Dotmapping City 6 and beyond

[YossarianLives]

Here are some pictures for us to start thinking about where we want to put city 6, and piecing together an overall dotmap.

NORTHEAST

Spoiler :

WEST

Spoiler :

SOUTH

Spoiler :

 

[talonschild]

As far as west goes I like the tile west of the river, provided we can get a missionary out to him pronto. I'd like to do that soon - City 6, maybe? Later one ought to go a little further north to claim the horses, unless we have a viable supply elsewhere.

As far as south goes, that one that completes the parallelogram with Indira, Terasvin and Mantra is a good solid city that won't make a total mess of our distance maintenance.

The northeast is stickier - at first glance I'd advise the hill west of the little lake. If we can be sure that we'll get a city on the tile EAST of that lake, then one there and one east of the silk. Then one by the marble.


So say I.

 

[YossarianLives]

If the point is to get Stone ASAP and that will be our next city, it should go on the tile marked "stone city?" That spot gives us immediate access to the Stone and dry Rice for growth. The border pop will get us the Oasis and a couple Wines. If we settle here, we need to try to convince RB to settle south of the Corn so their culture doesn't take away our Oasis (that gives them the Fish that is on "our" side as compensation).

This city would have no defensive bonus, so it needs at least 1 or 2 spears and 1 or 2 Axemen from the moment it is settled. Even so, RB will be able to get War Chariots to this city faster than we can move up Spearmen, so good diplomacy is crucial for this to work.

In the northeast, maybe a city 1 from the horse would be good. It would have Horse, Cows, Silk, Daiva's Sheep and a FP all available immediately. It's also irrigated thanks to the lake.

 

[2metraninja]

Although I put most of those "city?" signs, now I prefer if we decide we give a shot at Pyramids to settle the Stone city actually not the tiles east of the stone, but north-east. This location still gives us the rice and the stone in first ring, so we dont rely/bother on border popup and still it leaves us for later settling the far superior in the long run city site on the coast of Thunder Bay where we will have Fish and Wines.

edit: crosspost with Yossa.

As for the Northeast city 1 of the horses, I like the location very very much.

 

[classical_hero]

Yeah if we want the stone,next then it is logical to to go to the stone city location first. Then in the western locations we can build a city on a hill right near wine and 2N of the pigs and the other one marked city near the lion. The south should pretty much be ours so I would say that we do those locations last. I agree with Talon that the area in the NE we should first settle the city on the hill by the lake and river.

 

[vranasm]

there is possibility to settle ON stone. That city would obviously be pretty bad long term city, but has some good short term gains.

1) We can work the oasis from start making the city almost pay for itself
2) We have instant access to stone (this can be important usually since you shortcut stone for 8 turns)
3) we block a little bit more land
4) after CS we can irrigate the plains tile 1NE of stone and spread irrigation easier to rice and with wet rice, oasis I can't see how this city won't be productive to pay for itself even in the long run.

danger here is that the team west from us (is it RB?) can take it as very aggressive settling and I would kinda agree with them on this.

 

[cav scout]

I like the spot on the river/sea marked "or city?" which gets the stone, fish, oasis and 3 wines. I don't see us winning a race to Mids so i'm not concerned about getting the stone in the first ring. We do want make sure Thunder Bay becomes a Indian lake though and the river spot is pretty key to do this.

 

[2metraninja]

Why you dont see us getting the Pyramids? There are no IND leaders in the game as far as I know and we dont see anyone had connected Stone yet. Uciv settling for their stone will take them at least 10 more turns before they have their borders pop (this gives away they just like the spot and dont need the stone immediately, thus they dont intend to build The Pyramids)

"Or city" will be there waiting for us to settle it at our leisure if we settle NE of the stone first to still have it in our first ring.

 

[classical_hero]

I am with cav scout that we don't need the stone right away, but eventually getting it would be good.

 

[whb]

Stone seems quite isolated, which might mean tying up a chunk of our army near that city for barb defence. I'd be more tempted to claim one of the horse resources first ready for when barb axes start to appear.

Probably both, in that:
- the horses N of Mantra has lots of juicy flood plains and isn't so far from Spain that we can leave the spot for too long, and
- a city on the desert square 4W2N of Daivagati would have pigs, cow, fp, horse, coast for building a lighthouse, and 2sq of lighthouse-enhanced lake. (The horse tile looks like it has a dark foggy beach on its northern edge)

 

[classical_hero]

Ideally the stone city is one we can settle at our leisure. It is not needed but we don't want another team to get it either.

 

[YossarianLives]

Assuming we are not going for Pyramids, I think securing the Horse to our Northeast is the best spot for City #6. My preferred location for this is on the plains tile 1 (sw) from the horses. This city will get us Horse in the first ring, and also has immediate access to Cows, a FP, and Daiva's Sheep. It also gets Silk in the first ring, and 3 more FP after the borders pop. We can then plant one of those desert hill cities in the east to shore up our border with the Spaniards in that area (I prefer the hill west of the small lake).

In the west, the Pig / Cow / Wines city is decent, but not until after it gets a border pop, so I want to hold off on this one for a little bit. Maybe the Horse / Pig / Cow city near Daiva would be better as the next western city, depending on what we find in that fog.

In the south, I really like that Corn / FP city, but there is no rush for this since it is in our backlines. It would be a fast city to set-up though, so we should keep it in mind.

If we do go for Pyramids, obviously the Stone city needs to be next, and then I would say settle some of those other western cities so that the Stone city isn't so isolated.

 

[1889]

I am anxious to conect horses too, we still have no defence against barb axes. I think stone will there when we need it and we already have another settler in the build queue anyway.

Also lookingforward to a little more exploring to the south. Also lets not neglect the value of coastal cities like "or city" near the stone. They produce lots more trade income and of course the potential to build a navy.

 

[2metraninja]

If we get the stone, we can have The Great Wall in each city we desire - it is only 1 chop and 1 whip to get that At the price of 2 and a half chariots, we get eternal defense from all kind of barbarians, 2 GreatSpy points , free border pop-up for a new city if we build it there, better defense via faster culture, faster 3-rd ring border pop (Lana?) and some nice failgold.

 

[cav scout]

@2metra- Perhaps I'm being paranoid about RB when it comes to the Mids. I wouldn't be surprised if they went for it (and won) even without stone. Don't forget that it will still take us many turns before we have the stone connected. So it would be a while before we even start building.

But if you guys think we can win a race to the Pyramids or The Great Wall then fine, lets go for it. Just keep the spot 6, 3 from the oasis available so we can put a city there to control the sea and that isthmus.

 

[1889]

I'd rather not go for Great Wall, don't care all that much for great spy at this point (would much rather have a prophet) and barbs aren't that scary anymore. If we get horses we should be able to handel them without much dificulty. We need that defence anyway as humans are way more dangerous and the Wall won't do anything to slow them down.

Pyramids are better but I think too expensive and we are starting too late. Would rather spend the hammers on soldiers and expansion.

 

[2metraninja]

Perhaps I'm being paranoid about RB when it comes to the Mids. I wouldn't be surprised if they went for it (and won) even without stone. Don't forget that it will still take us many turns before we have the stone connected. So it would be a while before we even start building.

After Mackotti (aka Midskotti over RB) the Pyramids are highly valued there too I think, so no wonder if they try to build them. But remember what they said about our Stone city - that this does not mess up with their plans. This can mean two things - either they are not even trying Pyramids or they (as you suggest) are after them for some time and they think they will get them sooner than us anyway. As for is it early or late to finish Pyramids late 80's turn, I just dont know. The dates from those 2 Mackotti games Yossa provided (t75 and t79) looks pretty despairing to me, but lets not forget Mack is one known he always beeline whole his empire aiming to Pyramids from the very start of the game and I doubt there will be others like him in the ISDG. Speaking with TMIT he said t88 is early-to-middle date.

Also lets not forget that we can get TGW with stone on the price of 2 monuments! Dont you think we will need culture spread somewhere between two cities? Even if only for that, I think it is worth (not to mention Captain Sommerswerd's obsession with TGW and espionage economy).

And it is not true that a Great Prophet can measure with a Great Spy. If we infiltrate someone, we can get up to 8-10 technologies stolen for that Great Person alone. When a shrine will catch up with that? We can have agreement for friendly stealing or we can decide on enemy and then go and infiltrate/steal (Holy City religion powered) from them. Or having the espionage power to accumulate points, etc, etc...

Barbs can be not that scary, but they are still a factor. TGW will cost less than 2 axes in hammers. Do you think we will lose less (1 axe only) defending from barbarians?

Humans are dangerous, yes, but we are not harmless too. We will build soldiers regardless of good diplomacy. I just want to say that it may turns out we have more soldiers to tackle/rebuff human teams actually building TGW, not risking to lose units fighting the barbs (remember TGW is only 2 axes hammers worth, so even 1 axe lost to barbs will tilt the balance).

As for hammers on expansion, Yossa's/vranassm's sandbox showed that having no good tech rate actually slows our expansion - having 2 settlers in place waiting to get some economic tech to increase income shows me this clearly). We must need to find the sweet spot between expansion and technology. This is around 10 cities at turn 100 I think and it is more than manageable with Pyramids.

It was shown with Pyramids we suffer on food and hammers, but I will make last attempt tonight to make better micromanagement and get comparable results with Yossa and Vranasm in this regard.

 

[vranasm]

^^ you can't undo the 225 hammers investment into Mids, that was always clear.

Building Mids will always mean 225 less hammers into s/w/units.

OTOH it doesn't mean it is bad thing here since we need to reach Currency before digging the hole.

What would be bad is NOT GETTING the Mids. Since then we will have less s/w/units and not get the better economy through Mids...that would be really serious setback, even worse then the SH situation.

I think Yoss saves show us that we can reach currency in reasonable time - T100 (he had almost finished it) while having good expansion, so I don't think that going the no-mids route is that bad, the Yoss save will very quickly pick up after reaching currency and cities starting to pay back sooner then new cities with Mids save.

And it's not like many teams will get Mids to reach currency sooner then us (either with or without Mids).

Biggest question here is how far away are other teams from Mids.

 

[2metraninja]

Well, it is wrong to count the 225 hammers invested in The Pyramids as wasted. If they are not wasted, why would you want them back? With the same manner we can say we cant get the 100 hammers for a given settler back. Or the 35 hammers invested in an axe. Civ is a game of trade-offs. One cant have everything everywhere at every time. One simply decides which chances to take depending on prognosis/estimation/risks/experience/current situation evaluation.

As for losing the Pyramids, if we fear this will be bad for us, I will try to make a plan to lessen to a minimum the impact a possible fail will have on the team. Like postponing settling the Stone city, setting everything ready to have The Pyramids in just 3-4 turns after settling the Stone, etc.

As for failgold, this can actually empower our expansion in the short terms. 400-500 Failgold coins will means we can settle settlers without taking too much care of the tech slider %. So until we spend the failgold taking Currency, our new settled cities instead of settlers sitting and scratching their balls, will actually start to grow and work good tiles to shorten the period when they will turn profit on us (getting back those 100 hammers put in to a single settler and the gold spent paying maintenance before a city breaking even and start turn profit).

 

[vranasm]

I maybe described my thoughts wrong way... the "argument" was that building Mids will cost us in less settlers, workers, that was always clear.

what we had to find out is if holding back a bit on REX (aka building workers, settlers) and giving those hammers into Mids is better way of progressing the game.

The point here most probably is that we play on Emperor difficulty which makes cities more costly then let's say on Noble and is very good strategy to be a bit smaller to reach critical techs and then outburst with cities.

That's why you sometimes see deity players to withhold on expansion while blocking a bit of land until they reach some milestone (Mids, GLH, currency etc)

I still think that going Mids and failing on them is bad, but I concur if we MM forests, OF to build mids in <5 turns the risk will be less.