SGOTM 9 - Smurkz

I believe you're right. If SE of the cow is our default location, then only if we find something in the E/N would we change our mind. So perhaps the scout should go E-E or even E-N. (EDIT: That is, unless WD already started playing, seeing how he's been online after mine and CB's posts. SE-S is certainly no disaster.)

On building, I'd go scout-worker-granary, I don't fear the barbs in the early game (famous last words :suicide:, but they're not raging this time ), and a second scout could make some nice contacts a lot faster. Otherwise I agree with you.

EDIT: Lots of cross-posting around here . And even though I'm not all that old, I did recognize the Raw Hide song. After all, Blues Brothers is one of the coolest movies ever... (what, from a TV series? Nah, never heard of it )

Niklas said:

(famous last words :suicide:, but they're not raging this time ), and a second scout could make some nice contacts a lot faster. Otherwise I agree with you.

Click to expand...

Lightning never strikes the same place twice.

Yes scout and then worker, then granary not to be pillaged by barbs. I agree.

(Or whatever you decided WD. )

Here you go, I moved E then S.



The scout is standing on another BG, and that is lambs on the plains tile... gives 1 bonus food I think.

India added their worker and Dehli is size 2. #1 on the F11 screen.

Yay! 4-turner here we come.

Looks like we're near the southern corner of our continent. I think the scout should about-face and go find some friends.

With the lambs and cows and 2 mined BGs, we can make 5fpt, 7spt at size 4. Up that to 5fpt, 8spt using BG as it is will give us settlers every four. And I think if we can go 4.5 to 6.5 we should have a warrior-settler factory. (Didn't do the math yet.) EDIT: nope 1 shield short.

I would irrigate from the cow across the BG to the lambs, roading as you go. Then go back to the other two BGs (with a second worker too) and mine/road them.

I think we can ignore the Southern area for now and concentrate on finding the other civs to the NW.

Have fun playing, I checking tomorrow!

Hmm, more ocean to the east, that means SE of the cow might give the best chances for RCP after all. And the lambs and the extra BG is certainly the deciding factor against the tile S of the cow. With the lambs we'll have an easy 4-turn settler factory, but we're one shield short of a warrior-settler combo. Not much chance of getting one though, only chance is if there's a second cow, either in the fog south or in the fog N (or why not sheep ).
On the other hand we could have a 5-turn archer-settler combo without a problem, and then even share some food with some other ring-3 town. So even if there is some cows outside the visible area, it's not clear we would be better off with a 4-turn factory since we want archers more than warriors.

Much rambling. I vote settling SE of the cow after all. Worker starts irrigating the cow, then mining BGs (we also need to be sure to irrigate to the lambs). I might be able to whip up a quick spreadsheet in a while, but I'm not sure.

EDIT: We really need to stop cross-posting. But nice work!

So SE of the cow it is. I'm going to get set up and then hand it off. I have a busy weekend ahead as usual.

Well I have the dubious honor of making mistake #1 of our SGOTM. I moved the settler before moving the scout north...



To get that cow in our radius it will take 2 more moves, plus another 10 turns for cultural expansion. Having that cow sure would be nice, but at this point I'd hate to waste any more turns. I say save that cow for town #2. maybe that's a good spot for the FP.

My apologies. It was a dumb mistake. I expected what we had found already would be as good as it would get.

Man, everytime I wake up and check our thread a new page has grown.

Well let's see. I agree with some, unsure about the other, and well... that might work.

Definitely settler SE of the cow.

As to the show, I recall watching reruns back in the 80's but I would have been in my younger teens, or late singles.

I should keep my mouth shut and stop wishing for things. Or maybe I should just keep up wishing for everything we want, how about those furs in the forest?

Sure it's good to move the scout first, but in this case it doesn't matter much. I'd rather run the capitol as a 5-turn archer-settler combo and give the second cow to a strong second town, possibly an archer pump. You go ahead and settle, I'll see what I can do about a spread-sheet.
If you want to hand off after settling that's fine, and as far as I recall Methos likes to play on weekends. My only worry is that everyone will then see by our score that we moved three turns, but who cares.

Want me to go ahead and play through 10 turns? I can do that. After the worker irrigates should he road or move on? We'll be working that cow tile every turn so we might as well get the commerce out of it.

I won't have time for that spread-sheet tonight after all.
If you want to play 10 that's fine, I'd say road after irrigation and then continue to irrigate over towards the lambs, roading as you go.

Curious, do we have any plans on build preferences? Should we do the same as SGOTM8 and go straight for the granary? Or as Niklas already mentioned pop a scout first?

And we're off! I was able to play 20. The short of it: popped a worker from a hut, we met Carthage and traded for CB and alpha, we've spotted a yellow border, few turns left on the granary, and... we're at war with India.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm9/Smurkz_SG009_BC3050_01.SAV

Save is uploaded and will post log tonight some time.

Got it. Hope to look at it later.

Nice job WD!

Great to see all the exploration and the contacts. It seems India has met someone else or learned Bronze already.

The extra workers are great, is the popped one a slave or a regular worker?

I do have to ask about the worker orders. It seems like with three workers we should have at least one mine by now but the three workers are on different tiles? Can you tell me your philosophy of using worker turns? I like to gang them to finish tiles faster.

Also, I thought you might work the other BG's leaving the irrigation on the one you did already. Our factory plan doesn't need all four mined and the extra food in Republic will be beneficial.

Just questioning so that I might learn. The rest of my questions can wait until you post the turn log.

@Methos, don't forget to MM for growth. Watch out that the granary finishes before growing to 5 though so we build it full instead of empty.

It looks like WD has gone min on writing. Probably fine since we'd need at least 6bpt to reduce the 40turns and we're going to need the luxury slider soon.

Turn log: 4000 BC to 3050BC

Turn 1) 4000 BC: scout E,E. Settler and worker E

Turn 2) 3950 BC: Dehlli is size 2. Must have joined worker. Scout E, S. Spots lambs on plains. Worker and settler to cow. The Indians are annoyed with us and disdainful of our culture.

Turn 3) 3900 BC: worker begins irrigating cattle. Settler SE. Scout N,N. uh oh. Another cow up here. Should have moved scout first. duh.

Turn 4) 3850 BC: Smurkheim founded. Begin building a scout and start research on alphabet. 40 turns. Scout N,N. Finds olives in desert.

Turn 5) 3800 BC: Scout W, N.

Turn 6) 3750 BC: Scout W, NW

Turn 7) 3700 BC: Worker E to BG. Scout pops hut and gets a worker! Bonus worker SE.

Turn 8) 3650 BC: worker roading BG. Bonus worker SE. Scout NW, W and spots ivory.

Turn 9) 3600 BC: Scout2 finished in Smurkheim. Send him S,S and spots game in forest SW. Bonus worker S. Scout1 N to hill.

IBT: Smurkheim grows.

Turn 10) 3550 BC: Scout2 SW to mountain. Bonus worker SE. Scout1 N,N.

Turn 11) 3500 BC: worker1 irrigating BG. Bonus worker SE. Scout2 E,E. Scout1 N,E.

Turn 12) 3450 BC: Bonus worker S. Scout2 NW,N. Scout1 N to jungle.

Turn 13) 3400 BC: Worker built in Smurkheim. Begin granary. New worker named worker2 and sent to lambs. Scout2 N,N. Bonus worker now worker3, roading BG. Scout1 NW.

IBT: cultural border expands.

Turn 14) 3350 BC: Scout2 N,N. Worker2 roading lambs. Scout1 N to jungle. Spots brown border NW. Probably Carthage.

Turn 15) 3300 BC: Worker1 E to lambs. Scout2 N,NE. Scout1 NW. We meet Carthage and trade warrior code for alphabet, ceremonial burial, and 10 coins. Writing in 40 turns.

Turn 16) 3250 BC: worker 1 irrigating lambs. Duh! how did I not road the cattle tile when I even asked about it in the forum!? Imbecile. Scout2 N,N Scout1 N.

Turn 17) 3200 BC: worker2 mining BG. Worker3 roading cattle. Scout2 N,N. Scout1 N,N.

Turn 18) 3150 BC: Scout2 W finding dyes in jungle. Scout1 N

Turn 19) 3100 BC: Scout2 N in jungle. Scout1 NE,N

Turn 20) 3050 BC:Worker3 mining BG. Worker1 to BG. Scout2 N in jungle. Scout1 NE,E and spots yellow border.

Here is the view of our immediate surroundings:


Here is a view of the explored area:



My absolute least favorite thing to do in this game is clear jungle and there's lots of it. I imagine I may have a new least favorite thing to do after this succession game is over; clearing jungle for another civ!

ControlFreak said:

The extra workers are great, is the popped one a slave or a regular worker?

I do have to ask about the worker orders. It seems like with three workers we should have at least one mine by now but the three workers are on different tiles? Can you tell me your philosophy of using worker turns? I like to gang them to finish tiles faster.

Also, I thought you might work the other BG's leaving the irrigation on the one you did already. Our factory plan doesn't need all four mined and the extra food in Republic will be beneficial.

Just questioning so that I might learn. The rest of my questions can wait until you post the turn log.

Click to expand...

The bonus worker from the hut is a regular worker.

I didn't gang the workers because when roading it wastes worker moves. It can be helpful when mining but the way I have them now there will be 2 mines complete before the city grows (at our current growth rate). Also I put the bonus worker to work roading as soon as he got inside our culture to avoid wasting worker turns moving him around. It seemed like a good idea at the time but I'm no expert. So he roaded the BG NW of the cow and then moved to the cow to road there because I was an idiot and forgot to do it!
I had 2 workers improving the lamb tile, but they did separate jobs... one roading and the other irrigating. That way no turns were wasted there and the improvements were completed nearly at the same time.

Now mining the irrigated BG... didn't even think about leaving it for Republic. That would have been a good idea. I moved the worker there and started the mine because I could start it on the same turn I moved there, since it was roaded.

And by all means DO ask questions whenever you have them, because I learn from it too! I probably have the most to learn of the people on this team.

I will never ask you "why the hell'd you do that" because I don't want anyone to ask me that. But I do think we have some differences about workers and maybe we can both learn something.

When you say ganging workers to road wastes turns, I agree that there's two kind of wasted turns when ganging to road: move and overrun.

Move
If you want to waste the least number of worker turns moving onto unroaded tiles then you want to move only 1 worker onto a tile and have him road it first before moving other workers to join him.

But you moved worker 1 to join worker 2 on the lamb when the road wasn't finished so you wasted 1 turn.

Overrun
If you gang 2 workers simultaneously to road then the first turn they do 2/3 of the roading. On the second turn, you can't wakeup one of them knowing that theres only one worker-turn left so you waste one turn by leaving them both there to finish one workers turn.

Solutions
If you can wait for the three turns for a worker to road a tile by himself then it's best only to move a single worker onto a tile. And move the second worker to another tile to road as well.

If you want something done faster, like we did the lamb irrigation, the you can move one worker onto the unroaded tile and have the second worker follow on the next turn. You still waste the extra move turn, but the first worker will have done 1 worker-turn the first turn. When you make the second worker road, they do exactly two worker turns for the job to finish. The road gets done a turn earlier with only the move turn lost. Next turn, the irrigation gets done in 2 turns with the 2 gang stack doing the job, no wasted turns (4/2=2.0). That gets the irrigation done 2 turns earlier that you did.

Once done with irrigation, you're in the situation where moving the 2 gang stack will waste 1 move turn AND 1 Overrun turn. Solution is to split them up. Move 1 to the BG we haven't roaded, the other to the cow that still needs it's road. They both road in 3 turns and finish together. Now, you can use the new roads to rejoin them and mine the roaded BG in 3 turns instead of six.

When their done we can split them again to road two tiles, OR if the third worker has finished his road on the BG, we can join all three workers to mine in two.

By wasting that first move turn, we could have sync'd our workers and finished 1 improvement by now. That's significant because right now at size 3 we're working 1 "unimproved" tile (the irrigated BG). Since we should set to grow in 4, we'll use the newly mined (was irrigated) BG for one turn before we start using another tile that's unimproved (the BG that Worker 3 is working on) for 2 more turns. Ganging the workers would keep us ahead of growth. That's why we wanted to build the extra worker in the first place.

I'm usually keeping track of how many worker turns are left in a job and don't mind wasting a Move turn if I can get an even divisor and make the job finish faster. As a help, I made a table of worker turns that ended up linked by the GOTM Reference thread <<HERE>>


Note that industrious civs change a lot of the math. Unless you use a slave/worker stack, roading always wastes a half turn, etc.

Holy moly. I had a great lesson in wasted worker turns at the beginning of last game (I was ganging workers the bad way) so I learned to split up my gangs for better efficiency. It was a revelation, really. I remember how excited I was when I put it into practice in a solo game. And now this... ControlFreak, that is awesome! Thanks for taking the time to do that. I know I've read this stuff before but I ddin't fully grasp it. Now to assimilate it and put it into practice. That's another story...

I'm going to edit my joking comment in my last post because I think it implied I felt criticized in a bad way and that's really not what I meant. I was just trying to be silly. One of the things I really like about this team is that everyone critiques and corrects with a great "spirit of generosity", and with me being one who makes -- oh never mind, you know what I'm trying to say!

Replayed that set thinking much more about the worker turns and it changed things a good deal. **Kicking self** should have waited for Niklas' masterful spreadsheets! With the timing of the second worker I don't think things would have been that different. Where I failed (I think) was taking advantage of the bonus worker. I ended at 3050 BC with one fully improved BG, the fully improved cattle, roaded lambs (will be irrigated in 1 turn?), and a roaded and irrigated BG, if I remember correctly. Live and learn. Hey Alan, can I start over?