Xteam 01 - Practice Game

[leif erikson]

With all this food, I think we should target an early Bronze Working for Slavery and pop-rushing?

I always have a slower development with seafood based food resources.

We start with Mysticism and Wheel. We need Agriculture, Mining, and Fishing to get moving. What priority should we give them? I like heading for Alphabet, if we can find some trading partners, otherwise, up the path towards Priesthood and Oracle? Sailing would be nice for early war.

 

[ShannonCT]

With all this food, I think we should target an early Bronze Working for Slavery and pop-rushing?

Agreed. BW should be 2nd or 3rd tech.

We start with Mysticism and Wheel. We need Agriculture, Mining, and Fishing to get moving.

I don't see much use in agriculture right now. The rice is not next to fresh water, so farmed only gives 4 food. Seafood are better with 4 food plus 2 commerce.

If we go mining-fishing-BW, an early worker can mine the gold and then start chopping workboats when BW is done. Builds could be worker, then warriors until fishing, then workboats. First settler at Pop4.

 

[leif erikson]

If we go mining-fishing-BW, an early worker can mine the gold and then start chopping workboats when BW is done. Builds could be worker, then warriors until fishing, then workboats. First settler at Pop4.

Agreed.
I think this is the first game I've seen where I would settle first and then decide where to send the Warrior! I think I'd like to check to the north first to see if any passages exist to the east. There seems to be more land to the west and southwest, so that is where I think we should head once we check the north.

We may need an early Work Boat for exploration. We have 5 forests to chop. I think we need to decide what the best use for them is, 3 Work Boats?

Seems like we settle in place, tech Mining => Bronze Working => Fishing and initial builds include Worker => Warrior => Warrior => ... => Work Boat => Work Boat. Are we ready to start? Who wants to lead off?

 

[rrau]

Start sounds good....agree settle in place. I"m out of town for the weekend, so it won't be me starting off.

 

[ShannonCT]

Seems like we settle in place, tech Mining => Bronze Working => Fishing and initial builds include Worker => Warrior => Warrior => ... => Work Boat => Work Boat. Are we ready to start? Who wants to lead off?

I can start us off today.

 

[leif erikson]

That sounds good to me. Good Luck!

 

[killercane]

I would move the warrior SW at least before deciding to settle in place. Probably the settler too if you are feeling lucky and want to man the PH.

 

[leif erikson]

I would move the warrior SW at least before deciding to settle in place. Probably the settler too if you are feeling lucky and want to man the PH.

Welcome to the party Killer!

Interesting move. Which PH are you speaking of, the northern or southern? I have been curious of why that blue circle shows 1 west? But I have come to not always trust those circles...

 

[ShannonCT]

I guess Killer is talking about the northern hill. At least that one would still give us 2 seafood. So I will move the warrior SW and see what we can see:

 

[ShannonCT]

So North PH would gives us a floodplain (which is food equivalent to rice), what looks to be 3-4 grassland, and a few unknown tiles. Advantages of PH would be better cottage potantial and chance of copper or horses in BFC for earlier rushing. Advantage of settling in place would be a capital that could generate GP quickly.

I guess conventional wisdom is one should avoid trying to turn the capital into the GP farm. If capital builds Oracle, Oracle will pollute the scientist stream that we need to bulb our way to Astro.

 

[leif erikson]

So North PH would gives us a floodplain (which is food equivalent to rice), what looks to be 3-4 grassland, and a few unknown tiles. Advantages of PH would be better cottage potantial and chance of copper or horses in BFC for earlier rushing. Advantage of settling in place would be a capital that could generate GP quickly.

I guess conventional wisdom is one should avoid trying to turn the capital into the GP farm. If capital builds Oracle, Oracle will pollute the scientist stream that we need to bulb our way to Astro.

How costly is it for us to lose two to three turns before settling and how should that factor into our decision to move or not to move? Wish we knew what was north of the two clams so we could see how viable a GP Farm would be over there?

I like the northern PH but don't like losing the three turns and the forest, although the extra hammer for settling on the PH should make up the time difference for a Worker build, so we lose turns towards research.

The trade off of settling on the PH seems to me to be acceptable.

 

[ShannonCT]

Played 25 turns, through 3000BC.

Turn report:

Turn 0: move warrior SW. Move settler W toward northern PH. Worker will come 1 turn earlier on PH.

Turn 2: Settle on PH. We have cows in our BFC (see screenshot 1). Build worker. Research Mining.

Turn 5: Find a hut on the map. I remove the hut in worldbuilder because SGOTMs dont have nearby huts. (I covered the minimap with my hand to avoid getting any info).

Turn 7: Meet Suleiman of the Ottomans in the South.

Turn 9: Buddhism is FIADL

Turn 10: Mining->Fishing

Turn 14: Worker->warrior

Turn 15: Hinduism FIADL. Ottomans have no religion.

Turn 16: Fishing->BW. Change build from warrior to workboat.

Turn 23: Spot Ottoman lands in the south. Only 2 tiles are accessible by our warrior, so worker steal may be unlikely.

Turn 24: Workboat->workboat.


Constantinople is working gold mine right now to get BW in 1 turn, as our worker is idle. After BW, we can work a clam net and grow in 2 turns.

 

[leif erikson]

Start looks good!
Nice call Killer!

Perhaps you should play one more turn so we can see if any Copper is visible?

We can go Pottery => Writing or, if no Copper, on to Iron Working?

I think we need to get a Work Boat out scouting as well, perhaps two? We can chop them.

 

[ShannonCT]

Perhaps you should play one more turn so we can see if any Copper is visible?

OK, I hit enter:

Turn 26: BW complete. Copper appears to our north, and nowhere else visible.


We'll need to scout up north to see where a good city placement might be. After a second workboat for the crabs, maybe finish the warrior in the queue.

 

[DJMGator13]

I've updated the first 2 posts to include the game settings, roster with killercane and a TOC in post 2. I'll try to keep this updated. If there is a good discussion item or something anyone wants added to the TOC during the game let me know.

BTW, using the {post=####}text{/post} command is pretty cool. Just type in the post id number and it jumps you right there.

Roster
ShannonCT - just played

Who wants it next?
Killercane
Gator
leif
rrau

 

[DJMGator13]

Constantinople is working gold mine right now to get BW in 1 turn, as our worker is idle. After BW, we can work a clam net and grow in 2 turns.

...

We'll need to scout up north to see where a good city placement might be. After a second workboat for the crabs, maybe finish the warrior in the queue.

We could scout by the copper with the WB before working the crabs. Not for too long, but enough to find a city location. Right now I like the spot NW of the cows but we'd need an expansion to pickup the copper. We could share the cow and add another crab, plus keep the grass hill in play for mining.

Letting the warrior complete is good also because we're in the time when barb cities can start and we won't be expanding into the southern jungle for a while.

 

[leif erikson]

Sorry I have been a bit slow in getting to this. We have relatives from Holland visiting and they are leaving Tuesday. So there are many things to get finished before they depart, so I haven't been on this much. I can't play until Tuesday evening most likely.

On the game, I think we need to switch our citizen to the Clams. The chop will get us both the Work Boat and the Warrior in 4 turns. We shouldn't delay the Work Boat on the Crab as we will grow in three turns and should work both food tiles in order to grow.

If a site looks good near the copper, then we should chop a settler as soon as we can and get that Copper hooked up, so after Settler, a Worker? Do we need another Warrior before we start building the Settler?

Research route needs some more thought? Do we want to go for an early rush of the Ottomans? With Axes or will we need Swords? Do we need a Rax? Animal Husbandry?

Sorry, more questions than answers...

 

[ShannonCT]

I think we need to consider the cost of an early rush against the Ottomans. They're quite far away, so axes would take a long time to get there. So we would need more axemen than if they were close. I think an axe rush is not compatible with any wonder building strategy. Maybe it's better to let the Ottomans expand a bit. If they're capital is at the end of a peninsula, they really aren't much of a threat to get very big. And it looks like they have no copper.

For possible wonders, what are our options?

1) Oracle - could be used to try for Machinery, although that would require a good bit of luck to pull off. We would have to research Myst, Poly, Preist, Pottery, and Metal Casting. Our capital is strong for beakers but there's no second city location that would help research move faster. A safer bet would be to Oracle Metal Casting.

2) Great Lighthouse - has a strong upside on this map where most/all cities will be coastal. Requires Sailing and Masonry, so should be easy to build early. And this could be done along with Oracle; we just need to research Sailing early to get started on a lighthose, and Masonry when the lighthouse is completed. If we get a second city build up north somewhere, we can build two wonders at once.

 

[DJMGator13]

Or should we try to cultivate Otto as a trading and wonder building partner, while we research and take out the other AI's on this half of the map. If we push forward to Alpha and then gift Otto sailing will he build the Lighthouse for us?

The benefits of getting Machinery from the Oracle are great. It allows to save the GS for bulbing optics and astronomy. I think it is worth a shot. Team OSS did it back in SGOTM06.


I can play some later tonight or tomorrow. Immediate plan is to switch to clams, let WB and warrior complete, then chop a settler for the copper.

 

[leif erikson]

I think we need to consider the cost of an early rush against the Ottomans. They're quite far away, so axes would take a long time to get there. So we would need more axemen than if they were close. I think an axe rush is not compatible with any wonder building strategy. Maybe it's better to let the Ottomans expand a bit. If they're capital is at the end of a peninsula, they really aren't much of a threat to get very big. And it looks like they have no copper.

Agreed. Looks like an early rush would set us back more than help us.

For possible wonders, what are our options?

1) Oracle - could be used to try for Machinery, although that would require a good bit of luck to pull off. We would have to research Myst, Poly, Preist, Pottery, and Metal Casting. Our capital is strong for beakers but there's no second city location that would help research move faster. A safer bet would be to Oracle Metal Casting.

2) Great Lighthouse - has a strong upside on this map where most/all cities will be coastal. Requires Sailing and Masonry, so should be easy to build early. And this could be done along with Oracle; we just need to research Sailing early to get started on a lighthose, and Masonry when the lighthouse is completed. If we get a second city build up north somewhere, we can build two wonders at once.

I like the idea of trying for both, although priority to Great Lighthouse? In addition, we should give The Great Library a shot too.

In planning for this, we then need to grow Constantinople so that we can work the Clam, Crab, Gold, Cottaged FP, mined PH and, perhaps, a couple of coastal tiles which can become specialists once we have a Library.

Research path then should be something like Sailing, Masonry, Polytheism, Priesthood, Writing? When would have a chance to throw Pottery in there? Seems like a lot of time to get the techs and still make it to the Wonders?