AUSG101 - Opportunist Team DAR2

[alexman]

I don't blame Arrian; he's traditionally had particularly bad luck with thin defenses. I remember that no-military AU game (All we're sayin' is give peace a chance) where the AI invaded a couple of turns before he would have won...

PS. Are we all on 1.27f? That would explain different RNG results from the same save.

[Dominae]

Another thought:

A big part of accepting the RNG is anticipating the bad results and figuring out how you're going to minimize their effect, or how you're going to cope with them. If you start thinking of the worst-case scenarios, you also start thinking of cost-benefit.

What if that Barb enters my city and steals 25 Gold? Is that worse than spending a lot of time building an extra military unit? Personally I would rather lose the 25 Gold, in favor of getting an extra production center up early.

What if that Barb moves West instead of SW? Am I prepared to move my Worker who is 2 turns from finishing a Mine to avoid the hit? Ideally I would want a defensive unit there, but sometimes they're just one turn away. I'll gladly move the Worker in such circumstances.

What if I do lose my Warrior in attempting a Settler bop? Can I survive the counter-attack? Should I be more cautious and wait until another unit arrives? I think this is an example where we can all agree that the potential cost is dwarfed by the benefit.

The great thing about this (if you're following, and not puking in disgust) is that sometimes the RNG does favor you, and sometimes the AI is really stupid. By expecting the worse-case and accepting the consequences, everything that goes your way feels like a free lunch.

It's this kind of reasoning that lies at the heart of my "paper-thin" defense idea. I'm not saying this is the "new thing", just trying to describe my playstyle.


Dominae

[Arrian]

I understand, Dominae. And you're right - I don't normally play this way, and therefore I stuggled with it (well, that and the RN rolls I got).

I see things differently, and play accordingly. I don't want to have to move that worker that is 2 turns away from completing his work (when I've got cities growing like weeds, the last thing I want is to slow down my terrain development). I don't want to risk the 25g hit (or, as happened to me, loss of production on a nearly complete archer, plus 1 pop point in Mecca... which I didn't even mention in my DAR) or anything else. Therefore I will build more units than you will. I'll build spearmen, so those barb horsies have almost no shot at sacking cities.

The results of my block of turns served to remind me why I stopped using paper-thin defense a long time ago.

-Arrian

p.s. "Give peace a chance" was particularly awful, yeah, because everything went so well right up until the Egyptians gutted my empire a handful of turns before I would have won. I admit, however, that my own complacency (failure to adequately prebuild the UN) cost me. If I had started a prebuild earlier, I would have won prior to the Egyptian attack.

p.p.s. I'm upgraded to 1.27, yeah.

[Dominae]

Part 1/4

Ok, I was a bit more sloppy with this round because I really wanted to make the deadline. So this report is not going to be as comprehensive, and my play was not as well thought-out.

Since this was more or less a boring stage of the game, I'm going to do something different with this DAR. I'm going to write three sections:

1. Description of my game plan for this block.
2. List of cities and their build queues (suprinsingly simple).
3. Defense of my "paper-thin" method.

I'll include a screenshot of 2150BC here to start things off. First, here are the stats from my game at that date:

Cities: 12
Population: 30
Settlers: 2
Workers: 13

Military: 3 Chariot, 3 Warrior, 1 Spearman, 2 Scout

Temples: 8
Granaries: 2
Barracks: 2

Tech: Polytheism, Writing, 3 turns from Monarchy

Gold: 617, -8gpt at max research

[Dominae]

Part 2/4

My plan with this block was basically to continue what I had started with the first 40 turns: focus almost purely on economy and grab as much land as possible. I figured an opportunity to do something more interesting would present itself at some point.

Since I wanted to deny the AI a lot of land, I sent my Settlers off to a distance 8 ring before completing the distance 3 and 5 rings. In these outkirt cities I poprushed Temples if they were only producing 1 Shield per turn, or would benefit from a timely Forest chop. I also avoided settling the inner rings right away because I wanted to leave that decision up to the rest of the team, assuming my save gets picked again. If you study the map above carefully you can see that there are a lot of city-sites available in the distance 3 and 5 rings, but settling them all would result in some pretty tight spacing. Normally I would place the inner cities first (unless rushing for a resource), but in this game I wanted to try just grabbing a lot of land. I feel the safe enough on this map and at this difficulty to attempt this. In short, my "opportunism" in this block was to claim all the land the AI was leaving open, as quickly as possible.

Once my Barracks cities were up, I began building Chariots because I'm preparing for an eventual Horseman offensive against America. Why America? Well, they're currently building both the Pyramids and the Oracle. If I give them enough time to complete those, I should be able to grab them without too much resistance (that's 2 out of their 5 cities pouring Shields into Wonders instead of units). Both Wonders would be great to have: Pyramids, obviously, but the Oracle should be nice since I'm making a point of putting a Temple in every city. This makes me think of a tip!

Tip #1: If the AI is of no immediate threat to you (they're not buzzing around with military units, denying you Strategic resources, etc.), it's a good idea to delay attack until they begin construction of a Wonder, or even let them complete it then attack. If there is enough land to expand into, you gain little form taking out an AI civ (at Monarch level), because you can only REX so fast. Time the completion of your army to occur near the time the AIs are focusing on Wonders. Then the spoils of war will be the greatest.

The Chariots that I built stayed in the core cities as MP, because a central location and their fast movement allows for good response times to Barb attacks from anywhere. All my slow military units are stationed on the outskirts of my empire, on high ground to spot potential danger (see below).

Once I researched Polytheism at 10%, I cranked up Science as far as it would go and started on Monarchy. With the Luxury slider hovering between 20% and 30%, this caused a deficit of ~6gpt throughout the entire research period, but I think it's well worth it. I still have a bunch of Gold for upgrades, and Monarchy should give me the tools to really pull ahead of the AI.

I've avoided trading for Horseback Riding for now, because it's more efficient to build Chariots then upgrade.

America and Japan have Horseback Riding and Polytheism, while Carthage has Writing (which I traded for). Surprisingly, even though Carthage has a Warrior one my side of the isthmus, they still want to trade for Contacts with Japan and America! That lone Warrior really wants to get home, I guess (see screenshot), but my Scout has other ideas. I think I'll let the Warrior through then block the passage again, to ensure Carthage's isolation.

[Dominae]

Part 3/4

Here's a brief listing of my cities and their production queues for this block (it's probably not 100% correct, but you get the idea):

Mecca: Settler every 4 turns, plus 1 Warrior early on to fight Barbs.

Medina: Worker every 3 turns, plus 1 Settler to grab Spices.

Damascus: 1 Warrior to fight Barbs, Granary then Settlers.

Baghdad and Najran: Barracks, Settler, then Chariots.

Other; Basra, Yamama, Kufah, Anjar, Aden, Khurasan: Temple (either poprush or Forest Chop) then Workers, eventually switch to Barracks and/or Settlers.

Pretty simple. The idea is: focus on REX as much as possible, even producing Settlers in Barracks cities. With this setup, it should not take too long to mount an army to clear the continent. I have no plans for Wonders yet. With Map Making I'll produce a couple of Galleys, of course, but Harbors can wait for now.

The main problem with my game is that I've let myself fall behind slightly on Workers and tile improvements. Poprushing has made this less of a factor, but if I continue playing this save I may very well take Mecca and Damascus off Settlers for a while and pop out 2-turn Workes. The annoying thing about this would be that Mecca is producing around 8 Shields per turn at minimum Shield output, meaning a big waste in Shields when building Workers.

Tip #2: Make sure your 5 or so core cities are always working improved tiles. It's less critical that every other city be fully improved (although still important). Those 5 main cities can support your entire empire in the early-game.

[Dominae]

I'll post the last part (and the save+log) tonight sometime.


Dominae

[Dominae]

Sorry again for the sloppy report. I have no time to write up the last part I mentioned. I try to get it done tomorrow. For now, here's an archive containing my 1250BC save and a sparse log.


Dominae

[Theseus]

Damn, you are good.

I mistakenly credited alexman with being the closest to Monarchy in another thread. Verrrry impressive, Dominae.

[Dominae]

Well, it cost a bunch of Gold, that's for sure, especially considering that I did not follow your advice and had almost no MP for the first two blocks (forcing a cycle of 2 turns at 20% Luxs, 2 turns at 30%). I'm actually quite surprised to see that I still have that much Gold.

In any case, alexman (and the other Spaceship people) did not have the start I did at 2150BC. The Opportunists had the good fortune of playing with two 4-turn Settler pumps...there's no beating that economically, no matter how hard you try. Credit it to my good fortune in the first block (now we see why alexman did not want to vote for my game...we're heading straight for UP!).

The funny thing now is that once we hit Monarchy all that work that went into getting smooth-running Settler pumps will have to be revised, due to the lifting of despotic penalties. I must admit I've not done a Monarchy beeline in a while. It will be a headache, but I really have nothing to complain about (more Food is good).

I look forward to "judging" the Domination team!


Dominae

[Rhothaerill]

Time for the decision process

It is almost midnight EST so I'm going to go ahead and officially declare the second turn block over. Now we will start the process of deciding which saves will begin the next turn block. Per the suggestion of Defcon5 and Master Zen, the team decision will be shuffled around each turn block. Therefore for this turn block the opportunist team would choose for the domination team and in turn the spaceship team will choose for the opportunist team.

In the domination DAR 2 thread please post your preference for the next turn save for that team. It is also encouraged, though not mandatory, to discuss and critique the individual saves while posting your preference. The time period for discussing and posting your preference will last until 23:59 EST Thursday, and the next turn block will begin on Friday.

I will keep a running count of the voting updated in the first post of this thread. The choice for the next savegame will be posted in this thread and a brand new DAR 3 thread for the third turn block on Friday.

Please note that in the event of a tie by the end of the decision process either myself or Nuclear Master if I am not around on Thursday (unlikely) will break the tie.

[BRC]

Sorry guys. NO time to talk. anyway here's the save. it's decent.

[G'Kar]

Originally posted by Arrian
Considering that even 3-tile is tough for me to stomach, I'm happy you don't want to go for the "optimal" culture-win strategy.

I still like the "opportunistic" concept, frankly. Take advantage of our opportunities and see what happens.

-Arrian

Just to be clear, when you guys say 2-tile or 3-tile for culture wins do you mean 2 and 3 tiles in between cities, respectively?

[Rhothaerill]

BRC WILL be part of the team for the spaceship team to judge, just so everyone knows. I'm not going to get into not accepting savegames, even if they are technically after the "deadline". That's not fun for anyone.

[G'Kar]

A screenshot of BRC's game: