Your Start

[notyoueither]

Krill asked me to look at an Oracle for Alphabet gambit.
If we are in contact with two or more teams (maybe even just one) this might be interesting. Blitz for religion then use the Oracle to make us a trading power assuming we get the religion we shoot for.

3720 Mysticism
3680 Pop to 2
3520 Warrior complete. Shields to baracks, grow in 3
3400 Pop to 3. Change to worker. Barbs from hut
3360 Meditation. Buddhism in Timbuktu
3160 Priesthood
3000 Hunting. Worker complete
2800 Pop to 4. Mine complete
2760 Archery
2720 Warrior
2600 Skirmisher. Begin Oracle
2560 Change from BW to Writing (I thought we could do both before Oracle, but it didn't look like it, but then we could, but that may have been effected by AI research)
2120 Writing
1920 Bronze Working. Oracle complete. Take Alphabet

[Metaliturtle]

try running a sim with settling on the ph too, and make the solomwi sammich

[Blake]

A question for multiplayers:
If two players research a religious tech on the same turn, what acts as the tie-breaker for founding the religion? Player order or randomized?

[notyoueither]

Player order.

[NicodaMax]

Oh man, what I wouldn't give to be on my pc with CIV right now!
maybe I should buy a laptop and carry it around at all times...(i'm loosing it)
On the bright side, my kid finally got the courage to get on the little rubber boat in my inlaws pool

I'd say that just from variations on nye's "oracle gambit" I've got about 3-4 sims to run, plus multiply that by two to try out the solomwi sammich...

btw.1 By looking at the pictures I think tile 32 is a forest.
btw.2 If any don't like my non constructive babbling while i'm unable to use CIV please say so and i'll shut up 'till i've got something constructive to say

[Aginor]

Quick glance at the start:

Meh. BW then Pottery start, but running a civ that demands an early religion. Bummer.

(odds are we've got Copper or Iron somewhere in that radius...we'll want the metal techs fairly early)

Health will own us if we move onto that Plains hill for the city site...better off staying put and mining that hill.

The Oracle is going to go up FAST...not sure that 1920 BC is going to get it done. Either you gamble everything on not getting Axe rushed, going Oracle first and research/build the Skirmishers on the back end, or drop the Oracle and go infrastructure, IMO. Lizzie can do some baaaaad things snagging CoL with the Oracle, and I think she can do it faster than 1920 on Prince.

We can always snag Monarchy from the Oracle if we go straight to Priesthood - the tech cost is just as high as Alphabet, we're going to want Hereditary Rule (even on Prince) given all of those Floodplains, and we'll get some GPP in the bargain with which to ultimately make a move on Civil Service.

Does it occur to anyone else that we may actually get more tech mileage in the long run from this start spamming the Cottages as fast as we can? This strikes me as an 'Academy and tech up the tree the hard way' sort of start. Strikes me that the alternative to the Oracle route is to grab Skirmishers, then go for Pottery and Writing, and try to build the strongest capital we can while expanding horizontally.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by NicodaMax
btw, are we in favour of having Snoopy split the warrior and settler for all the teams? It could be very relevant to where that warrior is moved (if moved at all)

I am, yes.

-Arrian

[NicodaMax]

Well, last night I tried nye's Oracle Alph Gambit with mixed results. I went for Agri/Pott right after Priesthood and with the help of some cottages managed to get the oracle/alphabet at 2000 BC. I even had to hold off production 'cause I didn't have writing yet (for alphabet), but if I was going for Monarchy the oracle would have been ready by 2120 BC.
On the bad side, I was only able to build two warriors (no skirmishers) so its a hell of a risky bet.
So, we can rush for the oracle/monarchy by 2120 or oracle/alphabet by 2000 BC but we'd be very vulnerable. Oracle/Alphabet by 1920 is a safer route, but wouldn't be taking advantage of our FIN aspect.

Isn't the pop limit on the ph settle 3 and not 2? Still, it is very limited by health.

[Aginor]

You know, if we want to go the Pottery/Oracle route, another method to consider:

1) Research straight to Pottery
2) Spam Cottages
3) Go up to Priesthood
4) Start Oracle
5) Get Writing while tidying up Oracle
6) Snag CoL and get Confucianism in the bargain

Can this be completed faster? Also, can we snag Archery at a reasonable time following this tree?

[Krill]

Um, As stated, the Oracle will go fast. 2000 BC, if not before. There is not time to go via pottery, and the time it would take in any case leaves us open to attack.

If we go for BW after preisthood, we can chop a few forests to speed along the Oracel. I got it in 2240BC, but that is without tweaking...Warrior>Worker>Oracle...

if someone wanted to test anything else, it would help tremendously so that we don't focus too much on any one strat...

[Aginor]

My question is this - if we go Pottery *literally* first and get Cottages up immediately - does this cut into the research time sufficiently to pay dividends? My experimentation suggests otherwise, but I'm not going to trust my own MM alone - someone else may come up with a more efficient methodology than what I'd run.

Have to agree with Krill that we need to test some other opening gambits out...the more I think about it, the more I think that a CoL snag with the Oracle backed up by building a Temple, making a Priest, and running a modified CS Slingshot is the *ONLY* strat that can possibly pay dividends on the 150 hammer investment for the Oracle, and I just don't think that with this start we can pull it off fast enough to actually get the Oracle and grab CoL with it. Never mind that we're vulnerable - if we're going Oracle, it's a pure risk/reward gambit (risk losing immediately for a large reward if we don't). I just don't see outracing the other civs to the Oracle out of this start...we're short on resources for building and short on commerce unless we go Pottery.

This looks like a certain Warrior first start to get city growth here. Whether this is a vertical or horizontal start remains to be seen (after exploring the surrounding terrain). Is there agreement on whether this is a religion start or not? Strikes me as an iffy religion start looking at it, but if we don't snag Buddhism right off, how do we propose to grab a religion?

Do we want that Worker building Mines immediately? Would we rather farm up a couple of floodplain tiles to max out city growth while cottaging? Is getting an exploration unit out with our 2nd build the priority here? Do we *need* Buddhism more than these other priorities?

These last few are the questions we need to start thinking about answering, IMO.

[NicodaMax]

Patience my friends, patience...we have time, or do we?
First thing for me tonight (I get off work in 12 minutes ) is to fix that little forest tile on the scenario, and then, off to trying out stuff you've been posting here guys.
We're generating a "decision tree" with multiple outcomes. Important thing is to post the alternatives we've gone over and results obtained so that future effort can be placed on new alternatives.

[Krill]

Limiting factor in building the oracle is always going to be how much production we can put together in a given time.

We don't know how fast any other civ could complete the Oracle, so that is why, if we were to try for the Oracle, we have to go straight to priesthood.

I agree with Aginor in the rest of the post though. If the rest of our land is like this, then we aren't going to be doing an Oracle slingshot, if another civ decides they want to do it, and they focus on it.

If we were not going to try for the Oracle, what should we do? I would still try for a religion, if this was SP or MP. But here...I'm not certain. If we went for pottery first, and for 2 workers...chop a settler, we could find ourselves leading the world in GNP, if not in tech. BW first does not sound like a good idea for me, it may be that chopping anything in the capital is a bad idea, atleast for a while, as we will need the health if we go for a "Big" capital. We're not certain of getting anything in our capital radius (I've played too many MP games with nothing in the cap radius to rely on it). We have Skirmishers, so we could use them to defend with, and we could churn out 2 turn Skirms @ size 6, with 3 mined ph and 2 cottaged fp and 1 irrigated fp...

[notyoueither]

I think any team trying these Oracle starts is going to be found guilty of 'playing against AI' and have their heads handed to them.

[notyoueither]

There's not enough explorers. There's not enough cities. There's not enough muscle. The turn you complete that bad boy, and have a religion in the same city, the chariots/axe start out for you.