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haphazard1 · December 24th, 2013, 03:03

There is some nice land over to the east. smile

But I don't think it is any better than the land close to your capital. There is definitely a lot of water on this map, which means competition for the Colossus will be higher. But of course the reward for getting it will also be greater. I think going for it is worthwhile if you can get it built as rapidly as you are planning.

(December 23rd, 2013, 10:08)Catwalk Wrote: I'm going to read up on Colossus and Oracle build times in previous games to see how my plan stacks up. After that, I'll micro a focused Colossus plan. Rough draft:
1) Get another 2 settlers and 2 workers fairly soon, probably settler/worker/settler/worker.
2) Build cottages everywhere and keep cities at high pop and happiness.
3) Get MC right after Pottery and Hunting.

How are you going to manage the conflict between #1 and #2?

In addition to the cluster of resources further east, I note that a grassland pig was revealed between the lakes right next to the banana tile. Settling on the banana becomes a much stronger move with the extra food in the first ring. Would be even better if there was some way to be able to get a lighthouse for the lake tiles, but even without that is going to be a nice spot.

Dhalphir · December 24th, 2013, 03:14

I can see at least five good city spots in that screenshot from turn 8, so it will be easy to densely pack cities for maximum land utility.

Catwalk

It's a good point that the land does seem generous. One of my main arguments for Colossus is that we'll be cramped for land and need to make the most of what we have. So far, we're seeing very lush lands around us. This increases the opportunity cost of Colossus markedly (we lose out on more on delayed expansion) and lowers the expected value slightly (we won't be working quite as many water tiles as anticipated). I'm very much still in the thinking box about Colossus, it can backfire even if we get it.

haphazard1, it does seem very difficult to get 2 settlers and workers in a timely manner while researching full bore, preliminary results are not encouraging. I did, however, find a way to speed up our first settler by 2t. It will cost us several warrior turns though, and Pottery + Hunting won't be available at the time of settling. I could go for Hunting first, I suppose.

Catwalk · December 24th, 2013, 04:30

Through a slew of bad micro too embarrassing to even post, I'm able to land the Colossus on t70 after teching Metal Casting t60. This is with a 2nd neglected expansion, 3 workers and a handful of warriors. I think I could make a decent plan for landing it t75 without long-term costs that are quite this severe, as the turn numbers show I was ill-prepared for chopping it out when MC landed. Will t75 be soon enough, though? I'll need to do a bit of research on how fast Colossus falls on a comparable map, and how often it falls to the Oracle player.

Dhalphir · December 24th, 2013, 05:25

how many cities will you have with a turn 75 colossus sorry?

Catwalk

Turn 9
First contact!

Jowy has been discovered, FIN/IND of Zulu. He's 13E2N of my capital, fairly close to what I expected. I'm fortunate that my scout is facing SE, if it was facing E it'd be more obvious where I'm coming from. Now, how should we play this? I see 3 options:
1) Declare war and sit on a resource that his impending worker will need to use
2) Declare war and scout out his capital area, then leave
3) Go around his borders without declaring war

If he only he one land food resource like me, sitting on it will hurt him quite a bit. It'll be quite some time before he builds his first warrior, there's no way he went warrior first. I actually thought it was Sian at first, which made me lean towards option #3. Sian has succesfully bullied me before, so returning the favour would likely spark a small early feud.

Seeing that it's Jowy instead, I'm all for option #1. I consider him my main competitor for Colossus, and I have no doubt that he's tinkering with wonder plans as we speak. Not only would sitting on his rice delay him, it would also stress him out quite a bit. My setup doesn't have aggression written all over it, but it doesn't have farmer's gambit all over it either. I'm optimistically guessing that he'd react to my scout move with a more defensive posture, hopefully delaying his wonder plans.

Provided that he's also settled on a 2/1/1 tile, he'll get his worker on t12 and then spend at least 4 turns getting a warrior on t16. If he has two land resources to improve (more likely scenario), then my scout blockade won't do much harm. I notice that he's not working his 3/0/1 rice tile, so he has something just as good as better elsewhere. If he has a forest deer tile as well, he'll get his worker on t10 which would let his worker get there before I can block it. It might still stress him, though. He might even speculate that an early warrior is heading his way (would be highly unlikely, but it's not nice having visions of doom hanging over you), which would mean he'd need more than one warrior in order to keep both his worker and his city safe.

The preliminary Colossus plan gave me 3 cities total on t70, definitely not impressive especially given that the last one is a runt. I think there's plenty room for improvement, so I'll post a better one later. I'm hoping to be able to land it on t75 with 4 cities total.

Dhalphir · December 24th, 2013, 08:11

Yeah 3 cities on turn 70 is a recipe to lose the game. No way can the colossus make up for that.

Catwalk

Keep in mind that on this very crude run, I researched Metal Casting on t60 through more or less max research at all times. That's a primitive approach to give me a baseline on when I could expect to get it. I wasn't able to build it until 10t later, so there was absolutely no need to research it this fast given that I'll be mainly whipping Forge and chopping Colossus. My capital was only at size 5 when it hit, I didn't have enough workers and they weren't in position.

Furthermore, surveys so far show that Colossus is extremely unlikely to land before t80. Here are results from 6 games I looked through:

Unless Colossus got a hell of a lot less popular in the meantime, planning on building it around t80 should be more than a safe bet. I could likely even push it back to around t90, especially if I manage to make Jowy a little paranoid and screw with his long-term planning.

If I plan on building it t80 (again, that's very early compared to other games) then I can easily pick up at least Animal Husbandry before proceeding to Metal Casting. I'm going to see if I can find a way to get Writing and Mathematics as well, as that'll let me chop out Colossus with just 3 forests, making it much easier to complete it in 1t. I wish so badly I was something other than PHI, though smile

The alternatives were CHA, IMP and AGG. IMP might have been preferrable for my Colossus strategy, as settler cost would be a big factor in expansion speed once the Colossus is up. It also speeds up my start a decent amount, unlike PHI which just sits there and stares at me.

Dhalphir · December 24th, 2013, 18:07

Wait, is this game being played on Quick?

spacetyrantxenu · December 24th, 2013, 18:17

Nope, normal speed.

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