General Planning: War Gaming the Map

[regoarrarr]

Okay I ran the sim twice tonight. Looked really good. I'm continually amazed by your and Memphus's abilities (or maybe just time!) to so carefully orchestrate things. Things like granary's being half-full - workers using 3 roads and then doing things - cities growing at just the right times, etc.

A few questions - you may already have these things taken into account for and/or I may have just mis-read things.

1. I think that IS doesn't grow to size 7 till T75 when the gems are mined but you have 7 tiles worked on T74.

2. Question on JD's builds on T71 (when it grows to size 4). It does one turn of the grass forest before moving to the elephants. Is this to get the food box up to half full when the granary is built? Not sure if that's that important.

3. Speaking of JD - Automated Teller is scheduled to road the elephants after camping (T66-67). There may be better things for him to do since we don't need those roaded to access them. Though I guess it does save a worker turn when we get around to chopping the jungle.

4. We should probably add the paths for the settlers. The one for City 4 is pretty obvious but I wasn't sure on City 5s (and I know we haven't decided exactly where it goes yet)

5. Around turn 72 or so we should probably move the axe from JD south to guard the workers that are roading down to City 5. In one of my sims one was eaten by a barb warrior. It is at size 4 so it doesn't need it for the happiness. It can be replaced by the axe that is built in IS on T74.

6. I have a question mark next to VC's worker actions on T73-74. But I'm not sure why and I've closed the game. The actions are Move 22road then Move 22 road / finished. Maybe I thought that was a duplicate? It is possible that he's supposed to move on T73 and on T74.

 

[Krill]

well, I have 2500 words to write on a boring topic (Cancer treatment) that I'm putting off. Due in on friday though, might have to start it soon. And thanks for checking it

1. Thanks for the catch, should only have been 1 farm. Corrected.
   
   
2. Er...no idea. Should probably just use the elephants; I've not been optimising JD apart from getting the granary half full and making sure it was working cottages.
   
   
3. You're right that we don't need the road right now; it is left over from when we were chopping it immediately. If there was something else for him to do though, we should do that, but I can't think of anything that we need doing at that point that we are capable of doing. Possibly chopping a forest...but we would be chopping into a forge, and that could probably wait until we have maths, or until we have writing. Comments?
   
   
4. It works out the same either way; 3331, 222, 1 or 21 or 22 (settle).
   
   
5. Yeah, we need to move it on turn 70. Technically that's not within the scope of the domestics powers, but what the hell.
   
   
6. Ah, that one seems tricky but is actually correct. VC moves 22 and roads the tile that was preroaded by AT. Then GeneralW move 222 and cottages/cancels. next turn the road on the hill is finished, and both GW and VC move 22 and road the tile so that city 5 can be built that turn instead of the turn after. This is not required if we were to go with the city site that got the wheat and the sugar though.
   
   

 

[Krill]

I think we (read: I (but correct the grammar )) are going about one thing the wrong way. CK has naff all food; we ought to be using this city to build military where possible so that it can grow slowly while building stuff. IS can build the settlers and galleys (and a few workers as required) and grow quickly to the happy cap using the two food resources and irrigated grasslands. CK can still make a few settlers; I think it should make the settlers for cities 6, 7 and 8, but after that I think it needs to be making military units to take some of the weight of IS, which frankly seems to be building everything (3 galleys, 2 axes, 2 workers in about 11 turns in the last sim I ran). IS is the only city other than sheep that can make galleys, and sheep looks to be out of commision until turn 102. Otherwise we end up using IS to build almost everything bar the settlers and CK gets stuck making us too many settlers. Allowing CK to grow would provide us with more military sooner so we can settle the risky cities sooner, instead of having little to no military relative to our number of cities.

They are almost equal in production capacity at size 8/7, both making 26 hpt but IS can make 1 spare food with a lighthouse, so the only lost time is from extra movement from different positions on the map, and we would also need to make two barracks. End of the day, a barracks is 2 turns worth of hammers from those cities, and the flexibilty of having both with barracks makes alot of sense IMO.

 

[Krill]

Here is a projection for turn 79/80, with both CK and IS grown to the happy cap (suprising, we are only 18 turns from there IMO), ready to starting expansion at a proper pace.

IS built 2 axes and a workboat while growing from size 6 to size 8; one to gasrrison JD, the other to explore with. We could build a spear, or a barracks etc if we wanted to, but for the purposes of this sim 2 axes will do; the workboat is necesarry for Sheep.

Comments on the immediate few turns after t79; chop the forest at sheep and get teh granary next turn by working the sheep and mine, and not the sheep and fish; the extra food from the fish is worth less as the granary won't be finished in time to store any food when growing. Other than that nothing really to comment on; please download it and have a play around and see what you can come up with. I posted a few comments earlier in the thread that may be useful guidance though.

And yes, city 5 in that projection is planted to not get teh horse. It'll do for the projection...it's there to get an idea of what we are capable of, not to stress test our empire.

 

[regoarrarr]

I took the sim for a drive this afternoon. A few thoughts / comments:

1. Krill - you probably have already empirically tested this, but it is definitely better to swap over to the mine and get the granary out sooner. On T85, that puts us at size 3 19/26 with 14 hammers in the forge vs. working the fish as soon as it is netted, which on T85 puts us at Size 3 14/26 with 11 hammers in the forge. One thing I didn't test us was whether it would be worth it to build a plains hill rather than the grass hill. If you work the fish one turn and then swap to the grass hill, you're at 59/60 on the granary, so my thought was if we had a plains hill instead of the grass hill that might work. Might be worth considering.

2. Health is a concern as you pointed out. One thing to keep in mind is that IS's borders pop for 500 culture on T108 and get the rice in range. So if we have workers working on that, we can get that hooked up soon after. That's 2 health with a granary. That is 13 health with an aqueduct, granary, cow, rice, fish, wheat and sheep.

3. I got the Pyramids and Colossus both on T102. I revolted to Caste and Rep on the next turn.

4. I founded the gems city and then the gold/wheat city. Wasn't sure where we had decided to put that so I put it 1W of the gold. I sent a galley (built in IS) with a worker and an axe (both built in IS). Then 3 turns later I sent a settler (built in CK) with one of the existing workers in another galley (Built in IS). 1st worker roaded the gold and then mined it with the 2nd worker, then both workers roaded towards the wheat and farmed it once borders expanded.

 

[Krill]

1. Hmm...I think the plains mine would be better than the grass mine. Gain 3 food from it there which we can always turn back into hammers working more plains mines instead of grass mines. Good catch I could sim it out, unless you would want to...? I will be a little busy until wednesday at the earliest, so I may not be able to do it until then.
   
   
2. I don't think IS needs an aquaduct; it isn't going to be over size 10 until we get into rep...we would get 9 health with the resources and river, how much health do we get as standard though? If it's 4, then it doesn;t need an aquaduct, if it's less then when we hook up the corn then we definately won;t need the aquaduct. If we want to go for HG though...
   
   
3. Pretty sweet.
   
   
4. We haven't actually agreed on anything yet, but I think we should settle for the clams and gold with 1 settler and use the wheat for a second city. We're getting the Collosus, so a coastal city working that wheat is pretty nice at raking in the commerce while growing, and later on it can work all of the hills (after CS).

 

[regoarrarr]

1. I don't have a very good way to do sims, so I will let you do it whenever you have some time.

2. I'm talking about post-Rep when the happy cap is 13 (I think). My last sim had us at 13 health in IS which I believe was 2 health from difficulty, 1 from a river, 4 from rice and wheat (with granary), 1 from cow, 1 from sheep, 2 from aqueduct, 1 from fish and 1 other one which I can't remember

4. That seems to make sense, I'm going to spend some more time on it this evening. Another bonus is that gold/clams gets us another health (we already have much wheat).

 

[Krill]

You get two health from fresh water. Add in the clams, that's

• 2 from difficulty
• 2 from river
• 4 from wheat+rice
• 2 from cow and sheep
• 2 from fish and clams

That's 12; the aquaduct = 1 settler, we could afford to lose 10 food for another city, but we could have that city down prior to IS reaching size 13, it isn't that difficult to achieve.

Comment RE: 4, I was sending over axe and settler and two workers, then another axe and a settler; I think 4 workers would be preferable to 2, could be the ones that improved the rice could road straight over there and be defended by an axe and a spear. Bonus of this is that we could leave 1 unit to fogbust between the two areas, or maybe we decide a city in that little desert is worth it if there is seafood there (galleys would see it as they rounded the spit).

Personally I think we could probably get out 4 settlers, 3 from CK and 1 from city 5 without neglecting workers and military, that gives us something like a spare 250 (takes the 3 settlers into account) hammers production in CK if it sticks at size 7 and 550 hammers in IS (less if we grow it to size 10 in that amount of time), between when CK and IS grow to the happy cap and turn 102. The question becomes how many cities can we afford before tanking our economy, and how long does it take to get it back researching at x amount. Basically, that last point is answered by how long it takes city 5 to reach it's happy/health caps and start working 5 scientists, as thats 37 beakers right there, which is at least half of our research at max science before rep, and closer to all of it at breakeven. Sheep can get a lighthouse and grow to the happy cap gaining us another 20+ commerce from t105, so that's a couple of cities, JD can grow and work another 3 cottages, so that's antoher 9 commerce etc, so I think 4 cities is doable, and that would bring us to 9 cities total.

Another one of the reasons corn makes sense to get up and running is the 2 food resources would let us run another city working 4 specialists at size 7 or god knows how many at size 10/13. So if we settled two cities in the east, one for horses and one for gems, the corn city could be delayed slightly (2-4 turns) to get military out to defend it, and taking into account growth at sheep, JD, and IS, we should have enough commerce to build it and grow it large without going bankrupt (although without collosus or rep things would be very different...). That gives us 10 cities before 1AD (turn 115), where we could justifiably stop expanding and focus on a little infrastructure, military, a wonder or two, or whatever.

 

[regoarrarr]

What are your thoughs on tech path? I notice the T79 sim save has Sailing - I guess we do need that for the galleys, and we'll want Col and Math, and need to spend 2-4 turns on Masonry somewhere in between now and T102. I guess that's a decent plan then Sailing->CoL->Math->Masonry (possibly switching the last 2 depending on time)

 

[Krill]

We can't get math and CoL prior to pyramids, unless we temper our expansion. I think that CoL is worth it because it lets us tech so much faster. Maths, I'm not so sure about anymore. I'm really tempted to say we should expand as fast as we can to 10/11/12 cities and try to not explode our beaker potential so that we can still trade techs with other teams but outproduce the 2nd and 3rd MFG and just grow instead of staying just slightly larger than the second biggest and not being able to fight off a 2v1. CoL, Pyramids and Collosus can do this, coastal cities to provide commerce and city 5 to tech for us (40 bpt from city 5 along with 20% slider). Tech with specialists (which cheap libs and pyramids it is stupidly effective) and use the sea for commerce and to fund expansion until we can get some cottages up where ever the available land is. This is one of the reasons I would want to nail down all the city sites over the next few weeks, and also, if we could now send Barentz south around that cow after that barb showed up (he is heading over that direction anyway now), that would help us decide on the best usage of the south.

I can't really think of another way to grow quite as fast or tech quite as well as doing it this way; cottaging city 5 would let us afford a few more cities but not tech quite as well, only one coastal city in the east and we can't grow much either, whereas with two coastal cities shortly after t102 both cities start raking in the gold so we can expand a little again or tech faster. Caste System lets us get out a scientist buy turn 120 for an Academy (ironically, I think the academy should go in city 5, if it is working 5-6 scientists, and the second one can go in JD). The chopping from maths doesn't compare, and we can't research as fast either unless we slow expansion, if we go maths before CoL. No other tech I think is quite as important as CoL IMO (unless we find a team is suddenly powering up in which case HBR and construction are more important).

I think Sailing is definately worth it: it makes it easy to settle gold, easy to scout out around the middle eastern desert for sea food so we can decide if a city is worthwhile there and so we can make a decision on where to build Moai. It also allows us to build Triremes to guard our seafood at either side of our empire. It's not expensive, and while it would be nice to be able to trade for it (IW), it's not a big deal having to tech for it.

 

[Memphus]

other teams notice when you out tech them, and you become public enemy #1. what you want to do is be a strong techer, but not get noticed. other players don't tend to see the MFG number as much.

 

[Memphus]

 

[Krill]

Thanks Memphus, I can make a composite out of the zoomed out pics, but the zoomed in pics have the fram which makes some parts of the map unviewable.

 

[1889]

Does anyone know how what size map we are playing on and what sea level is? I'm thinking of determining what percentage of the map we have explored vs. how much land belongs to the other civs and see if it gives some idea of how far the other teams are.

 

[Dreylin]

Y'know I'm wondering if Sullla has removed all land routes between Civs ... forcing Multiplayer Naval warfare would be an interesting twist.

edit: that would also mean that each team has approximately the same area immediately available.

 

[Krill]

Does anyone know how what size map we are playing on and what sea level is? I'm thinking of determining what percentage of the map we have explored vs. how much land belongs to the other civs and see if it gives some idea of how far the other teams are.

Standard/Low sealevel I think, but I'm pretty sure that the map script used to generate the base map used a standard size larger than normal, because I generated the simulation from a hemispheres map IIRC, and the city maintenence is lower in the game than in the simulation, suggesting that the size of the world is bigger in game than in the sim. It also means I'm going to have to rebuild teh sim at some point...but we do have evidence for the size of the world.

When I rebuild the sim I'll try to figure out the exact size and hence which mapscript this map script this is based upon, but right now I think a fairly modified global highlands is the best bet.

Y'know I'm wondering if Sullla has removed all land routes between Civs ... forcing Multiplayer Naval warfare would be an interesting twist.

edit: that would also mean that each team has approximately the same area immediately available.

Sullla stated that there would be no isolated starts in this game, so there is at least 1 other team on this landmass, maybe 2 or 5 (if there were 3 other teams then that would mean one other team is isolated...so it can't be 3).

 

[azzaman333]

But, no land routes and isolated are two different things.

 

[Krill]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=299721

No Isolated starts. All teams will be able to contact at least one other by land - Sullla.

 

[azzaman333]

Contacting other teams by land doesn't necessarily mean there is a land route though. Hypothetically, it could just mean we can see another civ's culture from our section of the map.

 

[Karhu]

your splitting hairs that I don't think Sulla would split.