The West Tower

This will be the home of our Imperial Strategist and our Imperial Mathematician. This is where all Merlot long and short term strategy will be crafted. The discussion here will be moderated by the Imperial strategist and the King himself.

All the people of Merlot are encouraged to participate here with ideas and suggestions.

Your Imperial Majesty, fellow nobles of the court;

May I be the first to congratulate Sir Donovan Zoi to the post of Imperial Strategist and Sir Aivoturso to the post of Imperial Mathematician.

Your humble servant,

Hercules

Your Exalted Majesty, Lords of the Imperial Court,

I was going to stand before you to give a gracious (and somewhat long-winded) speech expressing my gratitude to His Magnificence Lord Indiansmoke for granting me generous quarters here in the West Tower, and entrusting me as a humble advisor on strategic matters of our mighty empire.

Yet it appears our work is about to begin......

I present to you, good noblemen, the lay of our land!

DaveMcW said:

The sun rises on the year 4000 BC. Since time immemorial, the Merlot people have lived a nomadic life. After years of wandering, they are ready to settle down and found your first city.

Pacal II, your people have vested absolute power in you, trusting that you can build a Civilization to stand the test of time!

Click to expand...

Where Do We Settle?

At first glance, I can't think of a reason we should settle anywhere but where we currently stand. This location gives us:

- Two luxuries, Gems and Wine, the latter of which may inspire us to hastily dash toward our beloved Monarchy tech.

- Two 5-food tiles, which will unfortunately be without irrigation for some time.

- Fresh Water (by lake), which should grant us an extra 2 health. (EDIT: Do we get the Fresh Water bonus if we settle on a hill? Enlighten me... )

- Stronger defense by settling on Hills.

- Four visible forest chops.

- Immediate access to coastline.


This location will not provide a solid foundation for a cottage economy, but our financial-bolstered coastline should allow us to dedicate early workers elsewhere after the Corn has been farmed, and later the Gems have been mined.

-----

Of course, these are just my initial thoughts looking at the attached photo and not diving too far into opening strategy. Please feel free to post your thoughts here, so that His Magnificence can be afforded the full spectrum of options available.

For the Glory of Merlot!

Graciously,
Donovan Zoi
Imperial Specialist of Merlot

PS I look forward to working closely with Sir Aivoturso in ensuring that we maximize our every move. I'd also like to thank my old friend Hercules90 for his heartfelt congratulations to us both.

I agree that we should settle in place.

I'm not sure either about the fresh water lake bonus on a hill, will have to double check. But regardless, it would be silly not to settle in place, unless our warrior move discovers something epic.

I think moving our Warrior 1W, then re-evaluating our options would be the best move, but heavily leaning towards settling in place.

So it has began

On first look this is not a good bureocracy capital as Sir Donovan mentioned. The position lacks river tiles and has only 5 grassland, 3 of which need to be farmed if we are to irrigate the corns.


On the bright side, it has 2 hammer start which will help alot early, it has gems to accelerate early tech, it has health bonus from lake and it has 2 corn that even not irrigated are still 10 food.


As Sir Tegvtec mentioned we need to move the warrior on the grassland hill 1W to see what is there before deciding to settle in place, maybe we are lucky and something good is there.


However we must be prepared for the settling in place scenario if nothing good is revealed. In that spirit Sir Donovan Zoi needs to provide alternative opening plans for settling in place, what we build, what we tech and what tiles we work. The expertiose of Sir Aivoturso will be also needed to mathematically back up the opening scenarios.

So please consider and evaluate worker first or warrior first by settling in place.

As huts are off, presumably some of the pressure for very early scouting is lessened? We need to explore to find good nearby land to settle, but there is not such pressure for an early hut-race.

Indiansmoke said:

So it has began

On first look this is not a good bureocracy capital as Sir Donovan mentioned. The position lacks river tiles and has only 5 grassland, 3 of which need to be farmed if we are to irrigate the corns.

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Since our opening city looks like it will be coastal, I would not object to moving our palace inland to a better Bureaucracy location if we find a suitable site.

Indiansmoke said:

As Sir Tegvtec mentioned we need to move the warrior on the grassland hill 1W to see what is there before deciding to settle in place, maybe we are lucky and something good is there.

Click to expand...

At the risk of being parted from my head, might I be as bold as to suggest that we move our sturdy warrior 1E?? Otherwise I fear the good fellow would drown!

I also apologize for not including the Warrior move in my initial summary.

Indiansmoke said:

However we must be prepared for the settling in place scenario if nothing good is revealed. In that spirit Sir Donovan Zoi needs to provide alternative opening plans for settling in place, what we build, what we tech and what tiles we work. The expertiose of Sir Aivoturso will be also needed to mathematically back up the opening scenarios.

So please consider and evaluate worker first or warrior first by settling in place.

Click to expand...

I will get to work on that straightaway, and will provide you some scenarios in 8-10 hours time. My first inclination is to build a second Warrior for extra scouting and protection, and start on a Worker once we have 2 population. Also, look for an outline of our first research options.

whb said:

With due deference to our liege, whose decision is the one that counts - .

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Our mighty King has final say, of course! It is the duty of myself and Sir Aivoturso to provide His Magnificence with all the information necessary to make a solid decision.

whb said:

I agree with settling in place (even if it turned out there was seafood to the south, this position is already well-supplied). However, can I suggest 1NW for the warrior? I don't see what we could find 1W that would persuade us to move the settler 1 square inland (losing all coastal bonuses). 1NW is both next to the sea to search for northern seafood, and bounded by one non-forest square, increasing the line of sight revealed.

Click to expand...

1E actually uncovers all tiles of our proposed site's fat cross, so I feel that should be our first move. But any information unveiled by 1NE, even if amazing would likely have us settling on the second turn. We'd lose the Gems if we decided to settle 1N as well, though we will likely be focused on growth for the near future...

Donovan Zoi said:

At the risk of being parted from my head, might I be as bold as to suggest that we move our sturdy warrior 1E?? Otherwise I fear the good fellow would drown!

Click to expand...

But it could be entertaining!

You are right nevertheless, the people of Merlot are known to be good swimmers, but let’s not start throwing them to the sea just yet!

This has been revised with the calculations based on the Kings point below. Originally I had the wrong difficulty level. As such some of my strategy has been revised as well - mainly when to go for Bronze.

Excellent points my King, and to all good sirs! Permit me to give some ideas and details. Please forgive me if some of this is elementary - my goal is to both explain some of my reasoning and also some of the mechanics to those that have identified themselves as "newer" to these types of musings. Likewise I look forward to having my own analysis respectfully challenged by those who are my betters. No doubt I have made some errors - but in the spirit of learning from them I present to you my ideas.

Using our warrior to scout 1 East to the top of the hill and continuing to (after founding our city) do a tight arc, revealing our immediate surroundings, would seem the best course.

Assuming he sees nothing truly significant from his vantage point at the top of the hill we found our great city here, with the intention that we move our capital buildings to a more strategic inland location lush with food and farmland in the years to come. Our woman will be happy with the glittery rocks we can mine for them here, and gentleman, a happy woman means a happy noble! More importantly, we will revel in the sweet nectar of this here... grape juice. I am however experimenting with it... I feel that I may be able to turn it into something better if I let it rot a little. I know, it sounds crazy but gie me some time!

Founding in place and sending the commoners to work either the N or E of the city (2F 1H) will see us grow our city in 11 Turns. The King has suggested we either put our efforts towards another unit of our glorious Warriors (5 Turns) or train some Workers that can improve our lands (12 Turns). Because of our palace it would be 5 turns until our cultural influence spread so that we could build a mine on the nearby gems.

The Warrior vs. Worker issue will in no small part rely on where we choose to put our research. Gentleman, our mystics have hinted to me that there is great benefit to Meditiation(119) (10 Turns) or Polytheism(149) (13 Turns). Consider this - we are wise in the ways of Mysticism, and most civilizations are not. By spending time early on this we could found a religion that will cause great happiness, allowing our cities to grow large, our coffers to expand - and our influence to be felt. Other backward civilizations would first need to understand the Mysticisms we already take for granted. We are half way through this race. The only leader that could beat us is Isabella, who has a commerce advantage (fishing) and therefore has more tech if she works her water tiles. I havent seen Isabella much in Multiplayer, but I havent played on Civfanatics before.

There are 7 (or 8?) resources that in their raw form give a bonus to commerce - wine is one of them. Likewise rivers give bonuses to commerce. If our wine tile had a river on it, for example, it would give us 3 more commerce per turn. Considering we are only at 9 commerce (and at 100% slider 1 commerce point - 1 research point) a person working that tile would get Buddism 33% faster then us, if they had that tile, and if they were working it, and if they started with Mysticism... lots of ifs. Basically in the most optimum situation if they went for it a civ could get it on turn 9. We can get it on turn 10. In the case that another civ can get it on turn 10 it would do us well to work our wine for the first 10 turns so we have more research points as we both complete - but I will need to run a test to see if this is how a "tie" is decided.

The Wheel(89 / 9 Turns) - the King has suggested that by chipping the corners off of this square block I might save some effort in rolling it aroung. I need some help with it, and it will take me about 7 turns. I wouldn't personally recommend we waste our time on this nonsense right now. These square blocks are working fine.

Hunting(59 / 6 Turns) - I have been out in the forests and there is nothing nearby to hunt. With considerations to our unique unit and as a prereq to archery I would suggest we do this immediately after getting the basics to working our land. If some other civ has Monty we don't want to face him with Warriors!

Fishing(59 / 6 Turns) - Being able to fish in the lake to our SE will produce an extra 3 Commerce per turn. With our research slider at 100% this increases our research rate by 33% (currently at 9: 8 for palace, 1 for city square). I don't see a lot of trade happening in this game (correct me if I'm wrong), otherwise this would be a slightly higher priority as a prereq to sailing. As it stands I would say it is a mid research goal. Yes, I know it produces more food on the ocean - but still, until the city grows large enough to support it I don't see it as important as Agriculture - particularly if our next city is going to be inland. Perhaps the main thing that would change my mind is if we saw a food-rich spot with some good fish/clam/crab up or down the coast line.

Agriculture(89 / 9 Turns) - With the lake here I would pick this up soon for farms, and as the prereq to pottery for our next commerce city. In order to grow I would put this high.

Masonry(119 / 9 Turns) - Great Lighthouse, Great Walls - meh. There could be some industrious civs our there. I would be interested to see how quickly the "Such and Such a wonder is build in a far away land" comes up. Pyramids are extremely useful for Representation, but without industry or stone immediately availablt we have to pass. Walls and aqueducts are great, but later. This is a low priority for now.

Bronze Working(179 / 15 Turns) - The big boy. High priority but high cost. With it we chop the forests, use it in part to build our kick-ass unique unit, and if Bronze shows up in the arc our warrior is scouting then it is a big factor in where we settle. It's just so damned expensive.


With all this in mind here is what I am thinking (1st is research timeline, 2nd is build timeine, 3rd is worker timeline, 4th is cultural border timeline, 5th is city square worked. Square brackets indicate the turn number it is started on, round brackets indicate the number of turns whatever is started that turn takes.):


Buddhism Start v1.0 [CurrentTurn]Details(TimeItTakes)
Research:[1]Meditation(10) > [10]Agri(9) > [19]Hunting(3) > [25]Archery(5) > [31]BronzeW(9)
Build:[1]Worker(10) > [10]Warrior(8) > [18]Barracks(17) > [32]Archer(?) > [?]Settler
Worker:__________> [10]Travel(2) > [12]BuildGemMine(3) > [15]Travel(2) > [17]Wait(2) > [19]BuildWheatFarmSW(5)
Culture:_____> [5]CulturalBorderPop
TileWorked:[1]North(10) > [10]WheatSW(8) > [18](+1)WheatSW&Gems

Once the Gem mine is complete on turn 21 the square will give us an additional 6 commerce - adding over 50% to our research rate at 100% slider - which you see in the hunting/archery/bronzeW numbers after turn 15. We dont have roads yet, but who cares, all our people are happy enough we can hook it up later.

We also found a religion! Buddhism. Again, the only way someone beats us to this is if another civ with Mysticism starts with a heavy commerce square in their immediate workable area and works it. Isabella has the advantage of being able to work coastal for this as well. In the case of a tie I don't know how the game assigns the religion. We could go for Polytheism instead, add 3 turns to the research time. The idea being less people would go for it - and then found Hinduism. The benefit to doing this is that we can then easily continue on to found Judaism (11 turns with the Gem mine). We need to go this route to get the Organized Religion civic anyway - which knocks off 25% of the build time on our buildings... so maybe spending 2 extra turns to go Hinduism isn't bad? In the unlikely event that we don't see anyone else founding a religion by turn 10 we should consider researching priesthood and building the Oracle.

Those are my ideas, humbly submitted as the basis of conversation. I don't expect anyone to say "I agree." These are submitted to all for the purposes of discussion. I look forward to having my current thinking change by your wisdom and under the thoughtful guidance of our King.

ash88 said:

The Wheel(66 / 7 Turns) - the King has suggested that by chipping the corners off of this square block I might save some effort in rolling it around. I need some help with it, and it will take me about 7 turns. I wouldn't personally recommend we waste our time on this nonsense right now. These square blocks are working fine.

Hunting(44 / 5 Turns) - I have been out in the forests and there is nothing nearby to hunt. With considerations to our unique unit and as a prereq to archery I would suggest we do this immediately after getting the basics to working our land. If some other civ has Monty we don't want to face him with Warriors!

Fishing(44 / 5 Turns) - Being able to fish in the lake to our SE will produce an extra 3 Commerce per turn. With our research slider at 100% this increases our research rate by 33% (currently at 9: 8 for palace, 1 for city square). I don't see a lot of trade happening in this game (correct me if I'm wrong), otherwise this would be a slightly higher priority as a prereq to sailing. As it stands I would say it is a mid research goal. Yes, I know it produces more food on the ocean - but still, until the city grows large enough to support it I don't see it as important as Agriculture - particularly if our next city is going to be inland. Perhaps the main thing that would change my mind is if we saw a food-rich spot with some good fish/clam/crab up or down the coast line.

Agriculture(66 / 7 Turns) - With the lake here I would pick this up soon for farms, and as the prereq to pottery for our next commerce city. In order to grow I would put this high.

Masonry(88 / 7 Turns) - Great Lighthouse, Great Walls - meh. There could be some industrious civs our there. I would be interested to see how quickly the "Such and Such a wonder is build in a far away land" comes up. Pyramids are extremely useful for Representation, but without industry or stone immediately availablt we have to pass. Walls and aqueducts are great, but later. This is a low priority for now.

Bronze Working(132 / 11 Turns) - The big boy. High priority but high cost. With it we chop the forests, use it in part to build our kick-ass unique unit, and if Bronze shows up in the arc our warrior is scouting then it is a big factor in where we settle. It's just so damned expensive.


With all this in mind here is what I am thinking (4 lines, 1st is research timeline, 2nd is build timeine, 3rd is worker timeline, 4th is cultural border timeline. Square brackets indicate turn number):



[1]Meditation(7 w/Wine) > [7]Agri(7Turns N Square) > [14] Bronze(11 Turns) > [25]
[1]Worker(15 w/Wine) > [15]Warrior (5 N Square)(Fortify) > [20]
> [15] 2TurnsTravel > [17]Build Mine on Gems (4 turns) > [21]
> [5]CulturalBorderPop(After5Turns)

Click to expand...

Your calculations seem wrong noble Ash. Meditation is 10 turns with working the wine or without working the wine. Bronze working is 15 and 14 with wine agriculture is 9 etc.

Did you use the right difficulty (monarch) and map size (standard) in your test?

Indiansmoke said:

Your calculations seem wrong noble Ash. Meditation is 10 turns with working the wine or without working the wine. Bronze working is 15 and 14 with wine agriculture is 9 etc.

Did you use the right difficulty (monarch) and map size (standard) in your test?

Click to expand...

Bah - I used Noble difficulty. I mistook our Kings preference for what the actual game setting was. I will rework the calculations shortly.

Bah! Double Bah! (That is Frustrating!!!! So much work!)

Edit: Ok... Edited it, and updated/changed some of the strategy accordingly... (What a pain).

It looks as if the mapmakers are telling us to just settle in place, I don't even think we need to move the warrior 1E to decide that so I'd just as soon move 1NE to begin looping around.

Worker first on a forest, and then a hill forest at border pop for expansive bonus. Agriculture, then prolly BW. Those are my instincts.

Indiansmoke said:

Your calculations seem wrong noble Ash.

Click to expand...

Nonetheless, my liege, his plan sounds intriguing.

Buddhism would allow a holy city, greatly increasing our commerce later if we build a shrine and help the religion proliferate to the democratic heathens.

Agriculture, I would, in all honesty, advise researching BEFORE Meditation, considering the lack of food until the borders of our glorious lands can expand, but since that seems to be happening before a worker can be conscripted anyway, I can understand it's lessened priority.

Bronze Working will be vital, however you look at it. We shall eventually come into conflict with those commoners, so preparations must be made. Plus, with such tools, we shall be able to apply methods of making our own mangy serfs far more productive..

My one point if conflict would be with the choice to put the serfs before our military.

Whilst I see that the land around our glorious palace must be improved for the good of the kingdom, preparing them for such an expedition would prevent growth of our city, reducing it's productivity until they leave.

Training warriors does not have such a hinderance, so the city could expand, reducing the time taken on getting the serfs to leave.

But, these are just my humble opinions.

slaze said:

It looks as if the mapmakers are telling us to just settle in place, I don't even think we need to move the warrior 1E to decide that so I'd just as soon move 1NE to begin looping around.

Click to expand...

Propably but lets not rush, move the warrior 1E decide next, there is a possibility 2E 1N to be a good settling spot.

slaze said:

Worker first on a forest, and then a hill forest at border pop for expansive bonus. Agriculture, then prolly BW. Those are my instincts.

Click to expand...

Yes it is the logical choice, but lets calculate it first.

A most excellent starting position - I would humbly advise my liege to settle in place, as it seems most productive. The lack of a cottage economy, whilst irritating, is somewhat recompensed by the gems and wine present, plus the inland sea.

As for tech, I would personally suggest either dashing for a religion or perhaps bronze working then religion - I am correct in assuming none of our barbarian rivals' scholars have knowledge of Mysticism?

Your Imperial Majesty, nobles of Merlot,

First let me thank your Excellence on entrusting me the important responsibility of Imperial Mathematician. Time for the flourishing speachs seems indeed be in past so let me get straight to the point.

If any of the Merlot court feels strong calling to mathematical studies, please send me a private message and I will find you a place in Imperial Mathematical Seminar. All others are obviously also welcome to share their mathematical insights. You don't have to have a licence to count However, I'd like to ask everyone that before engaging in lengthy calculations and I am online, please send me a message first just to make sure we won't waste time doing the same calculations. If you need any more complex calculations done for the Empire, please let me know I'll try my utmost to find the solution.

I shall start my work immediately doing calculations on short and long term possibilites of our capital assuming we settle down just where we stand. If you my Liege or you Sir Donovan Zoi would require anything specific counted, let me know and I will get into it as soon as possible.

Let me also share couple of comments about our starting position. If I'm not horribly mistaken, it seems that two positions to the east from our settler there is plains hill and right north from there would be forest. This is based on what can be seen from the hidden space. So moving warrior to east would only reveal whether there is any extra resources in the hill or not. That probably wouldn't be enough to persuade us to move away. However, I agree that there probably is no need to rush in the cartographing since the cottages are off. So either way I don't see much difference between moving E or NE.

Ash88 has done a great job in the initial analysis. I would also suggest going for either for meditation or polytheism. As Ash said, there would be added benefit of being a step closer to montheism if we start with polytheism. However, the positive side of going for meditation is getting monasterys early. Temples we probably won't need as soon, since we have gems in vicinity to appease the common folks for a while. There actually is another possibility aside from Isabella for someone being faster to the technology. If there is wine or elephants next to a river, it would be faster for even a non-financial civilization to get to the meditation/polytheism. However the rush is more likely to end up in a tie. If that happens I believe the one with more overhead will win. In this case it would be tie on that merit too, so I think the religion would then be randomly assigned. All being said, I'm leaning a bit towards to polytheism but meditation is not a bad choice either.

Respecfully,
Aivoturso

PS. I look also forward in working together with Sir Donovan Zoi and join in his thanks to Sir Hercules90.

mgsmuhammad said:

Agriculture, I would, in all honesty, advise researching BEFORE Meditation, considering the lack of food until the borders of our glorious lands can expand,

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Looking at my Buddhism v1.0 list (in my revised post above, which now takes into account the Monarch difficulty), there seems to be more synergy in waiting - let me explain:

Our borders expand on Turn 5. Our worker is done on Turn 10. Regardless of whether we research Agriculture or Meditation these things will happen. The only thing that changes is whether or not we send our worker to Wheat or Gems when he is complete.

If we research Agriculture first it is done on turn 9. When our Worker is done on turn 10 we send him to the SW Wheat (more easily defendable then the North wheat with the water there). He has farm built by turn 16 (including his 1 turns of travel time). We don't see the benefit of having researched Agriculture first until turn 16. At this point it will chop down the growth of our captial from the 3 remaining turns (using the non-farmed Northern Wheat Square) to instead be 2 turns (using the newly built farm on the SW wheat square).

Long story short, we sacrifice the 66% research increase from building the Gem Mine first, and also sacrificing our potential religous founding we end up with a 1 turn advantage in our capitals growth.

In the Buddhist First v1.0 plan the Wheat farm is built after the mine. Our capital increases in size on turn 18 and we are working both a completed Gem mine (for a massive 66% research increase) and a completed farm by turn 23.

Assuming you build the gem mine second in the Agriculture first plan, then by turn 23 there is a mine and a farm. The difference is that the Buddhism first plan is way ahead in research, and the Agriculture First plan is slightly ahead in the race for the third population point. In both cases we already have 2 population in the city.

That research difference means that Bronze Working, for example, takes 9 turns instead of 15 turns.

The second point is that if we don't go for meditation off the bat it is a crap shoot. Anyone that is going to take it is going to take it aggressively. If we bang off Buddhism fast then other civilizations are going to second guess even Poltheism/Hinduism... Afterall - if we snatched Buddhism then we can snatch polytheism too - so they will second guess going for it.

This is an interesting discussion. Overall I think being aggressive is the key. And if that means aggressively going after religion then thats the ticket. We snooze we lose. imho.

Worker is done on turn 11 - 5 turns until border pop @ 5/turn and then 6 turns at 6/turn for 61/60