Cookbook #1 (Sally, Immortal)

[Swordnboard]

My votes:
1. Mscellaneous (Copper is nice, very well-balanced game, small issues with city placement are outweighed by the positives)
2. Sampsa (3 cities/3 workers is nice despite concerning barbarian issues, city placements are pretty solid)
3. Wrathful (3 cities, only 1 worker but a lot of population to make up for it, damascus placement is a bit funky but no biggie)

 

[Fippy]

So you want to play more soon, okay.

Voting will go until Saturday 1st,
Game will most likely resume on Sunday.

2.5 days left for voting i guess
If all votes are posted sooner, i can ofc cut those dates shorter.

 

[Fippy]

Votes (click on player for their posts)

* Swordnboard
Mscellaneous (3 points), Sampsa (2 points), Wrathful (1 point)

* Gumbolt
Mscellaneous (3 points), Wrathful (2 points), Swordnboard (1 point)

* Krikav
Swordnboard (3 points), Olafeson (2 points), Mscellaneous (1 point)

* Sampsa
Mscellaneous (3 points), Swordnboard (2 points), Wrathful (1 point)

* floydmcw
Tonny (3 points), Olafeson (2 points), Sampsa (1 point)

* Olafeson
Mscellanous (3 points), Swordnboard (2 points), Samspa (1 point)

* Major Tom
C^3 (3 points), Mscellaneous (2 points), Powerfaker (1 point)

* Mscellaneous
Swordnboard (3 points), Gumbolt (2 points), Sampsa (1 point)

* Undefeatable
Krikav (3 points), Sampsa (2 points), Mscellaneous (1 point)

* Powerfaker
Olafeson (3 points), Mscellaneous (2 points), c^3 (1 point)

* c^3
Swordnboard (3 points), Undefeatable (2 points), Mscellaneous (1 point)

* Samuel_996
Krikav (3 points), Mscellaneous (2 points), Powerfaker (1 point)

* Anysense
Mscellaneous (3 points), Sampsa (2 points), Wrathful (1 point)

* Wrathful
Samspa (3 points), Olafeson (2 points), 6kMan (1 point)

* Tonny
Undefeatable, 6kMan, c^3 (each 2 points)

Voting closed, 6kMan away.

Standings after 15 votes

Mscellaneous: 24
Swordnboard: 14
Sampsa: 12
Olafeson: 9
Krikav: 6
c^3: 6
Wrathful: 5
Tonny: 3
Undefeatable 4
6kMan: 3
Gumbolt: 2
Powerfaker: 2

 

[Fippy]

Links on votes added, can now click on the voter for seeing their posts.

 

[Fippy]

Adding, i did read all your comments & suggestions (i.e. about honorable 4th saves that can be played, cos they are interesting to many).
This game has far exceeded my expectations so far, currently i have not more time.

Somebody wrote it's still only the first one after bringing this format back to life (if Kossin could see that ),
no suggestion will be forgotten even if not implented right now.

 

[krikav]

I'm also very impressed! This far exceeds my expectations, both the number of players and the activity of all involved.
So many interesting ideas and thoughts presented!
Thanks alot everyone!

 

[Fish Man]

Alright, I think I know how I'm gonna vote now.

1. First place: @krikav for going the unconventional 2-city pottery rush approach. I think this has very large potential to pay off, as you're miles ahead everyone in bpt (well not miles but...7ish is a lot this stage of the game), even with only 2 cities, and the gap's only going to get bigger as people like me or @sampsa are 10+ turns away from even putting down a cottage.

2. Second place: @sampsa for settling what I think was best, which was basically what I did but substitute the fish city with the pig city. Also 2 workers is a big advantage. Sorry to hear about your bad luck with barb combat (maybe I stole all the good luck...).

3. Third place: @mscellaneous for by far the strongest position - I only put you 3rd because truth be told it's almost a given you're going to be selected. Copper pop is HUGE for extra 3 hammers/turn, either for capital or pig expo. You somehow have not 1 but 2 WBs out already, which is more than my 0.95 and everyone else's 0. Stone city is a bold play and the area's a bit barren but I think it'll work out once we get a border pop and get those extra resources to work - regardless, it's a unique move which is also why I'm more attracted to it.

Honorable 4th place: @Swordnboard . Nothing really wrong with your save except Damascus seems to be...in an inexplicably trashy position? Growing cottages is the only thing it's good for, and even that's suspect; that city has basically no food, questionable tiles, and is almost useless for whipping or running specialists. There are 3 other spots with actual food resources in the BFC, and that place is not it. But, good thing is: you're super close to your 4th city (closer than anyone else really) and you got a head start on granaries! Fingers crossed for that barb fight though...

 

[Fish Man]

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.

You're right, actually, now that I think about it. I keep putting myself back in the deity, especially deity iso mindset, where you can just about expect to go broke if you settle more than 5, at most 6 cities, up until the classical era (and meanwhile the AI gets 12 or more easily). I've almost forgotten how forgiving immortal and below are in terms of costs.

Anyways looks like nobody here's a pescatarian so my fish idea seems to be out, for now. I think I see the point in settling pigs first.

PS @Swordnboard nice art skills

 

[Powerfaker]

One thing that is stated several times that I disagree with is that 2 cities at 2200BC is under par. People that have a third city at this point have gotten it at the expense of tile improvement which has its consequences. T45 is simply too short to have both. Problematic would be if around 2000BC still no third city is close to completion.

Using Sampsa’s excellent spreadsheet to make a differentiation:
3-city-saves (average of 6).
food + hammers : 19,5 (current production)
commerce – cost : 11 (current tech rate)
tiles improved: 3
2-city-saves (average of 9).
food + hammers : 19 (would be 18 without C3)
commerce – cost : 15,5
tiles improved: 5

I see more of a tech rate loss (30% !!) than a production gain (10%). Personally I think the better state of improvements/tech rate is more valuable than an extra city at this date (and I will dedicate 1 vote to this). We may need to speed up archery or alphabet, cause 1 belt of fogbusters is not going to keep away barb axes/spears eventually. Another thing I would rather start sooner than later fe is to put live in the gems/sugar/silk spot with IW in the pocket.
Naturally, my own save favours tile improvement too. Also note that with the 2 cities I’ve got 3 settlers can be produced in ±10 turns .….. for the people who like to expand

I would also prefer to build Mids in the capital and save all forests for that. This way the stone city can be 4th rather than the 2nd . Construction will take …… max 10 turns?? But of course I need to see who will get the fastest date with a ‘’stonehunter’’ save too.

Anyway, my Votes:
1 Olafeson
Good job on cottages / fogbusting. Workers/Tech/Builds in nice position for next steps. EP points are focused.
2 Miscellanious
Best placed stone city, next to wheat + will catch horses early (luckily). I do like the scout boat. This could be such a map with long, small corridors. Who knows how far it has to travel to meet another civ.
3 C^3
Quiet the different approach. Set for both GW and Mids, GW might proof valuable too. Will get behind in expansion somewhat, would like to see how this works out.

And wow, the stream of responses is massive.

 

[c^3]

Here are my votes:
1. Swordnboard - Excellent expansion with the prospect that the 4th city can be founded in the next few turns
2. Undefeatable - I am in favor of water food resources
3. Mscellaneous- Copper in capital's BFC earns this savefile a spot in the top three

Honorable mentions:
Gumbolt and Sampsa - Both have good 3 core cities with great potentials

 

[Powerfaker]

Powerfaker: I like everything about this save except the exploring workboat (do you really need it given everything your worker has mapped?). And the nagging feeling that you want to steal Shaka's worker. Please don't anger Shaka.

=> workboat is meant for crab while capital produces the settler.
=> my initial intention was to steal some worker somewhere. Finding Qin so far away while meeting no one else changed things. Shaka a little later didn't change things back. I actually had a chance to steal from Qin who was roading to his 2nd city, but I let it pass. The point of stealing was futile now, and Qin may be the only decent civ to trade with. The plan for this warrior was now to stick around till OB anf find a coastal city for trade routes. I would certainly not anger Shaka without a fist to make, haha

 

[Gumbolt]

@ power faker - In terms of city and land you really under estimate the power of a larger empire. On levels like this getting your 3rd/4th city sooner can be a big difference. Once key cities develop cottages your science rate increases hugely. Getting 1-2 helper cities early on to develop cottages for your capital provides a bigger boost in bureau civic. Finding a city to run scientists also helps science early on and allows an early academy for 50% science boost in your capital.

If you want to be doing construction rushes you will want at least 4+ good developed cities. In most games I aim for 3-4 cities by 2000bc.Science may go down to start with as you grow to 4 cities but as cottages/scientists come into play it hardly matters. When playing JoaII you can sometimes rex to 7 cities easily. As long as you have writing and techs like sailing it doesn't really matter as you can use specialists to boost science. Remember a lot of people playing here have been playing immortal for a long time.

On a good game there is no reason not to reach 7-10 cities by 1ad. You don't do this by restricting city nymbersh early on.

There are a few games where you might restrict early growth. There would normally be a strategy behind this. E.g. isolated or aiming for GLH wonder. Long shot CS grab on Oracle.

We have no need for archery here if we go with miscellaneous save. I suspect we will find iron somewhere. Shaka and China are not that close. I rarely tech archery unless going for an HA rush.

 

[Samuel_996]

My votes:

1) krikav: I agree with your assessment of the value of early pottery and the relative unimportance of an uber-early 3rd city. I followed a very similar opening path but you seem to have gotten to t45 in a more solid position than me, so definitely a no-brainer for my #1. Having a bit more progress in that second worker would make it even stronger (and what a shame about those barb losses), but can't have everything in 45 turns.
2) Mscellaneous: Very solid game with good expansion, nice scouting WB and I'm keen to see the impact the copper pop has on the course of the game.
3) Powerfaker: Scouting is nice, improvements are strong, settler 3 well underway. Interested to see an approach with late BW, which almost never occurs to me, so nominating this one as kind of a wild card. As someone who is very pro-whip but not all that convinced about early chop-spam, I'd like to see a really nuanced comparison between early-BW and this game, which looks to hit it around t52.

 

[Swordnboard]

Using Sampsa’s excellent spreadsheet to make a differentiation:
3-city-saves (average of 6).
food + hammers : 19,5 (current production)
commerce – cost : 11 (current tech rate)
tiles improved: 3
2-city-saves (average of 9).
food + hammers : 19 (would be 18 without C3)
commerce – cost : 15,5
tiles improved: 5

This is an interesting analysis. I guess one concern of mine is that, at least as far as food+hammers are concerned, the 2-city saves are getting close to saturated with growth and tile improvements, so in order to improve in those regards they will have to spend time building settlers, whereas the 3-city saves have much more room for improvement and their modest food/hammer advantage will likely take off in the near future. As for commerce, I'm unsure of what the future teching plan should be, so I'm curious to hear what folks like Krikav and yourself plan to do with all of the extra beakers.

Another concern is that the very best and very worst saves from each group are lumped together, when we should probably analyze the strategies based on how the strongest results turned out. I'm going to pick out the saves that I think are the best from each cohort and do a similar analysis here.
I would consider Myself, Mscellaneous, Sampsa, and Wrathful (roughly in that order) to be the strongest 3-city examples to go off of.
Swordnboard: 21 /, 14 net . Progress on a fourth settler means productivity will once again jump in 5 turns.
Mscellaneous: 22 /, (20 w/o copper pop), 10 net . Completion of workboat will eventually reap large commerce rewards.
Sampsa: 17 /, 12 net . Also note 3(!) workers and 1T from piggies meaning many of these yields will improve quite soon.
Wrathful: 21 /, 10 net , but only one worker so I rate a touch below the others.
I guess what I see in these saves is an average of about 20 /, and a lot of clear growth even looking only 5 or so turns in the future. As for the 2 city saves, while many linger around 18/ which is pretty close, the now-necessary settler building process (ideally reaching 4 cities by T60 or so, for my own save I'll have a goal of settling city #5 by then) will halt progress in / for a little while. Meanwhile, commerce will slowly increase due to cottage maturation, but the two cities are aready operating near happy cap so not too many new cottages can go down.

For the 2 city saves, I'm noticing a lot of parity and have trouble picking favorites. I'll downgrade c^3's production to 16 (since getting double credit just for building the GW is a bit cheesy), although perhaps we should consider the doubled hammers as research output instead since they'll probably end up as failgold (but 2 cities = very low deficit so will take quite some time to spend the gold). Some of the stronger games IMO are Olafeson's 17/19, Krikav's 18/20, Powerfaker's 20/16. If you have a solid plan for the extra research and want to play Krikav's save, you may find issues with stagnating productivity as the necessity of workers & settlers catches up to you. Or if we look at Powerfaker's save and think of it as comparable in outputs to my own, why not choose the save with a "free" extra city?

Nothing really wrong with your save except Damascus seems to be...in an inexplicably trashy position?

Who knew my seemingly innocuous city plant could spark such diverse opinions... Krikav and Sampsa really like it, you rate it as one of the worst among all possibilities, and I myself will defend it but stand somewhere in between. I settled it with auto-connection and early hammers in mind, but 3N1E seems to do about the same in this regard (only 1 road required for connection), while adding a much needed second floodplain to the mix (this is actually much more important than the potential of getting stone with a border pop).

I'd like to see a really nuanced comparison between early-BW and this game, which looks to hit it around t52.

Perhaps we'll be able to see a game for that! Also curious to hear Fippy's take (re: Krikav's choice to do early pottery). Doesn't necessarily have to be powerfaker's save though; even folks like Krikav who have BW but have been building improvements instead of chopping can serve as a comparison point. Worth noting though, is that despite my maniacal chopping spree, I still have 7 forests under culture, same as Powerfaker, Krikav, Olafeson and Floydmcw.

Ack! This post turned into an essay... will try to break things up in the future

 

[sampsa]

One thing that is stated several times that I disagree with is that 2 cities at 2200BC is under par. People that have a third city at this point have gotten it at the expense of tile improvement which has its consequences. T45 is simply too short to have both.

This is a fair statement. I think what favors more cities rapidly here is floodplains, as they are certainly decent tiles even unimproved.

1 belt of fogbusters is not going to keep away barb axes/spears eventually.

This is interesting. I have played a lot of immortal level games and possibly never seen a barb axe and not that many spears. I have played some emperor saves when someone has posted an interesting start to this forum. There I've seen plenty of barb axes spawning. This must be caused by something in the code (a bug?). On deity also barb cities pop up so quickly that barbs don't spawn a lot say after T50.

I would also prefer to build Mids in the capital and save all forests for that.

I haven't touched this subject directly, but I think the stone city is a very nice spot for Mids.

This is an interesting analysis. I guess one concern of mine is that, at least as far as food+hammers are concerned, the 2-city saves are getting close to saturated with growth and tile improvements, so in order to improve in those regards they will have to spend time building settlers, whereas the 3-city saves have much more room for improvement and their modest food/hammer advantage will likely take off in the near future.

When looking at some numbers I think I like 3-city empires even more than I did intuitively. I thought 3rd city would lose some , but it doesn't. Like I noted in an earlier post it's -3 but generates 323 if settled on plains hill like Swnb did. So something else, (like growing and building cottages) needs to beat 32 per turn, which is quite a task. Also for those who don't like to chop early: a mine is +1, a cottage is +1 but chopping takes 4 turns and creates 20, so it is 5 per turn, again something that is not easy to beat. I do understand that the mine will be there forever and it's easier to create directly this way, a cottage will grow and chopping a forest actually loses the forest, but the earlier you found cities the more you gain (like that 3rd city is +3+2 won per turn) so these things snowball very rapidly.

 

[krikav]

Seeing that so many players which I have over time gained respect for due to their strong gameplay go for an other approach than I, my first assumtion is that I have something to learn and that my intuition is abit off.
I'm not in a position yet to make a clear comparisson and validate this assumption yet.
So when I now reason I do it without confidence that I'm correct.

I'll just use my own save and Swordandboards save as examples, because they are the ones in my attentions focus (the game I played and the game I would like to continue).

The question is, what potential is there in my empire for growth in food and hammer generation, relative to swordnboards?
Here are some factors that might come into play:

a) More future potential for chopping, ie forests left standing.
This can't play a decisive factor, looking at the screenshots I can count 2, or possibly 3 more forests in my empire. Thats at best 60 hammers and alone can't close the gap.

b) The granary.
If the worker is whipped in my save, we start at pop3 with a granary, at pop3 we gain 7 food per turn.
Due to the inner mechanics of the granary, we will not get full benefit from this untill turn 48, since we will start turn 47 at 9/26 food. However at turn 48 the food production of Mecca will increase from 7F per turn to 14F per turn. This is still some turns away though, and if one is convinced about the insane power of the granary, one can be chopped/whipped in Swordnboards save as well.

c) Future worker turns.
In a way, I see working cottages abit like having free invisible workers. Each time a cottage mature it's the equivalent of me getting 4-5 worker turns for free.
In the short perspective laying down a cottage is a very annoying thing to do though. Where you divert 4-5 worker turns to gain a measly 1C per turn.
In my save, I don't think I have to build another cottage for an very long period, and future roads to cities can likewise completely be ignored such that all future worker turns can be fully commited to chopping and improving food.
I imagine that in swordandboards save, a significant amount of workerturns need to be diverted to laying down cottages, perhaps also non-riverside, to be able to get teching going.

d) Pigs vs crabs. From what I see in SnB save a plan could be to settle a city by the crab spot and improve it with the crab with a workboat from pig-city.
This would add aprox 4F 1H 2C to the empire in about the same time as it will take for me to improve the pigs.
Pigs will add 4F to my empire. So an extra city with crabs comes out ahead.

 

[sampsa]

b) The granary.
If the worker is whipped in my save, we start at pop3 with a granary, at pop3 we gain 7 food per turn.
Due to the inner mechanics of the granary, we will not get full benefit from this untill turn 48, since we will start turn 47 at 9/26 food. However at turn 48 the food production of Mecca will increase from 7F per turn to 14F per turn. This is still some turns away though, and if one is convinced about the insane power of the granary, one can be chopped/whipped in Swordnboards save as well.

This is interesting and certainly not easily quantifiable by numbers, so I investigated it a bit. I mean, counting only current raw outputs and outputs created so far certainly has major flaws, since it doesn't predict future in any manner.

Spoiler :

The future of krikav's capital:

I didn't create a test save, but I double-checked it and it seems to be correct.

food pt = food generated this turn
food bar = the amount of food in the bar AFTER the turn
hammers pt = hammers generated this turn, after "+" the current overflow and hammers generated by whip
hammers in build = hammers in build AFTER the turn
(3-pop) whips are marked with magenta
WORKER/SETTLER on green means it's out this turn

non worker/settler builds don't matter much, but I chose 4 warriors before madrassa

As unhappy citizens don't eat food while building a worker/settler I just grew directly to 6 and whipped next turn. I'm too exhausted to find an optimization there, but I don't think there is one in this particular case.

Anyway, to the real subject. Worker T46, settlers T56, T64, T72. Hammers generated to other builds 3 granary, 60 warriors, 28 madrassa so 91. If we substract 11 that was already in worker, the total hammer output of these turns is 100*3+60-11+3+60+28=440 in 28 turns. That's 15,7 per turn, certainly pretty nice!

However (I know I'm using this a lot ) settlers are out really, really late and you still only have 2 workers (though 2nd city can certainly help with this!). Since we've already established 3rd city is neutral and working an unimproved fp wins 3pt and 1-2pt, there is IMO no way 3-pop whipping settlers with a granary helps you to catch up the expansion speed that T45 3-city empires have. Note however that this analysis completely ignores , where you will remain ahead due to better cottage growth. Having more cities earlier will eventually lead to more cottages being worked though, so I don't think that lead lasts forever.

edit

Spoiler :

This is also completely ignoring chopping. I think putting chops asap into workers/settlers is good, but definitely need to be able to 3-pop whip at size 6. So certainly future settlers will be earlier out than projected in my spreadsheet, but the problem remains - 3rd city is very late.

 

[Tonny]

Love your work @sampsa... could you do it for my save too?

 

[sampsa]

Love your work @sampsa... could you do it for my save too?

Your save has too many cities, so it's hard. Btw I think with a few changes I would like your save quite a lot, especially chopping the fish city spot before it's under capital culture is annoying. I'd also like it if you skipped fishing and put 3rd to SwnB:s spot 3N of cap and get 4th out quickly while teching masonry. So I think the main issue is same as in my save, stone city + masonry will be a bit late and I really really want Mids.

 

[krikav]

@sampsa wow, thats really impressive!
I love these charts. It's really laying bare how insanly powerful whipping with a granary is, while simultaniously dispelling any illusions and unrealistic expectations.

Catching up is not an easy task and it's very easy to trick oneself with faulty reasoning along these lines:
"Well, thats not a problem, because I can chop and whip a settler and it will be out in two turns, then it's only 3 turns untill I'm in position to settle..."
The crux is that if we compare two saves, it's not like the save we are trying to compare with just sits idle. Those 2+3 turns might not seem much, but by the time that third city is settled, the 3-city save I'm comparing with is likely to be very close to city#4.
To catch a running target you need to run faster.

The other factor that could play in, is that the cottageless aproach need to, at some point, divert workerturns (and citzens) to get some commerce going.
The timing of this transition from a lean cottageless big empire into something that can sustain teching, is something that I don't grasp, and as such I don't know how big of a factor it could play. My guess is that it's not enough to make a differance.

Haven't had much time to play, but I did do a quick trial of a mad chopping dash in the Sulieman map from the Lain-thread, and didn't really succeed in finding a balance.

Really looking forward to seeing this transition in action and learn from it!
After the next turnset is done, I do intend to try out both saves and compare.