SGOTM 15 - One Short Straw

Not great:

Thoughts?

Not great, but not terrible, either.

Compare it with settling 1E of the starting location: only 1 workable Resource instead of 3 workable Resources, but 2 of those 3 Resources would not provide us with any Food.

It does look like there is another Grassland Hills square NW + W of the Stone, so it's quite likely that the two positions are reasonably balanced.

It's not to unbelievable to think that one location has Copper and the other has Horse, particularly if we think that all 3 Cultural Victory Resources are nearby.

Three Grassland Hills plus our City Centre = 12 base Hammers, which is about the minimum that you want for each of your Legendary Cities in a Cultural Victory game. It's not perfect, but it's good enough to be a Legendary City, should we go down the Cultural Victory path.

If we're lucky, that'll be a Plains Cow 2W of the Stone (it looks kind of Plains-like from your screenshot).

Maybe 1 Flood Plains Farm, 2 Grassland River Farms, and the rest Cottages and we've got ourselves a decent Legendary-to-be City.

The only real downside is that if we need to settle Marble City a bit further away from the Corn, it might not get a Fresh Water boost, since that River ends. Then again, there might be more Fresh Water to the south or east of there, or perhaps a Food Resource to the west of there that still lets us settle on the River that the Warrior is next to.


So, yeah, it's not an amazing capital location but it will be "good enough."

It's fine as a capital, but marble's not looking very good as a second city if there's no more food. I think we should just roll the turn and move the warrior 1S or 1SE, and settle on the stone. I'll wait for people to weigh in, though, and only play tmr morning.

We'll still want to move the Warrior again before settling... that Forest 2S of the Warrior makes it harder to see things... for example, if the Warrior goes 1SW, that Forest will block the view to the east. Going 1S with the Warrior will probably be the better move in terms of helping us see the Marble City's fat cross.

EDIT: I didn't look at moving 1SE, but that could work, too.

I guess it depends... I'm thinking that based on Stone City's fat cross, we're more likely to have a Food Resource appear if we move the Warrior 1S than if we move it 1SE, since, if the starts mirror each other, any Food that exists probably would not be visible from the Marble square itself, just like it wasn't from the Stone square. That's all pretty speculative, though, rather than scientific.

babybluepants said:

It's fine as a capital, but marble's not looking very good as a second city if there's no more food. I think we should just roll the turn and move the warrior 1S or 1SE, and settle on the stone. I'll wait for people to weigh in, though, and only play tmr morning.

Click to expand...

I think I prefer S, in case there's no more food in the capital and we just want to explore.

Well, I screwed it up. I meant to mention the obvious difference between marble and stone, but it slipped my mind yesterday: the river hill. That's what makes worker first good, if not better than settler first. Now if we go worker first, it costs us a turn and a half on research.

Of course, we didn't know if stone would also have a river hill (and there's a minimal chance it does), but you have to play on what you see.

That's water over the dam now. To me the question is do we explore to the east for a couple more turns before going west or not?

ZPV: The question about AI research was not whether we had time to finish agri first, but whether we had time to delay poly till we settle Bombay on T20.

LowtherCastle said:

ZPV: The question about AI research was not whether we had time to finish agri first, but whether we had time to delay poly till we settle Bombay on T20.

Click to expand...

Well, still no. They are a little less likely to pursue Myst->Poly off the bat, but they'll still do it too quickly if they do.

LowtherCastle said:

That's water over the dam now. To me the question is do we explore to the east for a couple more turns before going west or not?

Click to expand...

Will we be able to do any useful exploration with our fast worker, if we build that first?
At the very least it can move onto a hill, and then back into our territory.

ZPV said:

Will we be able to do any useful exploration with our fast worker, if we build that first?
At the very least it can move onto a hill, and then back into our territory.

Click to expand...

If there is a Hills square adjacent to our Cultural Borders, won't our Cultural Borders already "explore" that square and whatever can be seen from that square automatically?

I'm not sure about on the diagonals, but other squares should get auto-explored by our expanding Cultural Borders.


Well, as far as the Grassland Hills square goes, we'll just have to roll with the punches.

Marble has 5 (visible) Grassland River squares (just counting flat Grassland squares) and with the River ending, we can't count on there being a second River there.

Stone has 8 (visible) Grassland River squares.


Don't forget about our suspicion being that Stone City will be more centralized; if that turns out to be true, then we'll be saving far more than 1 Commerce worth of Maintenance for a good amount of the game (just not at the very beginning).


Again, if Marble turns out to be an awesome location (such as our Warrior revealing some actual Food Resources), we can always build a Settler... and nothing says that it would be the END OF THE WORLD if we started on a Worker for 1 or 2 turns and then switched to building a Settler first, if you see where I'm going here... i.e. we probably should aim to reveal Marble's fat cross and the area immediately around it, in search of Food Resources, as effectively as possible.

If it turns out that Marble City or a City settled really close to there could be pretty solid, then we can still get Settler-first after a couple of turns in delay building a Worker without much harm done.

Or, we could just stick with Worker-first by completing the Worker and aim to settle a second City down there within a reasonable time frame.


Marble City would have been up by 2 Worker moves (Farming a Grassland River square to and from going to the Corn), but again this difference is relatively minor in the grand scheme of things.

Trust me, it's nothing like missing the Silver Resource in SGOTM 11 and feeling like you let the whole team down and also feeling that you're behind the eight ball the entire game to try and make up for it. We're fine.

We had our reasons, we used those to choose, and ultimately, as long as the two positions are relatively balanced, it won't matter that much... and whatever we do miss out on can come with our second City.

It seems we are safe to just end-turn now and learn a bit more demographic info, then we can discuss what moves to make on T1. Or is there anything else we can learn this turn?

BBP, could we get a screenshot of the interesting pages - demographics / religion / whatever. (I'm assuming not everyone has opened the save for themselves)

Magnusmarcus, you there? Don't worry about the high volume of posts ...

beestar said:

Magnusmarcus, you there? Don't worry about the high volume of posts ...

Click to expand...

Or the -ahem Dhoomstriker- intimidating length.

It's bad about the river GH, but there's not much to do about that.
I'll roll the turn and move the warrior 1S.

I've got a couple of screenshots what different moves (SW, S, and SE) might look like... hang on a sec while I upload them.

I drew the white lines to indicate what we already see, but tried not to draw the white lines at the edges of the squares, so as not to mess up the view in the fog.

Assuming that the Hills and Forests are roughly correct, then we will see:
3 squares of Marble's fat cross, including 1 square that is not visible from the Marble itself
9 other squares
12 total


6 squares of Marble's fat cross, including 1 square that is not visible from the Marble itself
4 other squares
10 total


7 squares of Marble's fat cross
1 other square
8 total


Slightly altered test saved game:
Test OSS SG15 BC-4000h.CivBeyondSwordSave

Sure.

Edit: so SE reveals 1 extra tile. I knew that already, but I think it doesn't really matter. We can't reveal the entire BFC for a few turns either way. I'll go with whatever the team wants. Have to run out for an hour soon, so maybe later today.

Edit2: What do the white lines represent?

I updated the images and the text slightly.
SW and S both show us 1 extra square in Marble City's fat cross that we wouldn't have seen had we moved the Settler to the Marble (i.e. 1 square in the blind spot).

SW shows us the most squares in total and might be good for trying to spot another Food Resource that is outside of Marble's fat cross but can be partnered with the Marble.

SE shows us the most squares in Marble City's fat cross by 1 square, but shows us the least amount of total squares and doesn't reveal anything that we wouldn't have seen had we moved the Settler there.

S gives us a good balance of the two above options.


I would tend to say:
Move S if we think that we'd probably want to settle on top of the Marble should a Food Resource appear SW + W of the Marble; but otherwise, if we'd probably be willing to settle not on top of the Marble with the hopes of getting more Food by settling further, then go SW, so as to see more of said land for determining if we might want to go for Settler-first for a not-settled-on-the-Marble City.

So, given that the land doesn't look Resource rich, we probably won't settle on top of the Marble, so my vote is for SW, but I'd be okay with S, too.

Without the production of settling on the marble, there's no point in going settler-first. A worker to build mines, etc. just snowballs much faster.
So we should go S to look for food.

beestar said:

It seems we are safe to just end-turn now and learn a bit more demographic info, then we can discuss what moves to make on T1. Or is there anything else we can learn this turn?

BBP, could we get a screenshot of the interesting pages - demographics / religion / whatever. (I'm assuming not everyone has opened the save for themselves)

Magnusmarcus, you there? Don't worry about the high volume of posts ...

Click to expand...

I'm here. Just soaking it all in.

ZPV said:

Without the production of settling on the marble, there's no point in going settler-first. A worker to build mines, etc. just snowballs much faster.
So we should go S to look for food.

Click to expand...

Oh? Is that because Settler-first is weaker if we don't get a ton of early production in City 2?

In that case, sure, go S.


It was my understanding that Settler-first was stronger more because that we could build a Settler relatively quickly on the first rock that we settled while being forced to tech a non-Worker tech; I didn't think that the advantage was also so heavily tied to also having to settle on top of the second rock. If I'm wrong in that Settler-first is only good with settling on the second rock, then we have no real choice but to go S.

ZPV said:

Without the production of settling on the marble, there's no point in going settler-first. A worker to build mines, etc. just snowballs much faster.
So we should go S to look for food.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure I understand your S. Going to the Marble tile reveals 7 of the 8 remaining BFC tiles. Going S from where teh work is reveals 6 of 8, right?

I think we should just go SE to the marble, then go a bit further E and SE then loop around to the SW so that the time animals spawn we're back to the hill/forest region.