The West Tower

Indiansmoke said:

We stop at size 3 working the 2 corn and the gems and use 2 chops for the settler. That is the point of Agri/BW. Growing without working premium resource tiles is not worth it this early.

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Turn 22 then. That's when the Agri/BW strat hits size 3.

I get the sense that we are all pretty good with numbers here. So I'm not going to bother revising to show the difference if you stagnate at 3. The numbers are the same - just what you do with them are different.

I initially had some problems in opening the spread sheet, but now that I've seen the data I concur with Sir Ash's numbers. A bit changed simulation showed that quite conviniently population would hit 3 exactly the same turn when we would have our gem mine ready (assuming improvement order: soutehrn corn, gems). Also conviniently, if we go from hilltop down to the forest, we can start chopping exactly the same turn we get BW (tech order Agriculture, BW). After the first chop though there would be 4 turns left until the settler (if it was changed immediately when we hit 3 population) and 3 turns when we could start chopping. Thus, the second chop would not hasten the production of the settler at all. In my humble opinion after the first chop we should move to upgrade the second corn.

Aivoturso said:

I initially had some problems in opening the spread sheet.

Click to expand...

Anything I can do to fix it / make it easier? I purposefully saved it in an older version of Excel for maximum compatability but I'm happy to make changes to make it easier.

Cheers.

Nah. I just got an 404 error for an hour or so. I don't know why, but when I got the file to download, it openend just fine. Sorry for not being clear.

ash88 said:

Turn 22 then. That's when the Agri/BW strat hits size 3.

I get the sense that we are all pretty good with numbers here. So I'm not going to bother revising to show the difference if you stagnate at 3. The numbers are the same - just what you do with them are different.

Click to expand...

I am not saying to grow straight to size 3. I am saying worker/warriors to size 2/another worker/warrior to size 3/settler.

First worker improves corn first, then gems, then second corn then both workers chop settler.

The logic is that it is optimal to work only improved tiles than to grow to unimproved.

Indiansmoke said:

I am not saying to grow straight to size 3. I am saying worker/warriors to size 2/another worker/warrior to size 3/settler.

First worker improves corn first, then gems, then second corn then both workers chop settler.

The logic is that it is optimal to work only improved tiles than to grow to unimproved.

Click to expand...

This would be easier to explain/discuss over a conversation. I'm not sure whether there is even a disagreement in our two points tbh.

I agree that working unimproved tiles isn't the best use of the cities resources, however, for the purposes of the simulation it showed the optimum growth and workage. If one chose to not work the best tiles available on any given turn (regardless of whether they were improved) then inevitably the simulation would show a much lower score.

We could, for example, start and stop any strategy on any number of worked tiles. By showing the optimum worked tiles for all strategies we show a baseline for comparison. Yes, any strategy could produce less then this baseline, but that wouldn't be a fair comparison (we could work no tiles - have a bunch of citizens all producing 1 hammer - but that wouldn't be a fair comparison).

It should be noted that at no time during the Meditation/Mine strategy, aside from the begining turns before a Worker builds the first improvement, is a tile being worked that isn't improved.

As the Agriculture/Farm strategy grows much quicker there are some turns when tiles are worked that are not improved. We could potentially stagnate growth during these turns by building another worker - but keep in mind that in the Agriculture/Farm strategy only 6 tiles are inevitably going to be worked. Any stagnation detracts from the overall effectiveness of the growth strategy.

Contrary to how I am presenting this I am not all pro Meditation/Mine strategy. I just think it has a lot of merit. If the King goes Agriculture/Farm it really doesn't make much of a difference to me. This conversation and the journey to that decision has been its own reward.

I've provided the tools needed to check it all out. By all means play the turns and see for yourself. By turn 35 the Meditation/Mine strategy does not put us way behind. In fact it puts us on par with a religion in our back pocket. See the spreadsheet above.

If in the middle of that strategy you want to build a worker, or a settler, or what-have-you of course it is going to change the strategy, but it would change either strategy. The point is that both strategies would be equally affected.

That's all I'm saying really. Meditation/Mine brings you to almost the same place as Agriculture/Farm but with a religion.

I support Agriculture > BW, with worker/warrior at size 2, same at size 3, then chop settler with BW. I bet you we can still pick up a religion after this, especially if we're the only race with mysticism

If there is another civ with mysticism out there, I'd take a conservative route and not get into a race for an early religion, There will be options to acquire one down the line.

DaveMcW said:

Mavericks: Gandhi
AMAZON: Cyrus
Sirius: Willem van Oranje
CDZ: Ragnar
Merlot: Pacal II
Quatronia: Hannibal

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If we go worker first we'll grow faster and so on ... typical CFC pitboss multiplayer play. And 2 of the other five start with a scout.

Test save

Mavericks: Gandhi
AMAZON: Cyrus
Sirius: Willem van Oranje
CDZ: Ragnar
Merlot: Pacal II
Quatronia: Hannibal

Click to expand...

Oh this is awesome - I didn't realize we would get this. Most of that is reasonable except Ghandi? I don't get it. I have never played or seen Ghandi played multi player and I don't know what to expect. Would Ghandi need to found a couple religions in order to be viable?

I'm also surprised that Monty, Hauyna Capac, and Victoria - none of them make appearances on this list! This is going to be an interesting game

The Dutch in particular are a great choice imho. I have played them many times and the early game culture bonus without needing to waste hammers on Monuments has always been a winner for me. I have admittedly never really used their UU to its full ability but have always found it interesting that it can enter enemy space as a transport unit.

Cyrus is just all around dangerous.

slaze said:

If we go worker first we'll grow faster and so on ... typical CFC pitboss multiplayer play. And 2 of the other five start with a scout.

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I agree with Sir Slaze. Regardless of what we research (Agriculture, Meditation, Fishing) I can't think of any other initial build then Worker first.

Aivoturso said:

For comparing plans I would recommend using a start with no AIs (or all tucked safely behind an ocean). Otherwise we may misjudge the research speed due to known civilization having the tech bonus.

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I figured that the AIs were easy enough to take out if you wanted to. That aside though - help cure my ignorance - what is this about civilizations having a tech bonus? Is this something I am missing? What civilizations have what tech bonus?

Thank's to slaze's attachment*** , I was able to play around with a few scenarios.

First of all, our wise King (and the rest of you for that matter! ) is absolutely correct: Fishing is not the way to start the game.

I will say for now that I played slaze's savethrough turn 37 and ended up with Bronze Working (Turn 15), Agriculture (T21), the Wheel (T25), Pottery (T32) and Hunting (T37).

I ended up with 2 workers, 1 Settler (T37, but this could be tweaked, I believe. Most of of the Settler was built at Size 2), and 3.6 Warriors.

A road net was completed to the Gems and the northern Corn, but could theoretically allow us to road net to our 2nd city location instead. All three resources (not the Wines, natch) were improved, with a Cottage on the way in T39.

By going with a worker first, I moved to the Gems first (T16 complete), then over to our southernmost Forest to chop our second worker (1st built Warrior in the interim). Our worker was ready to farm the Corn on the same turn we discovered Agriculture. Our second worker went north to chop the tail end of 2nd built Warrior (with 90+ % overflow going to Settler) then proceeded to farm northern corn. Southern worker moved 2NE to chop eastern forest. Switched to temporary Warrior build to grow city to Size 3. Finished Settler. Workers built road net and started Cottage.

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So there is merit for starting Worker/BW.

We get to use the Gems quicker, and they also allow us to use the 25% worker benefit while supercharging our research and waiting for our food to grow. The tech cues up perfectly --- our workers hit their mark knowing exactly what to do. I'd just like to play the last 7-10 turns to see if there's a better play for making that Settler.

***though I will give props to ash88 for putting all the work into his file. It just didn't work for this old schooler.

ash88 said:

I figured that the AIs were easy enough to take out if you wanted to. That aside though - help cure my ignorance - what is this about civilizations having a tech bonus? Is this something I am missing? What civilizations have what tech bonus?

Click to expand...

Well it's all listed in a greater detail in the article I linked yesterday. The basic idea is that everyone gets bonus modifier to the beakers for researching any tech based on how many prequisite techs they have in their pocket and number of known other civilizations have the tech already.

For prerequisites this means having x1.2 modifier for having the necessary techs and 20 percent unit plus to that for each extra optional tech the civ has. In our current situation it means that we get x1.2 modifier (12 at the beginning) towards Meditation, Polytheism and BW and x1.4 towards Masonry (14 ).

The known civ bonus is an independent modifier and the exact formula you can see in the article. For us the modifier is (1 + 0.05*N) where N is number of know civilizations having the tech we are researching.

So turning of or enclosing off the other Civilizations eliminites a variable that will affect our research in the game, but would be different in the simulation than in the real situation.

On the other news I'll be sparsely available until next monday. It seems to me that mathematical background for our current situation is well estabilished now and I hope there will not be any extremely critical happening during my absentia. (Should we have an "Away" thread?)

Ghandi, Interesting... Well I'm 100% on the "not get in a race for a religion with ghandi" train now. I also noticed nobody is industrious, which could prove useful should we find stone/marble. I usually only build a few wonders in a game, but not having an industrious leader will help us plan out the few we might want to grab.

Donovan Zoi said:

Thank's to slaze's attachment*** , I was able to play around with a few scenarios.

First of all, our wise King (and the rest of you for that matter! ) is absolutely correct: Fishing is not the way to start the game.

I will say for now that I played slaze's savethrough turn 37 and ended up with Bronze Working (Turn 15), Agriculture (T21), the Wheel (T25), Pottery (T32) and Hunting (T37).

I ended up with 2 workers, 1 Settler (T37, but this could be tweaked, I believe. Most of of the Settler was built at Size 2), and 3.6 Warriors.

A road net was completed to the Gems and the northern Corn, but could theoretically allow us to road net to our 2nd city location instead. All three resources (not the Wines, natch) were improved, with a Cottage on the way in T39.

By going with a worker first, I moved to the Gems first (T16 complete), then over to our southernmost Forest to chop our second worker (1st built Warrior in the interim). Our worker was ready to farm the Corn on the same turn we discovered Agriculture. Our second worker went north to chop the tail end of 2nd built Warrior (with 90+ % overflow going to Settler) then proceeded to farm northern corn. Southern worker moved 2NE to chop eastern forest. Switched to temporary Warrior build to grow city to Size 3. Finished Settler. Workers built road net and started Cottage.

------

So there is merit for starting Worker/BW.

We get to use the Gems quicker, and they also allow us to use the 25% worker benefit while supercharging our research and waiting for our food to grow. The tech cues up perfectly --- our workers hit their mark knowing exactly what to do. I'd just like to play the last 7-10 turns to see if there's a better play for making that Settler.

***though I will give props to ash88 for putting all the work into his file. It just didn't work for this old schooler.

Click to expand...

Try agriculture and improving the corn first then gems and another worker at size 2. I am sure you will see it is in the end better than gems first.

ash88 said:

Oh this is awesome - I didn't realize we would get this. Most of that is reasonable except Ghandi? I don't get it. I have never played or seen Ghandi played multi player and I don't know what to expect. Would Ghandi need to found a couple religions in order to be viable?

I'm also surprised that Monty, Hauyna Capac, and Victoria - none of them make appearances on this list! This is going to be an interesting game

The Dutch in particular are a great choice imho. I have played them many times and the early game culture bonus without needing to waste hammers on Monuments has always been a winner for me. I have admittedly never really used their UU to its full ability but have always found it interesting that it can enter enemy space as a transport unit.

Cyrus is just all around dangerous.

Click to expand...

The dutch are a favorite civ of mine as well, nice starting techs, cultural is nice and their UB is propably the best in the game under certain circumstances.

Ghandi is a weird choice indeed, but he has the best UU in the game nonetheless.

Charismatic is very weak trait IMO the weakest after protective, so both hanibal and cyrus are weak choices...but...can prove handy in situations with real shortage of hapiness resources, which fortunatelly does not seem the case here.

Ragnar is a surprise choice as well...as he is the only leader in the game without some economic/developement unit or building discount.

Indiansmoke said:

Try agriculture and improving the corn first then gems and another worker at size 2. I am sure you will see it is in the end better than gems first.

Click to expand...

OK, I ran both sims, and it looks like Agri first edges out BW first by a slight margin.

Settler: Turn 34 for Agri, Turn 36 for BW
5 techs discovered: T38 for Agri, T37 for BW
Size 3: T23 for Agri, T30 for BW
Resources: Resources developed more quickly under BW, resulting in better road net, more fluid worker movement, less jumping around. But not enough to overshadow other factors.

Obviously, the early Settler trumps the extra turn of research. Capital is also closer to Size 4 on T37 under the Agri plan.

So, after much stonewalling, I have finally joined the party and concur that our official first moves should be:

Turn 0
Build in place
Begin research on Agriculture (9 turns)
Begin Worker build (12 turns)
Work either Forest

Turn 5
Borders expand
Switch to Plains Forest to gain extra shield + bonus (Worker in 6; 11 total)

Turn 9
Begin research on Bronze Working (15 turns)


This opening proposal gives us 9 turns to fully optimize our next 27 turns to the letter, although it seems like we have a pretty solid idea how we are to proceed here. We would still need to discuss turn-by-turn moves for our roving band of Warriors.

Does the King accept this opening plan?

I am also doing sims - have much more to do, though thankfully with one decided opening, say ag and worker first, we would have until the completion of that worker to put a plan into effect.

But my sims are generally getting a settler much earlier (though have more to explore with corn>gems for worker improvement, which is likely our path). But anyway, here are first draft results.

worker first, corn>corn>gems, worker at size 3 - settler done for turn 32
worker first, 2nd worker at pop 2, settler at pop 3 - settler done for turn 31.
one worker, whip settler pop 3->2 - settler done for turn 30
one worker, whip settler pop 4->2 - settler done for turn 30
one worker, whip settler pop 2->1 - settler done for turn 29

I still want to run alot more simulations but my general instinct thinks that the corn and spacing to reach them (6 and 8 worker turns if done consecutively) leaves us growing too fast and working undeveloped tiles. It feels like 2nd worker at pop 2 while improving gems after first corn is most efficient. In the above 2nd worker option I believe I did both corns first so the setller would be delayed a turn or two but that second worker would most likely get us to a quicker 3rd city etc.

But surrounding countryside should infuence our ultimate decision.

If it happens that an overlapping 2nd city (specifically to the south sharing a corn and gems) becomes an attractive option, then one of the whip scenarios looks good at the new city and capitol (whipped to size 2) have the worker caught up well with improving tiles with 2nd farm completed roughly at founding of 2nd city.

My sim for the snaaty play (grow to max pop and begin settlers, a very strong play) completes settler at turn 37 but with only three developed tiles. (although snaaty says 2nd worker comes before 1st settler.

Sorry for all the above gibberish if it comes off hard to follow, I will research some more and come up with a more decisive recommendation. For for the time being I agree with donovan that AG and a worker is the way to go. But soon after we have to make choices as the corns differ by 1 worker move in their closeness to the gems.

My five sims also don't account for turns of worked gems, also very important

Those maths are way beyond me. But I am glad our team are doing them.

slaze said:

My five sims also don't account for turns of worked gems, also very important

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How was your tech during your sims? The good thing about Mining the Gems second is that it stunts growth slightly while adding a significant boost to tech research. It also provides the same amount of hammers to worker production as the unfarmed Corn.