SGOTM 08 - Smurkz

Since we delay the third WB quite a lot, it's hard to see how we could spare any turns exploring. It would be the third WB at any rate, taking one or two steps to check out that jungle island up north.

Is the submissions page down for anyone else?

It works for me and so does the hof site. Granted, I didn't submit anything, but the page loads.

Alright, here's the turnset:

Turn 32/500 (2720 BC) [21-Sep-2008 15:25:53]

Turn 33/500 (2680 BC) [21-Sep-2008 15:27:16]
While attacking in the wild near Yosmurkzhappy, Warrior defeats (2.00/2): Barbarian Bear (Prob Victory: 100.0%)

Backwards Logic Bear Dead, Find Pigs. Yay!



Yosmurkzhappy finishes: Work Boat

Turn 34/500 (2640 BC) [21-Sep-2008 15:38:37]
Yosmurkzhappy begins: Warrior (3 turns)
Tech learned: The Wheel
Yosmurkzhappy grows: 4
Yosmurkzhappy finishes: Warrior

Turn 35/500 (2600 BC) [21-Sep-2008 15:42:24]
Research begun: Pottery (6 Turns)
Yosmurkzhappy begins: Warrior (3 turns)
A Fishing Boats was built near Yosmurkzhappy

IBT:
Civics Change: Suryavarman II(Khmer) from 'Tribalism' to 'Slavery'

Turn 36/500 (2560 BC) [21-Sep-2008 15:51:39]

Turn 37/500 (2520 BC) [21-Sep-2008 15:52:31]
A Mine was built near Yosmurkzhappy

Turn 38/500 (2480 BC) [21-Sep-2008 15:54:05]
Yosmurkzhappy grows: 5
Yosmurkzhappy finishes: Warrior

Turn 39/500 (2440 BC) [21-Sep-2008 15:54:39]
Yosmurkzhappy begins: Warrior (2 turns)

Turn 40/500 (2400 BC) [21-Sep-2008 15:55:40]
Tech learned: Pottery
Yosmurkzhappy finishes: Warrior

IBT:
Judaism founded in a distant land

Turn 41/500 (2360 BC) [21-Sep-2008 16:01:09]
Research begun: Writing (6 Turns)
Yosmurkzhappy begins: Settler (7 turns)

Alright, here's a shot of our land:


The save:
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm8/Smurkz_SG008_BC2360_01.CivBeyondSwordSave

A save , a save, my kingdom for a save!

Ok, nicely played - except for that extra warrior you built. Obviously the sheet wasn't clear enough. I'm afraid this will set us back a few turns overall. Oh well, we'll just have to live with it. Back to the drawing board.

EDIT: Looking at the sheet I see no way to salvage the situation I'm afraid. We've basically lost two turns, and everything after will be delayed by the same two turns, due to not being able to use the whip as we want. I need to look very carefully at this, and I would appreciate more eyes on it.

Just so we're clear, here's a dotmap of our current city location plans:



I'm more inclined to settle red first.

Well, I given another look using the flying camera and saw a lot of stuff ( transformed in a slideshow..... )



If you want to see individual images.....

In resume:

-We have land SW, S , E , N , NW and W ( )
-There is a posibility that the "island" south may stretch to Shaka lands, but i would bet more in a chain of islands.
-We definitely have water NE and SE and probably some NW too.

Well. let's make the best of the situation with the extra warrior and send him out to do some scouting. We'll have open borders with Shaka by the time he gets there and with a little luck dealing with barbs we can perhaps get some info on Shaka's lands or contact with other civs earlier than we would have otherwise.

And a test save ( courtesy of Niklas play + my WB editing )

Got it....

I agree with what Renata says about scouting.

I've had a look at the sheet, and basically everything will be as before, except everything that requires a whip will come two turns later (turns ending with 4 instead of 2). That means the capitol will still be on track to all its (non-whipped) builds, but the second town will be delayed two turns.

I just had another idea though that I haven't had the chance to try out yet. The idea being that we build the first settler "by hand", to complete on turn 47 and settle on turn 48 (with some clever roading to make that possible, we don't need the gold roaded until later). Writing comes in on turn 47 too, and we whip the Library on turn 48, having it up on turn 49, 6 turns earlier than in the plan above (and 4 turns earlier than in the old sheet). That would give us whips on turns ending with 8 instead, hence speeding up the later whip builds, but at the cost of some "ordinary" hammers. The capitol also builds a worker for the second town, which can start Granary right away instead.

As I said I haven't checked this second idea in a sheet, it may be much more costly in the long run. I will try it, but it's too late here now, I need to go ...

EDIT: Here's the sheet for the "simple" fixed version, i.e. the first I mentioned:

Can you post the spreadsheet file of the most recent?

Sure, here you go. But be aware that it may be nonsense down past the 70 or so turns that I bothered to mess with.

The first thing that comes to mind is this - if we settle the red city, it will be a long time before we use the clams, as we won't be sharing seafood with the second city. So we could delay the clam workboat even further to allow other builds in the capital. In fact, if we net the clams now, it's entirely possible a barbarian galley will pillage them, and we can't defend because they're on the northern coast.

Alternatively, with four warriors, would it be worthwhile to rush a second settler and get the third city launched earlier than planned?

I like the idea of settling the red site first, especially if we build another worker to get the pigs pastured. That would really speed up growth for that city and it would, in general, be very helpful to have a second worker. Among other things, he could road and pre-chop the forests so we could quickly cash those in on the Pyramids and Great Library once we get Math (waiting for marble on the latter). Remember, we get a 25% hammer bonus on worker production--would take but a few inconsequential moments to make another .

I have many lame excuses for not doing any recent test games, but one semi-valid reason is that I'm not sure what our metric is. What are we aiming for? Is it still fastest Pyramids and Great Library? It would be easy to compare one plan against another for that, and it also happens to be a pretty good goal. Do we want to set some secondary conditions, such as that we must have 3 cities by x date (in order to grab territory before we get boxed in), or have sent out N boats to explore, or....? We don't have to actually follow those strictures in the real game, but it would make things more realistic as we pursue a simple-minded goal during testing.

And to further push Chris's preference for the red city, note that pastured pigs on a grass hill is 5 food + 1 hammer vs 4 food + 1 commerce (?) for the clams; we could spend those workboat hammers [edit: and maybe delay the lighthouse, too?] toward a worker to do the pigs, and then do other improvements (such as chopping the forest underneath the green site, which would otherwise go to waste), while a workboat drops nets just once. The red site also has more forests to chop than the green.

For the capital, beyond what's in the updated sheet, I think Niklas built Moai, GLib and maybe a baray or another settler? I'm not sure, but it's in one of the earlier posts somewhere and should give you a baseline for what to aim for. The second city was looking at at least a granary, and Pyramids by turn 80-something.

Long term, the goal is what Niklas identified in post #42 -- one wonder per 5 turns. In the end, wonders are all that matter. Short term, the two wonders that give us the biggest boosts are Great Library and Pyramids. We want to get both before the AI beats us to the punch.

Instead of being worried about Shaka attacking us, we need to be figuring out how to conquer him quickly.

I should go to bed. But if we settle both of those sites Methos marked and get them up and running quickly, we should have very nice early production. It does look like we're going to need it. There's really nowhere else for us to go than through him.