]

Oh dear no, don't fall into the worker gang trap!
Two workers roading separately can road 2 tiles per 3 turns. Two workers in a gang can road 1 tile per 2 turns. You only gain the very first road a turn faster, but every road thereafter will be delayed. The only reason for roading in a gang is for long connecting roads where you can't send a worker to the next unroaded tile in line unless the one before that is roaded first..

Whoa! How have I played civ this long and not grasped that? This changes everything! Ok, I'm going to get off topic slightly here. I'm currently working on the COTM and have tons of jungle to clear... what is the optimum number of workers to use to clear jungle tiles? I have about 40 workers and of course will not give the task to all of them... there of course are other things for them to do still. Maybe there's an article I missed somewhere about worker moves...

 

[The Adjudicator]

Wardance, here is the war academy article on worker moves

 

[The Adjudicator]

I've been looking at the progress chart on the SGOTM results page. You can see our downturn when the barbs sacked our granary. You can also see where we are moving up about halfway through my turns. I think we would be up near wacken if we hadn't lost that granary build. But our factory seems to be building out a few turns faster than the other teams. Maybe we were the only ones to get a free worker? I thought the worker was planted there, but perhaps not. Two or three more turn sets and we might be clear of the pack.

Although early fast growth is critical, this game is unlike other gotms in that there is so much going on in the IA and modern age. There will be ample opportunity for those teams that excel at early growth to make mistakes in the mid game. We can get our 7 turns back that were stolen by the barbs!

 

[The Adjudicator]

More thoughts. It seems to me that if we keep growing through the AA and wait until knights to clear our continent, both the greeks and the chinese will have spread out to build cities on other continents. Especially the ones nearby. We should be able to get some overseas cities in peace deals, right?

 

[Niklas]

@TA: Hey, that's a really clever idea, I hadn't thought of that at all. Of course we should let them settle the nearby islands for us!
All the more reason to expand fast so that they have only little land on our island to settle, then they will have to spread over the world all the faster.

@WD: For a previously unroaded tile, if you use X workers for a task that takes Y turns, the cost in worker turns is X+Y (since those X workers each need one turn to move to the tile). Thus the ideal is always to use one worker on each tile, if you only count worker turns, but the difference is smaller the more expensive the task. When you clear jungle, you must also take into account the benefit of getting access to the grassland underneath. The ideal here would AFAIC be to use exactly so many that you can outpace the growth of nearby towns that need those grasslands. I often use teams of 6 or 8 when clearing jungle, sometimes even 12 or 16.

 

[Durkz]

we must first secure the horses and iron to think of knights, so dont make plans now when we dont know do we have them.

I use 6 workers in a team to clear jungle (they clear it in 4 turns)

 

[WarDance]

Thanks for the worker orders tips! I'm kicking myself for never seeing this in the year or so I've been playing. Applied it to a game I started the other day with amazing results.

Anyway, back on topic... my turnset is done. Uploading the save now and starting the log.

 

[WarDance]

1750BC Save

Turn 1) 2110BC: Durkzington is size 6. Ent to 30%. Wurkzer N to BG. Niklas to olives.

Turn 2) 2070BC: Greece wants gpt for writing. China has mysticism and the wheel, as well as bronze working. I wonder if they got these from huts or from a neighbor? Somehow I doubt China is going to give me a straight trade for writing. 2 turns left... we'll finish it ourselves.

IBT: barb approaches New Niklas, New Niklas pops worker. Durkzington- settler.

Turn 3) 2030BC: Settler heads towards site E. Take one MP out of Durkzington to head for New Niklas.

IBT: writing is complete. Sure enough, can't get a straight trade from China. Buy the wheel for 10 coins +2gpt I hate paying gpt for tech. Especially the stinkin' wheel. Wheel to Greece for Bronze +5. Cheap buggers. They have 50 in the bank.

Turn 4) 1990BC: Settler in position at E. Code of laws in 36 Niklas heads south. Wurkzer mining BG. or do I have the 2 confused? China has Iron working as well.

Turn 5) 1950BC: Atlanta founded at E with barbs coming in fast.

Power about to go out with a big storm coming in... saving and will finish later

Ok, finishing up.

IBT: barbs sack Atlanta 3 times for 1 gold each. Barbarians sacking a town stinks, but if my settler had gotten there one turn late they would be rushing into our lands instead. Atlanta is right at the choke point. Barb moves in towards New Nik. Durkzington builds a settler. China builds an embassy with us.

Turn 6) 1910BC: Think about attacking barb near New Nik but decide not to.

IBT: barbarian decides to leave New Nik alone. It's a staring contest now.

Turn 7) 1870BC: Niklas S to BG. Warrior from Philly moves into Durkzington on MP duty. Worker irrigating plains near Philly.

IBT: Boston builds archer.

Turn 8) 1830BC: Niklas roading BG. Settler moves to site F.

IBT: Atlanta sacked 2 more times for 1 gold each.

Turn 9) 1790BC: Chicago founded at F, popping a hut and yielding a warrior.

IBT: Atlanta builds warrior.

Turn 10) 1750BC: Niklas starts mining BG.

And that's all folks. Nothing very exciting. China and Greece are still at war. We are definitely out-expanding them, though they still have lots of growing room up there. The nearest horses I can see are across the channel to the SW... map builders having a laugh. The only horses visible on our land mass are right between China and Greece. Hopefully we have some iron in the mountains nearby.

 

[Durkz]

great turns Wd.

I noticed that we can sign allliance with china against greece for myst. and Iw. I think that it's worth it. because it will take 15 turns for greece to send trops to us and because they are at war with china they might not send them at all.
Also it will keep them at war.

 

[WarDance]

Wow, Durkz. I never thought to look for that. Learn something knew all the time with you guys!

 

[Durkz]

ok so the roster is

salkiN - detratS
sohteM - deunitnoC
rotacidujdA ehT - deunitnoC
ecnaDraW - deyalp tsuJ
yxyz - yawa
zkruD - PU!

Our score is rising just nicely

 

[Niklas]

Great turns WD, and I'm really glad you got Atlanta sacked!

I'm not so sure on the MA though, we're just on the verge of expanding north. B is still unsettled, after that I think we should claim the nearest dyes and start expanding into the jungle. We're in no particular hurry to get either IW or Myst, except possibly to know the location of iron, and we can easily get both those techs once we get a monopoly on CoL. I vote stay neutral in their war for now.

 

[The Adjudicator]

Keep in mind, if China is willing to give us two techs for an alliance, they are probably losing the war. Those sacked towns we saw were Chinese, right? If we join in, it could help balance things out. I have to take a look at the save to be sure, but I think we should join the effort just to prolong the war. Also, greece and china are likely going to have better techs than Myst and IW soon that we can trade for with COL. I say we join up for 20 turns, take the techs, build some archers, and sue for peace as soon as we can.

 

[Niklas]

I honestly can't see how we could tip the scales of their war other than by making ourselves the target of Greek troops that would otherwise go for the Chinese. If we join in we should be prepared to fight, and right now we are not.
Also, I really see no reason to prolong their war at all. We're already outpacing them in expansion, and any towns we could hope to settle far up there will be totally corrupt, so IMO we'll be better off by them ending their war and start researching instead. We don't need their lands until we're ready to set up a second core, until then we should get as much help from them as possible, and also give them a chance to settle nearby islands. Rather them than some other off-island AI.

Btw, I'm really pleased to see how well we're holding up, not only in the score graph but also in the posts-per-turn listing.
In SGOTM 7 I won the internal spam league by far, but for this game I'm getting tough competition: http://forums.civfanatics.com/misc.php?do=whoposted&threadid=125347