General Planning: War Gaming the Map

[Krill]

Any XP over 10 is lost when you upgrade, except on warlord units, so if we upgraded barentz he would still be 5/10. I agree that it is very powerful, especially considering that CK is stuck at size 4 for c. 14 turns(and ivory would be connected, so it takes a further 5 turns to grow to size 6 where it needs the gems connected anyway) if we build the settler there, and IS is fine up to size 6 with the ivory. It takes 4 turns to hook up gems after we research IW, if we have 2 workers there, and road beforehand. If we saved up 80 gold for the upgrade, and 50 gold for the deficit research that is something along the lines of 6-7 turns of idling, and a further 8-10 turns to research IW, so it would take around 21 turns to connect the gems, worst case scenario, but it is only 4 turns slower than not upgrading, and if we have to keep the cities at a smaller size by building settlers for a few turns or slow growth by working hills/whatever.

On the whole I think it is a gamble, but it isn't a risky one by any means. It'd actually be safer in the short term, as we would have an extra axe to defend with.

 

[Memphus]

true. Also woodsIII could be his promotion and then he could also be a pillaging force / defender at home.

 

[Krill]

I think I favour the upgrade, I doubt it would take 20 turns to upgrade and research IW.

One comment on your production suggestions for CK Memphus: You suggested Oracle>axe to east>axe to home. We either need the first axe to stay as military police or for Houtman, the warrior to the north of CK, to return to act as MP. We also need to consider that we need to build a road to the sheep site if we go with that, so we may want to keep the fogbuster up there.

 

[Memphus]

hmmm true. ill sim it out in a turn or two once the save is updated.


But we are very weak to the East.

although not as much with barentz comming back for the upgrade...

 

[Krill]

Simulation is here. It is the projection of where we will be at the end of t55 if we get the Oracle, and as such is not 100% correct as yet; it only contains the map infomation known to us from the end of our t51, and is subject to change if another team beats us to the Oracle.

 

[Krill]

We need to start coming up with longer term strategies now that we are close to completing the Oracle, ie the next 60 turns.

There are certain things that in the short term we have to do, such as build a few axes for defense, but other than that everything really is on the table. We have a concensus to go for IW next, and this is best achieved by saving up 50 gold (3 turns) and then deficit researching; it gives us a buffer against events and it also is slightly more efficient. A few people have commented that getting a forge in IS (after a granary) is a good idea, to try for a GE there before we get our GP from the Oracle. The site for city 4 up by the sheep and fish looks nice, and makes alot of sense if we can get it out quickly enough. An issue that we have not got concensus on yet is wether we upgrade barentz to an axe; we don't need to decide this until turn 59, as this is the point when we would start researching IW; if we decide to upgrade him and try to get him to 10XP for the Heroic Epic (and use him as cover for JD until we get anotehr axe there) then we need an additiononal 80 gold, ie 3-4 turns research.

Then there are longer term views that we must take. Are we going to aim for the Great Library? Do we want to build the Collosus, do we want to try for a religion asap via monotheism, or leave it for a short while and aim for CoL/Theo/Philosophy. how many other scouts do we need to get out? How and when should we hook up that gold eg via galley or make 2 workers raod all the way over there first? What techs do we need asap after IW?

 

[regoarrarr]

I would say yes to colossus, yes to the GL. I would lean towards no for mono, since there are other religions that are more on a research path that I would think would be better (Col / Philo)

I lean towards yes upgrading him but I would not want to do so at the cost of sacrificing any growth for IS / CK (i.e. i want the gems online as soon as they're needed). But I figure you adn memphus can sim it out and make that happen

 

[Krill]

The way it looks to me is that gems isn't important to CK if we go axe/axe/settler/max growth building forge there. It is important to IS; it delays growth to size 7, but we can slow growth there by working 2 food/3hills/Engineer, making 1fpt and then time growth to size 7 with hooking up the gems. Also, we could make a settler for city 5 there and get the horses hooked asap while stuck at size 6, then grow asap. I think we have enough time to irrigate another grassland (1 should be irrigated by the workers on the way back from CK) to boost growth some more.

If we go for the Collosus, we can either build it at the sheep site if we don't mind leaving it to around t100, maybe a bit before, or at the capital and risk the GE by around 20%. IF we build it at sheep we do impair our tech rate by working all of the hills; getting the collosus in IS and working coastal tiles in sheep really helps our research and hence helps getting the GL (where we should build that I have no idea...only 2 cities that make sense to me are sheep and IS unless we can get JD working both hills and 3 camped ivory, even then it takes ages @21 hpt).

 

[azzaman333]

I can't see the Colossus being especially worth it.

 

[1889]

Thanks for setting up those sims Krill. Playing with it a bit I'd say lets not upgrade Barry and let’s skip the Colossus.

We can build a barracks and get 3 xp axes out of CK about the same time we would have the gold to upgrade Barry. Aren't we paying 80 gold and delaying Iron 3 turns for 2 more XPs? If we have an archer marching toward a city and not enough time get an axe in place then upgrading makes a lot of sense but it’s a bit too expensive otherwise.

As for Colossus, are you sure we are going to be working enough water tiles to make it worth while? I dislike that the Colossus will mess with our Great Engineer probability. 20% uncertainty is a pretty serious discrepancy in the kind of game we are playing. The GE and the ability to make solid game plans are more valuable to me than the gold Colossus gets us (unless it’s huge, but I don't think it will be).

I know that building it in city 4 will spare us this inconvenience, but then it comes latter and so is that much less valuable to us. And while the cost is not high (125 hammers is about as cheep as they come) I am concerned about having to pay that price at this stage of the game. Whether now in IS or latter in City 4, I would rather spend those hammers on getting city 4 out 10 turns sooner, or build some ships and maybe make contact.

I may be wrong on that, but Colossus doesn't impress me as much as the other stuff we could build instead.

 

[Memphus]

well look at it this way.

for 600 we just turned our empire upside down (Oracle)

So if for the colosuss it isn't really a hardship and we generate 600 before it goes obsolete then it had the same "value" as the Oracle.

 

[Krill]

What would be a fair guess for when we obselete the Collosus, if we built it? t190? t175? We have a problem that we are going to start paying more for a cities if we keep on expanding (We should keep on expanding, as the only city sites that we can see that aren't cottageable are the sheep site and the eastern area with gold, both of which are coastal). For hugeness of the Collosus, it makes up to 10 turns difference on the GL; that's the difference between using the GE to build the GL and building it the hardway, which in turn is equivalent to giving us the pyramids instead.

I think that as we want both the sheep site and the gold site up and running asap, and that as both need to be working the coastal tiles to grow, the Collosus would give us more than 600 commerce over the course of it's usefulness. The other point is that if we are going to go for the GL (and I'm not sure if we can get it if we keep on expanding) that we need as much gold as we can get on the race to lit. The Collosus gives us that.

Building it at sheep isn't the worst thing in the world; It'll take even the best teching team until t85 at least to get MC, then they have to build a forge and the collosus; at size 7 sheep makes 21 hammers without a forge, so that is a 5 turn Collosus, although we would have to speed growth to get there. It costs us a fair amount of gold; a lighthouses is half the cost of a forge and then it grows much quicker to size 6 working the coastal tiles.

Building ships out of sheep means that we only have JD working commerce tiles until we get the horses/wheat city growing working cottages, and that is seriously going to impact our teching ability. If we were going to turn sheep into a production city, the collosus would help us mitigate the loss of commerce.

If we want boats just build them out of IS; they only take 2 turns at size 8.

 

[Krill]

As to Barentz: he is still our best explorer, our only problem is that the barbs are going to seriusly hamper his ability to explore shortly, and if we build 2 extra axes to explore with we are delaying expansion to city 5, 6 etc which would lower the actual cost of the upgrade by an unknown amount (to turn 100 I'd expect the regained gold from quicker settling to amount to at least 20 gold, likely to be higher as the horse/wheat site should be working lots of river cottages whilst growing). Also, while I agree that we need more explorers, we ought to try and secure the HE asap; this requires that we get 1 unit to 10 XP and using 2 axes to kill barbs slows down this process.

We also don't necesarrily have to upgrade Barentz until something like t65, but if we don't save up the gold and try to get IW asap then we do lose this option. We ought to explore the benefits to IS of getting gems online asap ; there aren't any benefits to CK.

 

[Memphus]

upgrade. have HE built earlier in IS secure's our winning the first war.

 

[Krill]

We can build a barracks and get 3 xp axes out of CK about the same time we would have the gold to upgrade Barry. Aren't we paying 80 gold and delaying Iron 3 turns for 2 more XPs? If we have an archer marching toward a city and not enough time get an axe in place then upgrading makes a lot of sense but it’s a bit too expensive otherwise.

Actually, if we are going to go for a GE we need to be going granary>forge, this takes about 12-14 turns, And it only takes 10 to get an axe to JD and let Barentz go off exploring.

 

[dutchfire]

well look at it this way.

for 600 we just turned our empire upside down (Oracle)

So if for the colosuss it isn't really a hardship and we generate 600 before it goes obsolete then it had the same "value" as the Oracle.

On the other hand, if we take Metal Casting from the Oracle, we'll likely be the only ones to have it for a long time. (I think few people will research MC when the oracle is gone, and they realise it wasn't used on Code of Laws). So it's not only a question of if but also when to build the Oracle. I think it's more important to get back in the growth mode we sacrificed to get the Oracle (build settlers/axes/workers), and get the Colossus later. We can probably build it in a rather short amount of time as the city will have a forge (+25%) and copper (+100% right?) anyway.

The plan is to build the great library with a great engineer right? What will be the bottleneck on that, reseach or getting the great people points? I'd like to upgrade Barentz, but how much of a setback would that be to our research/estimated Great Library time?

 

[Krill]

Yeah, we don't need to rush the Collosus by any stretch of the imagination. We could quite easily build it at the sheep site without much of a risk; building it in the capital by turn 90 after/while growing to the hapy cap is incredibly easy (It's equivalent to 3 axes if we build it while growing, for example).

As to the GE and GL, the bottleneck is research, it shouldn't take long to build the GL from scratch (depending where we want to build it). For example, IS could build it in 12 turns with well applied overflow, although that would detract from using IS as the HE city, and the GS points would be diluted be GE points as IS needs to run an engineer to hit max hpt. CK doesn't have the food to run any specialists; it's quite a drag trying to grow that city and running a preist for example, if we wanted to speed up the prophet there when we found religion. Sheep could build the GL in hammer configuation in about 14 turns depending on overflow (13 turns with correctly applied overflow). We could use the GE to speed the GL and get it in Sheep which looks like the best city to use as our National Epic city (it's the one with the most food surplus at +8 other than JD or IS which need cottages and mines respectively), but I think using the GE on the GL is a waste if we can build it in Sheep safely, although that element of safety can only be decided upon when we are closer to building it.

Researching towards the GL is a long road that, tbh, I expect we would get overtaken on. We are looking at researching IW and Sailing before heading onto lit, so although writting, Aesthetics and Lit cost c. 800 beakers we still have 400 odd beakers to research before we start that beeline. If the other civs have met and started to get research deals together, we will be left behind with very few military techs (ie no HBR, nor Archery, no maths, masonary nor construction) and it would be around t110, and no one in their right minds will trade us military techs for Aesthetics and Literature.

 

[Ronnie1]

Barerntz could possibly just find a nice forested hill and suck up barb archers for the XP.

 

[Krill]

Problems with that are: we still don't have the best odds of winning; we don't know when barb axes will start appearing either. We can't rely on using a Warrior as the HE unit.

1. We would need to get out 2 axes to cover the same amount of ground as 1 woodsman 2 axe; if we build them after a barracks in IS, then we are not going to get them finished until around t75, 10 turns after we could have sent Barentz off to explore; that's 20 tiles in 1 direction; that's possibile contact with another team, scouting out their land for when we invade them, better understanding of their land so we know of their capabilities, and easier for us to make a fair border treaty.
   
   
2. It delays getting city 5 out for horses and delays chariots for exploring.
   
   
3. It delays us getting the units out to defend the gold city, and the galleys/triremes if we want to explore with them/use them to ferry the awe/settler/workers over to gold.
   
   
4. Yes, in the short term it slows our research by 4 turns. To put this into perspective we've increased our research rate by 4 turns from the original Oracle plan (t63). This isn't meant as a valid reason, more as a demonstration that we can probably increase our research speed.

Those are some pretty considerable reasons for upgrading Barentz IMO.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

Sure, we can build collossus - do we want to?