City Placement

[zyxy]

Don't you always get the cheapest tech?

Back on topic, either green dot or the tile directly north of it looks rather nice: food bonus and bg's.

 

[fe3333au]

I like the idea of a ship building city on the coast for our next city, however I would prefer not to crowd our capital's borders since we will be able to expand because of river and it will have no coruption.

So I would actually see what is north of the pink dot and that way we will be able to perhaps use the fish as well.

 

[Paul#42]

So I would actually see what is north of the pink dot and that way we will be able to perhaps use the fish as well.

A downside (apart from popping the hut early) of that location will be low production in the first turns. Red dot will immediately get 3 spt with one mined BG while for pink or orange dot we will have to irrigate some floodplains and mine plains. And to get a worker there takes longer while red dot can be improved soon by our man on the BG. A curragh from red dot will be ready easily 10 turns earlier than from orange dot.

In the long run orange dot is surely stronger but we want that curragh quickly, right? However we are only talking about chunks of 4 turn delays...

 

[Paul#42]

I prepared a new dotmap. Should I replace the one in the first post?
I moved grey dot to claim gems and wheat. However it will be tough to connect and improvement will take some time.

So my favorite sequence right now would be red-blue-orange.

 

[fe3333au]

Ooops I actually ment I'd like to see what is South of the pink dot as I don't like the idea of cities infringing upon the capital borders.

Don't replace the maps as it will get confusing, just add the updates as they come

 

[AutomatedTeller]

you don't always get the cheapest tech - usually, but not always.

But waiting to pop a hut until later, especially if we can trade, and maybe getting a tech like CoL/Mysticism/Polytheism or even currency/map making/construction would be *huge*.

More likely, of course, we will anticipate getting a nice tech for a month, only to end up with a conscript warrior

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I'm of two minds about blue dot.

A) getting the luxes is good, and that's going to be a great science/production city, with lux and gold, plus all those lovely hills

B) Putting it there delays another 4 turns any use of extra food bonuses - we see 3 (maybe 4) more tiles that can be 3 food under despotism - the 2nd floodplain near the cap, the wheat on plain and the 1, perhaps 2 FP down by pink dot.

I don't particularly have a strong preference - I like getting a good city in that spot relatively soon. In fact, I might suggest settling *on* the gold - just doing that will near double our science output (1 for city, 1 for river, 4 for gold, reduced by 1 for despotism for 5 - add 1 (or 2) for working a river or river with road or lux... hmm... I'm leaning more and more towards that area.

 

[Niklas]

You don't get the full bonus to research for settling on the gold, so I would advise against that. IIRC you get +1 commerce in your city center, which would mean 3, while later in the game that same tile will yield 6 (gold, river, road).

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I have heard that, but it's been my experience that it's not true. It *does* work that way with shields - putting a city on a hill means you lose the 2 shields you can get, but I have always gotten the full commerce bonus.

Popping the capitol down on a commerce bonus is a waste, because the capitol has a minimum amount of commerce it makes anyway, so you would pretty much lose that bonus.

I'd recommend doing that with the gems up north, but those aren't on the river, so the city would have to spend shields on an aqueduct and that's a pain in the ass.

 

[Niklas]

And right you are! I tested in the editor, and a town on a gold hill near a river makes 5 commerce for the city center in despotism. I stand corrected (gladly so).

 

[Paul#42]

Settling on the gold hill might be a good solution. IIRC we should lose one commerce, we had that lately in the India Gotm.

This inspired me to a weird idea regarding those gems:
How about planting a town on them, hiring a scientist there, producing a settler in 30 turns (disbanding it) and resettle E (or NE) then?
It would gain like 3 (+3) beakers and would spare us several worker turns cleaning the jungle.
We could also let it grow to size 2 in ten turns and pop rush the settler (getting unhappiness for the next town...). Our settler as a lumberjack.

Simply crazy or an alternative?

 

[Niklas]

Not a bad idea at all. I've used this exact tactics many time in previous games, as you say it clears jungle a lot faster than a worker. I don't normally do it with one of my early towns though, it's generally only for semi-corrupt towns later in the game. But in this one case it might actually be worth it. We should do some calculations on this. A downside is of course that we don't get the wheat in the first eight.

 

[peter grimes]

That sounds devilishly clever! But please explain this: "getting unhappiness for the next town..."

 

[Niklas]

If you whip a settler and abandon the town, the whip unhappiness is transferred to the next town. I don't recall exactly how it works though, doesn't the unhappiness go to the nearest town already settled?

 

[Paul#42]

If you whip a settler and abandon the town, the whip unhappiness is transferred to the next town. I don't recall exactly how it works though, doesn't the unhappiness go to the nearest town already settled?

Yes it does. If we get the gems connected by then, they would make up for the unhappiness easily.
Red dot would get the unhappiness which is not too nice since it should be size 2-3 by then probably demanding a MP.

The benefit of this action is tough to calculate. I might try it at home but SGotm12 and Gotms demand their time share, too...
Here's a little draft:

no trick: found town on grey dot (or other), road gem jungle takes 6(?) turns, no extra commerce (not working jungle) - clear jungle way later.
slow trick: found town on gems, citizen scientist for 30 turns, build settler: ~5-7 beakers per turn. Wastes ~3 pop. Road gems needs another 3 turns.
quick trick: found town on gems, work unimproved grass - ~2 extra commerce per turn for 10 turns, then whip settler, get 3 beakers (town mustn't grow to build settler at size 1) --> wasted 1 pop, unhappiness in red dot for 20 turns. Road gems needs another 3 turns.

Both trick szenarios waste a prime site for several turns. That's why I'm not sure if this is a great idea...
But we get the gems 6 turns earlier (spare roading it) and get the tile usable for extra commerce also (which would take us ages otherwise)

EDIT#6: Don't feel bad if you don't understand this post - I don't understand it either

 

[zyxy]

I guess one way to evaluate this trick is to weigh it against the alternative option of building a town just where we like it, and produce 3 (or more) workers in 30 turns (for the slow trick), or 1 (or more) workers in 10 turns (for the quick trick).

Long run, even one worker is better than 1 cleared square IMO. So, is the short run advantage (faster clearance & gems connection, and in case of the slow trick some gold) great enough to outperform this?

 

[peter grimes]

It's tricky, because sometimes a short-term gain is preferable to a longer term advantage.

One other aspect of this to consider is the intelligence we could gain on an opponent indirectly: If we found a town on the gems and then abandon it, only to found another town a turn or two later, only the most perceptive of teams will notice that something strange happened. Any team that questions us "Hey - what happened with your population during turns xx?" will be someone to watch out for

 

[AutomatedTeller]

Another option is to just plop the city on the gems and build an aqueduct. That will give us the commerce bonus of the gems, get us the gems hooked into the civ 6 (or 3 - I think roads in jungle are 9 turns?) earlier, all at the cost of an aqueduct. is it worth it? lets see:

Under despotism, we have a city center making 4 GPT instead of two, so every turn, that's 2 GPT better. Once we get out of despotism, the city center will make 6 GPT instead of 3, which is 3 GPT better.

The aqueduct is 100 shields... clearing the jungle is 24 worker turns.

Ahh - yes, it's not worth it - because waiting for the aqueduct means a delay in getting to size 7, which adds raises our city center commerce to 3 gpt + river or 4. We can run numbers, but I can't see how it can possibly be right to actually leave the city on the gems. Too bad.

There *is* another trick we can do.

Drop a colony on the gems, *then* found the city. Costs 1 pop and 10 shields, but gets the gems connected to the city 9 turns earlier. Doesn't clear the jungle, of course.

 

[donsig]

What is our goal for our second city? Beakers or shields or food? (The Chamber will be spitting out settlers.) I realize we'll get settler #2 four turns after settler #1 but if the race for philosophy hinges on a couple of turns then when and where we place our next city could be very important.

 

[Paul#42]

After being distracted so long, we have to get back to the blue dot discussion.

Where to settle Blue Dot
On the hill SE of Dyes (good defense, spares forests and grass),
directly on the dyes (connects quickest, wastes forest and grass)
on the gold hill (gets extra commerce, RCP 5 (more corrupt), beyond the river),
the grass E of Dyes (most quickly settled, a bit crowded) or
N of Dyes (wastes forest, grass, RCP 5, beyond the river)

This RCP 4 or 5 only effects the rank order of our towns. It could well be wanted to place that town further away then the other first ring towns - however I consider it very productive so the corruption should rather be low -> RCP 4.
To be beyond the river might be no problem in our isolated situation. Quick shifting of units between the towns seems not necessary - but that might change. As does the defensive advantage of a hill site.
To waste a forest or a grass is not good with all those hills around.

Taking into account the discussion above, I vote to settle blue dot on the gold hill. Extra commerce rules!