Turn 3, 3920BC

[Hot Mustard]

Sorry NYE, too late. We missed by more than it appears, since I played, took the shot, sent email, etc all before posting turn report here.

[notyoueither]

No worries.

We'll just have to use our time better.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Aginor
Have to concur with nye on this one...little point in heading anywhere the expansion will sight for us.

Edit: However, I do not agree that this is necessarily our only decision for the turn. There's a BIG problem with Myst, see KGB thread. Looks like Liz AND Sara have us outteched - we need to decide if we want to gamble on a religion or bail entirely. My thinking is research Myst and see how many people have it by the time we get it. Figure we'd probably put off Scout until after Warrior #2 finishes anyway, so nothing lost by going Myst->Hunting bailout if the competition is too stiff. Thoughts?

Edit2: Too slow - this will teach me to go play Guild Wars...

That's exactly Blake's gambit.

Do hunting so we don't waste too much time on Meditation before another team beats us to it.

We should continue on that line.

A lot of teams are going to want AH and Agriculture as they see useful stuff from their start.

We can do Hunting and still beat them to Buddhism.

[Mudhut]

Oh well. Good job Dejon for keeping things moving.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by notyoueither


That's exactly Blake's gambit.

Do hunting so we don't waste too much time on Meditation before another team beats us to it.

We should continue on that line.

A lot of teams are going to want AH and Agriculture as they see useful stuff from their start.

We can do Hunting and still beat them to Buddhism.

Could you explain this again?

There are two available Religions after Mysticism.

Let's say the two research-strong teams go for a Religion. Then there's nothing we can do and we'll lose the race to both. Hunting first is thus a way of minimizing our losses.

Let's say only one of those teams goes for a Religion. Then unless they also go for a second one, we have a good chance of getting our own. However, if we detour to Hunting first, another research-average team might just beeline and beat us to it.

Let's say the two research-strong teams follow the same reasoning as we do: they go for Fishing or Hunting (or whatever) before Mysticism. Unless we beeline for the Religion ourselves, they will beat us to it after their first tech.

Let's say no teams go for a Religion except for us. Then Hunting first is okay but not really all that beneficial, since it's going to be a while before we build our first Scout anyway (at least under our current build order).

In short, it seems to me there are many situations in which waiting to see if anyone goes religious could backfire. Minimzing our losses helps us in the event we have no chance of getting either Buddhism or Hunduism, but hurts our chances in the process.

If you want something, go for it.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Thinking about it, 1 7 7 7 will see more since border expansion will top the two hills we are discussing by going 6 9 or 9 6.

Why backtrack?

By going 69977 in the next few turns, we will see further than our borders will reveal in the direction. We end up on the Hill tile right about the Incense, from where we can continue looping around westward.

No Barbs will be showing up before we get to that Desert Hill, and (unless the map makers are crazy) probably not other teams either.

[vulture]

Originally posted by Dominae

There are two available Religions after Mysticism.

Let's say the two research-strong teams go for a Religion. Then there's nothing we can do and we'll lose the race to both. Hunting first is thus a way of minimizing our losses.

They might go for the same one, giving us a shot at the other (50% chance they go for different ones, 25% chance they go for the same one and we go for the other and win, 25% chance we all go for the same religion )

Let's say only one of those teams goes for a Religion. In short, it seems to me there are many situations in which waiting to see if anyone goes religious could backfire. Minimzing our losses helps us in the event we have no chance of getting either Buddhism or Hunduism, but hurts our chances in the process.

If you want something, go for it.

How much risk is there in going for a religion? We need to get the techs eventually. All we lose is pushing back some of the useful worker enabling techs for a while, but as you say, with our current plan we won't have a worker for much of the lost time anyway, so the cost is relatively small.

Either way, I think it would be wrong to switch from mysticism now we have started on it. We can re-evaluate the plan when we have to chose our next research goal based on what we can divine at that point about the other civs' research state.

[Aginor]

Originally posted by Dominae


Could you explain this again?

The idea with the original Blake gambit is signaling. Suppose you are slightly outteched. Someone else that beelines directly for the tech you want researches it concurrently with you. They get there first, and you get no value from researching the tech.

You can't beat them to the tech if they decide to go for it. You have absolutely no control over the situation - you get it if they don't go for it, and your beakers are essentially wasted if you get outraced.

The response is to research a cheap tech you need anyway in between, then switch to what you want. That way you waste 3 turns instead of 10 if you get outraced to what you want, and if the enemy doesn't go for it you get it anyway.

The concept is two-fold - you're mitigating possible losses and you're giving yourself time to switch to the other religion tech in the event that you get caught trying to research the first one.

This is great if you've got ONE adversary that deviates from a situation which otherwise is one of parity, and where you have first mover advantage on your adversaries (as we do). It's lousy if you've got two adversaries in the religion contest that have you outteched. The ONLY way to get a religion in this case is to beeline directly, get lucky and have both your adversaries erroneously go for the same religion. Otherwise, when the switch to the second tech happens you will get outraced by the loser in the first round, who researches faster than you and gets to the second tech first (assuming, of course, that there isn't a fourth player in the game that made the right research call to start with).

OK, so mudhut has proved that only one of the two civs we are outteched by could use a religion as much as we can. (AC/Sara is almost certainly the 12; the 11 logically must be Creative, and probably is the first-turn 9). So, unless we are very unlucky and the 11 or one of the 10s is also gunning for a religion, we shouldn't get stuck with the two-competitor scenario if everyone is acting rationally. So the question then should boil down to whether or not the 12 is gunning for it, and what the 12 is gunning for. Chances are it's Meditation, if they're religion hunting. We'll have to see in 4 turns.

(edited regarding mudhut [12,11,10,10,10,10,0] proof])

[Arrian]

Even if we don't get Buddism, it's not like we won't need Meditation at some point. As long as we have worker techs in time for our worker to have something to do, it's all good.

-Arrian

[Aginor]

Just finished my rant on that subject in the KGB thread: why discount the tech for other civs when we can take advantage of the discount ourselves later? Wasted beakers = bad. Better off researching Hunting and Ag in the same span of turns if we're not going to get any mileage out of Meditation.

Also, the high food start pretty much demands a religion for happiness reasons early on in order to maximize productivity. If there's any way to pull it off, whether with Buddhism or Hinduism, I'd like to accomplish it.

So I advocate seeing where we stand on Myst once it's done in order to determine what the correct strategic course of action is in our research. Myst->Med only makes sense if we're the first ones to Myst; otherwise there are better strategic options that are more likely to yield us a religion.

[Dominae]

Aginor: thanks for the explanation!

Am I to understand it that tech discounting is a global effect now, that does not depend upon having contact with other civs? The things you learn in a demogame!

[Arrian]

Correct, Dom. It's global, no contact required.

-Arrian