Sandkasten

@Snaaty,
Teching OR for a more effective second city chop/whip is quite clever. I tried it once though, and couldn't complete the research in good time. Ended up with a t54 forge, for t71 GE again. Will try again later... Are you building second worker / settler at size 3 or 4? In which order?

bbp, I had wondered about how effective going the OR route was, but wondered if we could complete the tech in time. With the gems, possibly.

I'm about halfway done through my first test (tried experimenting with a fast worker to start, then a second fast worker at size 2), and I'll have one of Niklas's spreadsheets saved and displayed later tonight.

babybluepants said:

@Snaaty,
Teching OR for a more effective second city chop/whip is quite clever. I tried it once though, and couldn't complete the research in good time. Ended up with a t54 forge, for t71 GE again. Will try again later... Are you building second worker / settler at size 3 or 4? In which order?

Click to expand...

I used some tricks

1. Start 2. worker immediately when growing to 3
2. chop the forest 4 from capital into it, second worker r26
3 overflow into settler (1 turn)
4. farm the dye before mining the gems (3food2commerce-its not a big waste, cause both workers have to stop there 1 turn anyways, to save movements, so its just 3workerturns more)
5. r 27 stop settler, switch back to warrior, time growing to 4 with juggling dye and first gemmine (2 turns dye, 1 turn gemmine)
6. after growing to 4 work both gemmines and switch back to settler
7. chop 1 forest into settler, road towards city 2
8. farm cows for city 2 immediately when you can
9. mine the grasshill for capital immediately when you can
10. only then start chopping oracle

its all a very tight fitting, but worked out for me

Alright. My answere for quick speeds is to go for Med instead of Poly. Poly takes an extra 2 turns. That's 2 turns longer to BW, which is 2 turns longer to chops, which is 2 turns longer from..... etc.. etc.

I also do NOT improve our food plots. I keep working the gem as soon as it's running and I never bother trying to grow the cap above 1. I chop a second worker asap and then settler, and then start to pre-chop forge, while chopping oracle with the other worker. Then when oracle is in I do the 1-chop drops in the forge city, while finishing off with a whip for 30 hammers.

It would be most optimal if you could grow to pop #3 in the forge city, then you could run the engineer while still working a plot to grow. Otherwise, city stags at pop 1 until we are done with the engineer.

I will try to get a third version up of our map, later on today.

Anyhow, going Med first saves us 2 turns, but then we have to burn off 5 turns later to get Poly for other wonders. On the other hand, since both Med and Poly has their uses for religious buildings, maybe it isn't such a big deal?

obsolete said:

One issue I'm not sure on in the current release. If you switch into a religion, does that speed up spread chances?

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Missed this before. No, spread chance is not at all affected by state religion (except for Theo that stops non-state spread of course).

Alright I don't know what the hell is going on with the world editor.

Can someone tell me why the hell Stalin keeps showing up on the score-board in 4000 BC?

I also would like to know how you change AI leaders in World Builder if that's possible.

@obsolete: Learn to love the WB saves - they're just text files! You can change the AI leaders there, by using a simple text editor, it's pretty straight-forward. There's also stuff in there for who you have contact with at the start (you can change that in WB itself as well but it's far more messy).

I played around a bit with my spreadsheet. Got Settler out on T29 and then Oracle on T48 for MC, but I'm sure there are better attempts out there already. Mine had only 1 worker and the second city was hardly in a position to get a quick forge up, despite being founded T32.

WB saves here are useless, because every time I try to load a saved WB for this map it just crashes. Maybe it has to do with the way things were very weird from the start with invisible sheep and things.

bottleneck here isnt the oracle, neither are the 2 turns of getting medi earlier then poly, neither is getting 2 workers out, problem is getting city 2 up to be able to get the forge in time (cost me 6 turns to wait for city 2 to grow to 4):

getting MONO and org reli would make it possible, to get a pop 1 whip when chopping only 3 forest and getting 10 hammers (should be doable in 2 turns per 5 hammers), so in theory it should be able to get the forge in turn 50, IF you find a better spot for second city then in my test (either more food or more prod + wood)

times and dates to beat:
oracle t47 pop 5 in capital
forge whip in turn 52 at size 4, down to size 2(gi in 53 but city still growing with +2 food)

@obs:
i refuse to see how not growing the capital can be better then going the MONO path and saving hammers on the forge for city 2... ...but since i know your special, i accept the possibility that you might really be able to do it and beat the dates above... ...(somehow)

besides that, i really think we should go for agri-bronze first, due to the facts mentioned in the warfarethingy thread... ...your fault by starting it obs

Alright, I fixed that ******ed problem. Turns out it's due to a memory-leak inside the damn world-builder itself. With Firaxis involved, why is it I am not surprised!?

Here is the official 3'rd map. I added a stone a little off to the west, if someone wants to get fancy with that GW discussion. I also added a marble hill that is exactly 10 tiles away to the west from our start location.

Mini-bonuses to who can get a warrior on top of that marker FIRST, and extra points for more scout warriors. Though one could CHEAT a little by making the second city quite more vulnerable, so I wouldn't look at the data too solidly there.

Also, remember some sort of bonus for sea-side tiles since this allows the city collossus if we cant. But since there isn't that much land here, I guess it doesn't really matter!

Well now I realize we should agree on settlement rules. Each time I play I keep trying to move our second starting city farther and farther away. This makes a big difference.

I will for now try to use the same spot you used last, so we are on the same spec-list here.

----

Update:

Well it seems your spot does slow things down by a few turns. This is because there are more trees out in the West/North to chop, which also leaves more trees you can chop for the capital. But to be conservative, I guess we can keep with your spot because we never know how bad terrain issues will be in the original map.

I did a test run, without growing the capital past pop 1 (except for very end). I decided to go bronzeworking first to see how that would go.

I also only got the Engineer up on T-53, and I had the oracle built at 2040BC.

Well I gave it a shot. It's probably not as good as the rest of your saves, but I'll put it up for consideration.

My tech: Agriculture - Meditation - Bronze Working - Priesthood - Wheel - Pottery

Oracle complete turn 44 (2240 BC). Had to whip Delhi for 2 pop on turn 43 (switched anarchy free to slavery). Second city founded turn 39. Which is bad since it would have to grow in order to complete a forge.

The key here is for me to see how fast we can get the second city up with a forge and an engineer. I assume this means we want a city 3 tiles away from our capital, 4 max. I need to check your other saves.

I'm starting to do some test runs with Snaaty's Mono idea. Slowly I'm narrowing down the time limit but it's still taking too long.

I would be much, much, more favourable for this line if there was a missionary that came with mono I could see a lot of advantage in that.

---

Well damnit, I did a few sample runs. Then I went back to no mono, and instead went Med first to at lest ensure religion. Best I did was get MC at T47, and engineer at T53. Not really an improvement over Snaat's Mono.

I guess I can try dropping med as first-tech again... then see what improvement I may get.

Snaaty said:

times and dates to beat:
oracle t47 pop 5 in capital
forge whip in turn 52 at size 4, down to size 2(gi in 53 but city still growing with +2 food)

Click to expand...

Can't seem to beat that.

Snaaty said:

i really think we should go for agri-bronze first, due to the facts mentioned in the warfarethingy thread... ...your fault by starting it obs

Click to expand...

I agree with this.

I'm not so sure how Snaaty got Monoethiesm so fast. I did have an idea for a second trick, going Hindu for the capital, and then found Jewdiasm in the sister-city. We can then abuse spiritual by swapping one religion to the other so we get a 25% bonus on oracle, then switch it for the forge city. It also means we don't have waste effort building a useless obelisk in our second city.

Unfortunately, this takes extra time

obsolete said:

I'm not so sure how Snaaty got Monoethiesm so fast. I did have an idea for a second trick, going Hindu for the capital, and then found Jewdiasm in the sister-city. We can then abuse spiritual by swapping one religion to the other so we get a 25% bonus on oracle, then switch it for the forge city. It also means we don't have waste effort building a useless obelisk in our second city.

Unfortunately, this takes extra time

Click to expand...

grow capital superquick to work both gemmines ASAP
use trick and irrigate dye BEFORE starting on first gemmine (you gain 1 turn on growing, from 3-4, so you get the lost gemmine-turn back and you gain the dye for 2 turns (4gold)... ...road to city 2 to gain traderoute ASAP... ...each bit counts
juggle worker/settler builds to take max. overflow and whips and finish them superquick (cant grow while building them)

something else:
going agri-bronze has a second BIG advantage:
we will very likely SEE which reli Pacal will pick... ...he picks medi, great, we get poly... ...he picks poly... ...even better, we can sneak towards the oracle

save attached to check log and such for details, mono we get turn 50... ...so IF we manage to coordinate workers a tiny little bit better an can whip a 3rd forest into 2. city... ...we can get pyramids earlier...

I wanted to see how viable it was to research the religion tech first, so I started with Meditation->Agriculture->Bronze Working->Priesthood->The Wheel->Pottery->Masonry

I worked mined gems until farmed rice was available.

Ended up getting Oracle on T50, but I could have whipped it sooner, but I mismanaged my micro a little bit and had not completed Pottery. That left plenty of time to build grassland farms, plains hill mine and prechop in city #2.

Milestones:

T10: Buddhism founded
T35: Settler built (with some chops), Oracle started
T50: Oracle completed, Metal Casting claimed
T55: Forge built, Engineer assigned
T72: Great Engineer born.

Someone can probably do better than I did. Anyone think religion first is a good idea?

The reports seem very promising - but I want details!! Turn by turn accounts for what tiles you work, what the workers do, what you're reseaching and building. Without that, it's hopeless to try to improve on what you guys do, let alone understand it!

Snaaty, your log apparently is all in French.

I will try a new angle of attack again later on today to see what happens. Anyhow, once we start the real game, the terrain will be different and of course much of our optimization will most likely go right out the window.

Grrr.

Niklas said:

The reports seem very promising - but I want details!! Turn by turn accounts for what tiles you work, what the workers do, what you're reseaching and building. Without that, it's hopeless to try to improve on what you guys do, let alone understand it!

Click to expand...

i try to copy here what i have:

agri-BRONZE-WHEEL-poly-priest-pottery-masonry-mono

faster bronze helped me chopping 2. worker (1 chop, 4 from capital)

build in capital: worker, warrior, warrior (grow to 3), switch to worker2, chop goes in worker, put overflow in settler (1 turn)

worker aktions are: improve rice9 improve rice8, chop4, irrigate dye41
worker 2 (r26) irrigate dye 41

both workers:
mine gems 21, mine gems 22, road 4

capital switches back to warrior to grow to 4 after putting overflow into settler (use irrigated dye to save 1 turn=dont work mined gems for 1 turn), restart settler at 4

worker 1:
chop 7, r (1turn) 41 dye - finishes road

worker 2:
r (1turn), 41 (dye), then r 411 (where city 2 goes, so it can be founded same turn as settler is finshed

r36-settler finishes and builds city2

both workers:
farm on cows 8from city 2

1 worker mines hill 89
capital growth to 5, works new hill

then both workers chop 3 forest in total for capital, oracle finishes turn 47

then both workers start to chop forests near city 2 (city 2 works max. growth tiles, irrigated cow and irrigated dye) - here maybe can be saved a turn, cause i havent moved my workers ideal (with preabuilding roads and such)... ...maybe during running around with workers from capital to city 2 and back also...

r51 mono in city 2 relifounded-switch OR + 2 forests chopped

r52 chops + whip in city 2

r53 - run gi

...

hope this helps... ...im not that keen on mming... ...so more than digging in the sankasten you wont see from me... ...spreadsheets ugh