Fish Man
Emperor
- Joined
- Feb 20, 2010
- Messages
- 1,553
I disagree with this line of thinking. Especially in the early game you want to settle cities that become productive as soon as possible. In your example you mention fish takes 12 turns to improve, while pig takes 4. If we only consider those resources (haven't studied this particular map closely yet), then settling the pig first gives you a productive city 8 turns earlier, meaning that city can give produce a worker or a settler 8 turns earlier. 8 turns earlier worker means it will always be 2 improvements ahead, 8 turns earlier settler is a huge deal. As with everything in this game, early gains are way more valuable than later gains. Besides, if we look at total food produced, fish first will probably never be ahead of pigs first, so there isn't even a later gain to be had.
Looking quickly at the map, I'd agree with Olafeson. Fish city should rather be delayed until later in this case.
First of all these are good points, and I definitely agree with Cereal's tried and true guide of food on first ring, at least most of the time (even he said - exceptions do exist).
But I've slept on it a bit and I've made a decision on how to articulate my argument better. It's fine if you disagree; honestly, I'm not sure how I got to thinking this way either. But it's been my experience that it works on deity, for some reason, so maybe it's not completely meritless?
Anyways, the thing I have to say is this - the fish city make better use of early turns production-wise and in terms of tiles worked. The moment I settled the fish city, I was building something useful - monument, followed by WB. These are hammers put into a solid build queue that directly contributes to the goal of 1 thing: getting food. On the other hand, if I had settled pigs first, I would've been at a loss at what to build; nothing would've been really that useful to start on. Warriors? I have 4 already; at this point maintenance will start to kick in. Worker? 15-turn slog; not a fan of enduring that. Barracks? Hammers will all but decay by the time I get around to it after switching to granary -> library -> all the other builds that are coming up. And meanwhile it's forced to work unimproved tiles for at least the first 10 turns of its existence. So at this point in tech and worker turns available, pigs city can't really do much to pay back, and founding it later to cut these minimally productive turns will do far more for us when we consider what we get from fish city (much, much faster access to food).
So I guess my point here is, the fish city makes better use of early turns production-wise because it's automatically building something tangibly useful instead of having to twiddle our thumbs until pottery to start on a granary. It also can work a much more high-quality tile, grassland mine (I know, not the best, but better than most unimproved tiles for sure) - as opposed to having to wait for AH to actually get a decent yield (regardless of WHEN it was founded), and stuck growing slooowly at 3f tiles in the meantime. Finally, because it needs an extra 2 builds to get started, founding it earlier will make it be able to start on the essential infrastructure (granary, library, maybe lighthouse) sooner whereas the pigs city WON'T have any turns saved on building these important things if it is founded sooner because the techs necessary aren't in yet. Put simply, being founded earlier does a lot for the fish city but basically not much for the pig one, the fish city can build much more useful builds in that time, and the pig city cannot contribute much anyways until certain techs are in.
And with that, I rest my case.
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