City Placement

[donsig]

I'd hold those one tile islands with warriors for now. Let's get our continent citified before we settle any islands.

 

[zyxy]

dbl post
xcl

 

[zyxy]

I agree with Paul and donsig on the 1-tile islands.

I am somewhat undecided on where to send the boat settler, but an early warning post on the northern island could be worth it.

 

[zyxy]

We can of course also pop the hut with a warrior...

It seems there is a majority for settling our own landmass (donsig, General_W), dissenting opinions Paul#42 (north island) and sirdanilot maybe (settle one tile island, or something else?). So I'll go with settling our own landmass.

 

[sirdanilot]

Yeah I guess that's allright too, but if you do that just put a warrior on the one tile islands as mentioned above.

 

[peter grimes]

Settlers are more valuable on our own island at this point, after our continent (prison?) is settled, then we can settle the reef islands. Until then, a warrior lookout is smart and safe.

 

[Paul#42]

Spoiler :

I'd like to consider moving black dot NW and pink dot NE just for the case we decide to ics the coast line.
Both towns will still be able to grow to 7 if we don't ics there.

We will have to send a worker to black dot soon to be able to settle it in some 20 turns.

 

[Aigburth]

I agree, I am a advocate of the ICS coast plan (at least in the more corrupted areas), I think it is probably the best way to deal with a potential BABE invasion both tactically and economically. The only real snag is all the extra settlers it would require, probably around 8 or so)

 

[Paul#42]

That will be easily made up for by the increased unit support.
(okay, I'm still quite impressed by the unit support of small towns in Feudalism... maybe we switch our gov one day )

And we won't have to hurry to found them, I'd think we take some time building workers and wonders after we settled all remaining 7-9(?) high prio spots including the 1-tile-islands.
Settlers for the ics might come when towns start wasting food.

I'd just avoid replacing towns then.

 

[zyxy]

The reason for putting Pink Dot where it is now is that it will be able to work those hills only if it has access to some irrigated grass. With 4 hills, it might be a reasonably productive town.

IMO it depends on the corruption levels whether ICS is a good idea or not. And it seems corruption is still quite low...

Black Dot NW is fine with me. But this town (wherever we put it) is definitely no priority AFAIAC.

 

[General_W]

I'm with zyxy on this one. I don't think we should ICS anywhere on our continent. Short term that certainly has some appeal… but long-term, I think we're pretty clearly going to be better served by having fewer but larger cities. Not only does each City give us the support of 3 towns, but we also get bonus commerce from our larger cities as a commercial civ. Additionally, only us and BABE are in a position to make almost every town on our continent reasonably productive with courthouses. That means more libraries, more markets, more universities, more factories, more everything than anyone else.

Specialist farms are nice – but nothing compared to what we'll be able to do.

Every extra town we build limits the upper end of growth and production for our cities/metros and increases rank corruption on our continent.

I think we should stick with the long-term view and keep our eye on maximizing the number of highly productive cities and metros we can get on our continent.
With our tech edge and deals with FREE, Saber, and BABE, we're sitting very pretty for defense, and once we get rails, having our coast ICSed won't matter defensively anymore anyway.

 

[General_W]

Ok – here are some CAII numbers to back up my contention.

Our current corruption numbers:

Not to great, right? ICS looks like a good idea.
But look at this again with Courthouses added in!

Even our far-flung cities like The Greenhouse and The Marina are decently productive at around 50% !

 

[zyxy]

Nice!

It gets even better if you also add in the FP, IIRC.

 

[General_W]

Oh yeah!

And does it ever!!!
Just check out these numbers with a Forbidden Palace in The Silo…
(and courthouses everywhere, of course)

​

 

[donsig]

Dot map with settled citied in Korean Blue:



We have 8 cities left to build: 4 on our continent, one each on the two one-tile islands and two on our northern island (the one with the two MWs on it).

We'll have a settler in a couple turns in The Chamber. Where should it go? A couple turns later we'll have another in The Gulag and the turn after that should have another from The Chamber. Where do they go?

 

[Paul#42]

The next two I'd send to pink and yellow dot to claim those areas. I don't want BABE to settle there way outside our cultural borders. We'd have a hard time arguing it's our land...

The third I'd send to the island of BABEs. It should be timed with a pike (from The Admirality? - I think it's worth the effort to get a vet there) and the galley's return (~5-7 turns). On turn 112 we should settle there.

The reason for putting Pink Dot where it is now is that it will be able to work those hills only if it has access to some irrigated grass. With 4 hills, it might be a reasonably productive town.

Located to NE, only using the Plains (railroaded and irrigated: +1fpt), Pink dot could use 3 hills for 14 spt (before corruption). That's 6 to 8 spt with a courthouse I'd estimate. Not too bad.

However the hills are better used by towns closer to our core, The Aerie will be less corrupt and might profit more from a hill, especially as it has just forests and a mountain (BGs will go to The Silo). And The Aerie won't get too many grassland tiles to its south side and will probably demand those grass tiles anyway (except for the one to the NW)...

 

[General_W]

Thanks for the Map Donsig! I assume, the settlement locations shown on the southern island are actually meant for the reachable (and mirror image) Northern Island?

Anyway – I'd personally send the settler and Pike to that Northern Island as soon as we can get the boat back. I'd like to see the settler and pike (even if it has to be a regular, though Vet would clearly be prefered) waiting on shore when the boat arrives.

I'm not so worried about BABE settling on pink or yellow dot. It's clearly our continent, and BABE would have to expect their settling there to be an ultimate lost cause… they'd never hold it against us unless they're wiping us out already. But just the same, I agree we should get those areas settled as a priority.

No comment on location of Pink Dot… I'll leave that to the better MMers

 

[zyxy]

Located to NE, only using the Plains (railroaded and irrigated: +1fpt), Pink dot could use 3 hills for 14 spt (before corruption). That's 6 to 8 spt with a courthouse I'd estimate. Not too bad.

However the hills are better used by towns closer to our core, The Aerie will be less corrupt and might profit more from a hill, especially as it has just forests and a mountain (BGs will go to The Silo). And The Aerie won't get too many grassland tiles to its south side and will probably demand those grass tiles anyway (except for the one to the NW)...

Railroads won't be available for a while, and towns that have access to irrigated grass grow faster.

It seems to me that none of these arguments actually show the advantage of Pink Dot to the NE. All of them are equally applicable for both locations of Pink Dot.

Simply put: its current location will make it grow faster, lets it work more hills, and will give us more flexibility in using hills where we need them. Moving it 1 tile NE will alow us to build another town between Pink and The Marina.

 

[donsig]

I'm not sure about settling the island with the first settler. Where will we get a pike from? If we settle it I think we have to settle it with the vet MDI for now and put a pike there as soon as we can.

 

[Paul#42]

Railroads won't be available for a while, and towns that have access to irrigated grass grow faster.

You are right, before our few workers will have railed those hills, the game is likely over

Let's stay with original pink dot.

I don't care too much for moving the black dot, too. ICS on out island should be quite unneccessary.

I just made up my mind (again...), I'd favor to send one of the first two settlers to the BABEs. And definetely NOT with an MDI, that would even raise our losses in case of a backstab.
I say: A pike or nothing as company.

My favorite plan:
Build a vet pike in The Admirality before the library right now. This will delay the lib by another four turns, most of them we will run 0% science anyway. So the potential loss of 5bpt becomes a gain of 1gpt spared upkeep
(and a loss of 2gpt due to raised unit support )

Here's my suggested schedule:
The Gulag builds settler in #107 (or The Chamber in #106)
The Admirality buils pike in #106 (warrior disbanded to get 28 -> 30)
both reach boarding point in #110, embark #111.
galley surrounds island, reaches boarding point on turn #109.
Settler lands on island on #114 founds The Watchtower in #115.

That's late enough
I don't want to lose more time by taking the 3rd or 4th settler.
Black Dot's marsh won't be cleared in time anyway to use one of the first two settler there.