S.ilver
Emperor
Great discussion folks, and some good ideas all around about dotmaps. I've compiled them all into a mega dotmap, which I'll post later in this post.
First, I'll do a fairly gentle critique of goblinmarine's save though
.
1) This is completely not your fault, as you asked for advice regarding worker actions, and no one answered, including S.ilver who rudely ran off to class without barely a glance in this thread...
So, we are playing Cathy and Cathy is Imperialistic. So we get +50% production on settlers. So every 2 hammers we put into a settler, we get one more free. This bonus ONLY applies for hammers, and not food.
After pasturing the cows, the best move actually would have been to mine the plains hill instead of farming the other floodplain...
The reason? Right now, we have 6 food going into the settler, which becomes 6 hammers. We also have 4 hammers, which turn into 6 because of our bonus, for a total of 12 hammers. We will get an extra food when that farm finishes, in 6 more turns (takes us 8 turns on epic to build a farm on a floodplain). So 13 total hammers towards the settler. We also collect the one extra commerce from being riverside, which is a nice tech boost in the early turns.
If, instead, we were building a mine on that plains hill, we would still collect that one commerce. However, instead of collecting 3 food, we would collect 2 hammers, which for a settler, since the hammers are multiplied, would be the same. HOWEVER, upon the mine finishing (mines take 6 turns to finish on a plain hill, so would have been faster than the farm), we would now be pulling in 4 base hammers from that tile, so 6 hammers strictly from that mine for the settler. That would win us a total of 14 hammers per turn towards the settler, a few turns earlier on account of faster build speed, and not having to walk through the forest for one turn. So something like 6 hammers immediately plus another hammer over the farm method for every turn we're working on the settler. This probably would have saved a turn on settler production.
Again, this is not a major
or anything, just ways to improve the micromanagement efficiency of worker actions (and taking advantage of the much maligned Imperialistic trait).
Note: The farm method would actually start to win if, instead of actually building the settler, you went for another warrior first, while moving the city up to size 4. Once at size 4, the settler could be built and whipped for 2-pop when possible. That is essentially 90 x 1.5 hammers (135 hammers) towards a settler and a VERY efficient use of population, since Size 4 population only takes 39 food to fill the box, and yields 45 hammers (note it's made even more efficient because we are Imperialistic).
2) Why is the warrior headed east towards that bear? If it's to fight the bear, it's a bad idea, as bears are the strongest animals and have higher base strength than warriors, so we should make all attempts to avoid the bears. Instead, this warrior should be heading to the west. We obviously did not discuss settling yet, but any expansion attempts would have been made to the west anyways, to begin blocking our rivals.
Not much else to say, solid turns otherwise goblinmarine. Good job keeping Boris alive to scout out the south (he kept getting mauled by wolves in my set). Shame about Ivan, but the RNG gods always frown on Liq and S.ilver productions
Ok, on to the consolidated dotmap (spoilered due to dimensions).
Ok, so Yellow and Blue are obvious stronghold cities taken from goblinmarine's dotmap, along with magenta dot, which is sadly only logically settled on the horses (one of the rare times we settle on a resource); good job noting those sites mate. I took the liberty of adding Red Dot to the mix. 2 sugars provides ample food, and fog gazing says the land ends just above that last jungle tile, so we will have only 3 water tiles in an amazing coastal city. Fog gazing also tells me the last 3 tiles are 2 grasslands and 1 grass hill, the grass hill being directly NW of the city site. No idea about resources, but nice land no doubt. Yellow, Blue, and Red form a VERY strong core along that river. We should endeavor to ensure we get all three of these cities, as they are very strong and have multi-tool potential.
In the west, we have Arlborn's modified Green Dot, which is a very aggressive blocking city towards Wang. I will come out and say this now; I do not think it is practical, or even possible to get Green Dot. It is very far away from our capital, and will be very hard to reinforce. The land between it and our core cities is garbage as well, so it will forever be difficult to help, until we get rid of Ramesses and can reinforce from the river area. It is an awesome city, but if it comes under attack we are basically dead meat.
Dark Purple Dot is meant to reinforce Green Dot. However, the city lacks a high food capacity until Civil Service, meaning it is also fairly impractical.
White, Teal, and Dark Green Dots are meant to fill up our east coast while taking best advantage of the land and resources there. They are shamelessly stolen from Liq's dotmap
.
Black Dot is also borrowed from Liq, and that picks up the silver and the wheat, so we can actually work tiles there. An alternative is to move it 1SE to the plains hill. This picks up the bonus hammer in the city center, but we lose the grass to the north, in exchange for massed tundra to the south and east. No thanks.
Pink Dot is filler for much, MUCH, later... Like Electricity later, or State Property later (if we even run that). The river makes it workable, and there is deer there, so we could possibly settle early and run a couple of specs. That fish is completely toast BTW, as we won't be able to settle a city to get it, but it doesn't matter as said city would be half ice anyways.
Orange Dot is filler to basically pick up the tiles west of Moscow, which, while unspectacular, are not completely lousy. The city will just take it's sweet time growing that's all.
Saladin Lime Green Dot is also more filler, largely to pick up all the grass there. Can run cottages or work hills for production. Similar in structure to Orange in getting decent tiles with no resources.
Brown Dot wins us Fish, Deer, and another Silver, and should probably be ignored as some sick fantasy. The combined 9 food of the deer + fish make this a viable city for running a spec or two though, and still working the silver mine.
And finally we have Izzy Peach Dot, which is a lame attempt at getting the copper, which is probably futile. I'm getting the bright idea of preserving all the forests here and hoping for an eventual National Park city, but clearly that's delusional, lol. Only in Boff-0s
.
First, I'll do a fairly gentle critique of goblinmarine's save though

1) This is completely not your fault, as you asked for advice regarding worker actions, and no one answered, including S.ilver who rudely ran off to class without barely a glance in this thread...
So, we are playing Cathy and Cathy is Imperialistic. So we get +50% production on settlers. So every 2 hammers we put into a settler, we get one more free. This bonus ONLY applies for hammers, and not food.
After pasturing the cows, the best move actually would have been to mine the plains hill instead of farming the other floodplain...

The reason? Right now, we have 6 food going into the settler, which becomes 6 hammers. We also have 4 hammers, which turn into 6 because of our bonus, for a total of 12 hammers. We will get an extra food when that farm finishes, in 6 more turns (takes us 8 turns on epic to build a farm on a floodplain). So 13 total hammers towards the settler. We also collect the one extra commerce from being riverside, which is a nice tech boost in the early turns.
If, instead, we were building a mine on that plains hill, we would still collect that one commerce. However, instead of collecting 3 food, we would collect 2 hammers, which for a settler, since the hammers are multiplied, would be the same. HOWEVER, upon the mine finishing (mines take 6 turns to finish on a plain hill, so would have been faster than the farm), we would now be pulling in 4 base hammers from that tile, so 6 hammers strictly from that mine for the settler. That would win us a total of 14 hammers per turn towards the settler, a few turns earlier on account of faster build speed, and not having to walk through the forest for one turn. So something like 6 hammers immediately plus another hammer over the farm method for every turn we're working on the settler. This probably would have saved a turn on settler production.
Again, this is not a major

Note: The farm method would actually start to win if, instead of actually building the settler, you went for another warrior first, while moving the city up to size 4. Once at size 4, the settler could be built and whipped for 2-pop when possible. That is essentially 90 x 1.5 hammers (135 hammers) towards a settler and a VERY efficient use of population, since Size 4 population only takes 39 food to fill the box, and yields 45 hammers (note it's made even more efficient because we are Imperialistic).
2) Why is the warrior headed east towards that bear? If it's to fight the bear, it's a bad idea, as bears are the strongest animals and have higher base strength than warriors, so we should make all attempts to avoid the bears. Instead, this warrior should be heading to the west. We obviously did not discuss settling yet, but any expansion attempts would have been made to the west anyways, to begin blocking our rivals.
Not much else to say, solid turns otherwise goblinmarine. Good job keeping Boris alive to scout out the south (he kept getting mauled by wolves in my set). Shame about Ivan, but the RNG gods always frown on Liq and S.ilver productions

Ok, on to the consolidated dotmap (spoilered due to dimensions).
Spoiler :

Ok, so Yellow and Blue are obvious stronghold cities taken from goblinmarine's dotmap, along with magenta dot, which is sadly only logically settled on the horses (one of the rare times we settle on a resource); good job noting those sites mate. I took the liberty of adding Red Dot to the mix. 2 sugars provides ample food, and fog gazing says the land ends just above that last jungle tile, so we will have only 3 water tiles in an amazing coastal city. Fog gazing also tells me the last 3 tiles are 2 grasslands and 1 grass hill, the grass hill being directly NW of the city site. No idea about resources, but nice land no doubt. Yellow, Blue, and Red form a VERY strong core along that river. We should endeavor to ensure we get all three of these cities, as they are very strong and have multi-tool potential.
In the west, we have Arlborn's modified Green Dot, which is a very aggressive blocking city towards Wang. I will come out and say this now; I do not think it is practical, or even possible to get Green Dot. It is very far away from our capital, and will be very hard to reinforce. The land between it and our core cities is garbage as well, so it will forever be difficult to help, until we get rid of Ramesses and can reinforce from the river area. It is an awesome city, but if it comes under attack we are basically dead meat.
Dark Purple Dot is meant to reinforce Green Dot. However, the city lacks a high food capacity until Civil Service, meaning it is also fairly impractical.
White, Teal, and Dark Green Dots are meant to fill up our east coast while taking best advantage of the land and resources there. They are shamelessly stolen from Liq's dotmap

Black Dot is also borrowed from Liq, and that picks up the silver and the wheat, so we can actually work tiles there. An alternative is to move it 1SE to the plains hill. This picks up the bonus hammer in the city center, but we lose the grass to the north, in exchange for massed tundra to the south and east. No thanks.
Pink Dot is filler for much, MUCH, later... Like Electricity later, or State Property later (if we even run that). The river makes it workable, and there is deer there, so we could possibly settle early and run a couple of specs. That fish is completely toast BTW, as we won't be able to settle a city to get it, but it doesn't matter as said city would be half ice anyways.
Orange Dot is filler to basically pick up the tiles west of Moscow, which, while unspectacular, are not completely lousy. The city will just take it's sweet time growing that's all.
Saladin Lime Green Dot is also more filler, largely to pick up all the grass there. Can run cottages or work hills for production. Similar in structure to Orange in getting decent tiles with no resources.
Brown Dot wins us Fish, Deer, and another Silver, and should probably be ignored as some sick fantasy. The combined 9 food of the deer + fish make this a viable city for running a spec or two though, and still working the silver mine.
And finally we have Izzy Peach Dot, which is a lame attempt at getting the copper, which is probably futile. I'm getting the bright idea of preserving all the forests here and hoping for an eventual National Park city, but clearly that's delusional, lol. Only in Boff-0s
