Cookbook #1 (Sally, Immortal)

[Fish Man]

This thinking is also a bit flawed. In the early game your main goal is expansion. A city building something that only helps the city itself get productive contributes nothing at all to expansion. It is basically a delay until the city can contribute to your main goal. Fish city needs to invest 30 hammers more than pigs city until it can be of any help at all. Again, I haven't played this map myself, but I find it hard to believe that there is nothing useful to build this early in the game. Putting hammers into barracks is often a good idea if you plan to war somewhat early. Sets up a nice 2 pop whip for later. More warriors are always welcome for more fogbusting and later as MP. I don't think you are running into the free unit limit just yet. And as someone mentioned, you could start on the workboat that later is used to improve fish.

If you improve pigs immediately, it will take the city only 6 turns to reach pop 2. Then it can continue growing or maybe start on a worker, while also helping capital grow cottages. This is where it really starts pulling ahead of fish city. Fish takes much longer until it can contribute anything meaningful.

Edit: Xpost. Well said @krikav

After a bit of thinking I do realize that you are right. If expansion mattered most then pigs city definitely is better than any seafood city. With my current position only my cap is really in a state to produce workers/settlers. But with pigs city if I got AH before fishing, it would've been a great worker/settler pump.

My issue with that, then, is that we might not need that many workers/settlers during this stage of the game? At this point in the game I'd take a short settling break at 4 cities (3 expo + cap), which doesn't require too much production/food - what are your thoughts on this?

 

[elitetroops]

My issue with that, then, is that we might not need that many workers/settlers during this stage of the game? At this point in the game I'd take a short settling break at 4 cities (3 expo + cap), which doesn't require too much production/food - what are your thoughts on this?

In my experience, at least on immortal, there is no such thing as over expansion. There is only bad empire management. Or maybe "bad" is a bit too strong, let's say "less than optimal". A large empire is expensive to maintain, which makes it more difficult to play, but it is possible to keep expansion going and still maintain a strong beaker rate, as long as you have a plan and utilize all available means to acquire gold. Again referring to competitive games, the best ones are pretty much always those that go for max expansion right from the start and don't stop expanding until the game is won. Of course, this does not mean that every single spot should be settled as soon as possible, you always have to evaluate if a spot is worth settling or not, and whether there are other more urgent builds than settlers. But usually if there is a food resource and you can spare hammers for a settler somewhere, it's better to settle the city than wait until later.

Too many workers cannot be an issue, unless they really start draining your economy with unit upkeep cost. If somehow you already have every tile improved that you want to improve, they can still prechop every single forest in your nearby area, build roads towards future settling sites or war targets, prechop around future settling sites and so on.

In any case, taking a break from expansion at 4 cities would be way too early. The empire doesn't become expensive and difficult to maintain until much later. On this map you should at least grab all the land south of jungle asap. Then probably start thinking about how/when to do some friendly (or probably not ) visits with an army to your neighbors.

 

[Gumbolt]

I agree on IW. So many Ai self tech this for you. I grabbed IW from trade in that game. Really wasn't urgent on NC200. I suspect this game it would be better to tech alphabet and trade it that way.

In terms of trade routes I think sailing could be key here. So roaming workboats could be very useful this game as roads to AI will need to avoid barbs. Albeit we can see China's capital is not coastal. Could be same for Shaka? In terms of IW the jungle does cover up gems and sugar. I doubt we can rely on the Ai to chop this. Also makes AI less likely to declare with so much free land to expand into. This makes it more urgent for us to grab land here. Or the Ai will just grab the rest of this continent.

I think powerfaker save is a must see for all. He has found both the Zulu and Chinese cities. Looks like China lacks metal for now. Same for Shaka. Our capital is up to 22 tiles away from either nation. Worth trying diplomacy to see if they suggest they have a unit to be fearful of.

One thing clear from my save is that Shaka has the highest power rating of all AI. 71k. On some saves this was as high as 81-82k.

 

[lymond]

Olafeson brings up an interesting point on espionage points. In general, we put 4pts onto one leader to try to see research and facilitate better trades (qin seems obvious choice since Shaka is such a bad techer). However, AI also respond to your EP spending by spending points themselves, which in few-AI cases like this can totally offset the benefits. I attempted several permutations of EP allocation to try to convince Qin or Shaka to spend on each other, only to deem it impossible and settle on split allocation to see demographics of both..

This blurb caught my eye, as I have recently been playing with this myself. For years, by rote, I have usually just been focusing the 4 pts into one AI - a Mansa or whatever, but I really started to pay more attention to it recently. I too noticed the impact of EP focus on an AI's willingness to do the same. It is not always a given, but usually at some point an AI will be like "hey, this guy is spying on me I need to focus on him". I've played with it a bit, but I now tend to put 3 pts in a target AI and 1 pt in another potential target. I micro this a bit more now than usual, but find that AIs tend to delay their focus on you more often than not which can sometimes actually speed up the visibility of info. Other factors are present, ofc, such as known leaders..by the AI, and who those leaders are. FIN leaders are more problematic as when the AI tends to raise their EP slider, FIN EPs are boosted more. Also, I notice certain AIs tend to focus more on EP - Willie, Pacal, Zara and Fred come to mind.

 

[Fippy]

Much to think about (like voting system),
first i wanted to give some insight on how i picked that map ~~

I was looking for non linear resis, bad example would have been 2 more corn around our cap.
Or pigs, sheep, cows all close..making AH early very clear.
Here you had only 1 pigs, a very strong tile for sure, but 3f increase for east city comes at an annoying research cost (for only 1 resi).

Fishing also not 100% clear, or pottery vs BW (i was surprised how few played pottery first, thought floodplains & wheel have a stronger temptation ).
I also liked the possible expansion space, and stone (not too close, not too far). And ofc no gold mines or super tiles.
Then we also have jungle, which usually holds plenty interesting resis like gems, but requires some more planning.
Was suprising that i had to make no edits, besides your cap tile switched to plains hill (also done for some AIs, being fair) you are playing an original map.

Pyras are always an interesting wonder, also maybe the most controversial.
Loved by some, dismissed by others, thou this often comes from playing different games.
If playing a very rich map, with AIs in distance, it's ofc more tempting to let them build such expensive wonders for you, while you would rather grab gold, rivers, and so on and take them via force later.
While an extreme opposite would be being isolated with not much but stone, or also just boxed in (deity i.e.), and you have not much else than using their power for breaking free.

On this map, and on Imm in general, i think stone also becomes interesting for tgw failgold.
On deity you would usually be late for that cos tgw can go earlier than ~T40, but if i remember right it's often getting built much slower on Imm, and a quick chop for 40-50 hammers means having that amount in gold more soon.

Pyras are usually best if you can build them at your own pace, also considering taking just some failgold if an AI builds them faster than expected.
Not counting those games where you really need them, and not have such luxury.
Imo nothing speaks against putting hammers into them, once workers are free, and your best prod city might be happy to have something for it's hammers.
Overflow can also come into play here, settler into Pyras being very popular and covering both expansion + wonder.

 

[Swordnboard]

What if we tried voting for 3 different approaches instead of 3 optimizations of the same approach? One person going for mids (and I'm all for seeing how that would play out despite not really thinking it's for the best), one with the meta 3 city spots (cap, pigs, crab), and one with an unorthodox city spot (totally not shilling for myself here) or perhaps even 2 cities but better developed w/ pottery first?

This idea has its pros and cons. On the one hand, it can promote more diverse saves and allow people to pursue whichever strategy they prefer. But on the other hand, it raises new questions of who to vote for. For example, say I would like to vote for a game that will be best at a pyramid-building strategy. Should I vote for c^3, since he obviously committed to it the hardest and already has stone improved? Should I vote for mscellaneous, since he has the stone city founded but managed expansion better around it? Or would it be better to co-opt a more generalist save like mine or Sampsa's for the purpose?

As long as the voting happens with the idea of "which game would be the best for a continuation with this strategy?" rather than "who tried the hardest to pursue this strategy?" I'm all for it.

Since it's all but guaranteed that some save with rapid expansion and a lagging economy such as sampsa or SnB is going forward I'll go for one of those for the next turnset since I think I learn most from that.

I'll have to go into a discussion with these guys on how they usually handle that problem.
Going on from my save, the 3 cottages in the capital will be enough to sustain a long phase of expansion while they continue to mature, with no need to build roads or any more cottages in any other city. This approach I am comfortable with.
But how to handle this in a more lean empire I'm less familiar with. Probably need more cottages since they are less developed? Do you put a hold on expansion after the initial 4-5 cities? Need some handholding or I'll probably just tank my economy completely in the next turnset.

As elite said, definitely don't need to hold back expansion after 4-5 cities on this map. My understanding of the early game is that, aside from a few critical technologies such as pottery, research is generally a linear process. That is, researching more techs doesn't really help you research faster. Production, on the other hand, is an exponential process. Having more workers and settlers increases your rate of producing new ones, which once completed increase your rate of producing new ones, and so on until you have a really massive empire. Then, once you've enjoyed the fruits of the exponetial growth (i.e. expanded throughout all of the good land nearby), the workers can go to work cottaging all of your cities at once.

Even Gumbolt, whose economy is nominally in the worst shape (only +9 commerce - costs), has reached pottery and can continue relentless expansion, safe in the knowledge that the future worker army can cottage up all at once when the time is right.

Too many workers cannot be an issue, unless they really start draining your economy with unit upkeep cost. If somehow you already have every tile improved that you want to improve, they can still prechop every single forest in your nearby area, build roads towards future settling sites or war targets, prechop around future settling sites and so on.

This is true. Having workers is strictly better than not having workers. But as always the opportunity costs have to be closely monitored. For example, a worker could instead have been 2/3 of a settler, 2 workboats, 4 warriors, a granary, 120 failgold, etc. I expect once we play to T75 or so that there will be a bit of convergence around 4-5 workers, but whether a save has 2 or 3 at this point is not so important as long as good alternative builds were planned for those with only 2.

 

[Fippy]

Merci for the BB Codes link, Swordnboard.
Doing this for 16 links felt a bit like exercising lol, but also useful..doubt i will forget again how to do that.

New list and rules post link:
List of Saves & Rules

 

[Gumbolt]

I would say vote for the saves you want to play on. No one is forcing anyone to play any strategy here. That is the point of these games.

Right now there is not much more of map to reveal.Only real unknown now is if we have iron. Apart from that we have room for 5-7 cities.

 

[sampsa]

@Undefeatable I think elite and krikav gave you good answers. I don't think you need AH for pig-city to be good, working even unimproved fps is productive. If I were to play this again I think I'd skip both AH and fishing and go for spots Swordnboard chose. Get masonry and 4th city by stone up asap. Note getting more cities up asap is much better on non-deity levels due to less maintenance.

 

[krikav]

@Undefeatable I think elite and krikav gave you good answers. I don't think you need AH for pig-city to be good, working even unimproved fps is productive. If I were to play this again I think I'd skip both AH and fishing and go for spots Swordnboard chose. Get masonry and 4th city by stone up asap. Note getting more cities up asap is much better on non-deity levels due to less maintenance.

Yes, I'm thinking very much the same here.
I really like SwordNBoards the city placements. (I know he mentioned settling 1E of his city for stone in second ring is better, but I don't agree, riverside freshwater has long term potential that I like. And I would be going for stone next so no monument is needed.)
It bothers me that this save has done fishing, I would be much happier with being half-way to AH, just for them sweet pigs, or close to finishing masonry.

The three cities SnB had first, then stone/wheat, then crab, then fish.

 

[Olafeson]

I want to promote 2 saves here, besides the 3 that i already mentioned as my favorites. Since Fippy meant we should promote our saves a little bit, and explain our approach. You can see the screenshots for both saves at page 5 of this thread ( in the spoilers)

6KMan

Spoiler :

After seeing the map and how far away shaka and qin are from (powerfakers? map), i came to the conclusion, that you maybe need archery. Most of the submitted saves are pretty save for now due to good fogbusting and barbs can only come from the north. But since there is a lot of jungle and even desert, it will be quite likely a lot of barbs will spawn. Maybe even axeman or spearman (btw can anyone explain why sometimes you get axes and spear barbs and sometimes not, i think there needs to be a barb city spawning on copper?). At least even several archers can become a problem.

So i think investing in archery makes sense since there is no copper ( in most of the saves, exception of mscellaneous who sold his soul for the copper pop) and no horses. I am not used to immortal barbs anymore since i play mostly deity now, but i think they still can be a huge problem with only warriors.

My own save (Olafeson):

Spoiler :

I think my save has only 1 problem. That i only have 2 cities instead of 3 like some of the other players. But i have a settler started, a forest 1 turn away from being chopped.

So at turn 46 i will chop the forest at turn 47 i can whip it into granary, then move 3 N to the plains hill and settle that spot. Then regrow to size 4 or 5 chop/whip another settler, and grab the spot 1 N of the stone, capital will regrow to size 4 or 5 any build Settler Nr. 4. Medina can work the cottages during that time, and at size 4 also just build a worker. So around Turn 60 i will have 4 cities and 3-4 workers, all cities connected most likely and the stone maybe hooked up. While already having up 3 grown cottages.

In this approach, i have all cities connected, the city 3N of capital will save me turns roading to the stone and also allows the capital and medina access to stone due to river. Also i only need 2 roads to connect all 4 cities and the stone to whole empire. That would make a very compact empire with 4 strong cities, i think at turn 60 there is still a good chance to get the Pyramids. After that i think i should go for Archery for barb defense, then writing to get a library up and then sailing to get Traderoutes via coast.

Get another city at the clam spot, then go for alphabet and trade IW from qin. Then get 1 or 2 more cities in the jungle, tech to CoL and get another city at the fish spot to the east. That would be my approach for this map. If we can get the pyramids, the clam and fish spot should just whip granary size 4 and library at size 6 and work 2 scientists each.

 

[krikav]

I see alot in your save that I like Olafeson. And the differance between 2 or 3 citites I don't give as much credit too as others do.
My feeling going into this excersise is that it's possible to catch up and surpass the leaner saves. The forests are spent in those saves while they stand in saves that have prioritized cottaging. As things look now, this previous assumption of mine will be subject to a brutal examination, but I still feel like the jury is still out.

Your save is almost identical to mine, except that the tech-order was abit different and that your cottages are 10-20 turns behind, you have your second worker done while I instead have a granary.
The intent of this is to utilize the power of whipping. This is also why I dislike the crab-spot early, the capital should have it's corn. Crab site is ok once pigcity builds a wb.

I like that you have avoided fishing, since that would enable me to settle the third and fourth cities in SnBs pattern, and then go for the stone.
It REALLY bothers me (I'm abit crazy, I know) that you have a cottage in the pig-city. The cottages belong in the capital on this map.

Regarding 6kMans save, I'm not worried about barbs. Perhaps I'm too gutsy, but I think warriors are just fine here. We have barbs comming from almost only one direction and if I misjudge everything completly we can still save the day by spamming warriors.

 

[floydmcw]

Explaining my (floydmcw) save (won't bother with spoiler tag now):

My strategy was influenced by the early isolation. At first I thought this might be an iso map. It took until T21 to meet a neighbor.

So I prioritized commerce, and safety. 5 warriors was maybe overkill but I've had bad experiences, even on Emperor where I normally play, with endless streams of barb archers and warriors.

I'm a little surprised that several other players have a minimal army. Maybe immortal barbs aren't as bad as I thought.

I didn't go for very early pottery but I did get it after Ag - Mining, so I have some cottages and a good economy (18 beakers at breakeven, tied for the lead with two other saves). I built the obvious second city near pigs and went for AH, a 6F pig is a strong tile. Also IMO the 4H1C PH mine is nice.

Mecca is 3 turns from building a worker, my original plan was to chop a 3rd worker then whip a settler into a granary. But having seen other saves/comments, maybe a 3rd worker isn't necessary? The general advice on this forum has been 1.5 worker per city, is that no longer the consensus? (I usually play with about 1 worker/city, sometimes less.)

 

[sampsa]

I'm voting since I want the game to move on and I've done careful analysis on all the saves.

1st: mscellaneous
+ emphasis on chopping, which led to having most hammers produced (even without the copper pop that netted +20)
+ skipping AH
+ getting stone city up
+ fogbusting
- favoring crab-city over fp-city

2nd: Swordnboard
+ emphasis on expansion
+ skipping AH
+ city placement
+ fogbusting
- fishing

3rd: Wrathful
+ city placement (actually really liking stone city placement, most BFC forests)
+ skipping fishing
+ fogbusting
- AH
- one worker, could have chopped more earlier

Honorary mention for the most interesting save: c^3
+ failgold possibilities
- slow development and it will snowball

Nonsensical saves: sampsa, krikav
+ good development
- die to barbs

Most common mistakes to me seems to be under-expansion and not chopping early. Also several saves would get more love from me with city placement that doesn't require border pop.

 

[sampsa]

5 warriors was maybe overkill but I've had bad experiences, even on Emperor where I normally play, with endless streams of barb archers and warriors. I'm a little surprised that several other players have a minimal army. Maybe immortal barbs aren't as bad as I thought.

I think 3 fogbusters is good here, especially if you have one extra to double when necessary. The good thing here is that barbs can come only from one direction, so you definitely don't need to be overly worried about barbs. I haven't played that much emperor, but the higher the level the earlier barb cities pop up, which in turn causes much less random barb spawning. That being said, I'm very worried about safety in my save (one fogbuster) and krikav's (no fogbusters).

Mecca is 3 turns from building a worker, my original plan was to chop a 3rd worker then whip a settler into a granary. But having seen other saves/comments, maybe a 3rd worker isn't necessary? The general advice on this forum has been 1.5 worker per city, is that no longer the consensus? (I usually play with about 1 worker/city, sometimes less.)

1.5/city is rather ridiculous advice to be honest. If I had to pick a number, maybe it would be 0.75/city, but the thing is that it varies a lot. Do you have forest to chop, jungle to clear, cottages to be built? Or are all your cities coastal, mainly working seafood? I've several times had 1 worker for 6 cities and it felt like it's enough, sometimes 15 workers for 10 cities felt like not enough.

 

[Olafeson]

The general advice on this forum has been 1.5 worker per city, is that no longer the consensus? (I usually play with about 1 worker/city, sometimes less.)

I too feel, that most of the time 1 worker/ city is enough. I barely ever have 8 workers for 5 cities, more like 4-5 workers for 5 cities and i am doing quite fine. Why would you need more workers if you can not work the tiles they improve anyway. Later when it is time to spread irrigation, some more workers are added, even later at Communism/Railroad tech i add more workers to get the railroads and workshops and mills up.

 

[krikav]

Going on soon is probably good. I could probably get completly bogged down in theorizing about this situation if left to my own.

My votes:
#1 SwordnBoard, because it's the most extreme form of rapid expansion and lean development I can see with a fourth settler on it's way. This is the save I feel I could learn the most from, and would like to continue from myself.

#2 Olafeson, because it's closest to what I thought was best going into this excercise. The tech-situation is what I think is sound, and I would feel confident playing on from this situation.

#3 Mscellaneous Because of a good overall developed situation, and a city up by the wheat already, something that could cause problems in some other saves.
This is both + and - though, I think that it's abit too rushed, and it really bothers me that the pig-site isn't settled.
I do favour early scouting, oftentimes too much since I lose my warriors. >_< and the shiiiny wb is nice.








@sampsa At least I died to barbs because I was too stupid to stay put and spawnbust and instead went for a stroll in the jungle. Your luck seems to be almost Lain-worthy.

 

[Swordnboard]

An idea that seems to be coming up (or has already happened) in several games is whipping a settler without granary. Not everyone's setup is the same, but I'm going to do some analysis here assuming the available tiles are farmed dry corn (5), farmed FP (4), PH mine (4), and unimproved or cottaged floodplains (3) My intuition before any analysis is that whipping the settler will be a bit worse than not, even considering the additional turns of having a new city.

Spoiler Possibility 1: 4-2 whip :

Setup: pop 4, 0 in bank, settler at 40/100.

Option 1: 2-whip the settler immediately. That turn, we also generate 9h which will become overflow.
-Work corn and farmed FP for 4 turns (28 total, now grown to size 3 with 4 in bank).
-Work corn, farmed FP, FP for 3 turns (24 total, grown to size 4 with 2 in bank).
-Generated a total of 23 in the interim time, settler comes out on turn 1, ready to go on another on turn 8.

Option 2: produce the settler using and , no whipping.
-Work corn, farmed FP, mine, FP for 5 turns (settler completes)
-3 turns to do whatever. Could start another settler and get 36 head-start, could be 2 turns away from a worker, could complete a warrior and stockpile 18 towards growing to size 5, etc.

Comparison: Supposing the new city can output 4 + per turn, the 2/23 and 4 turns earlier settlement seem to offset or even slightly beat out the 36 netted by avoiding the whip. Fringe benefits of whipping include leaving the mine available for other cities, while fringe benefits of not whipping include improved commerce from extra tiles, maintenance savings for no slavery. Seems like mostly a tossup. Caveat: if you really need another worker or settler, the whip situation may not use its 23 effectively, so in that case I would definitely recommend not whipping.

Spoiler Possibility 2: 5-3 whip :

Setup: pop 5, 0 in bank, settler at 40/100

Option 1: 2-whip immediately. Generate 11 that turn for overflow
-Work corn, farmed FP, FP for 4 turns (grow to size 4 with 6 in bank)
-Work corn, farmed FP, FPx2 for 2 turns (24 in bank)
-Work corn, farmed FP, FP, Mine for 1 turn (grow to size 5 with 2 in bank).
-Generated a total of 29 in the interim time, settler comes out on turn 1, ready to go on another on turn 9.

Option 2: produce settler using /, no whip
-Work corn, farmed FP, mine, FPx2 for 5 turns (settler completes with 5 overflow)
4 turns to do whatever (42 towards settler or worker seems strong)

Comparison: again, I assume the new city produces 4 +. Then the 2/29 and 4 turns earlier settlement are roughly on par with the 47 from avoiding the whip. Since whip anger is relevant at pop 5, I lean more strongly towards no-whip here. Since I personally place such a high weight on workers and settlers over other builds (because into warriors, barracks, failgold, even granary that won't be completed for some time don't contribute to exponential growth), I devalue the interim capital hammers and validate my original intuition that whipping is inferior.

tl;dr: 4-2 whip makes more sense than 5-3, but simply growing to size and staying there often makes more sense. If the prospective new city is especially good, or you have a particularly relevant capital build that isn't a worker or settler, consider whipping (check your micro conditions to see if they are similar to my assumptions). On the other hand, if you have a need for commerce or really just want workers and settlers, definitely avoid the whip.

 

[krikav]

@floydmcw
The number of workers that is optimal in a situation is very difficult to asses.
In the NC JOAO game, I had 18 cities and 2 workers, which was sufficient.

I think the consensus of 1.5workers/city is a very useful advice, since players who struggle moving up in difficulty almost always have to few workers.

Having too few workers in any given situation is a total disaster almost en par with having your army going into strike-mode.
Having too many at worst cost you a few gold per turn in maintenence, and you have lost the opportunity to build something that could have been of even more use to you.

On the topic of workers... this map looks like it could be one of those very rare cases when serfdom could come into play.

 

[Gumbolt]

The issue for me was barbs. I could not send settlers north as it was crawling with barbs. Real risk of barbs settling cities in fog too.

1st Mscellaneous purely on city grab further north. Were unlikely really to use the copper but it's a big bonus. Reasonable effort.
2nd Wraithful. The northern city helps but not ideal location. 3 cities and good expansion.
3rd Sword nboard - 3 cities and good fog busting of the stone site..Can still grab stone site barb units pending.

Maybe unlucky RNG on warriors Krkav. Losing 2 may make things harder here. Same for Sampa with limited warriors too.