jar01: spain, emporer

[jarred!]

ROSTER:
1. jarred!
2. CKS
3. tjs282
4. Nathiri
5. Elephantium
6. Quintillus

Here are the starts:
start A:

start B:

start C:

start D:

 

[Nathiri]

I guess Save B . Save A is a good one too.

 

[CKS]

I hate to give up the river, but I have to agree with Nathiri. Two cows is the winner.

My solo games usually start like C.

 

[Nathiri]

I hate to give up the river, but I have to agree with Nathiri. Two cows is the winner.

My solo games usually start like C.

Yeah Save A has good gpt with river and silks; but if we want 100k, I'd think cities are more important. We should have enough gpt from cities instead to tech.

 

[jarred!]

I was also wondering if the commerce of save A would be more beneficial than the excess food of save B, but with better growth the commerce will naturally grow too. We get a low mm 4 turn settler factory with B (1 mined cow, 1 irrigated cow, 1 mined bgrasdland, 1 mined gressland, and a spare forest tile to work on growth), so that's my vote, too.

How early to we want a temple in the capital?
I was thinking early build order is something like this: warrior (land exploration), curraugh, worker, warrior (MP), granary? The second worker chops a forest to speed up the granary? A spreadsheet would help time the worker build with growth.

I think map making is a key tech, and are we going to be a feudalism? Then maybe we go for Philo and grab something besides republic as the freebie (maps?)

 

[tjs282]

I hate to give up the river, but I have to agree with Nathiri. Two cows is the winner.

Yeah Save A has good gpt with river and silks; but if we want 100k, I'd think cities are more important. We should have enough gpt from cities instead to tech.

I vote B as well.

Rivers are nice for commerce, but the 1-tile lake will do fine as a water-source (and we are SEA, so get extra Commerce from coastal towns). Irrigate one Cow, mine the other, we have 5 FPT; mine the other Grass, add a Gran, plus the Forest-shields on the IBT = a 4T Despot Settler-Factory at Pop5-7 (if not Pop4-6).

Hooking the Gems unfortunately won't be possible before the first border-pop, without burning our starting Worker on a Colony. But after the borders pop, it's going to cost 10 Worker-turns...

EDIT: X-posted with jarred!...

 

[jarred!]

Hooking the Gems unfortunately won't be possible before the first border-pop, without burning our starting Worker on a Colony. But after the borders pop, it's going to cost 10 Worker-turns...

If we build a colony pre-border expansion it will become a road post-expansion? That's an idea. At size 3 we would have a 2turn worker pump as well (right?) So we could replace him fast and at a small loss, but it would delay cow improvement

 

[CKS]

Building a colony makes it cost 540 worker turns. It isn't worth it. It won't be worth hooking up for quite a while, probably not until our island is full of towns.

 

[Elephantium]

I vote B as well.

Rivers are nice for commerce, but the 1-tile lake will do fine as a water-source (and we are SEA, so get extra Commerce from coastal towns). Irrigate one Cow, mine the other, we have 5 FPT; mine the other Grass, add a Gran, plus the Forest-shields on the IBT = a 4T Despot Settler-Factory at Pop5-7 (if not Pop4-6).

It could even work at size 3-5! Counting the shields:
Irrigated cow 1
Mined cow 2
Mined BG 2
Plus 1 from the city center = 6 shields for the starting point.

 

[jarred!]

I figured that would be unanimous. Let's wait for Quintillus to check in before getting started.

Research:
min run on writing and then full bore into Philo, grabbing maps for free and then (min run) lit? Shut off research after that?

Terraforming:
I think we irrigate the first cow? Irrigation gets us to +5 food at size 2, whereas mining leaves us with either waste shields or waste food.

Build order:
I think warrior, curraugh, worker, warrior, granary, settler. I think this gives us time to get the factory prepped.

I'm willing to play the start, but I'm probably the least experienced player on the team as well.

EDIT: 40-turn start followed by 20-turn sets? That's flexible, if things start to drag maybe we'll cut it down to 10-turn sets.

 

[CKS]

On emperor, we should definitely go for the republic slingshot. Waiting to get out of despotism until feudalism isn't a good idea. Plus, in feudalism we won't be able to pay maintenance on our many buildings, so we need to build up cash reserves before we switch. Since we are religious, we can afford a second anarchy.

Who are our opponents?

Unless we have a very large starting landmass (so ToA is worthwhile), we'll want to get to education quickly, so we shouldn't plan on turning off research. If we have a very large starting landmass, we'll want to never get education, but we may want cavalry, unless the plan is to do 100k by eliminating our rivals first and then building culture. Either way, we don't want to shut off research early. On archipelago, emperor AI don't necessarily research fast. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. If they are slowpoky, we don't want them to delay our building plans.

Definitely irrigate the first cow first.

If there is another food bonus nearby, we probably want to put out a settler before the granary.

I think we run our capital as a settler factory until we don't need settlers anymore before building a temple there.

20 turns seems like a lot to me, but I'm good with whatever. You should definitely play the start, jarred!, since it is your game. We should talk before planting towns and when we have a good idea of how much space we have on our island.

 

[tjs282]

On emperor, we should definitely go for the republic slingshot. Waiting to get out of despotism until feudalism isn't a good idea. Plus, in feudalism we won't be able to pay maintenance on our many buildings, so we need to build up cash reserves before we switch. Since we are religious, we can afford a second anarchy.

Have I understood that right? Switch to Republic ASAP, then switch again into Feudalism once we get into the Medieval?

If so, does that mean you are envisaging using ICS for town-placement, irrigating everything, and whipping excess citz into Culture buildings? When would we start doing that? Before the switch to Rep, or after the switch to Feud?

Since Temples only cost 30 shields, we could build one in any town, even the 1-shield towns, as soon as we have 10 (11?) shields in the box and Pop2 (i.e. likely 10 (11?) turns after founding, at most). Would that be the general plan?

(When) do we build military units? Wait until after we're Feudal? It's not like we won't be able to afford it, with small ICS'd towns (=5 free units per town)...

Who are our opponents?

If I understood correctly, jarred listed them in the previous discussion thread:

Picking rivals who don't have Alphabet (and I also crossed out all the REL rivals too) leaving: Germany, China, Aztecs, Mongols, Sumeria, Maya, Russia, America, Persia, Zulu, and Inca. Then we choose Spain or India (Alphabet and Religious).

So I'm assuming Ghandi's not in the game...

If there is another food bonus nearby, we probably want to put out a settler before the granary.

I think we run our capital as a settler factory until we don't need settlers anymore before building a temple there.

But that could be thousands of years down the line, couldn't it? Whereas, once we have a Gran up, whipping a Temple early on would barely interrupt the Settler-flow...

(And since SEA-Curraghs can move 3x faster than Warriors, if we can afford to build at least 2 of them early on, that might make for faster exploration/ mapping/ meet-n-greets: if our island is large, we'd discover that much sooner than the Warriors would tell us; but if it's small — and we can't see any neighbouring islands — we can suicide the boats in the most likely direction, or disband them into a convenient coastal town)

20 turns seems like a lot to me, but I'm good with whatever. You should definitely play the start, jarred!, since it is your game. We should talk before planting towns and when we have a good idea of how much space we have on our island.

Yes, I agree jarred! should take the first set.

But (I've been told that) a Culture-win requires a lot of planning, especially in the early game, so 40/20-turn sets do seem excessive to me.

 

[jarred!]

If I understood correctly, jarred listed them in the previous discussion thread:

...

But (I've been told that) a Culture-win requires a lot of planning, especially in the early game, so 40/20-turn sets do seem excessive to me.

We were split between cherry-picking our civ and our opponents or going all random, so I decided to pick our civ and go with random rivals. I'm not opposed to seeing who we got via the spaceship screen, but I'm on my phone ATM.

I was just suggesting turnset lengths, as this is my first SG. If 10- or even 5- move-sets seems like a better idea, let's do that. I'd like to learn a lot from this game so more discussion is welcome. We all have lives offline so shorter sets might hold interests better as well.

 

[Nathiri]

In the Viking SG, we did 20 turn start for the first set, but then did all 10 turn sets after, which was more than sufficient I thought afterwards.

I've never completed a 100k win personally, so this will be a learning experience for me too.

 

[jarred!]

Whereas, once we have a Gran up, whipping a Temple early on would barely interrupt the Settler-flow...

I was suggesting a build order to get our factory up asap. Obviously this would slow our exploration, and if we focus on exploration we slow our growth. If we put an early town on the water to produce a (lame) navy, we would lose turns exploring, but would put the capital on settler duty from and earlier date.
ASIDE: with our location on the map so far to the south, we might be able to lose some turns exploring that way and not suffer, but that depends on the size/shape of our island.

 

[Elephantium]

Re: government, my vote is for Republic ASAP, switching to Feudalism later. IMO the extra turns of anarchy are worth it vs. staying in Despotism longer.
Re: turnset length, 10 turns is pretty standard. Often the game creator will play 20-30 turns because there's so little to do in the initial turns.
Re: build order, I'd like to try to chart out some possibilities. If we start the Granary first thing, how long will it take to finish? Should we squeeze out a Settler before building the Granary? Etc...

 

[CKS]

Have I understood that right? Switch to Republic ASAP, then switch again into Feudalism once we get into the Medieval?

That is what I would do, since we are religious.

If so, does that mean you are envisaging using ICS for town-placement, irrigating everything, and whipping excess citz into Culture buildings? When would we start doing that? Before the switch to Rep, or after the switch to Feud?

Yes, I think we should ICS as best we can, except in our core. We can't whip until feudalism, and we probably don't want to switch to feudalism until our expansion is mostly done. As much as possible (which is probably just on our starting island), we'll want to cash-rush universities before switching, because 200 shields is hard to pop-rush. After we switch, we'll want to disband units to help rush the universities.

Since Temples only cost 30 shields, we could build one in any town, even the 1-shield towns, as soon as we have 10 (11?) shields in the box and Pop2 (i.e. likely 10 (11?) turns after founding, at most). Would that be the general plan?

Maybe not in the core, where we will have other things to build besides culture, but certainly everywhere that is corrupt.

(When) do we build military units? Wait until after we're Feudal? It's not like we won't be able to afford it, with small ICS'd towns (=5 free units per town)...

We'll want to build military units as soon as we can reasonably take on our neighbors. 100k culture games are won by expanding fast, ICSing, and then building culture.

If we have a small island, we would like the AI to build pyramids and ToA on nearby large islands, which we would then like to take from them early on, and we'll need military units for that. Feudalism is great for conquest, because you can pop-rush with your enemy citizens, but I find it hard to research in feudalism, so I tend not to switch until I'm about done researching.

If I understood correctly, jarred listed them in the previous discussion thread:

So I'm assuming Ghandi's not in the game...
But that could be thousands of years down the line, couldn't it? Whereas, once we have a Gran up, whipping a Temple early on would barely interrupt the Settler-flow...

While it is true that building a temple won't take long, it is also true that the temple from one city will hardly affect our total culture, and each settler is potentially 14 cpt, not counting possible doubling or a research lab (which we won't get to).

(And since SEA-Curraghs can move 3x faster than Warriors, if we can afford to build at least 2 of them early on, that might make for faster exploration/ mapping/ meet-n-greets: if our island is large, we'd discover that much sooner than the Warriors would tell us; but if it's small — and we can't see any neighbouring islands — we can suicide the boats in the most likely direction, or disband them into a convenient coastal town)

We definitely want curraghs out exploring ASAP. We want to find the AI, find the empty islands, and figure out how much space we have on our land, so that we can make a plan.

Yes, I agree jarred! should take the first set.

But (I've been told that) a Culture-win requires a lot of planning, especially in the early game, so 40/20-turn sets do seem excessive to me.

20 turns, then 10 turns, then 5 turns once we have 100's of towns would be more typical. 100k games take less initial planning than 20k games, but archipelago adds an interesting twist to it, so we'll need more initial planning than usual.

 

[tjs282]

We were split between cherry-picking our civ and our opponents or going all random, so I decided to pick our civ and go with random rivals. I'm not opposed to seeing who we got via the spaceship screen, but I'm on my phone ATM.

Ooh, exciting...

I was suggesting a build order to get our factory up asap. Obviously this would slow our exploration, and if we focus on exploration we slow our growth. If we put an early town on the water to produce a (lame) navy, we would lose turns exploring, but would put the capital on settler duty from and earlier date.

I agree that spamming Settlers is our highest priority, but meeting other folks also makes our research cheaper, which will be important to get Edu (or MilTrad!) ASAP in the Medieval. This VC is not just about getting the most Culture, but also about getting it at least twice as fast as the next-best Civ.

The AI won't end a Curragh's or Galley's turn on a Sea tile (without GLight) until it knows Astro, nor an Ocean tile (ever) until Magnetism/Navigation. Until then, therefore, in a single turn, an AI-Galley can go

• Non-SEA, -GLight: = Coast-Sea-Coast
• Non-SEA, +GLight = Coast-Sea-[Sea/Ocean]-Sea
  
• SEA, -GLight = Coast-Sea-Sea-Coast
• SEA, +GLight = Coast-Sea-[Sea/Ocean]-[Sea/Ocean]-Sea

...and Curraghs are obviously even more restricted.

Since this is a Large but 30% map, shortest-distances between 2 islands are still likely to include at least 1-2 Ocean tiles. So we can therefore reasonably expect that many of our 11 Random rivals will be (partly, mostly or fully) isolated from each other, and -- even if they have a whole island to themselves -- their early research will thus be slower. SEA-Civs may meet their nearest neighbours, but by using suicide-boats, we will be able to meet everybody.

So we will likely need at least 1 coastal town spamming nothing but Curraghs/Galleys in the early game -- in between its Culture-buildings, of course! -- and probably more than one such town. And not to forget, SEA-Civs get +1 commerce in every coastal town anyway, which won't do our research any harm either, especially after we switch to Republic.

Re: build order, I'd like to try to chart out some possibilities. If we start the Granary first thing, how long will it take to finish? Should we squeeze out a Settler before building the Granary? Etc...

I think we might have to: with 2 Cows, Madrid is going to grow really fast. To fully improve both Cows (irrigate+road one, mine+road the other) will take only 18 turns, by which point we should already be at +5 FPT net.

Some back-of-the-envelope guesstimation (I hate spreadsheets/ExCel!) suggests that, if we irrigate first (i.e. before even building a road), we could get within 2T of Pop5 in that 18T timeframe, with ~55 shields harvested, i.e. 2 Warriors (both needed to keep order at Pop4 without LUX%-spending*), then 1 Settler...

We're going to have 3 Forests in Madrid's BFC, so we could safely chop at least one of them for an extra 10 shields if we needed it. Maybe after the Cows are improved, then move to the SW Forest to chop it into a Gran-build?

*(I also think we should go 100% SCI% to CoL+Philo, not risk min-running Writing -- because if we don't get the sling, everything else will take a lot longer).

We can't whip until feudalism

We could also Temple-whip while still Despotic...?

Even if we successfully make the slingshot, it will still take us 50-60T to get to Republic; if we miss the sling and have to research it the hard way, it might be more like 80-90T. That's a lot of turns while our core at least could be whipping up some 6T-Temples (5T to get the first 10 shields and +1citz, then whip immediately after hitting Pop2)...

Incidentally, for 100K, do you still use the "standard" tight CxxC placement for the core, so that every core-town can potentially hit Pop10-12 before Sanitation/Hospitals?

 

[CKS]

We could also Temple-whip while still Despotic...?

Yes, of course. I meant we couldn't whip during the time we were a republic, before switching to feudalism. However, I don't think whipping in our core cities in the early game is a great idea. We need population to get beakers to get our early research done. 30 shields go quickly in the core. However, cities with 1 shield per turn should rush the temple.

Even if we successfully make the slingshot, it will still take us 50-60T to get to Republic; if we miss the sling and have to research it the hard way, it might be more like 80-90T. That's a lot of turns while our core at least could be whipping up some 6T-Temples (5T to get the first 10 shields and +1citz, then whip immediately after hitting Pop2)...

If we miss the slingshot, we should learn literature first. The libraries will get us to republic almost as fast as, and we'll have extra culture to build. However, if it looks like we'll miss the slingshot when we learn writing, we should go straight for philosophy. When we learn philosophy, if we can trade it for either polytheism (more likely) or code of laws (better) before choosing our next tech, we can still get a government tech for free.

I'm not sure whether it is worth going maximum on writing. On a standard map it is definitely worth it, but maybe not on a large map. We should count up beakers required and make a good estimate of how long it will take on max. We should also look at which rivals have alphabet - if none do, then a minimum run is probably safe.

Incidentally, for 100K, do you still use the "standard" tight CxxC placement for the core, so that every core-town can potentially hit Pop10-12 before Sanitation/Hospitals?

I don't, usually. I'll space CxCxxxC so that core towns can have room to grow but so I can sneak in extra towns later. Once the AI are no longer a threat, I'll shrink my core towns (that have already built their cultural buildings) and move their population to the new towns where they can work on building new cultural buildings.

 

[jarred!]

I peeked at our rivals this morning:
Rome (WC, alphabet)
English (alphabet, pottery)
Sumeria (BW, pottery)
Hittites (pottery, alphabet)
Mongols (WC, pottery)
Babylon (BW, CB)
Arabia (pottery, CB)
India (CB, alphabet)
Dutch (alphabet, pottery)
Egypt (masonry, CB)
Vikings (alphabet, WC)

So we have ghandi and the Vikings to worry about...
That's half of the players starting with alphabet.

Using the formula in this thread:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/technology-list-and-cost.193586/
Writing should cost us 320 breakers until someone we know learns it or a civ is eliminated. This means we need 7+ bpt to research faster than 50 turns?