Dirk's deity game pt II

[Dirk1302]

^That's true, we may find another pasture but our best chance for an extra resource in the east would be 2w1s. Time to move that warrior, if it finds seafood exactly 4e of current settler position or 2 tiles from coast 1e is bad as it'll kill the seafood, otherwise 1e becomes very attractive as that city on the coast would be a bit crappy in the first place. So i'll move the warrior 1 nw.

 

[Dirk1302]

So i did revealing this.



A crab, settling 1e leaves enough room for a northern city. Our location's rather to the north too probably since there's no crab near the equator as far as i know. I'm still not sure about capital location, early game those extra hills don't help me. Mid game after buro i could have tremendous production but only if i farm some tiles or else i lack food to work them all. Levee is worth 7 hammers here but that's rather far in the future. Early game settling in in place is the strongest move for early cultural influence unless we miss a strat resource on one of that unforested hills.

 

[Kadazzle]

In all honestly though, I'm more inclined to believe Iron or Uranium with either be either on the riverside plain 1NE of the lake, or 2E 1S of the settler. I find that I usually get Uranium or Iron riverside in my cap's BFC. Then again, yuo could also have coal on the unforested grassland hill. I wouldn't be too worried about what resource could be in the fog, as the chances something useful isn't in the fog is higher than if something useful is in the fog.

 

[ppciv4]

a food poor capital, I'll start settler at pop3.
and I'll settle in place, there's 50% possibility there's horse/copper in the BFC.

 

[DMOC]

I think the levee actually gives 8 hammers.

Settle in place, probably.

 

[RedFury]

It's nice to see some high level players having differing opinions here

Personally, and this inflexibility is quite possibly a weakness of my current game, I find it difficult to forgo setting up a commerce-powerhouse capital if its possible. I know that bureaucracy gives the 50% bonus to hammers as well, but not in the same multiplicative way. I can normally setup a pretty decent second/third city on a good hammer site and I find doing that and keeping the capital commerce rich for bureau usually works out better. Even if I have to go full-on production with capital because I have no choice, I usually end up moving the palace somewhere else if I find a riverside commerce giant in a timely fashion. I haven't found anything that competes with bureau/academy/river-cottage combination for early/mid research. Then again, I also freely admit to not having fully investigated Obsolete's hammer/wonder approach so I'm distinctly one dimensional so far.

Having said that, I'm a little stumped on what to do with this start - there are so many hills! A couple of farms + food resources will feed most of them, meaning with bureau you could seriously crank out the wonders and rack up GPP and settled specialists. Also if you went heavy commerce instead, a lot of the cottages here would be non-riverside. Non-riverside non-financial cottages are decidedly ordinary for a fair amount of time and (I'd image on Deity especially) getting useful stuff out of the early game is so important.

I think I will learn a lot from watching this game and seeing the different approaches people make. It might help me to become a bit more flexible in my play. It will be particularly awesome if some people go the full-on hammer capital and some go cottages.

 

[Silu]

I think the levee actually gives 8 hammers.

Not because the tile settled is grass and not plains. If there's no +1 stratreso there or an ongoing GA that is.

I'd settle in place as well, IMO there's enough easy production (13 base + somewhat high prob on stratreso) that doesn't necessitate extra farms. Though I guess on average I'm one of those evil cottagers that obsolete scares children with.

 

[Dirk1302]

So despite the possibility of going 1e which still allows us to work the crab later most want to settle in place.

Pros and cons for settling in place as i see it:

- Small chance on an extra food resource
- Better early cultural influence
- More freedom to choose the coastal city

Pros for 1e

-Far better chance of finding a strategic resource
-So better chance of rushing early should that prove necessary
-If we find stone and or marble we can switch the capital to all the mines and we could nick some good wonders that way, settled in place we won't have the option to really turn on production.
-Levee possible here

1 ne is also possible and could lead to an extra resource as well, this costs a turn however and the chance of finding a second resource isn't better than settling in place. I don't think i'm going to do this.

I now think that the pros of settling 1e outweigh the pros of in place myself. We have no idea what the rest of the map'll be like so having more options as to how to continue is important imo.

 

[shyuhe]

I'd settle in place. The lack of forests indicates that there are more resources in your starting cross so I'd just go with the map generator. I also think this is an average start - crappy food but the river makes up for it with early commerce.

 

[Olodune]

Exciting start!

A couple of other possibilities:

1) Settle on the rice -- it could pay off especially if there is another food resource in the south.

2) Settle to the West -- a city founded on the coast can pick up the abandoned tiles anyways.

That said, my gut reaction is to settle on the river, probably 1NE (though after moving onto the hill you can change your decision to 1E without additional penalties ...)

Good luck, I'll likely play along

 

[obsolete]

Two resources can't spawn beside eachother, unless it's two pasture resources (this rule I believe only applies to Capital's though) so in my opinion I'd settle 1E.

That better mean 2 different resources, and even then I doubt it.

 

[Nares]

The lack of forests indicates that there are more resources in your starting cross so I'd just go with the map generator.

Almost assuredly there's a strategic resource in the initial BFC.

I think it's 50/50 on whether you lose it by moving.

I highly doubt any of the "new" tiles picked up by settling 1E will have a resource.

With the lack of food, you'll need alot of farms to get the mines running if you move 1E. That's additional health and happiness you'll need to make use of that production.

Settling in-place offers less overall production, but hits food-neutral at a lower pop. Also, it has more grassland tiles, which means more food-neutral workshops later on.

I'm curious as to how deity level players would view the health/happy issue. As I see it, you're bound by low health/happy caps until roughly the mid-game. But, at approximately the same time you can start working all those extra mines, you can also swap to Bureaucracy, at which point I'd prefer additional pop to be working cottages rather than mines.

 

[Dirk1302]

^ the UB provides extra health.Happiness is obviously a problem on this start.

Jammeruno and Olodune suggest going 1 NE. I can't see much merit in that, it costs a turn and apart from the chance on an extra resource it's not really batter than 1e as far as i can see. Majority seems for settling in place suggesting that the generator should have something more in store for us. It was my first thought as well, often when in doubt don't move.

 

[Olodune]

Jammeruno and Olodune suggest going 1 NE. I can't see much merit in that, it costs a turn and apart from the chance on an extra resource it's not really batter than 1e as far as i can see.

The main reason is for more riverside tiles. While levees are a long way off the +1 commerce is still better than nothing. Possibly not worth a turn, however.

 

[Dirk1302]

Also more plain tiles. And indeed that turn is not unimportant. Well i make a decision tonight. In the meantime what should the techpath look like? i see 2 possibilities,

Mining->bw we'll know about copper soon and can speed up things by chopping/mining. We only have rice as a surplus food tile in that case and not much power for self building settlers so we need to use our chopping ability in that case.

AH->mining->bw->hunting->archery. Barbs don't hit before 2600 bc and it's ~2400 bc on average. To get to archery this way 'll cost me ~ 50 turns that's 2000 bc. Will be a bit faster since i get some +1 commerce tiles to work but it's too late.So it depends a bit on neighbouring ais , but i might well be forced to go archery before bw. Then again i could build a cheap barrack to defend with cover warriors, that might buy me some time. The plain cow would really help with building early settlers. And we'll know about horses before the first worker is out.

Pottery. That would solve the commerce problem but is too slow for rex purposes as i can't go around working food neutral tiles without hammer output this stage of the game.

 

[Silu]

I would plan AH->BW and delay Archery if you get Horse/Copper or if the area is easily bustable. The tech detour hurts with this start and Bowmen aren't really that spectacular. Vs barbs they aren't really much of an improvement over normal Archers even.

 

[Olodune]

Also more plain tiles.

A good point ... it is a little hard to tell from the screenshot, but moving 1NE might be adding many more plains. If so, 1E is better.

Without playing the next turn, determining the tech path is a little difficult. If you settle 1E I would pick up AH. While not as good as a 5-6 food tile, plains cattle is the best visible tile. Does is beat earlier chopping/whipping on the growth curve?

Edit: Any strategic resources in the BFC (which seem somewhat likely), would throw off any number crunching since a horse pasture or copper mine would be a nice bonus.

 

[Dirk1302]

@Silu, I agree, connecting resources is usually better than chopping, when building the settler the plain cow is 2H/turn better than for instance a mine. Moving and chopping a forest is 4 turns already to get 20H. Early plain cow would have produced 8H in comparision. I can use those forests later, also in the time the worker chops a forest he could also have been connecting a mine.

I have enough info now, i'll settle in place and if nothing shocking happens i'll start AH then go mining-> bw if possible.

 

[babybluepants]

I'll be following this game, for sure. Thanks for doing a slow one. I might make an absolutely miserable attempt at shadowing. Much like other high-difficulty-level pretenders, I have no idea what to do without a commercial resource and financial riverside cottages in my capital.

I would think AH first is a must here. There's a chance you'll get horses, and the cow is an awesome tile. It's a shame you probably can't take the Hunting discount, as it would leave your worker unemployed... I think the remainder of that tech path would depend a bit on the availability of horses.

How well do cover warriors do against archers? I wouldn't exactly feel comfortable with them, but I guess with cheap barracks, if you can fortify them on a good tile, it's doable... I'd like to see it.

 

[Dirk1302]

Well i'd really prefer to go without the cover warriors, if i'm going to use them i need to build barracks and a good fogbusting network. I'd prefer to use those hammers for other things. However the detour to hunting/archery without a commerce resource is very costly > 10 turns. If i don't find horses i'd really like another chance for copper also since i have wheel so once i find a resource i'll have it connected soon. So cover warriors might be the lesser evil if i don't find horses since the science detour is just very costly.