Tumbleweeds? Blow them all away!

[Theseus]

Aginor, do you mean "-2 health = -2 food = -1 pop"?

That is a loooooong way down the road, given the amount of food immediately at hand.

In two early runs of Nico's scenario (so far), the worst I;ve been was at -3 health... and I still had +4fpt or more.

Speaking of food: Since we are at Prince, anybody have any thoughts on Agri second, and maxing our capitol pop ASAP?

[Blake]

1) I find it hard to believe that no one else is going to go for Meditation... and assuming a beeline, we lose.

Why?
Religion is a gamble. I'm not too experienced with DG's but in most cases democratic decision making tends to not result in high risk decisions (think comprimise), and on the whole results in rational decision making (the irrational voices get uh... ignored, or at least moderated). This allows for effective use of game theory.
(Note: the rational decision making is only for economic decisions, when it comes to diplomacy and war all bets are off, especially with warmongers.)

Anyway, rational decision making is why I work on the assumption that other teams will only go for religion if it is low risk - if they have an unreasonably good commerce start. There is no way to know which teams have high commerce starts. Only Sana has a good chance of having a +3 commerce start, due to fishing + financial. Then again Lizzy has MANY, MANY possible options for early research direction, between Financial and Philo Lizzy is simply not a leader who needs religion. On the flip side they are a very frail civ - a glass cannon, going for fast religion is advertising further weakness - "Our economy is weak, we don't have a military, beat us up!". (I recognize it's sometimes possible to disguise the fact you've founded religion by avoiding founding on a hill and if there are no nearby hills/water which can be used to peek into the capital). Also a factor is they also WOULD be made weaker by founding a religion.

So Sana may be in a better position to get Buddhism (statistically speaking), but they have less incentive than us, and it is a riskier move for them since they don't have those nice skirmishers and can’t insta-switch to slavery. Still, if another team does found Buddhism my money would be on Sana, if they can go work boat first then it is quite a good move for them (still, I think for Sana rational play involves getting a credible military ASAP, preferably sooner).

As for the other teams, why would a creative leader want religion? The main reason would be for income/intelligence, and spreading religion will be VERY hard so there will be little of both. A creative civ going for religion right away would border on irrational play, there are just sooo many better things they can focus on, like worker techs or bronze working.
AC might get a good start – they are financial after all. But if they do, I think they’d go for Polytheism; they probably have the brain-power to figure out that us and Sana will be more inclined to go for Meditation so they’d be likely to see Poly as the safer bet (and the better bet, since it has a wonder).

One thing I forgot to mention earlier is that Mysticism is far from useless for us, we may end up needing to use Obelisk for culture. Meditation is useless sans religion, but we'll only need to sink 3-4 turns of research into it - so the actual price to pay for failure is really quite minimal. Either way we’ll be in a position to get culture into new cities.

[Arrian]

I think if we want to take a shot at religion, we just go Myst-Med. THAT's high risk. And it stands a far better chance of working, IMO.

-Arrian

[Mudhut]

Start location: I too am convinced that the plains hill 8 is our best option.

Religion: I'm really in two minds.
Blake has set out a convincing argument about what the other teams will be doing and why (which I really think is key to doing well in this game). One part of me thinks the other teams will act in such a rational manner, because they are discussing things exactly as we are (and have been for the past 3 months...). If this is the case, then Hunting -> Myst -> Med looks viable to me.

On the other hand, they are all comprised of humans, and that means they can be unpredictable (compared with AI). They may do irrational things (like going for Meditation early) simply because they feel the advantage of surprising people by doing something unexpected outweighs the "rational" reasoning. In which case, I'd vote against the Meditation plan.

Not sure that helps the discussion, but thought I'd throw it in there....

[Master Zen]

I feel like an utter n00b who has never played Civ4 when I read these discussions...


:sigh:

long are the days when I could consider myself a Civ pro :/

[Aginor]

Originally posted by Theseus
Aginor, do you mean "-2 health = -2 food = -1 pop"?

That is a loooooong way down the road, given the amount of food immediately at hand.

Correct in the -2 food = -1 pop equation, and while it won't impact us now it will matter later in the game. When I'm planning a city, I look at the immediate as well as the long term. Sure, it's not important in the first 50 turns, but eventually it does matter.

Note on the way CIV generates resources - odds are we have two out of this start, and they ain't on the flood plains tiles or the Forests. Odds are we've got a mineral in the hills and one on the squares we can't see. If the resource is south of us, founding on the hill removes it from the radius. Worse, if the mineral is Iron/Copper on that Plains hill, we're discounting our long run production capabiltiies further (though at least it couldn't be pillaged.)

Finally, those Forests on the river are chops and Cottages waiting to happen, exacerbating the health problem.

With all of that said to explain my reasoning, I'm clearly in the minority, so let's found on that hill.

[Hot Mustard]

Originally posted by Master Zen
I feel like an utter n00b who has never played Civ4 when I read these discussions...


:sigh:

long are the days when I could consider myself a Civ pro :/

You're not alone, MZ. The huge delay sent me to Oblivion.

[Aginor]

Please note from the main forum that Merc has the save. We've got plenty of time to make a research decision since if we settle the hill that doesn't have to be decided until turn 3, but we are on the clock!

[DeepO]

I think you guys are underestimating the appeal of meditation: it gives temples, and a temple leads to an early prophet. Civs wanting a prophet will have limited choices, and will try for anything that gives GPrPs.

We should think of the same: in the middle-long run, I really like us to try for at least 1 early GP. Either a prophet or a GS. That makes meditation quite attractive, assuming we don't want Stonehenge or the Oracle.

DeepO

[Aginor]

Meditation gives monasteries; Priesthood gives Temples. A minor distinction to be sure since Priesthood is dirt cheap, but the basic problem remains - no religion, no religious buildings.

As for Hunting first - this is a simple game-theoretic determination. We're not founding first turn and we cannot possibly win a straight-up race to Meditation. So instead we stall a touch in order to give the other teams an opportunity to signal their intentions, thus giving us the opportunity to divert our course to more profitable endeavors in the short run if we would otherwise have lost the race. (ie: chase Poly/wait on Mono/CoL)

Now, the capital does have the appeal of conceivably turning into a nice, fat GPP farm with the Buddhist shrine, but our start dictates that we can't control whether or not we get Buddhism, so we have to play it by ear.

[DeepO]

Oops about the temples coming from Priesthood. Well, assume that one is high on some civ lists, then

Don't get me wrong: I favour the hunting first path. That should make it possible to determine how many teams have mysticism, before we reach it (or at least we'll get an idea when comparing beaker-ratios on research). If we find only 1 civ having mysticism when we reach it, going for Buddhism first, diverting to Hinduism next is still a viable option to score a religion. If we see 4 other civs with mysticism, early religions are not for us.

DeepO

[Aginor]

*shrug* In the event of the latter disaster, we'll talk about Mono, CoL and lightbulbing Theo and Philo.