Asterix the Gaul -- Or: How to get the biggest bang out of the Gallic Swordsman

[Glasnost]

I willing to participate. I have read these forums for couple of days and realized how much I have done wrong in my past years of playing civ

But I think I can still manage somehow in emperor, not too many games played there tbh.

 

[Lanzelot]

Welcome Glasnost! I signed you up with Emperor as your preference.

We'll give creamcheese and DeXteR_ another day or so for signing in, and then we are off the mark!

 

[Puppeteer]

I should probably throw in a disclaimer that I tend to think outloud a lot and sometimes get excited and keep checking the forums and post something when it comes into mind. But I don't mean to dominate the conversation, and when I state a course of action I mean it's what I would do, but I'm not saying I know better than anyone else.

I just had an interesting idea, one that goes against how I would normally play: There is probably a river settling spot 2-3 turns away, and with our agri trait we would could reach size 3 14 turns after we settle. So if we settle in place, the first settler is out in 20 turns. If we move and settle, the first settler may be out in 16 or 17 turns if we have the shields, which I think we would.

Settling in place would mean more early warriors to scout, while moving and settling on fresh water would probably spend most or all of the shields on settlers.

Moving and settling would probably mean more long-term commerce due to the river, and we could grow the capitol to size 12 before aqueducts, but we may be losing a 20spt capitol location post-aqueduct.

These are the kinds of things I can't properly evaluate in their long-term game impact. Moving the starting settler 3 steps in Emporer is nearly an absolute no-no for me, but the known advantages in this case are compelling.

On the other hand, my initial idea was to have city 2 on the river and stealing the deer and BG from the capitol to be a settler pump. If we move the starting settler then it may be necessary to make the capitol the settler pump which stunts the capitol growth until we have enough settlers/workers or find a better place to make them.

 

[Aabraxan]

. . . .I just had an interesting idea, one that goes against how I would normally play: There is probably a river settling spot 2-3 turns away, and with our agri trait we would could reach size 3 14 turns after we settle. So if we settle in place, the first settler is out in 20 turns. If we move and settle, the first settler may be out in 16 or 17 turns if we have the shields, which I think we would. . . .

I was thinking the same thing. If the very first move is 1E with the worker, we will be able to see which way the river runs. I don't think the tile that we can currently see counts as a river for aqueduct & commerce purposes, but I have a hunch that the tile 1E from the deer does.

The problem with moving the initial settler is that it has the potential to set the entire empire back. In this case, though, think the increased food may make it worthwhile. I'm not a spreadsheet player, but by my back-of-the-envelope figures, I don't see hitting size 3 before turn 20, at least with the tiles as they now stand. Chopping and watering the deer would, of course, speed that up, but that's assuming that we can get irrigation to the deer in time.

On the other hand, if there is in fact a river 1E of the deer, we could settle that on turn 3. That gets us an extra food, and pops us to size 2 on turn 10 (just as if we'd settled in place), and size 3 on turn 17. If we have the shields, that's a new settler 3 turns earlier than by staying in place.

Depending on what becomes visible on the other side of the deer, it may also make sense not to chop the deer forest, but simply to road it. Does everyone have "emphasize production" checked?

 

[Puppeteer]

Agree on 1E of the settler not being "on the river". Pretty confident 1E of the deer is, also 2E of the settler.

There are more shields than I thought for a river capitol, and we have at least two forests to chop for an early granary. Mine the BG first, road it, road something else to avoid chopping before the settler completes, chop the non-deer forest towards granary, chop the deer forest, irrigate, then improve tiles to get settler pump going.

More babbling about moving and settler pumps:

Spoiler :

That would probably get us one or two warriors and a settler before starting a granary, and the second city could make some warrior scouts/garrison to cover the stream of settlers soon to come. I don't usually get a factory going quite that early, but it may be practical here. I don't know.

Then again we're agri and can leverage the river for 2-3 fast-growing cities assuming the river is a reasonable length.

Back to settler moving, I keep thinking that we'll have less shields, but aside from the lost production by not settling immediately we're not losing production, we're just growing so fast that we don't have time to build as much before we hit size 3. The more I think about it the more I think it's win-win to get the first settler out early. After that somebody needs to crunch numbers and look at scouting results to see if it's better to turn out another 14-turn settler or start setting up a pump.

My other concern is stunting capitol growth by keeping it as a pump, but perhaps after initial expansion settler production can be moved to another city for a 6-turn factory if we don't have another 4-turn location. I like the capitol to grow to max size as soon as practical to maximize the zero-corruption production and commerce.

Costs of moving the settler:
- Fewer early warrior scouts
- lose 2-3 turns of research and/or tax income

I don't know where the break-even point between building immediate settlers and setting up a settler pump is. It's something I've always wondered about. I think my usual action is to start building the granary when I think the worker(s) can have the land ready to support the pump city by the time the granary finishes and the pump gets primed.

Is that desert NE of the right mountain? I'm not sure if the river tiles are grass, think they might be plains. We might be short on grass around here, but of course it's too early to tell.

If I don't have the first official set of turns I think I'll move the settler to see how it compares to the other starts.

 

[splunge the 2nd]

I was also thinking of spending the worker turn to move on the mountain to get a view of the land. There may be other bonuses east making a riverside capitol better.
Dumb question that I really ought to know: do forests grow on plains or just grass and tundra?

 

[Aabraxan]

IMO, whether chopping the forest for a granary makes sense depends on what we see east of our settler's location. After all, it's a 2f/2s/1g tile if we road it, but don't chop it. That's a pretty good tile to pick up on the growth cycle. OTOH, we may need to chop and water for the additional food. Again, it depends on what we see east of our start.

splunge: I'm not entirely sure, but I think it's only grass, BGs, and tundra. And since there's a deer on it, it's not a BG. (At least, I've never seen a deer or cow on a BG.)

 

[Puppeteer]

I was also thinking of spending the worker turn to move on the mo rain to get a view of the land. There may be other bonuses east making a riverside capitol better.

Dumb question that I really ought to know: do forests grow on plains or just grass and tundra?

Forests can be on plains. I think the forest SE of the deer is a plains forest.

(At least, I've never seen a deer or cow on a BG.)

I recall reading somewhere that this won't happen on a generated map, but it's possible to put a cow/deer on BG in the editor. I've never seen it.

 

[CKS]

BG cows show up in GOTM occasionally.

 

[Lanzelot]

Well, Puppeteer and Abraxan got some interesting ideas already...

But:
a) It's hard to decide these things just based on a screenshot... More intelligence information will be necessary before a definite decision should be made.
b) Please don't spoil the fun for the others...! Everyone should get the chance to first try his own ideas, and then afterwards we should discuss the details.

Therefore, I'll better attach the save now, so you have something to keep you busy...

DeXteR_ and creamcheese haven't checked in yet, but the vote looks pretty much in favor of Emperor, so off we go on Emperor!

I'll play & post my turn set at the end of the week and then open the arena for discussion and spoilers. Perhaps everyone can just put his game notes into a txt file and attach it along with the save, so that others are not too "tempted" to read them before they played their own set?!

Lanzelot

 

[Puppeteer]

b) Please don't spoil the fun for the others...! Everyone should get the chance to first try his own ideas, and then afterwards we should discuss the details.

Ok, I was wondering how much pre-discussion we'll have. So you're saying we'll each take our turns and then compare results and not have the same pre-turnset discussions that happen in "normal" SGs?

Are we deciding ahead of time which turnset is the official first 20 turns?

Oops, question already answered in first post:

and then, when proceeding with the next set of 10 turns every player has the choice to continue from his own .sav or from mine.

 

[AnthonyIII]

This will be fun to read. Forgot to say, excellent graphics in the first posts Lanzelot! Emperor is were I'm currently at for the moment, so I'm sure I'll learn a lot as well. Please post some screenies as you go, guys!

EDIT: I've never been in this part of the forum before, but I see now that lurkers write "lurkers comment:" before beginning their post, so I'll do that if it's an unwrtten rule.

 

[Elephantium]

This will be fun to read. Forgot to say, excellent graphics in the first posts Lanzelot! Emperor is were I'm currently at for the monent, so I'm sure I'll learn a lot as well. Please post some screenies as you go, guys!

EDIT: I've never been in this part of the forum before, but I see now that lurkers write "lurkers comment:" before beginning their post, so I'll do that if it's an unwrtten rule.

lurker's comment:
It's actually a "delurk" tag that does that

 

[AnthonyIII]

Hmm, how should I write it/tag it to make it appear? Sorry for asking, this is a bit new to me.

 

[vmxa]

Looks like this:

Left bracket delurk right bracket

whatever you want to post

left bracket /delurk right bracket

http://forums.civfanatics.com/misc.php?do=bbcode has the codes.

 

[ChaosArbiter]

lurker's comment: Following this thread ... now, where's my disc ...?

 

[AnthonyIII]

lurker's comment: Great. Thanks!

 

[Desertsnow]

lurker's comment: So, is everyone ready?

 

[splunge the 2nd]

I'll DL the save tonight. I can probably manage 20 turns by the weekend; Rosh Hashanah starts this week will cramp my play time. If not, I'll catch up!

 

[Glasnost]

Already did my 20 .

And some of you will probably think my choises are rather intresting..

btw: are we supposed to play to the end of turn 20 or to the start of it`?