Foundation and Empire #4

[VoiceOfUnreason]

We're still seeing new players struggling with Noble, and under questioning we find that they spend and awful lot of time and energy on things that aren't winning. So this is an attempt at stripping away all the things we do that aren't winning.

The lessons within are expected to be simple, and generally applicable. In particular, a lot of "important" elements of the game mechanics are going to be completely ignored, because they are a distraction from the basic approach. Also, simple matters of technique may or may not get much attention - it depends on the kinds of questions that are raised.


The Plan for this game is Land, which offers a straightforward sequence of objectives

1) Claim more than our fair share of good land
2) Claim a neighbor's fair share of good land
3) Claim all of the good land we can reach
4) Win.


Settings
Difficulty: Noble
Speed: Normal
Map: Pangaea
Huts: Disabled
Events: Disabled

Leader: Tokugawa/Japan



The SAVE.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I've been experimenting with Tectonics Pangaea, and may switch to that map for the next run, but this is a standard Pangaea map.


Agriculture -> Hunting -> Animal Husbandry is the normal tech line here. On Noble, with these tiles, AH arrives early enough that the worker doesn't actually miss any turns.

Sneaking in Hunting does have a cost, though, all of the other important techs in the opening slide out a bit. One of the things that I notice with Tokugawa is that if you want to get your second city out quickly, you'll occasionally have to make a minor adjustment in your tech path.

Unfortunately, it's not really a decision you can defer very long; cows are too good a tile to deliberately postpone, so you have to make your decision when agriculture comes in.


In addition to the happiness resource, the presence of Ivory has two other important influences in the game. First, if you are picking up Hunting for camps anyway, you might as well get some use out of Scouts.

Now, in this game huts are off, so we're not going to be taking advantage of the improved hut yield. But scouts are a fast, cheap way to scout out our neighbors, so once we get to writing we should make sure we get a good look at the land our neighbors are preparing for us.

Second, Ivory opens up the possibility of the War Elephant. Construction + Horseback Riding can open up a lovely little skirmish with horse archers, catapults, and war elephants.


The presence of stone opens up the possibility of Stonehenge and the Pyramids. I'm not going to pursue that line, because reliance on wonders is something I'm trying to discourage in new players, but build all the stone things is not wrong by any stretch.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Hmm, given the forests covering the hills we'd need BW after AH to chop them down along with the usual benefits of it. But this brings up something I've always been curious about-- masonry. Would the yield from an improved stone tile be worth putting off BW? There's 6 tiles we're concerned about working in the early game-- the Grassriver hill, the two food tiles, the elephant, stone, and the floodplain.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Hmm, given the forests covering the hills we'd need BW after AH to chop them down along with the usual benefits of it. But this brings up something I've always been curious about-- masonry. Would the yield from an improved stone tile be worth putting off BW? There's 6 tiles we're concerned about working in the early game-- the Grassriver hill, the two food tiles, the elephant, stone, and the floodplain.

I think it depends a lot on how much of a hurry you are in.

In this tile arrangement, you're nearly perfectly aligned with starting a settler/2nd worker at size 3. If you're going to do that, the 1/3/2 elephants are nearly as good as the 1/4/1 stone, and doesn't require an extra tech.

At size three, you're basically looking at 13 (city:3 corn:3 cows:4 stone:3) hammers instead of 12 (ivory:2).

Alternatively, you can grow to size 4. With the floodplains, I think you hit 26/26 on the nose, but the aggregate hammers is 24? which doesn't really build to anything useful.

In terms of choices, you need to keep in mind that Masonry not only delays Bronze Working, but also Mysticism and the 20% research bonus.

It's a lot to give away for a single tile in your empire if it isn't part of your immediate game plan.

I think the real answer is something like "only if you are going to do something with it". For example, an ancient wonder like Stonehenge is an awesome tool for tile control -- 8 culture per turn right away, and it turns into 16 culture per turn very quickly. Dropped into the right sort of second city location, it can be a devastating blocker to the AI expansion.

But if you're just grabbing it for the tile yield, I don't think it's worth delaying the main research line.

 

[Keilah]

the stone is riverside, just farm it for a 2f2h1c tile available before bronze working.

If you go hunting -> agri, you can avoid wasting a worker turn by spending 1 turn on the elephant camp on the way over to the corn, but that only works if you can get both techs done in time for the worker's arrival at the corn. Otherwise just start on a road I guess.

If I randomly rolled this start I'd go agri -> myst -> masonry -> AH to get Stonehenge and farm the elephants until hunting comes in. It _might_ not be right for this series, but having Stonehenge fall into your lap like this is pretty decent for early city placement, similar to being creative.

While we're at it, I'd have settled 1s on the elephants, but I KNOW that's wrong for this series =]

 

[vranasm]

the stone is riverside, just farm it for a 2f2h1c tile available before bronze working.

If you go hunting -> agri, you can avoid wasting a worker turn by spending 1 turn on the elephant camp on the way over to the corn, but that only works if you can get both techs done in time for the worker's arrival at the corn. Otherwise just start on a road I guess.

If I randomly rolled this start I'd go agri -> myst -> masonry -> AH to get Stonehenge and farm the elephants until hunting comes in. It _might_ not be right for this series, but having Stonehenge fall into your lap like this is pretty decent for early city placement, similar to being creative.

While we're at it, I'd have settled 1s on the elephants, but I KNOW that's wrong for this series =]

moving for 3 plains tiles in expense of riverside grassland hill is not worth the 2H center tile.

@OP
Looks interesting starting position for some cats+WE's warfare. On noble there should be not much pressure for strategic resource to avoid BW if you go with writing as commerce source. But I guess for the purpose of guide you should go BW after AH

Maybe will try the map how quickly I can go to constr+HBR for comparison.

 

[Killroyan]

Ah VoU back with good advice. Even with all the time I am playing this game, I still learn stuff from your posts. Good work VoU, thx. About the start. This is one hell of a start to be honest.

About hunting, I think it is more then justified to slip it in. An extra happy and a very good tile (1F3H1C) is nothing to sneeze at, even not on noble. With cows, corn, elephant, stone and 3 mines we have a killer capital with which you can do anything you want. Expand like mad, go wonder whoring or just build a load of units and conquer thy neighbour. I wonder what you are going to do

 

[Keilah]

moving for 3 plains tiles in expense of riverside grassland hill is not worth the 2H center tile.

Strongly disagree.

Because:
-before settling we don't know that the 3 tiles to the south are plains, for all we knew they were grassland gems

-we still have plenty of good tiles to work after moving 1s

-short term gain of a free 1h/turn outweighs medium term loss of a riverside grass hill

-moving 1s puts us 1 tile closer to the food sources meaning we grow 1t faster as well. With the 3t saved on the worker that's a full 4 turns faster in the early game, plus we're still getting that free 1h/turn and we can now delay hunting until we need the happiness.

 

[Mylene]

I'd want BW and masonry quick with this start, agree with Keilah about settling on Jumbos...also i would skip AH.
But then again, on Deity i'd have no choice cos unlikely horsies will be in our borders, and there would be no time spending research on 1 cow

 

[Killroyan]

Moving 1S might look good at first glance but then you will be left with a very low hammer capitol. You will miss the extra hammers from the elephant, 1 grassland mine and you will gain 3 plain tiles (which are clearly visible in the screenshot). Especially on noble SIP is the best course. For deity it is a whole different story.

 

[JammerUno]

^Two hills, stone and a plains cow is plenty hammers. Not settling 1S on this start is ridiculous.

 

[Killroyan]

@Jammeruno: They are talking about not teching AH. That leaves you with two hills and stone. Pretty low production for a capitol. Also, we are still talking about noble. Happy cap is high, we have enough food and at size 8 we can work corn, flood plain, cow, elephant, stone and 3 mines. On deity it is a different story with a very low happy cap and higher research costs. Interesting discussion though that settling is totally different for different difficulty settings.

 

[vanatteveldt]

I think one of the principles of the Foundation series is to work out rules and choices that are useful at noble level. So, before we can have the discussion "is 1S better than SIP", we should have the discussion "is not settling in place something a noble player should consider?". Frankly, I think the answer to that is "no". In 95% of cases, not SIP means gambling on unknown tiles, which can be good in the hands of an expert, but a novice should just SIP and concentrate on the fundamentals.

 

[Keilah]

yes i agree, a novice should just SIP

The southern tiles are clearly visible in the screenshot only because we've already settled and our culture gives vision from atop the hill SW of the city. Before settling, the tiles south of the food are unknowable.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I think that settling ivory is actually something that anyone who wants to get better should consider. Should they generally SIP? Probably. But trade offs of settling ivory vs SIP are good, legitimate discussion in my mind.

 

[goldys_lackey]

I agree. I'd add that when tundra is visible to the north then there is another argument in moving south because there is a very good chance you will claim more land that way.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Howdy neighbor! Those brown borders over there are belong to Genghis Khan.

OK, point the first: at that distance, I should be thinking about an early kill. On a normalized map, the AI capitals are very juicy locations; the position in cramped, and the available lands aren't looking too promising.

Additionally, it's Mongolia, and I'd rather that their fate were secured - one way or the other - before Keshiks (Horse Archers) come on line.

There are several plans to evaluate. The most common play here would be to find horses (we're about 3 turns out from Animal Husbandry in this picture), push out a settler to secure the horses right away (setting up the roads that we need as soon as the elephants are camped), then throw a stack of 10 or so chariots at the Mongol capital.

I won't be taking that line, because early rushes are not part of the Land plan; but they are extremely effective. See the various rushing guides for details.

Another possibility was alluded to earlier, which is to hold back until War Elephants are available. That's pretty certain, but probably falls outside the usual 1AD target date unless you play very carefully.

I'll be looking at something in between those positions -- following the general theme, I want to secure the good land before I get belligerent. The eastern map hints that I have already gotten most of it but we'll see how it goes.

Once city location I'm looking hard at is yellow square. It's a fairly standard looking commerce city - eleven tiles for cottages, plus cows, and a mine to chew some food when I need to stall out growth.

In this position, I'm considering the city for two purposes - one, to block of Mongolian expansion westward. More significantly to my mind is that I'm trying to set up a culture bridge to his capital -- if I can beat back his third ring, then my troops are going to be only one or two turns away from the target. That means a lot less time for him to arrange a defense.

Orange square to the south serves a similar purpose. The upside is that the lands I'm blocking him away from are greener; the downside is that this location is further from both capitals, and it isn't as strong long term.

 

[Um the Muse]

Why are you considering a city at the blue square?

 

[Abegweit]

For the wheat. Plus it can work cottages for the capital.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Easy trade route via river too.