SGOTM 13 - One Short Straw

LowtherCastle said:

We have to decide on pottery or sailing next now. How will exploring stone earlier make any difference?

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I am assuming we'll go with pottery here, but if the stone site turns out to be powerful, we can stop production of the granary and immediately prepare for a galley + settler combo. I'll make a test save with 1 or 2 seafood near stone to see if it's worth going there early.

Not sure what you mean. The limiting factor is unlocking the galley build, not Granary production, right?

Sailing first gets us the second city significantly faster (about 10t?). It also means much less time to scout for the location, though that may be fine. From testing, I would say the trade-off between the two is faster second-city development for higher food/pop in capital at the end. Edit: Perhaps the quality of the second city comes into play in evaluating this, but we can't know that before making the decision.

I see no doubt that we're going to settle at least four cities asap, one for each resource we see. So the question is what's the optimal solution. I think settling cities without a wb is a waste of time. Each city sould build infra immediately (lh/gran/monument/lib), not wbs (unless there are multiple seafood tiles). The tundra is likely to have our Oracle marble. DS has been generous so far. No reason for him to stop now.



I suggest we agree to a couple of expedited testing cycles. Anyone who wants to test has 24 hours to do so and post results. Then a second 24-hour cycle. I don't thin we should drag this out forever. Test whatever you want, but it should clearly include thorough defogging in advance of settling, doable, since our earliest settler is ~T62, and even one explorer can probably finish on roughly T66.

Considering our worker will be idle, settling the stone asap is fairly powerful. A stone mine has the same 1f4h yield as the quarry. That's a strong early tile.

LowtherCastle said:

Considering our worker will be idle, settling the stone asap is fairly powerful. A stone mine has the same 1f4h yield as the quarry. That's a strong early tile.

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Okay, I can see how that's a decent square, although it's not as strong as, say, a Grassland Hills Copper square. But, is a production square what we really need?

I guess I had been assuming that if we decided to let the AIs have Stonehenge (and "since Moai Statues won't be of much use until we get more Happiness," an opinion that I tend to support), that we'd go for either the Crab of the Fish location. Since it was already stated that we, unfortunately, can't get Fish + Stone with the same City, that would mean not going for the Stone immediately.

Personally, I would think that the Food from a quickly-netted Seafood Resource would be stronger in the long-run, since we could start our whipping cycles early and thus could start "using" the "whipping unhappiness Resource" that comes for free with each new City.


That said, seeing LC's latest dot-mapping attempt, one location by the Stone offers one of the only locations (besides the western island) where we can share an improved square with the capital, a fact which can allow our early Work Boat to continue exploring instead of being immediately used to net the magical Fish or the Crab. Of course, that may mean a City that can ONLY support a GH Mine and a GH Stone Mine, having no Food to go with it, but doing so does free up a Work Boat explorer... I'm not sure if we'd consider such a short-term oriented City or not.


Using LC's original test run that we are targeting following, which Work Boat were we expecting to use for netting for City 2? Work Boat 5? Or an earlier Work Boat? Or no plans for netting at all?

Basically, I am wondering if netting one of either the Fish or the Crab is "allowed for/planned for" in our exploration plan or if using up a Work Boat in this manner could mess up the pace of our game. If netting is not planned for, then settling near the Stone for early production could even allow us to pop out another Work Boat before starting on infrastructure, allowing us a "nettable" Work Boat for City 3... but maybe City 3 already has a Work Boat earmarked for it?

I guess that I am really wondering what the role of each Work Boat was planned to be and how flexible those plans are (i.e. netting with one or some of those Work Boats early on) without too dramatically disrupting our exploration plans.


One thought that I haven't seen raised is that I wouldn't mind trying to settle near early Happiness Resources... Gold, Silver, Gems, Ivory, etc. With whipping in our capital being so powerful for production (the City already having an early Granary), I would think that a strong immediate production boost to our empire would be to grab +1 Happiness with each new City. I'm just not sure if that's stronger than the alternative options, since it does only mean one additional whipping action, but that whipping action could very well be a 2-pop or 3-pop whip... strong, but relatively how strong, I am uncertain.

I just got an e-mail from my wife saying:
Actually, it didn't say that. It said:


Regarding the test games, I still think that LC's test with Pottery first was very strong. It delayed City #2 a little. On the up side, it had two early explorers, City #3 (and City #4) was faster, the capital was more developed due to an earlier granary, and there was a WB#5 for City #2 already on the turn it is settled, leaving two exploring workboats. I think this is going to be tough to beat in the long run. All of this excess food just screams for an early granary, no?

Unfortunately, we have to make our choice now between researching Sailing or Pottery next. It would have been nice to know how awesome City #2 really will be so that we could figure out how much it will cost us to delay it a several turns...

In any event, I still vote for Pottery and an early granary next.

Now, I better get home for my hotdogs and chili!!

Dhoom, can you give us the main details on your 4 settler test, pls?

LowtherCastle said:

Dhoom, can you give us the main details on your 4 settler test, pls?

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I apologise but I'm not sure what you're asking for. Are you talking about one of my SIP testing runs? The only PH test that I posted results for was one where the tech order was different from what we've chosen to follow, so I don't really have any PH test runs on which to report info.

I still need to spend some time playing forward from the latest test saved game that Mitchum provided before I'll be ready to put up a PPP, but I expect that it will as closely as possible follow your LC #318 "Pottery first" test run.

Are you suggesting that I should play out some test runs until we have Settler 4 (counting our initial Settler as "Settler 1") completed and then try and improve upon our next steps based on which test run gets us Settler 4 the fastest?

babybluepants said:

LIFE EXPECTANCY

GLH leader = 7 1
At least 1 AI = 8 1
At least 1 AI = 6 1

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This point has got me curious... I imagine that you can figure out that at least 1 AI has "8" while at least another has "6" based on averages, but how do you know WHICH Leader has how much, i.e. in order to be able to tell how much Health the GLH Leader has access to?

By the way, no one has chimed in yet on how many screenshots or which types of screenshots they would like to see. Mitchum's method seems to be pretty simple... just press the Print Screen key and don't format the images... so, I can do that just as easily. It even works for windowed-mode, which is great because I'd like to see my PPP alongside the game, to help reduce the chances for error by otherwise having to Alt + Tab just to make sure that I don't forget certain steps.

GLH was pre-settled - shows up on turn 0.

Ahhhh, that's very sneaky. Makes good sense, too. It remains to be seen if we'll get a City named Orleans or not, in that, if France really has TGL, they will almost certainly settle a City #2 before we settle a City #2, and even if their capital was given a random name like "DS Rules The World," pseudo-France's second City would grab the next default name in the list, Orleans. So, whether or not we get Orleans should definitively tell us if there is a second France in the game.


The Worker
I'm a bit uncertain as to what to do about our Worker's actions. In Mitchum's suggested steps of what LC might have done, it seems that the GFor to the NW of Paris doesn't get chopped until we're about to complete our Settler #2. The Forest Chop, along with whip overflow, is then used to complete a Galley.

So, the Worker has some turns to kill. Does anyone care which of the squares on our mainland get Roads? Does it even matter?

For example, since the Worker is "already on the northern GH," he could build a Road there, but he doesn't have to do so.

Since the Corn already has a Road, our initial Settler's location won't really benefit much from a Road, in that 1-movement-point units still won't be able to move 2 squares to the west of Paris while moving onto a boat (SW then W then onto a boat), while 2-movement-point units will still be able to move 2 squares to the west of Paris and then onto the boat, regardless of whether or not a Road is there.

Basically, it is a detail that probably doesn't matter at all, but if you could pick one of the non-Corn squares (the Corn already has a Road on it) on our mainland on which to build a Road, which square would you prioritise?


Also, I noticed that Mitchum was working a Cottage for a turn or two... is that the expectation? That our Worker should be putting down a Cottage on our Settler's initial location? i.e. Would building said Cottage have a higher priority over building random Roads?

I've been playing around with the timing of whipping our Granary, as well as whether to work an Unnetted Clam or a GH Mine on Turn 45.

We also have the same choice between an Unnetted Clam or a GH Mine on Turn 46, but we pretty much have to work a GH Mine on one of Turn 45 or Turn 46 if we want our Work Boat 3 (aka Work Boat Explorer #1) on Turn 47, so I am going under the assumption that we will work the GH Mine on Turn 46... therefore, it's not really a choice.

Some scenarios don't work out all that well, but the best scenarios work out as follows:
Scenario 1: Turn 45 = Unnetted Clam instead of the GH Mine + early Granary
Scenario 2: Turn 45 = GH Mine instead of the Unnetted Clam + early Granary
Scenario 3: Turn 45 = GH Mine instead of the Unnetted Clam + early Work Boat Explorer #2

On Turn 63, values have "stabilized" after two rounds of City growth post-Granary, so the results become equitably comparable.
As of Turn 63, here are the Food, Hammer, and Flask values, as well as the number of turns to Grow, the number of turns until our Work Boat #5 is completed, the number of turns until we learn Sailing, and finally, the turn on which Work Boat #4 (WB Explorer #2) is completed
Scenario 1: 29 F, 28 H, 130 Flasks, 3 turns to growth, 3 turns to WB#5, 7 turns to Sailing, WB#4 on Turn 58
Scenario 2: 28 F, 31 H, 128 Flasks, 3 turns to growth, 2 turns to WB#5, 7 turns to Sailing, WB#4 on Turn 58
Scenario 3: 27 F, 31 H, 128 Flasks, 3 turns to growth, 2 turns to WB#5, 7 turns to Sailing, WB#4 on Turn 56

For easier comparison, the Scenarios give us this much Food, Hammers, and Flasks over the lowest values out of each of those 3 Scenarios:
Scenario 1: 2 F, 0 H, 2 Flasks
Scenario 2: 1 F, 3 H, 0 Flasks
Scenario 3: 0 F, 3 H, 0 Flasks

Analyzing results:
Scenarios 1 and 2 are basically like trading 1 turn work of working an Unnetted Clam for 1 turn of working a GH Mine. Unfortunately, Scenario 3 "falls behind" by 1 Food that is simply permanently lost to us, due to the delayed arrival of our Granary.

Scenario 1, however, provides us with an awkward situation... on Turn 63, we are at our Happiness and Healthiness caps and have 12 more turns before the whipping Unhappiness goes away. The problem arises in that Work Boat 5 will be completed on the same turn that we grow into Unhappiness and Unhealthiness; the other two Scenarios will complete Work Boat 5 one turn before growth and thus we can start on our Settler without needing to grow into Unhappiness and Unhealthiness immediately. So, for Scenario 1, we would either delay building Work Boat 5 for several turns (completing it after Settler 3 and Galley 1) or else we'd complete Work Boat 5 immediately but then would lose some Food to Unhealthiness while building Settler 3.

On that basis, I would say that Scenario 2 is better than Scenario 1, since Sailing comes in on the same turn, while we have essentially only traded the values of one square (getting a GH Mine instead of an Unnetted Clam for 1 turn)... but that while building the Settler, Scenario 2 will pull ahead by a few Food that get converted into Hammers due to not losing said Food to Unhealthiness.

However, when you look at Scenario 3, it has the draw of giving us 2 extra turns of exploration with Work Boat Explorer #2 (Work Boat 4), getting it on Turn 56 as opposed to Turn 58. Note that I also had a couple of scenarios where I could get Work Boat Explorer #2 on Turn 57, but those scenarios were inferior in terms of total Food, Hammer, and Flask values.

Note that with the "LC1 #304" test run, the results of which are summarized in Mitchum's latest table, used one of the Turn 58 options, but I'm not sure whether he used Scenario 1, Scenario 2, or even a slightly different approach... although by the looks of the fact that we got Work Boat #5 (Work Boat Explorer #3) on Turn 66 (i.e. 3 turns from Turn 63 instead of 2 turns from Turn 63 to complete Work Boat #5), I believe that he used Scenario 1.


As long as you agree that Scenario 2 looks better than Scenario 1, we only have to choose between Scenario 2 and Scenario 3.

So, in making that decision, we're looking at answering the following question: shall we permanently throw away 1 Food for 2 extra turns' worth of exploration with Work Boat Explorer #2 (and thus follow Scenario 3) by getting that Work Boat on Turn 56, or should we look at maximizing our empire's output by getting that extra Food and be happy with getting our second Work Boat Explorer on Turn 58 (and thus follow Scenario 2) as per the originally-planned arrival date for Work Boat Explorer #2?

Sorry, but I had a couple of typos in the last message in terms of the numeric values, so if you get your email updates from this thread "immediately," then you'll have to check the thread for the updated message's values, since reading the email message with the wrong numbers would end up being confusing.

I'm going to hold off on any further testing until I get an answer to which of the three Scenarios to pursue.

Dhoomstriker said:

But, is [stone] a production square what we really need?

a City that can ONLY support a GH Mine and a GH Stone Mine, having no Food to go with it, but doing so does free up a Work Boat explorer... I'm not sure if we'd consider such a short-term oriented City or not.

which Work Boat were we expecting to use for netting for City 2? Work Boat 5? Or an earlier Work Boat? Or no plans for netting at all?

I wouldn't mind trying to settle near early Happiness Resources... Gold, Silver, Gems, Ivory, etc.

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Exploration should answer all these questions. Right now we can't. First, we need to decide on sailing or pottery next. Then we'll obviously settle the most powerful cities first. Stone will need a food resource to be highest priority. Ideally, we'll net seafood as soon as each city needs it, but it's always an optimzation problem, that is, a balancing act, in this case between building settlers, infra or wbs and between netting or exploring.

Dhoomstriker said:

I apologise but I'm not sure what you're asking for.

Are you suggesting that I should play out some test runs until we have Settler 4 (counting our initial Settler as "Settler 1") completed and then try and improve upon our next steps based on which test run gets us Settler 4 the fastest?

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Sorry. I guess I was remembering yoru SIP testing. Just thinking about Sailing REX versus Pottery REX.

Dhoomstriker said:

By the way, no one has chimed in yet on how many screenshots or which types of screenshots they would like to see.

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It's good info to have. ANother good thing to do is to set autosave to 50 or something and move your autosaves somewhere after your turnset so they don't get overrun. (OR just save each turn, which is what I do.) THen we can always refer back to a particular turn, which is sometimes very useful.

Dhoomstriker said:

whether or not we get Orleans should definitively tell us if there is a second France in the game.

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Excellent thought.

Dhoomstriker said:

The Worker
I'm a bit uncertain as to what to do about our Worker's actions.

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A road on the se hill might be handy. If we go Pottery, definitely use turns on a cottage.

Dhoomstriker said:

Scenario 1: 29 F, 28 H, 130 Flasks, 3 turns to growth, 3 turns to WB#5, 7 turns to Sailing, WB#4 on Turn 58
Scenario 2: 28 F, 31 H, 128 Flasks, 3 turns to growth, 2 turns to WB#5, 7 turns to Sailing, WB#4 on Turn 58
Scenario 3: 27 F, 31 H, 128 Flasks, 3 turns to growth, 2 turns to WB#5, 7 turns to Sailing, WB#4 on Turn 56

So, in making that decision, we're looking at answering the following question: shall we permanently throw away 1 Food for 2 extra turns' worth of exploration with Work Boat Explorer #2

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Excellent testing. I would definitely take the +2t exploration.

One thing to note, though, is that you can turn off growth to avoid building a settler at a lower hpt rate. This has a very useful and hidden benefit, that we should all keep in mind:In view of this, your test results for Scenario 1 might be better than shown.

LowtherCastle said:

One thing to note, though, is that you can turn off growth to avoid building a settler at a lower hpt rate. This has a very useful and hidden benefit, that we should all keep in mind:

IF the food basket is already full, then we can poprush a settler, turn ON growth, and re-grow a poppoint the same turn the settler gets produced.​

In view of this, your test results for Scenario 1 might be better than shown.

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Thanks for the responses!


In this particular case, we are making 7 Food per turn. So, for Scenarios 2 and 3, after the 2 turns that it will take to complete Work Boat 5, we will have 28 + 14 = 42 / 45 Food and 27 + 14 = 41 / 45 Food, respectively.

If we whip down to Size 3, presumably on the turn that we grow to Size 6 after having partially-pre-built the Settler at Size 5, we'll only need 45 - 3 - 3 = 39 Food to grow from Size 3 to Size 4, so we would be able to grow immediately back to Size 4 for any of the three Scenarios.

The downside to avoiding growth in our current situation is that we'd make 29 + 7 + 7 + 7 Food = 50 Food for Scenario 1... but the Avoid Growth button unfortunately caps Food... so, we'd only have 45 Food, essentially losing 5 Food. If we had more Mines or other low-Food squares worth switching to, then we could feasibly do so. Unfortunately, at least for this particular City, we don't really have that flexibility, so by picking Scenario 1, we we'd either lose 5 Food up-front, would have to delay Work Boat 5's completion date, or would lose 1 Food per turn to Unhealthiness for every turn that we spend building the Settler.

Instead of losing 5 Food up-front, I could switch our 5 Food Corn to a 1 Food + 2 Commerce square for a turn, essentially only losing 1 Food and gaining 2 Commerce... but we still have to look at the opportunity cost that we could have later spent a turn working the Corn square instead of essentially what works out to be a "0 Food + 2 Commerce" square.


I personally tend to avoid using the Avoid Growth button, since it is very hard to maximize its effectiveness (either you get EXACTLY a full Food box or else you'll lose some of the excess Food that you earned), but given the right circumstances, such as a City with decent non-Food-heavy squares that are worth working, it can be useful. Still, I'd rather just get 1 Food less than a full Food box and then not have to worry about later forgetting to turn off the Avoid Growth button. If they'd implemented it so that you could "bank" all of the Food that you'd earned on the turn that you met or exceeded the Food box's total (i.e. so that we'd have 50/45 Food in this case), then it would be a considerably more useful tool to use.


Work Boat Exploration
As for which direction to send the Work Boats, we've had a couple of very graphical plans presented, which are very useful for me in figuring out where I might send the Work Boat explorers.

However, I do have a question... am I supposed to follow those paths relatively rigidly or would there be potential value in exploring a "second level of depth" of islands, should such islands exist? It looks like we're exploring the islands that would have us settle Cities in our first ring, but I am asking if that's what I should stick to doing or, if I see the opportunity, would it be okay to also explore islands that would probably fall into our second ring of Cities?

In so doing, I may or may not reveal additional Resources that are farther away but are good enough to consider settling early... at the cost of taking longer to complete the exploration of nearby City locations.

LowtherCastle said:

ANother good thing to do is to set autosave to 50 or something and move your autosaves somewhere after your turnset so they don't get overrun. (OR just save each turn, which is what I do.) THen we can always refer back to a particular turn, which is sometimes very useful.

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Unfortunately, I think that it was decided in the Maintenance Thread that teams should avoid loading autosaves for getting prior info. I'll try to instead remember to manually save the game on each turn--loading older manually-saved games is deemed to be quite acceptable as long as the only usage for doing so is to statically look at info and not re-playing any actions.

Technically, before meeting any AIs and with Random Events disabled, there should not be any issue with loading the autosaves, but I'd rather stick to the suggestion to avoid loading autosaves as closely as possible, just to avoid getting into a potentially bad habit. That way, we won't make the mistake later on of loading an autosaved game that "asks us a decision" at the start of a turn, which, when loaded, would have the unfortunate side-effect of making BUFFY think that we "reloaded" the game.

Great job on testing, Dhoomstriker.

To deal with the growing to 6 pop issue, I did one of two things. One was to switch a citizen from the Corn to a cottage to slow growth. The other was to start working a settler for one turn before growing to 6 pops. Then I switched back to whatever I was building before that (e.g. WB) so I would grow to 6. On the next turn after growing to 6 pops and +1/+1, I 3 pop whipped the settler. In doing this, the / never really impact the output of your city and that 6th pop comes just in time for the 3 pop whip.

Regarding exploration, use your judgement. I think we would "prefer" to settle cities #2 and #3 in the inner ring for maintenance reasons. Of course, we'd settle outside that if there is a great location. So, the priority would be to defog the inner ring first. It you see a potential great location on the outer ring while exploring the inner ring, I would check it out. If you're not sure what to do, nothing says you can't stop and upload a screen shot for input.

Mitchum said:

To deal with the growing to 6 pop issue, I did one of two things. One was to switch a citizen from the Corn to a cottage to slow growth. The other was to start working a settler for one turn before growing to 6 pops. Then I switched back to whatever I was building before that (e.g. WB) so I would grow to 6. On the next turn after growing to 6 pops and +1/+1, I 3 pop whipped the settler. In doing this, the / never really impact the output of your city and that 6th pop comes just in time for the 3 pop whip.

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Maybe I am wrong, so correct me if I am, but we want to 3-pop-whip each Settler such that it gains maximum overflow Hammers, right? From my prior testing, that usually meant spending roughly 5 turns building the Settler, so that it was "one turn away" from being a 2-pop-whip while still being a 3-pop-whip.

So, if that is our approach (maximizing whipping overflow Hammers), then I may need to spend several turns at Size 5 in order to maximize the value of building our Settler.


Now, the interesting thing of note is that while building a Settler or a Worker, Unhappy people come out to be "net neutral" in terms of Hammers converted from Food. You actually "get" 2 extra Food (the Food consumption cost of each Unhappy population point) for each Unhappy person in the City, but you only get this Food while building a Worker or a Settler.

So, as long as City Maintenance and Civic Maintenance Costs are equal at the two different City Sizes (say, City Size 5 and City Size 6), then the Unhappy people will have zero effect on Settler production.

It is the Unhealthiness that affects us... but once we net our Fish and/or Crab, we'll gain +1 Healthiness each. So, later in the game, when Health is less of an issue but whipping Unhappiness is still an issue, we may not really "care" whether, in a case like this one, we were to start building the Settler at City Size 5 or if we were to first grow to City Size 6 and then immediately start building a Settler so that we wouldn't "lose" the 2 Food per turn for having an Unhappy person.


What this stuff has made me realize is that when I replied to LC's comment above, I had been doing a 2-pop-whip of the Settler at City Size 5... in reality, we will grow to City Size 6 with roughtly a half-filled Food box, so it will take a few turns to grow back to City Size 4 from City Size 3.

Still, it will be more efficient Food-wise if we 3-pop-whip and take a few turns to regrow to City Size 4 compared to 2-pop-whipping at City Size 5.

If you're not sure what to do, nothing says you can't stop and upload a screen shot for input.

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A great point! It's often easy to feel the pressure of completely playing out a PPP that "everyone has already decided upon" and thus it is easy to forget that the team is there if you want to ask for help.

I'm supposed to stop play at least once during my turnset, so who is to say that I can't do so multiple times?

Regarding when to 3-pop whip a settler, I think we do it as soon as we have a location identified, a galley available and a work boat to net any seafood near that city. I wouldn't delay settling a city for 5 turns just to maximize overflow. I'd rather settle the city 5 turns sooner. Plus, the city is stagnant while building the settler, so I'd prefer to whip sooner rather than later so that we can start re-growing sooner. All of this depends on whip unhappiness as well, so it's not always straight forward.

With that said, if we did want to maximize hammer overflow, a settler costs 135 hammers. 2 pops whipped = 90 hammers. So, we want to whip before we have 149 - 90 = 59 hammers into a settler. That should only be 4 turns with 5 pops working 2 clams, corn and 2 mines (depending on overflow), right?

In any event, I still think getting a city founded sooner is more important that trying to maximize overflow with settlers.

EDIT: I think maximizing whip overflow is a good guideline, but I don't think it's a hard and fast rule. Overflow is one consideration among many.

Mitchum said:

That should only be 4 turns with 5 pops working 2 clams, corn and 2 mines (depending on overflow), right?

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Yeah, I'll have to play around to get it right... "5 turns" was an estimate.

In any event, I still think getting a city founded sooner is more important that trying to maximize overflow with settlers.

EDIT: I think maximizing whip overflow is a good guideline, but I don't think it's a hard and fast rule. Overflow is one consideration among many.

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Indeed... and I'll have to see if fast-whipping the Settler followed by immediately whipping a Galley makes sense, or if we're better off using the Forest Chop + whip overflow to complete the Galley.