Future Strategic Blueprint, or How to Ground Enemy Bones to Dust

Arguments against which plan?

I think there are 3 proposals:

Krills, memphus's and one I kind of made, where we get Krill's Red dot and an inland city with wheat and horse and we found another city on southeast coast later which gets a lighthouse, a granary and a harbor until levee's. Once we get to biology and a corporation, maybe it can get strong.

I don't think it makes sense make a coastal city on marginal land just to make one that uses coast - I would much rather put a city in the jungle than either of the blue dots in the other plans - the jungle is a pain, but at least with our army of workers, it can be improved.
 
I don't think it makes sense make a coastal city on marginal land just to make one that uses coast - I would much rather put a city in the jungle than either of the blue dots in the other plans - the jungle is a pain, but at least with our army of workers, it can be improved.


Well, the problems for settling an inland city, are:

Have the wheat as food, horse, 6 hills (3 grass, 3 plains) and 6 peaks, if you plant it for all 4 grasslands. If you move the city site then it loses grasslands; the 'best' production site for an inland city prior to windmills is only capable of 25 hammers per turn without a forge (a few more working irrigated plains), and isn't capable of making any commerce, whereas the caostal site that I marked can make 24 hammers per turn but is also capable of making commerce (this is going to be very important while we are expanding; the less commerce we generate the less cities we can build). It also doesn't leave any space for a coastal city.

If you plant a city on that coast without any food, it is going to take forever and a day to become productive. We also need to have a bunch of tiles that generate 2 food per turn to continue growing, coast does this nicely, and pays the bills, so it'as actually quite good. And if we build the Collosus, then the coastal cities can pay all of their maintenence and the maintenence of a bunch of other cities as the coastal tiles each make 4 commerce. A bad coastal city without food though can't do this because it has to work the irrigated grasslands to grow and so is a drain on the economoy is it isn't making any commerce. An inland city is in the same situation: while it may be able to grow, it can't make any commerce, and so we have to limit our expansion.

So, the comparrison isn't just between the city sites, it's also between what other city sites we could settle before we got near to crashing our economy. Two good coastal cities plus the Collosus would allow us to settle up to another 2-4 cities if we got the coastal cities down first and started them growing, whereas one coastal city and one inland city/slow growing coastal city would only allow us to fund at most 1 other city before that group of cities was a net drain on our commerce. Coast, in this instance, is more useful that a bunch of plains hill that we don't have the food to support.

The current CDP plan that I posted doesn't have us getting any more workers until after t76, as 6 workers are enough right now to keep everything on track, but when we start expanding properly, we are going to need to most likely at least quadruple the number of workers we have in very short order, and until we have done that we don't have an awful lot of slack in the worker movements, and jungle is going to eat up a large amount of our workers' time. We have jungle at JD that needs to get chaopped for health reasons and to make more cottages, which shoul IMO be a higher priority that another jungle city (which would be second in line IMO, as JD needs to be working cottages as much as possible in preparation for Bureaucracy). One of the advantages of getting the collosus at sheep is that that city is capable of 3 turn workers in a hammer configuration, so between sheep, CK and IS we are capable of making all the workers (3 turns in sheep), settlers (4 turns in CK) and military (2 turns axe/spear in IS), which would help our expansion an awful lot, as otherwise we need to fit workers into IS and CK which slows our expansion.

---

The Arguments against settling 2 cities over there early though are these:

  1. No horses. Counter argument is that we have horses down south, just plant a city for them, as we'll want a city down there anyway, and it's gotta be better land than we have to our east.

  2. Maintence, we would be paying quite alot for cities over there. True enough, but with the Collosus (plug, plug, plugging away) they would be a net increase in our GNP, which couldn;t be realised by an inland city and would be realised alot slower by a coastal city without food.

    Corroloary of this: we would be delaying settling a cottage site such as the jungle if our maintence was too high, and we would have to get out another settler. Yeah, we would need to get anotehr settler, but we would also need alot more workers to improve a jungle cottage site than we would to improve a coastal city with one source of food; we would be sending two workers over to hook up the gold, we wouldn't really need more than that to keep both improved as both cities would be working the coast to grow anyway, and that gives us enough time to improve the land with just 2 workers.

  3. Can't take Moai into account until we have scouted all of our coast line. True, but we need to get boats out to do that well, and there aren't many place that could make use of Moai as well as clams; for instance sheep only has 7 coastal tiles, so would be better suited to being the GP pump.
 
*Trying to get the ball rolling again*

What do people think about always keeping 50 gold in the bank so that any negative events can be bought off immediately? Currently we only have 2 granaries as city improvements, but losing a forge would really screw us over.
 
Well, if we did do it, we could either do it immediately, to make sure we save both of the granaries if the event occured in the next...12? turns, which would require that we either not upgrade barentz, or push back IW even more (ie by 2-3 turns), or do it after researching IW, which would give us 2-3 turns risk of getting the event with no gold reserve. If the event did hit in those few turns, we would not be able to get a GE out of IS before the priest pops out of CK, and we would be down 120 hammers.

The costs of playing safe would a delay in the gems hook up, maybe even the settling of city 5. And we would have to completely redo the worker MM (and some of the labour placements for IS.)
 
I HATE random events....have I said that before???....If there were enough POSITIVE events to offset the NEGATIVE events, I might feel differently,...the ONLY way to mitigate them is to have a gold reserve, so we might as well suck it up for a few turns and save the gold, it is a short term loss for long term security, and worth it IMO.
 
Well, looking at teh CDP thread, it looks like we have 7 turns af losing the forge before we got enough gold to buy off the event. Losing a granary I could suck up, it's only 60 hammers, but losing that forge is pretty expensive: no GE, another 120 hammer investment...that's 1 settler behind the growth curve, no pyramids for representation (with CRE that's just so sick...cheap libs rule).

I think I'd prefer it to delay the start of the IW research; end of the day, it's only 3 turns delay on hooking up gems, and I'm pretty sure that we could mm it to get city 5 down on the same turn as before. The other option would be to not upgrade Barentz if we wanted IW at teh same speed and upgrade him after IW...but that'd be a 10 turns delay on scouting and barb warrior killing.
 
i would rather take the chance at the granary. and keep IW and barentz as the plan shows now.
 
It's not just a chance on the granary; if we stop research after IW, then we also have a 7 turns risk on teh forge. The granary would be a minor, easily rectified set back that dioesn;t impact our macro strategy; losing the forge scerws up our whole gameplan.
 
50 gold; we could save for 2 extra turns, then run max research until we have just over 50 gold in the bank then either go ahead and get it runing max science that wouldn't leave us with less than 50 gold, or keep on running binary science if we didn't mind losing an extra turn on IW (that might not even occur). The current CDP plan has us starting research with something like 51 gold in the bank after upgrading Barentz (can't remember exactly, we end up with something between 131 to 139 gold)
 
What is so great about binary science again? It looks like extra mm work for nothing.

It is a pain but the reserve is a good idea. Lets just get now (after upgrading Barry but before researching IW). I'm sure we can afford the 2 extra turns.
 
It gains 1 extra beaker or gold a turn (not much, but it's something), and it also allows us to save gold prior to cottage growth and then spend it faster after the cottage has matured (ok, that one is probably even more minor than the first point). It also lets us save gold so that, taking into account the saved gold for events, we may have more options than just the mitigation of a bad event, if an event hits us. It also delays us investing in a tech, so if we meet a new civ in the mean time, we may be able to orchestrate a tech deal that results in us going for a different tech (although with IW, it's doubtful, afterwards this is much more important on a strategic level as it means we don;t waste time if another team researches a tech afetr we have spent a few turns researching it).

If we do delay IW, then we want to get to IW asap, so it may be best to save gold for 2 turns, then research at 100% and then slow the research to breakeven; growing sooner is more important than a few gold, but researching at breakeven all the way wont get us to IW any faster than binary for a few turns for a few extra beakers and then breakeven right at the end.
 
Spoiler :
AutomatedTeller said:
I dont' know that we ARE all that far ahead.

We have a 1 tech lead (granted, that's a big tech), but Oracle is a 1 shot wonder, other than the GP points. We aren't in the lead in GNP, despite being financial, creative and being the only team with a wonder. Cavalieros, in particular, is likely to outexpand us, even if they start from behind. Two civs have a religion, which we do not.

I think we have a slight advantage, but it's not a big one.


Not yet, but the Cavs have traits that emphasize one thing: expansion. We beat them to three cities, though they should beat us to cities four and five; but they can't tech as well as we can, and they need to spread their religion to keep up with us in happiness and pop borders. All we have to do is build cities...even assuming we all have ivory, unless Sullla balanced the map badly and gave them easy access to gold and silver, we'll have an extra source of happiness (though their religion will equal this, that cost in hammers slows their expansion significantly) that doesn't requie a short term junk city.

But thats minor; here is the real reason: on turn 102 we could build the pyramids at the cost of our first GE. Cheap libraries, and representation will bury every other team; get the Collosus and it would be a stupid increase in our beaker and commerce production capabilities in a matter of turns. And at this point we'll have been able to expand to at least 8 cities if no one tries to attack or choke us; yes, other teams may equal us in size, and numbers of workers, but they will not equal us in the strength of our economy. We could spam cities all over the map and each one would give us 15 beakers at size 3 with a half decent food resource if required, or they could keep on growing and our coastal cities/JD/city 5 can support the costs until they aare working enough cottages to support themselves.
 
Krill paints a picture which is great, but not completely in our control (ie, someone could build pyramids by hand)

So...

what do we want to do? Expand, yes - how big? 6 cities? 10? 12?
What % are commerce?
What religion do we want to aim for?
What is our tech strategy?
Which wonders do we want?

or is this just too early still?
 
The sims that I've ran...I've not been able to crash the economy no matter how fast I grew.

One comment on the pyramids: assuming no team gets stone, which is a fair assumption as stone should be a similar distance from rasch teams capital, if any team builds it before we would be able to rush, then they have cripled their own expansion, and that is what we have to take advantage of. One way of doing this would be having an ally get construction, while we quickly get CS, and bulb machinery for maces before turn 110.
 
Krill paints a picture which is great, but not completely in our control (ie, someone could build pyramids by hand)

So...

what do we want to do? Expand, yes - how big? 6 cities? 10? 12?
What % are commerce?
What religion do we want to aim for?
What is our tech strategy?
Which wonders do we want?

or is this just too early still?


And by which turn right?

The current plan goes to turn 76 (maybe 78 now that we are going to get a gold reserve). In that plan we have...
  • 5 cities
  • commerce is binary (either 0% or 100%) but with 2 galleys exploring it would run about 60%.
  • Religion has not yet been seriously discussed.
  • Iron Working, Writing then Sailing is the tech plan so far.
  • Maybe the question should be what wonders don't we want? Our plan is flexible enough that a decision is not yet imminent.
 
I think we can get the city on t76 still; slight cost to JD in hammers, and we may have to strip JD of protection for a turn, but otherwise I think I have away around it.

The question of wonders has to fit into the context of growth: the faster we want to grow, the less wonders (and military) we can afford. The exception I think is the Collosus which by turn 115 (1AD) can be having an effect on 15 sea tiles, which will only increase as our coastal cities grow.

EDIT: Minimising the amount of time JD is left undefended, we can get city 5 settled on t75. if we don't mind leaving it open for longer then we can get it settled on t74, but it requires that the axe in JD leaves JD around t70, and the replace ment would arrive in JD on turn 75. We would have the ability for the first few turns to send the axe back to JD though.

save is below for t74 settling. IS and CK grow to size 7 and 6 respectively at end of the turn (t74), and gems would be hooked on t75. no more improvement required at CK until growth above size 7 is required. Developement of Sheep would be unaffected. Granary just complete in JD, writing due eot t75 due to the growth. In reality we wouldn't have to make a decision on this until the forge is complete, or a few turns after that.
 

Attachments

  • MTDGt74projection,withsafety.CivBeyondSwordSave
    105.8 KB · Views: 127

Attachments

  • currentdomesticplancitiest55throught75safe.jpg
    currentdomesticplancitiest55throught75safe.jpg
    145.4 KB · Views: 175
  • currentdomesticplanworkerst55throught75safe.jpg
    currentdomesticplanworkerst55throught75safe.jpg
    111.3 KB · Views: 192
Top Bottom