City Placement

[General_W]

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.

sounds perfect to me!

 

[donsig]

Sounds good to me, too but that's Paul#42's suggestion, not mine.

 

[donsig]

Posted in the preturn information thread - but perhaps the discussion should be here.

...we need to decide which settler will go where. We'll have settlers on turns 105, 106, 108, two on 111, 114, 116, 117 and 120 (if The Gulag is a five-turner). We have pink dot, black dot, yellow dot, purple square and light blue square on our continent; red square and green square on the one tile islands and one or two cities on the northern island to settle. It would be nice to plan where each of these settlers will go.

And the dot map:

 

[Paul#42]

The next settlers (after the current one for the northern island) I'd send to their destiny in this order:

Yellow Dot (greatest gap),
Pink dot,
Black dot (as soon as marsh is dryed),
Purple square,
Cyan square,
Green square (one-tile-island),
Red square (one-tile-island).

Depending on our success on the northern island we might send two more settlers there in between.

And when we have too many galleys , we might want to test a chain to the southern island, two. But that's still in the stars...

 

[sirdanilot]

I don't think we can have too many galleys on this archipelado map

Settling southern island would be great, but nearly impossible untill astronomy...

 

[Paul#42]

I know, it's a tough expedition. We'd have two turns in troubled waters. But we'd like to have a galley on the shallows anyway.
On the other hand - we won't like to risk losing it again...

So you are right, the chance is lower than 1% - and even if we have enough galleys to risk the journey, the island will most likely be settled by BABE or FREE by the time we make it over.

I guess i was just dreaming...

 

[donsig]

Dot map.

Tentative settler schedule (The Chamber: 3 turns, The Gulag: 4 turns):

105: Northern island
106: Yellow dot
108: Red square
110: Pink dot
111: Light blue square
114: Dark blue square
114: Black dot
117: Green square
118: Add to a city
120: Add to a city

We may want a second city on the northern island or we may need someplace else for the first settler to go depending on BABE's actions regarding the northern island.

Councilors, please feel free to suggest a better schedule. I'm only trying to get the ball rolling here.

 

[Paul#42]

Ah, settling the one-tile-islands frees unit support, good move. I'm fine to prefer those spots over others.

One could try to add prospected journey durations to the settlers so we could time galley missions.

I'm absolutely not fine with building settlers to join towns. These should be rather workers!
Our settler factories could rather give productive tiles to other towns. When we stop building settlers, The Gulag should switch to workers and The Chamber should go on science duty (wonder / uni) (or also build workers for some time).

 

[Aigburth]

I'm absolutely not fine with building settlers to join towns. These should be rather workers!

Quite right! Worker = 10 shields per citizen, settler = 15 shields per citizen, I assume we will be able to work out a scheme to produce 2 workers every 3 turns in The Chamber?

 

[Paul#42]

Quite right! Worker = 10 shields per citizen, settler = 15 shields per citizen, I assume we will be able to work out a scheme to produce 2 workers every 3 turns in The Chamber?

Now that's the problem, unsolvable!
At size 6 we get +10fpt but there is no way to get 10 spt.
edit: As we know now (#112), we can and we do!

That and spared unit support (one unit less) are the only pro's. But workers are way more useful...

Unless we use settlers to clean our jungles
How about that? plant a town on the jungle and build a settler at once? 30 turns with 4bpt and a cleaned tile...
But... more corruption on all towns if we do that in our core... (
But for the corrupt periphery this could work!

 

[zyxy]

Lightblue and purple dots will increase corruption in a lot of towns - is this worth it?

 

[donsig]

Lightblue and purple dots will increase corruption in a lot of towns - is this worth it?

Are you suggesting we don't build those cities? I have no idea how to do the corruption calculations but not building two cities (and not using settlers to add to cities) means we can build workers and some military sooner.

 

[Paul#42]

Agree on your concerns against light blue - it's rank 12, distance 9 so would be between Aerie and Arboretum in Rank without adding any valuable tiles (not even a fish or whale) and pushing five towns back in the order.

But what's wrong with Pink Dot? It's Rank 17 distance 8, so only corruption for The Greenhouse is raised...

 

[donsig]

I think zyxy is talking about the purple square site that is 4 tiles NW of light blue. I think we all agree to settle yellow, pink and black dots on our continent, the two one tile islands and the northen island if we can. If we leave out the light blue and purple squares we have to settle 5 cities plus one or two on the northern island (again, depending on BABE's presence there). Paul has made a good arguement to back zyxy's inital concerns about light blue square. I agree we can forego light blue square. Purple square is further out and has a whale so we need a decision on that one now.

 

[Paul#42]

Lightblue and purple dots will increase corruption in a lot of towns - is this worth it?

But what's wrong with Pink Dot? It's Rank 17 distance 8, so only corruption for The Greenhouse is raised...

I think zyxy is talking about the purple square site that is 4 tiles NW of light blue.

Those able to read have a clear advantage...

Rank 13, distance 8... puts it above The New Yard, The Greenhouse and The Nursery.
Gets the whale, shares the wheat but only two more plains.
The other three are indeed more productive...

We should look carefully how's the worst corruption evolving when we found the next town.
If we just raise their corruption by 2-3%, it might still be worth it.
With courts, we are talking of 30%, i.e. shields 2, 5, 9 etc. are lost...
The difference for downgraded towns (in Ranking) might be losing shield #9 instead of #10...

What's the Nopt for this map?

 

[Paul#42]

We are about to claim the northern island

Should we ics it with two more settlers? We won't ever be able to defend them.

They'd provide us with extra 4bpt, 1spt (for a harbor and galleys) and 2gpt spared for unit support. Is that benefit for an uncertain timespan worth a settler each?

When playing against AI, this is certainly a no-brainer, but against human opponents I really don't know how quickly this investment will be wasted...

 

[donsig]

Are you suggesting we build another settler or two in The Chamber?

 

[Paul#42]

No, in The Gulag.

The 1twf in The Chamber is sealed.

 

[General_W]

My gut instinct is to be in favor of ICSing our Northern Island.

As Paul noted, each of those towns is 4bpt/2gpt bonus for us. Possibly a little bit more since we can squeeze a couple farms in there to get an extra specialist or two. Even without any worker improvement, with 3 towns, we're talking about an extra 12 beakers and 6 gold every single turn they live.

Per shield invested, that beats the stuffing out of anything else we could build… even with our cheaper libraries! (30shields for Settler, 40 for a library)

Yeah we could never hold that, but it would give us some nice warning of the coming attack if they stop to detour to take those towns… or if they attack simultaneously, then we've split up the attackers forces. Either way is positive. On a map with such a limited amount of space for cities, I think every extra town is a boon for us.
(and, if we decide we really want to hold that island, 7 units would make it totally secure till marines or bombers… that would negate the gpt savings, but we'd still be ahead thanks to the specialists.)

Long term, we could even consider sending a worker over to build some farms, then joining the worker to one of the towns, letting that town work all the farms and grow, short-rushing an aqueduct, and that way pick up an extra city for the +3 unit support.

Bottom line: I think it's worth sending 2 more settlers from the Gulag up there to settle the Northeast Hill and and Northwest grassland.

 

[donsig]

Well, that island may well be worth trying to hold since it has ivory - though we'd need to invest in a harbor for it. When would the ivory be available - after astronomy?