SGOTM 13 - Smurkz

[Othniel]

(Edited this post after I discovered the cow is standing on a bg)

Indeed, there could be more land. If so, I would rather research pottery than Alpha.

Thanks for putting together a spreadsheet.

Interesting that the cow has a BG under it. The starting screenie only shows 1 shield.

Even if there is more land--and eldar's right, we don't know conclusively--I think getting alpha first will be more beneficial than an ultra-early granary. Any more land won't be immediately accessible and our capital can't grow above 6 pop anyway. Getting contacts should result in immediate benefits.

If this isn't an island, I would probably vote to not join the worker. I know zyxy did that to demonstrate a max commerce start. With more land, getting a road to new city sites will be valuable.

Even if this is a two-city island, I'm not sure that the benefit of more commerce will be worth joining the worker. We gain +2 commerce/turn, although that is partially offset by paying +1 lux tax sooner through having more pop early. Also, getting the hill and the BG mined and preparing city site #2 would be decent projects to accomplish once the worker is idle. You can really never have too much shield potential, IMO. Can anyone calculate how many turns we'd shave off alpha by joining the worker?

Trying to read the team progress graphs...

It looks like team Klarius built an early temple. Teams Ivan and Spooks look to have gone for an early settler.

We're one of three teams not started yet. That's ok, haste makes waste.

 

[Niklas]

Alright, some administrative stuff. I'll be using the a lot more than you may be used to, since our last games have really dragged out far longer than necessary (and huge to CF for steering us right). I will expect a "got it" within 24 hours of the handoff, a turn strategy plan within 48 and a handoff within 72 hours. This can of course be extended on a per-need basis, if there's lots of discussion about something, but if you know in advance you'll be away or busy then please ask for a swap in advance. I'll try to keep an updated roster and tentative schedule in my first sign-in post (which is why I wanted that post, not to steal the first 20 from CB ).

Smurkz tradition dictates that the initial roster be created in sign-in order, but as I know how badly CB wants to play the start (and since I will (likely) be up in the CIV SGOTM), I'll defer that pleasure to him. So I propose the following tentative roster, yell if you want up or down:

• CommandoBob
• Niklas
• donsig
• Othniel
• zyxy
• eldar

I can't for the world understand why team klarius would build an early temple. Except possibly the fact that there's nothing else to build, but two MP warriors ought to pay off better, no? The +1 is offset by -1 gpt for maintenance.

 

[Othniel]

I can't for the world understand why team klarius would build an early temple. Except possibly the fact that there's nothing else to build, but two MP warriors ought to pay off better, no? The +1 is offset by -1 gpt for maintenance.

20k?

No, probably nothing better to build and they free up unit support for curragh spamming or something. According to my tea-leaf reading skills and ESP connection, I guess that means they didn't want a second city right away, which suggest to me limited space and resources in the foggy part to the south-east. I could be very wrong.

Administratively, please be aware that I'll be away for the holiday season from around the 18th until the 4th of January. I might have my laptop with me and possibly an internet connection, but I may or may not be able to play a set.

20 turns for CBob and 10 turns the rest of the way?

 

[Niklas]

Ok, actually it's not so mysterious when looking at the number of turns they played. At turn 35 they have 64 culture, the palace accounts for 50 of those, which means they built their temple on the IBT of turn 28/29. The two first warriors are built in ~8 turns leaving plenty of time for a temple after that. Actually it's more of a mystery what they built between the warriors and the temple.

And yes, 20 turns for CB and 10 the rest, it's worked well before!

 

[zyxy]

Even if this is a two-city island, I'm not sure that the benefit of more commerce will be worth joining the worker. We gain +2 commerce/turn, although that is partially offset by paying +1 lux tax sooner through having more pop early. Also, getting the hill and the BG mined and preparing city site #2 would be decent projects to accomplish once the worker is idle. You can really never have too much shield potential, IMO. Can anyone calculate how many turns we'd shave off alpha by joining the worker?

Even then, the better option would be to first join the worker and later build a new one. We have plenty of shields and nothing to do with it except build a settler - note that my scheme stops building anything after the first two warriors. The bottleneck seems to be how fast we can get to Alpha and MapMaking.
So perhaps the build queue should be: warrior - warrior - settler - some warriors and a new worker - curragh. Joining the initial worker will help to keep the capital large enough.

I think the first thing to do is to decide our opening moves - worker to cow or hill? Settle in place? Once we've done that, we can calculate the commerce output from a second town.

 

[eldar]

AdminStuff first: I'll be away from the 22nd to the 29th inclusive, I will have 'net access and as long as the med resources and save work on a Mac version of C3C I could play a set, but don't count on me being able to do so during that period.

Temple: Depends how isolated we really are. Eventually we'll want to build an aqueduct (indeed is it worth bee-lining Constr right after Maps?) and we will have happiness issues if we're very alone. Temple+Cathedral then will be worthwhile.

 

[ControlFreak]

A temple could have resulted in a failed prebuild for a wonder?

Or a temple could be used to offset a difference in size between the two towns.

With the fish, cow and two grass the max size is 7 (those four tiles plus three of {coast/hill/plains}). Of course we're limited to size 6 until construction unless there's an underground river.

When we build the second town, we lose one citizen because we're consuming the grassland, but we gain two because of the free food in the city center. So with two towns our maximum population becomes:
capitol: cow + 3 coasts/plains/hill + fish + BG=6
town 2: 2 coasts = 2

We could balance that out eventually by building workers to transfer pop to the other town and letting the fish and bg be worked by town 2, but a temple would be cheaper, faster and easier. So the temple makes sense if you're fight a lopsided population.

I think we should join the worker after roads are on the cow, BG and grass and the BG is mined (in that order). The capitol grows every 7 turns at size 4, but slows to every 10 at size 5 and to 20 at size 6. On a giligan start it seems to keep the growth potential as long as possible is best so ideally, planning to build the settler the turn we would have grown from size 4 to size 5 is best. Adding the worker after turn six of being at size 4, the food bin would have 6turns*3fpt=18. Adding the worker drops the city to 2fpt at size 5 so it would still grow to size 6, build the settle and drop to size 4 which keeps the town as large as it can be while still making 3fpt. Using the same growth is power philosophy, we build three workers when we would grow from 4 to 5. Then add 1 to town 2 and 2 to the cap to get to 6 and 2 (or we build 2, add them both to town 2 and let the capitol grow to it's max size of 5 letting town 2 have the BG)

 

[donsig]

I think the first thing to do is to decide our opening moves - worker to cow or hill? Settle in place? Once we've done that, we can calculate the commerce output from a second town.

I think we should move to the hill first, assuming we can do that, post a screenie and discuss it more. The view from the hill would help us decide where to settle initially and get a plan together. Since there seems little for the worker to do the benefit of the move outweighs the cost of not moving directly to the cow.

 

[Niklas]

I think CF's suggested worker moves is the way to go, but I also agree with donsig that climbing the hill is probably worthwhile. We would hate ourselves forever (or the rest of the game at any rate) if we missed something due to greed, wanting that extra 1 gp.

I also think a temple should go into the build queue, probably after the settler. At some point we will have a population skew, and even with the much higher commerce output it's likely that a temple will pay off.

 

[zyxy]

I agree to let the worker climb the hill.

I am not so sure about CF's worker plan, but we can work out the alternatives once we have had a look around.

CB, are you still around?

 

[ControlFreak]

Worker to the hill. Better get us going CB.

My thoughts on the worker actions are:
If we join the worker on turn 2 (scout hill on 0 , move back on 1, join on 2)) because we're going to loose the 1gpt from the cow for a long time in favor of getting the fish 2gpt for an extra 5 turns. In other words, it only pays to join the worker right away if the 10gpt up front will get us alphabet. If it doesn't, then we start loosing (from where we'd be if worker not joined) 1gpt from the cow on turn 4 (scout hill on 0, move cow on 1, road 2, road 3, road 4) and then we start loosing 1gpt from not having the BG roaded on turn 14 (what it will take to get to size 3) and another 1gpt from not having the grass roaded on turn 21 (what it takes to get to size 4).

I don't have time to spread sheet the two scenarios, but my belief is it takes alphabet longer by joining the worker before roading the cow/bg and grass. I don't care about mines because, unless there's more land, there's nothing to build but the settler until size 5 or boats at alphabet. It's probably worth spread sheeting the commerce for joining at turn 2 versus joining at turn 9 (road cow and BG, then join) and not joining until needed for the settler.

But I agree that we should move the worker to the hill and post screenie.

 

[Niklas]

Yeah, we need to get moving. Worker to hill, CB can recreate the move:

 

[eldar]

Interesting. It looks like the land does continue south. Isolated, maybe, but not necessarily by sea.

 

[ControlFreak]

At least we have something to do with the warrior we'll build.

I still think worker roads all the way to the grass and may continue south from there if the land does indeed expand.

The oyster offsets the food bias a little so the temple is less important and the settler more important.

Settle in place IMO.

 

[Niklas]

My immediate thought is that if the land indeed continues, we should settle 1SE. That means we lose the rocks for any town, but get a stronger capitol, and the oysters will speed up research. But if the land ends beyond the BG, we should settle in place and a second town on the grass. And there's no way of knowing.

Even if the land continues, the advertisement says we'll "eventually" meet the world, and if it's a long walk then curraghs may still be the best option to get contacts.

 

[zyxy]

Here's a new spreadsheet, based on settling in place. I'm still joining the worker to prevent the capital from dropping in size too much, but a little later than before. I think this is the best move, unless there's more land to the south. I also added in the commerce effect of a second town on the grass N of the oysters. As you can see we'll get Alpha on turn 35 according to this scheme.



EDIT: on turn 20, the town is really size 2. This is shown correctly in the original sheet, but not in this pic, apparently. Sorry for that.

EDIT2: the second warrior is free to scout.

 

[donsig]

Since there's no way of knowing how much (if any) lands lay to the south we should just settle in place.

 

[CommandoBob]

Been busy with church choir productions for Christmas; last one begins in 30 minutes. Then RL stuff for a while, but I will be able to get the one move done and posted before bed time.

Just the one move, correct?

 

[AlanH]

lurker's comment: Niklas already did it. See post #32

 

[ControlFreak]

I agree with donsig and zyxy. Settle in place, road the tiles we need and then join the worker.

If warrior finds more land, we may want granary instead of warriors?

We have enough for CB to play until the fog is pushed back more.