RBTS6 - Finally Ready for Noble!

Zeviz said:

What is the smallest city size for drafting?

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6 for rifles and below
7 for infantry
8 for mech inf

Zeviz said:

What is the smallest city size for drafting?

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So high that after the draft, the city is at least size 5. Easy to keep in mind.

(0) 750BC Make the aforementioned Math + Polytheism for Alphabet + Hunting trade with Joao. We do not pick up a trading plus to relations, however. (Must have been too cutthroat of a deal, heh.)

(1) 725BC Discover Iron Working, research next into Currency as planned. Whoa-ho! Apparently we have iron connected already!



There's iron UNDER Mount City! Well, that's one thing we don't have to worry about. Note to readers: I did not look in the Worldbuilder before suggesting the location of Mound City. Honest! Chalk it up to a very nice break. Oh, and note that Chaco Canyon had Hinduism spread as well on the interturn, yay! Now we can go ahead and just chop instead of prechopping.

(2) 700BC Forgot to do this last turn: Polytheism to Wang for Archery. We now know all AI techs, and even have a minor lead: up Masonry with Joao, up Math + Alphabet with Wang. (Korea seems to be sucking it bigtime in this game.)

Best news of all: Wang is up to "Pleased" with us, which means he should never declare war. Nice to know!

(3) 675BC First Pyramids chop produces 102 shields towards the wonder, yay! (The text printout said 44 shields, but of course that was before production modifiers.) Just six more to go, and two of them pre-chopped!

(5) 625BC Second chop adds another 100 shields towards the Pyramids. Hehe, this is fun! ETA dropping by more than 20 turns with every chop, now down into the 80s.

(6) 600BC I note on this quiet turn that our power is ranked above Wang Kon's, if only very slightly. Not sure why that is, Power graphs suggests that we got a boost from building the Great Lighthouse. (Ha! Shows how the AI makes some of its calculations.) If so, our power will go up further when we finish the Pyramids. It would be nice to stay above Wang on that graph, making him Joao's likely first target...

Our Production on the bar graphs is laughably low. Download the save and have a look if you're in the mood for a chuckle.

(7) 575BC Chop #3 at Chaco Canyon, four more to go. We should finish the Pyramids early on Compromise's turnset if all goes as planned. Whip the granary at Cahokia (and hooray for Organized Religion getting factored into whips as well! forgot about that but we'll take the 56 shields instead of 45), letting the override go into a barracks. I think settler will probably be the next call here after barracks.

(8) 550BC Funny event at Cahokia:



Oh no! Vermin got into the granary's food supply! Except that we just whipped the granary last turn, so there's no food stored in there anyway. As you can see, we've also exhausted our bank account from the early game huts. I dial down to break-even science at 70% (Currency 10 turns).

(9) 525BC And the good luck just keeps rolling in:



Took out our granary, argh! I think that I'm going to turn off the random events in future private games. These kind of early setbacks for our already slowly-growing civ are just painful.

(10) 500BC And that's it. So after great luck early in my turnset, those random events at the end kinda balanced it out. Poverty Point just reached size 4, is now unhealthy, and can whip its library for 2 population. We should either do that, OR swap to granary and whip that. Not sure which would be better, probably the granary (?) Mound City is getting close to whipping its granary, Cahokia is regrowing from its latest whip, but now with a granary for much faster growth. Chaco Canyon is probably 3 chops away from the Pyramids, which I've marked with signs. We are fully caught up on the tech race, BTW. Even though our Demographics are beyond terrible, we're holding our position decently here.

Higher-level stuff: We'll be getting a Great Merchant very soon from Poverty Point. My thinking with the Great People was to merge them all into the capital, synergizing there with Representation + Great Library + Bureaucracy to form a super-city that would offset our lack of tile improvements. I believe that this would be much stronger in the long term than spreading out our Great People all over the place, as someone suggested earlier in this thread.

Poverty Point and Mound City will both be designed to bring in commerce, as will most of our other coastal cities. Mound will have the special distinction of good production as well, thanks to Maoi. But generally speaking, our coastal cities will be low on shields, using the whip for production. I see Chaco Canyon as being a permanent military pump once it finished Pyramids. It can't ever grow to a large size, has very little commerce potential, so build a barracks and then just crank units endlessly. No need for a library or anything else! We can build another inland city or two that will function similarly later on. Specialization of cities is a must with so few resources on hand here!

Here's an extremely ambitious dotmap that I drew up, taking advantage of the excellent fishing chart that Compromise put together. It visualizes 13 more cities crammed into our southern continent, 11 of which will be coastal (yay!) Let me go through the logic, working clockwise from Mound City (the way I drew the chart).

Red: This is the only logical spot, on a plains hill and pulling in 8 coastal tiles. Somewhat low priority, this is more of a backfill spot than an urgent need.

Yellow: Pulls in the clams and a lot of water tiles, another no-brainer. Has a lot of overlap with red, which won't matter because they both won't be growing very large. This spot should have priority over red.

Green: On the stone for an extra shield (and possible trade bait use), pulls fish, and generally takes the best location in the area. Middle-to-high level priority.

Magenta: On the deer (which we definitely need for more health!) and the best spot on the east coast. We may want to make this the next city (even though maintenance costs will be tough!)

Blue: Second-best spot on the east coast - really! Don't be fooled by all the tundra and ice. Fish for 3 food/turn, tons of coastal tiles, and some surplus forests for chopping purposes.

White dots: Extremely low priority, filler locations. We'll want these eventually, but no hurry. The whales resource at the western white dot won't help very much without work boats.

Light Green: The best spot on the southern coast, sadly, due to the fish resource. Higher priority than the white dots, although still rather low.

Purple: One word - marble! We must settle here in time to go after the Great Library, even though otherwise the location is garbage. Probably go here with the second-next or third-next settlers. (Yes, I just invented those words. But you knew what I meant, didn't you?)

Light Blue: Crabs resource for 3 food/turn and more coastal tiles than anything else in the region. Best we can do with the horrible surrounding land.

Light Yellow: On the iron resource, which should give us 3 shields on the center tile (I think... not 100% sure) and another tradebait resource. We don't need to settle on the deer here because Magenta over in the east will be on the deer. And this location is a better overall fit for the dotmap, less crowding in the south.

Now the two inland cities. I moved Compromise's dot (Orange) one tile east, keeping it on the river and maintaining the same number of grassland tiles. We do lose the wines resource... but we already have wines, so it's no biggee. And by moving Orange east, that opened up the possibility for Dark Blue, which is not on a river (and will never be connected to our trade network) but actually has above-average terrain to work with. I envision building a barracks at Dark Blue and making it another military pump, ignoring all other city improvements.

Note also the Black dot where this is a current barb city. We'll have to do something about that soon! (Not worried about the barbs, MORE worried about one of the AIs capturing it from them and wrecking our perfect sealing job in the north!)

So, what do you think about these locations? Which should have first priority? Where do we want to make a run at Hanging Gardens? Many things to go over as a team here.

Sullla
darrelljs <<< UP NOW
Compromise <<< on deck
Zeviz

Sullla said:

Whoa-ho! Apparently we have iron connected already! ...There's iron UNDER Mount City!

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Su-weeet! Nicely done, Sullla!

Best news of all: Wang is up to "Pleased" with us, which means he should never declare war.

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Is this true? I thought you needed "Friendly" before you were safe from his greedy eyes....

And the rest of the turnset looked great too. I'm glad you timed the "vermin" event for right *after* a whip.

I haven't studied the other recommendations or the dotmap in detail yet, but my first impressions are all positive. From a philosophical point of view, I like the idea of a super-specialist capital. It would be interesting to see how close that keeps us to competitive on Noble. Do we want to make a play for many or most of the free great people given by first-to-discover techs?

Very nice luck with religion spread and Iron under the city. I mostly agree with all of the current suggestions. (Settling eastern deer ASAP, chopping Forge->Colossus there, settling marble next, and building a Great Library.)

About settling great people, I'd prefer Darrell's plan of settling the specialists at Mound City, and perhaps moving the palace there to take advantage of beurocracy. The problem with our current capital is that it has 0 commerce potential, and its production potential is worse than that of Mound City with Statues. So it would make more sense to put Academy in Mound City, which means that an extra academy at the current capital will be a waste of Great Scientist. It's true that we will not be able to chop Great Library there, but with Marble and Org Rel bonuses our top production city should be able to build it naturally, and prevent the need for an extra academy at the capital. This will leave capital free to spam settlers and their military escort.

I like Sulla's thorough dotmap, but there are a few places where we could better utilize our coasts. Every coastal tile will be 2f/3c with colossus, and every coastal city will pay for itself even working 0 tiles (see calculation in my earlier post), so we need to put every coastal tile into fat cross of some city. The less aggressive way to do this is shown on the modified dotmap. (Adding a city on eastern Iron, moving blue dot to accommodate it, and adding a city near the capital.

A more aggressive method would also move down light blue and light yellow dots on the west coast and put in a city north of there to take in more coastal tiles. However, I like the idea of having extra iron for sale, so I prefer the map I've attached.

PS Lee and Mystyfly, thanks for drafting information. This means we should aim for cities that could grow to at least size 6 to draft rifles.

I got it...should be able to play in about 30 hours. Will have to read all the good stuff later .

Darrell

Okay...great news on the Iron pop (extra hammer for our best hammer city!) and the Hinduism spread, not so much on losing the Granary and the food . I'd rather whip a Granary at Poverty Point than the Library. I am sorely tempted to queue an Aqueduct next and get all the Library overflow into The Hanging Gardens, but I would need to do the math and make sure we can get enough hammers here (without chopping forests we want long term for production). It would stink to have to delay the Library by so many turns just for some overflow, too .

I think we should merge all great persons to the same city now doubt. I've read Obsolete's SSE/WE economy threads and tried it out several times. It is a fun way to play and works okay. The city choice is a tough one...ideally you want to have Ironworks + Oxford in that city. We will probably want Wall Street in our capital if we get a Shrine running, and Mound City already has Maoi so it can't build both (Heroic Epic makes a lot of sense here). I guess my instinct is the capital and forget Wall Street. I think we don't have to make the decision immediately though, we want the extra food there to get the additional scientist specialist, and the cash will do great with Wall Street if we go in that direction. Once we get a specialist that generates hammers and/or beakers, though, we need to have this decision made. Wherever we go, it needs the Palace of course so if not the capital we need to take into consideration that hammer investment.

Dotmap looks fantastic, I think you missed an Iron city on the east coast, though. That city will pay for itself methinks, with an Iron for something + cash trade (or just cash). It would have been nice to grab another Wine for the 10 gold/turn in trade value (or some health). I would favor blue one north and orange one west. Unless my eyes decieve me we lose some useless grassland tiles (discounting a forest spread) and almost as useless plains forest tiles at Orange for the Wine. We lose a few grassland hill forests at Blue, but still have some 1/2 tiles to work for production.

The next big decision is what wonder to go for next, The Great Library or The Colossus. The choice will dominate our tech path and city build location for quite some time. Based on Compromise's tech testing, it would seem the GL should be next. I also believe it will be a bigger boost to our economy. We need Libraries for it (another black mark against delaying the Library in Poverty Point) and yucky Marble Dot. Do we want to use Maoi hammers to build it? If we go for Colossus, then I favor Deer Dot next (unless we need to found another choptastic city for the Hanging Gardens).

Darrell

P.S. Compromise, there are mulitple AIs who won't attack at Pleased, we are fortunate to share our continent with two of them (as I thought I had mentioned in my report ).

Zeviz said:

About settling great people, I'd prefer Darrell's plan of settling the specialists at Mound City, and perhaps moving the palace there to take advantage of beurocracy. The problem with our current capital is that it has 0 commerce potential, and its production potential is worse than that of Mound City with Statues. So it would make more sense to put Academy in Mound City, which means that an extra academy at the current capital will be a waste of Great Scientist. It's true that we will not be able to chop Great Library there, but with Marble and Org Rel bonuses our top production city should be able to build it naturally, and prevent the need for an extra academy at the capital. This will leave capital free to spam settlers and their military escort.

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The one problem with this is just that our production is so sorely limited in this variant, I can't see the value in spending several dozen turns moving the Palace for what would ultimately be a rather minor benefit. Zeviz, your plan of action would have us building Maoi Statues, then Palace, then library, then Great Library all in a coastal city with no forest chops to help out and no 3 food tiles for faster growth. That just seems to be asking too much of poor Mound City. I actually think that Chaco Canyon will be a good military pump post-Pyramids, and Mound City could be a great SETTLER pump, with every coastal tile producing 2 food/1 shield (as good as a forest tile) post-Maoi, in addition to the usual 2 commerce. Meanwhile, the capital would be using its excess forests to chop Great Library and potentially other key wonders.

I do like the other suggestions made in your post though.

Great Library is probably at more risk than Colossus next, so I suppose we should head in that direction tech-wise. I'm not overly worried about either though. Once thing I really think we should try and push is getting our expansion going faster. As I said before, delaying early settlers for critical wonders was the right move, but now we need to rectify that and offset our lack of infrastructure with pure size. Fortunately, we can whip settlers much easier with granaries in place. Pretty much any city that reaches size 4 can 2-pop whip a setter.

There are 3 reasons I want to prioritize Colossus:

1. Forges will let us grow almost 25% faster. (Production is our main bottleneck for expansion, and Forges affect Settler whips.)

2. Greater immediate economic benefit. (We'll be working more than 6 coastal tiles by then, so we'll be making more extra cash from colossus and from representation-enhanced GL scientists.)

3. More time to generate a Great Prophet for Shrine. (Once GL comes in, it will be hard to get anybody but scientists.)

However, if you feel that it's too dangerous to delay that wonder by about 18 turns it will take us to research MC, I'll agree with prioritizing GL.

As for where to settle specialists, I see Mound City as a better production center in the long term, but there can be a benefit from having two medium cities instead of one strong one, so settling at the capital is also good.

PS What are we going to do about Great Prophet? Perhaps detouring to Priesthood and building a temple at the Capital? (Or whipping a temple at Poverty Point.) Once we get GL, it will be very hard to get a prophet.

PPS I think Hanging Gardens should wait until much later, because their power is proportional to number of cities at the time of completion.

Zeviz said:

1. Forges will let us grow almost 25% faster. (Production is our main bottleneck for expansion, and Forges affect Settler whips.)

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Yeah, but Forgest cost about as much as 1.2 Settlers, so we'd have to build 5 Settlers in a city before we got ahead. I also don't think it changes the math on whipping...we still need to be at size 4.

Zeviz said:

2. Greater immediate economic benefit. (We'll be working more than 6 coastal tiles by then, so we'll be making more extra cash from colossus and from representation-enhanced GL scientists.)

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From a strict beaker standpoint, we need to work 12 coastal tiles to break even which I'm sure we'll do, but don't discount the 20 GPPs. Also, if we can find a way to land it in the capital we will concentrate the beakers in our Academy city.

Zeviz said:

3. More time to generate a Great Prophet for Shrine. (Once GL comes in, it will be hard to get anybody but scientists.)

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Mmm...this one I can't disagree with in any way . I still think we should go for the GL next, but I'll delay playing for another 8 hours or so to see if you've changed Sulla's mind or if Compromise has a strong opinion on the matter. If neither of them chime in I will take the wussie Priesthood way out. Getting a Temple going would be a good idea, with all the Prophet wonders falling like flies on the other continent. I also agree on the Hanging Gardens, it just isn't practical at this stage to tie down any of our meager production on this wonder.

Darrell

Sullla said:

Meanwhile, the capital would be using its excess forests to chop Great Library and potentially other key wonders.

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So, I took a look at this just now. The capital has 5 grassland forests. I'd love to keep those. It has one plains forest currently marked for Chaco Canyon, and another five 1/2 forested tiles inside the BFC, and about a gazillion in the next ring. So gosh, it should be cake to get The Great Library here, without sacrificing our forest tiles, and with enough left over to maybe snatch Oxford City or another World Wonder. I'm beyond convinced this is the best path to go, and all Great Persons should be settled here (I'd even favor putting future Great Merchants here rather than balancing out the food in another city, since Cahokia will probably be our only city with a Bank).

The other thing I've noticed is that Poverty Point can probably chop out the Hanging Gardens with a few whip overflows, assuming we can grab another ring of forests from Joao. Something to keep an eye on .

Darrell

Last thing (really, it is...I refuse to make more than three posts in a row); if we do grab Iron dot on the east coast, we should move Light Blue Dot one south to pull in more coastal tiles and reduct overlap. I think doing that, and then moving Blue Dot one north and Orange Dot one east gives a completed dotmap that we can all (all being me) agree on .

Darrell

Zeviz said:

1. Forges will let us grow almost 25% faster. (Production is our main bottleneck for expansion, and Forges affect Settler whips.)

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Forges are going to be huge for us, no doubt. I see us running a Mercantilism/Representation Engineer specialist in pretty much every city down the road. My only concern though is that... well, that's down the road, not short-term. As darrell pointed out, forges are more expensive than settlers, and I believe we should be pushing them next, getting some of the dots filled in our map.

2. Greater immediate economic benefit. (We'll be working more than 6 coastal tiles by then, so we'll be making more extra cash from colossus and from representation-enhanced GL scientists.)

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This is probably true. I'm more thinking in terms of losing wonders than immediate economic benefit. We know that Wang has marble, for example, and someone out there already built Stonehenge/Oracle. Of course, I'm not terribly concerned about losing the Colossus or Great Library either way.

The better argument for Great Library first is that we can get it up and running a whole lot faster than the Colossus. As darrell mentioned, with marble and excess forests at Cahokia, we can build the wonder VERY early indeed. The only question is whether we want to do so, or try to produce a Great Prophet first. I see that as the larger question, to be honest!

As for where to settle specialists, I see Mound City as a better production center in the long term, but there can be a benefit from having two medium cities instead of one strong one, so settling at the capital is also good.

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I really don't agree on this, unfortunately. Civ's multiplicative math means that the gains of putting every Great Person in a single city, then adding in Academy + Bureaucracy + Representation and so on will vastly outdo splitting up a couple of super-specialists in each city. And I hope we can agree that moving the Palace around would be a huge pain in the rear.

darrell, I like the idea of chopping Hanging Gardens at Poverty Point if we can steal some more forests from Joao. (But - remember we also have to whip an aqueduct there first. Hmmm.) And with Priesthood being a dirt cheap tech, we may as well knock that out next, then going on to Aesthetics. However:

darrelljs said:

Last thing (really, it is...I refuse to make more than three posts in a row); if we do grab Iron dot on the east coast, we should move Light Blue Dot one south to pull in more coastal tiles and reduct overlap. I think doing that, and then moving Blue Dot one north and Orange Dot one east gives a completed dotmap that we can all (all being me) agree on

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Adding an iron dot sounds good, as does shifting Light Blue down to compensate. But Orange can't be moved east because that takes it off the river. And if we keep Orange in place, I see no reason to move Blue.

Sullla said:

Adding an iron dot sounds good, as does shifting Light Blue down to compensate. But Orange can't be moved east because that takes it off the river. And if we keep Orange in place, I see no reason to move Blue.

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Blech...I meant west instead of east. Onto the Wine.

Darrell

So much discussion. Okay, here's my $0.02:

I say go for the G Lib asap. The only thing that would cause me to think differently is the chances of an earlier Prophet. Can we get a temple up in Poverty Point before the GLighthouse pops a Merchant? If so, I might run a priest there in the hopes of a Prophet or faster Merchant.

Dotmap: I like Sulla's subject to darrell's revision (settle east iron, move lt blue dot 1S to compensate). I feel little desire to ever found the inland blue dot; I'd rather have the wine to trade.

I like east deer next, though I think it might need a dog soldier for garrison way out there on the frontier.

After Literature, it's Metalcasting and forges/Colossus. I don't think getting Lit before MC will delay us getting the Colossus by much.

A steady as she goes turnset. In 485 B.C. The Kong Miao is built in a distant land. My fear of the other continent grows every turnset, I really think Hatty is over there. Hopefully she goes for a cultural victory. In 470 B.C. a Portuguese Spy is caught in our lands. We cannot underestimate Joao. I also whip a Granary in Poverty Point and let the overflow go back into the Library. I would whip an Aqueduct when we have enough size with the overflow going into The Hanging Gardens, then when we grow back to size 4 re-insert the Library and whip it with the overflow again going into the wonder. By then we should have reclaimed enough forest tiles to finish it off. It will help that in 425 B.C. Hinduism spread there . In 410 B.C. Chaco Canyon's borders pop and I move to working the floodplains.

When I check the diplomatic situation, no one has enough on their hands, however Joao and Wang Kon are Pleased with each other due to an extra point for Open Borders. Not good, we would be Joao's target and his power is about twice ours. In 380 B.C. when the Barracks complete at Cahokia I go for a Hindu Missionary next. The whip anger will wear off in two turns, I strongly suggest we whip the Missionary and convert Joao. After that a unit can be enqueued while we wait for size 4 and a Settler. Also in 380 B.C. I whip the Granary at Mound City (finally had enough hammers). I let the overflow go into the Maoi Statues. I noodle a bit and decide we are better off working two 1/2 plains forest tiles than the coastal tiles. We can get the wonder in 28 turns this way. It would take 19 turns to re-grow a population point (and 88 turns to build the wonder with just the capital's two hammers). On my last turn in 350 B.C. Joao discovered a source of Silver:



Coastal, although not the greatest location. Pyramids are nearing completion:



That forest marked "Chop" I would leave for the capital. There are others we can use instead. Oh, and Currency came in, with Priesthood only taking 3 turns to research (now due in two turns). We are getting great trade income:



A total of 22 commerce. If you look at our overall economic picture:



It is exactly half, with the 8 commerce and 4 EPs of the Palace at around 30% and tiles bringing up the rear (no surprise) at around 20%. The AIs failed to discover a new tech on my turnset, so we have extended our tech lead:



I wonder if they are going for Metal Casting?

Darrell

Got it.

I plan to play tomorrow afternoon if I can get my act together.

I see that we have a Great Merchant coming from Poverty Point's Lighthouse in 4T! I tend to agree with Sullla that all of our People should settle in the capital. Although there are good arguments for moving it to Mound City, I think it'll cost too much to move it there. I'd rather keep it in Cahokia.

My question is whether we should try to pollute our next GP with Prophet points. I think we can get a temple up quickly in either Poverty Point (fastest) or Chaco Canyon. (Or, of course, Cahokia if we want a 100% chance of prophet. I lean toward whipping a temple in Pov Pt and taking our chances. Another merchant wouldn't be so bad....

Techwise, I plan to head for Lit and then Metalcasting.

I'm not sure when to try to get our next settler out.

I think Cahokia after whipping the Missionary can work on units until size 4, then whip a Settler for the next couple of turnsets. It will have a whopping four food surplus after the Merchant gets settled.

I'd go with the whip overflow to Hanging Gardens plan in Poverty Point, if a Temple is one of those buildings, so much the better.

Darrell

P.S. Forgot to mention I spotted some barbarian borders to the southeast. It might be a good idea to fortify a Dog Soldier in the forest next to it.

P.P.S. Probably best to use the Missionary on Joao's border with Wang Kon. Definitely not in his capital!

I'd suggest delaying Hanging Gardens until much later. (I usually built them after 1000AD in original CIV, so unless dates are vastly different in BtS, we'd be better off building Settlers in BC years.)

Everything else looks good.

I can play this evening after Compromise, since it looks like all short term plans are settled.