Take 4 - Giving one more chance to the Kano site I chose
Changes are as follows:
1. I was advised to abandon the idea of chopping up the Congo River Jungle and cottaging and farming, because I would spend a lot of resources and it would take a long time to yield anything.
2. Since I am not clearing out a bunch of jungle, I do not need Iron Working and can delay it.
3. I should give cottages another chance. Before I was prioritizing food and hammers over commerce, because I thought I would need that more for expansion and barbarian defense - and I thought I was going to lose cottages to pillaging, which is a terrible loss.
Results are as follows:
Tribal Villages - We followed the same pattern in order to get the same results. This is a beauty of a fixed random number seed.
T6 - Lake Chad - 67gp
T23 - Central Africa - 60gp
T34 - Zululand - 55gp
The other three huts in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Carthage were claimed by Egypt.
We claimed a total bonus of 182gp from the huts.
Random events were as follows:
T56 - Previously, we got Parrots at (0,-1). This time we got Tower Shields.
T72 - Previously we got a Champion unit. This time I did not see a random event.
I did see on T76, Hatty got the Waters of Life.
Religions founded were:
T13 - Buddhism founded somewhere (We now know this to be India, but we have not yet seen any signs.)
T16 - Islam founded in Mecca by Saladin
T71 - Taoism founded in Egypt (on the exact same turn as well!)
World wonders built so far:
T77 - Stonehenge (previously T79)
T88 - The Great Wall was built in Egypt!
Foreign leaders encountered as follows:
T9 - Hatty
T51 - Saladin
T75 - Julius Caesar
T75 - Izzy
If we push to the NE corner of Africa, we can find Alex. As Writing passes around and borders open up, we might see scouts as they run through lands. We also managed to smuggle a scout into Egypt with the idea of exploring the known world.
T1 - Kano founded at 3E2S.
T9 - Border pop 2.
T24 - Worker 1
T33 - Farm 1
T35 - Size 2
T42 - Size 3
T43 - Farm 2
T44 - Warrior 2
T49 - Size 4
T50 - Cow Pasture
T56 - Size 5
T57 - Elephant Camp
T60 - Skirmisher 1; road complete to Elephant Camp
T64 - Skirmisher 2
T66 - Size 6
T69 - Skirmisher 3
T72 - Farm 3 - We lost one turn of building a farm to barbarian action. We moved over a tile and started a cottage, then finished the farm.
T75 - Skirmisher 4
T76 - Border pop 3
T79 - Cottage 1 - So the net cost of the barbarian incursion was 1 food.
T84 - Granary, Size 5
T86 - Settler 2
T89 - Skirmisher 5 - It is interesting that I have moved one turn ahead of my previous run.
T95 - Skirmisher 6 - Previously I built a worker.
T101 - Settler 3 - It looks like I decided Carthage was a higher priority.
T102 - Size 4
T103 - Scout 1
It looks like same number of Skirmishers. Traded 1 farm for 1 cottage. Traded worker for settler. We did not build the Barracks. Right now we do not need it. There are lots of warriors running around and when we attack one on open ground, we have a 99.6% probability of gaining 2xp and a level.
On the subject of whipping micromanagement, I eventually realized that it is generally better to whip from a smaller population if possible. So it was better to whip the granary from size 5 instead of size 6. Similarly, it was better to whip the settler from size 5 instead of size 6. In both cases, we are we whipping from 2 over our healthy cap. The flood plains farm behaves more like a grassland farm. The elephant camp behaves more like a desert mine with a river, 0f3h1c. These are very much whippable tiles. I believe I was able to recover some hammers as a result of this.
T87 - Timbuktu founded at (-4,2) which is 1W of the original start location. This is identical to the previous run.
T87 - Cottage 1
T95 - Cottage 2
T96 - Size 2
T103 - Size 3
This might be a subject for discussion later, but I worked out as well as I can the idea of growing the city on the farm instead of the cottage. My thinking is I get to size 4 sooner and whip the granary, then grow to size 6 and whip the library. We are spending cottage turns in favor of building a granary. On the other side, our lack of workers is making much of this discussion moot. We have two tiles left to cottage and then we might look at those three farms.
T106 - Carthage founded at (0,10)
This is 9 turns earlier than our previous run. Carthage has our one and only worker.
Technology as follows:
T16 - Agriculture
T26 - Hunting
T43 - Animal Husbandry
T54 - Archery
T66 - Pottery
T83 - Bronze Working
T95 - Writing
T100 - Mysticism
T105 - Fishing
Previously we had Iron Working. Instead we have Writing, Mysticism, and Fishing. There is a slight (21 points to 20, 1 point equals 27 beakers) advantage in favor of our current situation, plus we are 129/270, nearly 50% on writing. We are definitely ahead.
I thought I needed Mysticism to build a monument in Carthage. If I skipped it, then I would have Sailing right now. The culture would have to come from building a library instead. An alternative would be to push Mysticism after Fishing and Sailing and we would still get the monument in Carthage if we want. So there is one plan that would certainly have been better.
(I believe the difference is 24gp, assuming we have sea access to 3 AI cities. 7 turns from our first 2 cities for 14; 5 turns from Carthage for 10. I do not know if I do - I think our ships can only find Rome. Based on that, I will chalk it up as something I should think about in the future.)
The current body count is 36 total kills:
20 Barbarian Warriors
8 Panthers
7 Lions
1 Wolf
This is 1 kill less than the previous run and we traded a lion for a panther. We might have made exploring slightly less of a priority and spawnbusting more.
We have in our civilization:
3 Cities
1 Worker
3 Warriors
6 Skirmishers
1 Scout
Before I mentioned unit cost. That went up to 3 at one point, but has come down to 1, from the addition of Carthage.
We need one more worker and probably 2. I have to count worker turns.
Timbuktu needs about 10 more worker turns to complete the cottaging.
We need 24 more worker turns to cottage up the farms on the Niger River.
I think I need about 41 or 42 worker turns in Carthage to do the following:
Sheep pasture, Wheat farm, Marble farm, chop forest and mine.
Did I really spend that much time with a single worker in Carthage?
Gummy, Coanda, Sylvan and everybody watching this thread has been nudging me in a direction. Now it looks like the RNG is also nudging me in the same direction:
We have Tower Shields - a free Cover promotion to all of our melee units.
Egypt built the Great Wall.
Egypt is currently researching the Alphabet.
For settling, or plan is:
Build a Worker in the next cycle, about T115.
Build a Settler after that - Settle Casablanca.
We probably need another Worker, because we will be at 4 cities and 2 workers and lots of work still needing to be done.
Eventually we settle that terrible city site to secure the iron. However this time I will locate it slightly different, 1 west of the elephant. This gets me 5 hammers if I want an elephant mine, plus we will have the iron mine.
For research:
After Sailing.....
Masonry is an option, but do we really need it? I do not have any builds planned and a marble farm is still very good. So I am leaning towards skipping.
We do not need Alphabet, because Egypt is researching it.
This leaves Iron Working. I think after Sailing, we should research Iron Working again.
Here is our new situation:
We have 3 warriors to bust, but we have been doing okay at dealing with them with 2 skirmishers and a Woodsman 3 warrior. The barbarians are busted everywhere west of the Carthage-Kano line. Around Kano, we really only have 3 tiles to defend. The cows are defended by having a skirmisher on top of them, which is a single move away. The elephants have to be defended (counterattacked) if the barbarians are able to bust across the Niger River. They managed this in the previous turn, so this is why the warrior and skirmishers are in that box pattern. The Woodsman 3 Warrior is a marvel in this! Finally, Kano has to be defended if the barbarians ever get that far - and the farms and cottages along the Niger river, of course.
So far I believe the 1 warrior and 2 skirmishers are enough. The highlighted Skirmisher 3 can migrate to the northeast to do more busting in the Sahara desert and further protect Carthage. I don't actually need skirmishers to spawnbust, unless they are in a position that barbarians can advance. That means we can build a couple of warriors next instead of skirmishers, saving 15 hammers each. There are two or three busting locations that can be adequately done with a warrior. Timbuktu and Carthage will eventually need defenders and these can also be Warriors.
We are slowbuilding the library in Kano. I am doing this because I am whipping Workers and Settlers when the 15 turn cycle comes up. The library will provide 4 to 5 beakers per turn when finally complete, but I think it is more important to get Casablanca settled first. We also do not currently need to build units between whips.
Timbuktu is not a production city. We will whip a granary in a couple of turns, then a library.
