AU 202: Analysis, Solutions, and Stories (spoiler)

[Konquest02]

Well... I played a little bit and I am truly dominating (I really should have played monarch... Eh, what the... I'll continue my game.)

Finally, taking Athens was a good move, as it hurt the Greeks almost to death. They are now reduced to a tiny strip of land between Germany and me... The Iroquois are 4 tundra-based cites without horses. They are now a fun punching bag... "Mostly Harmless"

My next stop is Germany, as they beat me on the Pyramids by 3 turns. I had to settle for the GL in Washington but it was not of great use as I have a good tech lead... They also built the Great Wall, not that I'll go to war to capture it but it's nice to have...

I am eager to discover the other continent and have fun with the other civs!!

--Kon--

[Catt]

I thought I was coming over here to post something unique . . .

In the AU download thread, BRC threatened not to share his game details if things went badly. I responded with :

Originally posted by Catt
[personal plea]

No -- you must share your game with us (even if it seems embarassing). Part of AU is learning what works and what doesn't, and also learning how AI civs develop under standard rules versus AU Mod rules -- unless we are all willing to share what didn't work, no one learns!

If you look back through all the AU games (and the few mini-tourney or "MT" games that we played) I think you'll find everyone posting a loss or at least highlighting some serious mistakes made or well-conceived, well-executed but nonetheless unproductive strategies / tactics. If I'm not mistaken, the greats such as Arrian, Sir Ralph and Theseus (in alphabetical order) have all posted and dissected failed approachs or strategic errors. And we all learn from it.

So please put ego aside and share -- there's no ranking and no score competition (which is part of the reason why the move to offer AU as a scenario -- and therefore playable at any difficulty level -- was such a great idea!) -- we can all play at the level we consider most entertaining and we can all contribute to the knowledge base! Even if I like to play at Monarch or Emperor, I can still learn from someone who likes to play at Warlord (and vice-versa) -- but only so long as others share their games!

[/personal plea]

Catt

In that spirit . . .

Playing PTW AU Mod as the Arabs on Emperor. I built 3 scouts and then a settler, IIRC. Researching Alphabet at 40 turns in an attempt to make some headway to Monarchy quickly. Pretty good results from approximately 8 huts - 1 warrior, 1 map, 1 settler (very far from home - which results in a tip), 1 gold, the rest techs. I found each of the Iroquois, the Greeks, and the Germans.

My second city (I decided to go west for the gold hill beofre going south) produced two warriors for MP that could move back and forth between Mecca and Medina. About this time Bismarck showed up in the mountians north of Medina. Two turns later, Medina fell and I decided I'd start again The screenshot below is the beginning of the end.

Now I have to go back and read Aeson's posts and see how he survivied (and got a leader!).

Catt

[Catt]

At least one good tip that came out of my fiasco. As you may (or may not?) be aware, you will never get a settler from a goody hut if you have (1) a living settler, or (2) a settler in production in a city. A player tactic has evolved to briefly switch production of settlers in your cities when you're ready to pop a hut in an effort to preserve your chances for a settler.

I hadn't considered doing the opposite - switching production to a settler to avoid getting a settler - but I will consider it in the future. I popped a settler from a hut 15+ tiles from where it could be useful (and defended) and 25+ tiles from my capitol. I think I would rather have had even 25 gold.

(there are a coupla other good tips . . . like building some military units when on the same landmass as Bismarck )

Catt

[Dominae]

It seems the size of the continent and the low number of civs is misleading: the Germans will attack you ASAP from afar, and the Iroquois won't sit around either. What looks to be a pretty easy game when Scouting slowly becomes disastrous. For me, anyway, this is a toughie.

Good work on the honesty, Catt; nice to see someone who will admit a quick loss. I was pretty lucky not to have befallen the same fate, as I spotted the German "invasion force" early on (with a Scout, of course...yay Expansionist!), and assumed they were up to no good.

I don't know if I would ever willingly minimize my chances for a Settler, though. Unless there are hordes of Barbarians, a Settler will certainly make it "home", where the two free pop and 30 Shields is nothing to scoff at. Even if it takes 15-20 turns before it founds a city, the boost a free Settler provides so early in the game is huge.


Dominae

[Aeson]

Now I have to go back and read Aeson's posts and see how he survivied (and got a leader!).

The survival was complete luck! I've lost 5 games so far to the German starting unit rush (on Deity), never thought I'd survive one where I didn't see it coming.

[Aeson]

Don't worry, I didn't mess with the map this time. It's 100% map generator-made.

I was betting you had at least placed the Greeks. I can't recall ever seeing a starting location without at least 1 source of 2 food in the 8 surrounding tiles.

[alexman]

Aeson, actually, you're right. I did move some starting locations around 1-2 tiles (the Greeks were placed next to that lake by the generator - I didn't see I was putting them in a worse position), but I didn't touch the map. I purposely left that alone so that people can use your tips in the scouting thread.

[jshelr]

Germans Respect Clean Livin'

The Arabs were a good civ and followed Aeson's scouting cookbook to the letter on Emperor. I was looking forward to playing the AU mod for the first time. The receipe worked well and we came up with a list similar to the ones above out of the huts. Our settler pop was right on the lux bed to the west.

One funny thing was the new smart barbs made a mess out of that city. They would advance down the mountains and move to the lux -- which was on a hill and behind a river relative to the city. Then, either we would attack with one of our popped conscript warriors or the barb would of pillage the road. Attacking produced dead conscripts, and, twice, they ended up sacking the city.

The other funny thing was, after the last sacking, along comes a German archer / spearman pair. They enter the unguarded city radius, sniff around for a couple of turns, and then leave?

We have a nice tech lead, and look forward to some fun and games with the Arab's light knights.

Question on mechanics for you guys. When you have a river city with a granery in the early game, what are the considerations for the optimal population size for grinding out settlers?

[Nor Me]

I suppose I should try to say whether expansionist was worth it.
I can say that I didn't benefit from early knowledge of the map. On a larger map scouts would have been more useful for this. A central location would have given me first contact anyway. I could have made better military use of scouts (I Should have had the foresight to leave one on the other side of the Iroquois, near the horses.)

For me at least, the huts made the difference. Getting an early settler, selling techs and the early wheel were crucial. They meant the difference between a first war with archers and one with horsemen.
I was able to concentrate on REX early, knowing a would become a target. When war did happen, I was able to upgrade to horsemen early and buy in the Greeks. Several turns later the Iroquois brought the Germans in against the Greeks so this was obviously a good idea even at 12gpt. Horsemen vs MWs meant I was able to raze a couple of cities and extort to level on tech.
If I'd have been playing a non-expanionist civ, say my favorite the Chinese, I'd have probably had to archer rush the Iroquois. I would have won that war but at the expense of bigger Germay and Greece.
As it is the Germans are the biggest civ in the world.

Originally posted by Konquest02
They also built the Great Wall, not that I'll go to war to capture it but it's nice to have...

If only I felt the same way about the Germans having the Great Wall. For me, this is going to make the game much harder. The Greeks now look like a more inviting target.

All this is nothing new, I have always rated expansionist a better trait than religious.

jshelr, depends. You don't want to go beyond size 6 since you then need 30 food to grow and 6-7 doesn't benefit from the granary. But why would you want to anyway? The only effect of the river then is irrigation. If you don't have a lot of bonus food, you might as well just pump them at maximun rate.(i.e. 3 is fine for me.) 4 only when you hace 2 squares with more than 2 food.

[Aeson]

This is a very tough map. I just lost to a combination of the Iroquois (who I was able to destroy), Greeks, and Germans. I purposely didn't use Scout resource denial (did use scouts to pillage resources though), guess I should have.

I started a war with the Iroquois once I had about 20 Knights. Also had another 20 Horsemen waiting for gold to be upgraded. Again I sent in a Scout to pillage the Iron on the first turn of the war, he was killed the next turn. After a few turns of stand off fighting, I finally broke through the Iroquois defenses and took their two largest cities. My armies quickly moved down the peninsula to finish off the Iroquois.

During the fighting I got 3 Leaders. Sun Tzu's, relocating my Palace to the SW, and JS Bach's were the result. I finally went into revolution, heading for a Republic.

Then the Greeks sent close to 20 Knights into my territory while I was in anarchy (8 turns). Most of my forces were terribly out of position down on the Iroquois peninsula, but a few recently built Knights, and my Knight army, held onto a city in the western hills. All my available forces from the north were sent to hold that city, leaving my northern border (actually my entire empire other than that city) completely bare of troops. If the Greeks had had any veteran Knights it would have been over then and there still, but they were all regulars. Another leader showed up in the fighting (on defense!), and rushed Leo's.

My Knight army must have killed close to 10 Knights on it's own while defending the city in the hills, and counterattacking, and finally my entire Knight force was brought to bear on the Greeks. When the Greeks had attacked I was close to 50 Knights, with a smattering of elite Horsemen still around. I was down to 16, all my Horsemen gone, just 5 turns later. The Greeks had lost their entire offensive force though (close to 40 knights with Hoplite and Longbowmen escorts as well), and I was able to capture 2 border cities in the next few turns.

Thinking to build up a large Cavalry force I started researching on my own, and cut off my Iron supplies to build up as many Horsemen as possible. I was researching Gunpowder on my own at the time, having switched to Monarchy.

Then the Germans attacked. There was nothing I could do, as all my few remaining Knights were still down on the (new) Greek border, and my roads all went well around the mountain range to their NE. The German's had at least 50 Knights, my Iron was cut off. They took out my entire FP core in 2 turns, my Pyramids city, former capitol... and all my luxury deals were negated because I had been relying on a German harbor to make those deals. The remaining cities were all underdeveloped or corrupt as I had just moved my Palace before going to anarchy, so the German Knights just kept taking city after city. I could have made peace by the time I was down to a couple of Iroquois tundra cities, but.. no surrender. I had lost my remaining Knights trying to take back some of my core cities, and didn't relish waiting there in the tundra for Bismark to attack again.

I should have lost that game by 2000BC anyways. The Germans got their revenge. (I apologize for the lack of screenshots of my defeat, but something "happened" to the save files I was keeping towards that end, shortly after I lost )

[jshelr]

Aeson is quite right, being in the middle is a tough map position.

Groveling shamelessly and buying RoPs when they are the ones crossing our land, the Arabs have stayed out of the early wars and expanded successfully. My God, these PTW AI civs never stop! We have concentrated on building workers in order to have the best "knight factory." We are now approaching the end of the ancient era and the transition to knights will be critical.

[Catt]

Originally posted by Dominae
I don't know if I would ever willingly minimize my chances for a Settler, though. Unless there are hordes of Barbarians, a Settler will certainly make it "home", where the two free pop and 30 Shields is nothing to scoff at. Even if it takes 15-20 turns before it founds a city, the boost a free Settler provides so early in the game is huge.

Early settlers are a huge boost. But after thinking it through, I'm still convinced that there are appropriate times to minimize the chances of a settler, even absent hordes of barbs. Even in our game, I lost a scout to a barb (weren't we roaming barbs?) -- it's pretty easy to blunder into them in rough terrain, or even to have a new encampment appear right next to you or a tile or two away.

I see the trade-off as follows:

Option (1) is to preserve the chance for a settler -- the "value" of this choice is the sum of the values of all the possibile individual goodies (including a settler) multiplied by whatever the respective probabilities of getting each goody is. The value of a settler would need to be calculated, IMHO, taking into account (a) the "value in pop and shields" of the settler (admittedly certainly large, but hard to quantify convincingly -- a warrior and 2 workers?), multiplied by (b) the chances it will make it home over 20 turns (again hard to quantify), and (c) reduced by the investment of 20 gold as upkeep while it makes its way home. As long as I'm throwing around difficult to quantify variables, I'll add that I would probably consider the possibility that a lonely settler might add to the inducement of AI attack from the more aggressive AI's -- I obviously didn't think about it in my game, but I wonder if the presence of an unescorted settler, closer to German lands than mine, could contribute to the German decision to rush early? In my case, probably not ( ) since it seems Bismarck was intent on getting frisky.

Option (2) is to prevent a settler, in which case you trade the value of option (1) for the value of alternative hut goodies (techs, a city, units, gold, maps, or nothing), modified by how the odds of getting each are changed by the elimination of the settler possibility. Obviously depends on the probabilities inherent in popping huts, which probs vary by difficulty level, among other things.

Someone did an extensive test at CFC, but only with vanilla civ, not PTW (and the new "city" option), and, IIRC, the probabilities varied by difficulty level, traits (i.e., expansionist or not), and map size. But the key point for my view here is that the probabilities of receiving different goodies all increased if expansionist and therefore barbs were removed from the RNG role -- in other words, a hut that the RNG says will be barbs doesn't automatically become "empty" if an expansionist pops it (and can't get barbs). I am assuming that removing a settler from the probabilities also increases all other probabilities proportionally -- i.e., slightly higher chance at tech, etc. -- if this is not the case (i.e. an RNG result "settler" becomes "empty") then there of course isn't any merit at all in my point of view.

Too difficult to quantify objectively and accurately, IMHO, but I do foresee times when my gut will lead me to deliberately eliminate the chances of popping a settler -- increasing the chance to get a tech will be more valuable to me than preserving the chance to get a settler.

Maybe I'll have a chance to test it in my second go at AU 202 later this weekend .

Catt

EDIT: I actually had a save from just before I popped the settler. On reload and setting a city to settler production, the goody hut in question popped a city. I hope there isn't a hardcoded "settler or city, depending on the 'no settler' rule" but I'll keep my eyes open on future huts and will ask each of you to just take note when you get a city -- try to confirm whether or not you (1) had a living settler, or (2) were building one.

[Dominae]

Catt, I was thinking about this very discussion last night, and came up with almost exactly the same analysis! I still hold by my different conclusions, however. Here's why (sorry for the math!)

The value of a certain outcome of popping a goody hut is the worth of the outcome times the probability that it will occur. For example:

Value of getting nothing: p(nothing)*v(nothing) = 0.15 * 0 = 0.0
Value of getting a tech: 0.25 * [tech worth in gold, 200 for Mysticism] = 50.

Let's keep it simple and convert all "worths" into gold (although this is hard to do for some outcomes, like maps and Settlers).

Now, the expected value of popping a hut is simply the sum of all the values of these possible outcomes:

E = p(gold)*v(gold) + p(settler)*v(settler) + ...

While p(settler) may be quite low, v(settler) is surely high enough for the "settler" term to have the highest value among all terms (by the way, I would value a Settler at around 3 Workers this early on in the game).

Unfortunately(!), Civ3 is a complext game, and your Settler decreases in value because it may be lost to Barbarians (in contrast, you cannot lose the tech you discover, or the gold). So now we have to figure out exactly how to represent this decrease. My inclination is to do something like this:

settler = E(settler) = p(dies)*v(dead) + p(survives)*v(alive)

If we agree that the value of a dead Settler is zero, then we get:

E = p(gold)*v(gold) + p(settler)*p(survives)*v(settler) + ...

All we've done so far is decrease the value of the "Settler" outcome to reflect the fact that it might die "in the field".

From personal experience, p(survives) is high enough so as to keep the the "Settler" term quite high (at least higher than all other terms). This is a fudgy, I know, but if you're playing Expansionist, you've got the added advantage that you can scout with your Scouts(!) to make sure you don't run in to any evil Barbs.

[Sorry this is so long!]

If your hunch is correct, then if you "block" the Settler option by building one in a city, the probabilities of each of the other outcomes increases. So we get:

E' = p'(gold)*v(gold) + p'(map)*v(map) + ...

I hope we're in agreement so far! Now, here's my analysis of the situation. Given that the probability of getting a Settler is low in the first place, the increase of in probabilites in the E' equation (when you block the Settler outcome) is small. This assumes that the increase is divided somewhat equally between all the other outcomes (my conclusion may be different if this were not the case, depending on which outcome becomes more likely). But here's the catch: the values (v-coefficients) stay the same! So E' is going to be less than E:

Value of "blocking" the Settler option = E' - E < 0.


Dominae

[Dominae]

The early years

I'm not quite done with this game yet, but I've got some time to post my results so far.

I too chose to build 3 Scouts to explore the map. I would normally build 2, but I figured alexman gave us a map that favors Expansionism, and I was right. On turn 2, I get a Settler out of my first hut (I put up a screenshot of this a few posts back)! I heard somewhere that getting a Settler so early is equivalent to decreasing the difficulty level one notch. That doesn't really make me feel better, as this game is still pretty hard.

I also posted a list of the contents of the huts I popped, which I think were above-average. The Iroquois didn't do much with their Scout, so I'm thinking it died to Barbs or something. After revealing the "lay of the land" for the continent, I begin expanding aggressively towards the Germans, as I figure they're going to be the long-term threat. Bismarck ends up attacking me with 2 Archers and a Warrior, but I saw them coming and repelled the attack. A few turns and a couple of donations later, everyone was Polite towards me and I knew I could expand in relative peace for a while longer.

I begin building Barracks for a Horsemen offensive against the Iroquois, who don't seem to be doing much other than building Wonders: they get The Oracle in their capital ridiculously early, followed by the Great Lighthouse a little bit later. Dumb luck, I know, but just wait to see what's to come!

Here's a screenshot of the Palance jump I do around this time, probably my best ever (neat, efficient, painless):

[Dominae]

A surprising twist

As I begin my assault on the Iroquois, I'm deathly afraid of their Wonders: my only Culture-producers at this point are a relocated Palace and a lonely Temple. They also have access to Horses, but strangely enough decided not to produce their UU very much. The MWs that I do spot I catch napping in the open, and my 10 Horsemen eventually start capturing some cities.

I'm pre-building a Wonder in capital at this point, though I'm not sure for which one right yet. I've got Literature handy, so I figure the Great Library is within my grasp...

And then, news from the front!!!