[MH2] - Monarchs take on Deity

[Stochastic]

I'm going to read the thread and post some comments later today, I've been kinda busy. If asaf can't play, I can get it.

Asaf hasn't posted since the 28th, has anyone heard from him?

 

[Mikehendi]

He reported sick in a different SG (lurk lurk).

I suggest you swap with Asaf, Stochastic (that makes you UP now, please post a "got it" then and we'll get this game moving again)

That way Ichabod has some extra time to catch up (he hasn't posted his thoughts yet)


So, new roster:

Mikehendi - nothing of interest to put here, but it looks so empty if this were... well...empty!
Happyturtle - Just played
Stochastic - UP
Ichabod - on deck, catching up with the game
Asaf - MIA until further notice

 

[Stochastic]

Woah! OK, I've got it.

Here are my thoughts for the next 8 turns (until the wheel). I'm interested in the thoughts of the team, especially Ichabod and Asaf (if around) regarding the techpath.

I'm assuming that we currently have 3 votes (myself, Happyturtle and Mike) for going pottery, but maybe we've missed something that needs consideration.

Other than that I think the other moves are fairly straightforward:

• Heal the Quecha with Woods I and 3 turns and then scout SE-SE-NE-E.
• Mine the grass hill then move to the hills plain to start mining that too.
• Work the pigs+floodplain to size 3 then pigs+floodplain+3 tile until mine is done.
• Build Quechas.

I'm thinking of playing in ~18hrs if things seem agreed upon by then, otherwise of course I'll wait for the discussion to play out.

 

[Stochastic]

No comments? I'll wait a bit more then.

 

[Mikehendi]

Your plan sounds good to me. I'm think you should play the round. 24/48 is there for a reason, and unless there's a decision we disagree about, i think we should stick to it (at least to the 24h "got it").

A SG requires active participation in the discussion by all team members. If someone doesn't participate in the discussion, they'd be out of line complaining later about the decision the rest of the team made.

 

[Stochastic]

OK, I've played up to the Wheel, stopped there for discussion though I think there is less to talk about for the next set as we are now committed to potter.

Inherited turn:
Promote Warrior to Wood I, will be healed in 3.
Cuzo working Pigs and FP.
The Wheal in 8

Turn 22
Worker->Grass Hill

Turn 23
Start mining

Turn 24
Cuzo to size 3 add the 3 tile.
Quecha is healed so start moving towards horse. Wouldn't you know it, end up right next to a barb warrior ><

Spoiler :

Also barbs start showing up near our border.

Spoiler :

Turn 25
Phew, the warrior went away.
Carry on the path, there is another one!

Spoiler :

Turn 26
In between turns there is good news and bad news. The good is that once more the barb runs away from our mighty Quecha! The bad (or maybe just surprising) SH BIDL! That seems early to me...

Finish the grass mine so start working that instead of the 3
Cuzo finishes our second Quecha, we start on a third (due in 4 turns). I keep this Quecha home for MP duty.

Moving our scout reveals yet more jungle and a barb archer hanging out by the horse

Spoiler :

Turn 27
Start moving worker towards plain hill for a second mine.


Turn 28
Lots happen IBTs, 1st Judaism is founded. Second Pascal founds Chicken Itza IDL. Third, a forest grows on our plains Hill, sad for now as we can't build a hill, but good in future when we get BW. So I re route the worker to work on the farm.

Spoiler :

Turn 29
The wheel is in, set the path for Pottery.

Cuzo grows to size 4. I add a flood plain to the worked tiles because that gets pottery in 8 rather than 9. I'd prefer it if we worked another hammer tile, but I think pottery takes priority. We should keep an eye out for when it can be microed to work a 3 tile.

I press space on the worker in case we want to swap the worker from building a farm to building a road (so it needs to be given a command this turn so as to not waste a worker turn) and then move the Quecha to scout one last time, ending up next to a barb archer.

I think what it reveals suggests moving the horse city 1W to the white dot I added.

Our land:

Spoiler :

Diplo is still very boring:

Spoiler :

 

[shyuhe]

Lurker comments:

Pigs + FP farms + whip = faster production than working a plains hill at your city sizes, so I wouldn't have bothered to try mining the hill. Also, I would have farmed the southern FP in case you need to share it with city #2. With all other things being equal, you should improve shared tiles (or in this case potentially sharable tiles) before unshared tiles to enable tile juggling between cities.

 

[babybluepants]

I keep this Quecha home for MP duty

Why? Did you guys do any testing on when barbs are likely to enter borders?

 

[Mikehendi]

Lurker comments:

Pigs + FP farms + whip = faster production than working a plains hill at your city sizes, so I wouldn't have bothered to try mining the hill. Also, I would have farmed the southern FP in case you need to share it with city #2. With all other things being equal, you should improve shared tiles (or in this case potentially sharable tiles) before unshared tiles to enable tile juggling between cities.

We don't have BW yet, but that's an interesting point. But it seems hard to keep finding whippable thingies when we don't yet have any unit/building enabling techs.

I agree on the farming thing, especially when the only FP which won't get cottaged eventually is the one irrigating the corn.

Why? Did you guys do any testing on when barbs are likely to enter borders?

No, at least I didn't. In Kossins Barb challenge they entered as soon as they appeared, but that was raging barbs, so not really comparable. Sending him out east is safe anyhow, as barbs have only 1 spawning tile to the west/north I believe.

I usually keep the last warrior I produce before the first settler at home, the rest goes out.

Thanks a lot for your input, this type of "I would have..." comments is exactly what we're looking for in this game!


If both Ichabod and Asaf don't reply within an hour or 2, I will grab the save and play a round tonight until pottery is in. Nothing much to discuss now really, get some quecha's out and start a settler @ size 5 I guess, a bit of mm juggling with the tiles. I think 3 quecha's instead of 1 are more important then pottery 1 turn sooner, unless you guys convince me otherwise I'll do it that way.

 

[Stochastic]

Why? Did you guys do any testing on when barbs are likely to enter borders?

No, in retrospect I could have sent the first Quecha out to scout and still got another Quecha out before growing to size 5. But for some reason I had a brain freeze and forgot that the palace adds 1

We don't have BW yet, but that's an interesting point. But it seems hard to keep finding whippable thingies when we don't yet have any unit/building enabling techs.

I agree on the farming thing, especially when the only FP which won't get cottaged eventually is the one irrigating the corn.

I think that we could use a lot of whipping on settlers and build units while regrowing, and I do think that we should go for BW next and then Hunting for the extra happy.

Re improvment placement I agree, something that I will keep in mind for the future. Even our cottages should be first built on overlaps because that way we can swap them around as we whip.

If both Ichabod and Asaf don't reply within an hour or 2, I will grab the save and play a round tonight until pottery is in. Nothing much to discuss now really, get some quecha's out and start a settler @ size 5 I guess, a bit of mm juggling with the tiles. I think 3 quecha's instead of 1 are more important then pottery 1 turn sooner, unless you guys convince me otherwise I'll do it that way.

Sounds good, remember to tell the worker to build a road on the inherited turn.

For the settler, do you still want to go far off to the horse or gold first? I'm thinking that maybe the ivory site makes more sense.

 

[Mikehendi]

I'm afraid that, if we settle Ivory first, Gold will be gone. I assume we will be settling a few cities in rapid succession. If we settle gold first (1E of the gold, to include pig in 2nd ring), and Ivory 2nd, we will still be able to connect those cities fairly easy for TR's.

In favor of the gold city:
- IMMEDIATELY adds 1 extra happiness to the entire empire, 2 after forge. If we don't settle it now, we're likely to lose this happy source for a big part of the game.
- It nicely blocks of some land.
- Located on a hill for extra defense (if sury attacks he will probably attack this city first)
- its a great early production city, with 13 hammers @ size 4. Alternatively, when we have enough units for a while, this city can be used for generating the first Greaty scientist
- When sury's cultural pressure nabs of some 2nd ring tiles in the south/west, that's no problem at all.
- Can build terrace@size1, working the gold, for fast growth after border pop. The gold more than makes up for the extra maintenance.

I just think it's a very good and versatile early site.

But let me put it this way:

Why do you favor "Ivory first - likely lose gold" over "gold first - ivory 2nd"


BTW I like BW and hunting next, order shall depend on the city site we'll settle first. I'll try to scout a bit more at the horse site, if the quecha isn't tied up healing or dying

 

[Mikehendi]

OK, pottery is in, and there are a few things to discuss! But first, the report:

t29: I've decided to fisnish the 4-turns-remaning FP farm first, to help with settler production.

Micromanaging to hammer out 3 quecha's, timing the 3rd simultaniously when growing to size 5. All quecha's sent scouting nearby land and fogbusting southern city locations, except for the 5th and last.

t30 Quecha produced, and attack an injured archer @ 96% odds...

Succeed! But...

End up next to a barb warrior!

t31: quecha produced, the warrior doesn't attack our slightly injured quecha... phew...

t32: Meet SHAKA by workboat! Quecha's --> Settler almost complete:

t33: Worker roads the farmed FP, it allows settling the ivory spot one turn earlier if we choose this site.

t35: Meet Bismarck by running into his culture. Our quecha on his way to fogbusting the south, dies when being attacked by an injured barb warrior

t36: worker puts 1 turn in roading the tile south of the farmed FP (then cancelled orders)

t37:

Pottery is in! And our eastern quecha kills an injured barb archer, needs to heal for 2t

===============================================================

My thoughts on how to continue:

Spoiler :

I'd like to send the southern quecha this way:

That fogbusts the entire gold and ivory area, and prevents barb cities from spawning there! It also means we can sent the settler unescorted since the entire area is visible, 2 move barb units don't exist (yet), and they don't spawn within 2 tiles of any unit.

Then there's this quecha, he should stay there for a while, to help fogbust:

And the worker, what will he do?

- Roading the current tile allows settling Ivory Dot 1t earlier
- Roading another tile (1s of current tile) Allows for gold city 1t earlier
- Not roading any tile but starting on cottage 1w of current tile brings more commerce sooner.

What will we research?

hunting = 4t
BW = 11t

I think hunting-bw if we settle ivory, and BW-hunting if we settle gold first. that brings us to...

Where to settle?

I made a little dotmap, what do you think of it? Personally, I don't really like horse city. Do we really need horses? Well, we have BW before the 2nd settler I think, so let's decide after seeing if we have copper.

I still heavily prefer gold city first, Ivory soon after, for all the reasons I listed in the previous post.

I think the capital should build (quecha?)-worker-settler after the current settler.
The current worker cottages 1 tile in cap first, completes 1-turn road next (doesn't matter for gold city settle speed), and then goes along with the settler, improving gold.

And some more screenshots:

Spoiler :

The espionage focus to convince ai's to not direct points to us is working nicely.

If we send the quecha that scouting path, al nearby land will be reveiled.

EDIT: Forgot to attach the save. Again. sigh.

 

[Stochastic]

I'm afraid that, if we settle Ivory first, Gold will be gone. I assume we will be settling a few cities in rapid succession. If we settle gold first (1E of the gold, to include pig in 2nd ring), and Ivory 2nd, we will still be able to connect those cities fairly easy for TR's.

In favor of the gold city:
- IMMEDIATELY adds 1 extra happiness to the entire empire, 2 after forge. If we don't settle it now, we're likely to lose this happy source for a big part of the game.
- It nicely blocks of some land.
- Located on a hill for extra defense (if sury attacks he will probably attack this city first)
- its a great early production city, with 13 hammers @ size 4. Alternatively, when we have enough units for a while, this city can be used for generating the first Greaty scientist
- When sury's cultural pressure nabs of some 2nd ring tiles in the south/west, that's no problem at all.
- Can build terrace@size1, working the gold, for fast growth after border pop. The gold more than makes up for the extra maintenance.

1) While I don't think this is a crucial point, the gold will not add any until it is connected to our trade network which will require quite a bit of roads.
2) As we have still not even seen any cities of other AIs I'm not sure that we need to be quite as speedy in trying to block off land. Then again, this is deity, so maybe I'm dead wrong.
3) I think Sury grabbing the southern land from that city would actually be very bad, those are the few green tiles that that city gets. But that is a point in favour of settling now so that we get a granary up asap for the x2 culture.
4) I agree with that point

I just think it's a very good and versatile early site.

But let me put it this way:

Why do you favor "Ivory first - likely lose gold" over "gold first - ivory 2nd"

I have a few concerns about Gold first.

First, I don't think we have the military to protect it. I think you said we lost a Quecha as it was enroute, so we only have 4 right now. That means we only have 2 for spawnbusting and there is a lot of land between our capital and the Gold. If we settle the ivory first than we will have a much more consolidated empire for defense.

Second, we don't have the worker count to improve both our cap and the Gold. In 5 turns we will want to start building cottages around our Cap (otherwise there was much less point in getting pottery first) and we only have one worker. So we will want to start building a worker immediately after the settler instead of getting a second settler for the ivory or more quechas.
If we settler ivory instead I think we can get away with it starting a worker or Quecha first rather than a Granary first, which will help take the pressure off the cap. In addition our one worker can improve the overlapping tiles so that the new city is working good tiles off the bat which can then be traded back to our cap when we get more population.

So in summary I feel getting the Ivory first will result in a more efficient and (relatively) easily defendable empire short term. That needs to be played off against the risk of loosing the gold site

 

[Stochastic]

Re the set. Looks like we our barb luck is coming out roughly even so that is nice.

I don't really like the Horse site as a starting position either, but I think we do need to settle it, the horse will be very useful for mobile defense or we could trade it away for lots of gold/resources. Once we've got civil service we can farm a lot of the grass and watermill the river to make a semi decent production city. My problem is it will take forever to get the first border pop which will make it useful.

Very short term I think the worker should get a cottage up in one of the overlap tiles
Other build orders and plans depend upon whether we settle the gold or the ivory next.

Re the tech route, I think we should go BW next regardless of which city we settle, I think we want to get that expensive tech in before maintenance sets in, then Hunting can trickle in easily. We should also do binary research (either 100% or 0%) as soon as maintenance does show up. The deities will tech faster than us so we will get more tech discounts for our gold if we hold off on research until we can go 100% all out.

Can you attach the save please?

 

[shyuhe]

Lurker comment:

Pre-roading from Cuzco is unnecessary here if you're planning on settling ivory. That worker turn would have been better spent improving one of the FP's.

Your quechua on the plains hill just south of Cuzco is good - it'll block barb cities from popping up near the ivory. Barbies can't settle cities near the gold since there's no food so there's no reason to bust that area (from cities at least).

 

[Mikehendi]

1) While I don't think this is a crucial point, the gold will not add any until it is connected to our trade network which will require quite a bit of roads.
2) As we have still not even seen any cities of other AIs I'm not sure that we need to be quite as speedy in trying to block off land. Then again, this is deity, so maybe I'm dead wrong.
3) I think Sury grabbing the southern land from that city would actually be very bad, those are the few green tiles that that city gets. But that is a point in favour of settling now so that we get a granary up asap for the x2 culture.
4) I agree with that point

1) You're right, but connecting the gold to the empire only requires 3 roads (gold, and 2 tiles towards ivory site to connect through river)
2) I don't know, I'm being guided by hearing it is very important to get to 6 decent cities fast (for nat. wonders), before you're boxed in. There are a lot of AI's around on our landmass (don't know how big it is), all starting with 3 settlers, so being boxed in could be a real issue. And in a lot of deity games I've lurked, people are constantly beating the ai (or being beat) to city sites just by 1 turn.
3) With terrace (+library/theatre later on) culture, we should be able to keep the 2nd ring tiles. After the 2nd border pop, those tiles get pumped with (building+religion culture+20) per turn, after the 3rd pop (...+40) per turn.

I have a few concerns about Gold first.

First, I don't think we have the military to protect it. I think you said we lost a Quecha as it was enroute, so we only have 4 right now. That means we only have 2 for spawnbusting and there is a lot of land between our capital and the Gold. If we settle the ivory first than we will have a much more consolidated empire for defense.

Second, we don't have the worker count to improve both our cap and the Gold. In 5 turns we will want to start building cottages around our Cap (otherwise there was much less point in getting pottery first) and we only have one worker. So we will want to start building a worker immediately after the settler instead of getting a second settler for the ivory or more quechas.
If we settler ivory instead I think we can get away with it starting a worker or Quecha first rather than a Granary first, which will help take the pressure off the cap. In addition our one worker can improve the overlapping tiles so that the new city is working good tiles off the bat which can then be traded back to our cap when we get more population.

So in summary I feel getting the Ivory first will result in a more efficient and (relatively) easily defendable empire short term. That needs to be played off against the risk of loosing the gold site

First) the cap could build a 5th quecha in 1 turn after the settler (settler overflow + working hammer tiles), and we really need only 2, maybe 3 fogbusting quecha's to be safe. There's no way a barb is gonna defeat a quecha on a forest hill or a hill city (I believe we DO get a 25% barb city defense modifier, no matter the difficulty level).

Second) The worker can build 1 cottage, which the cap can work, then move along with settler to gold, while the cap builds another worker (5 turns or so?) (who builds 2-3 cottages), then the ivory settler.

Commerce-wise, I don't think there's a big difference between TR + less maintenance from ivory, or more maintenence + gold commerce in a few turns.

Summary) I think Gold city is best, especially if we go BW first. No point in settling the Ivory if we can't improve them yet. I do see your points for Ivory, though. It would be a bit safer. But I think the Gold site is just too good to pass up.



I'd like to hear the others also on this. Happyturtle, are you still around? Ichabod? Asaf? Where are you guys (and girl )?

About horse city: let's wait till after BW to discuss it. If we have BFC copper and more good land elsewhere, we might skip it.

Agree on cottage on the overlap tile.

Agree also on binary research. In addition to your points, it also nets 1 beaker/turn regardless due to rounding errors (when @10-90% slider).

Oh.. right.. the save... Right away sir!

 

[Mikehendi]

Lurker comment:

Pre-roading from Cuzco is unnecessary here if you're planning on settling ivory. That worker turn would have been better spent improving one of the FP's.

Your quechua on the plains hill just south of Cuzco is good - it'll block barb cities from popping up near the ivory. Barbies can't settle cities near the gold since there's no food so there's no reason to bust that area (from cities at least).

Wow, I learn something new every day while playing this SG

A 2nd quecha on the plains hill (between the mountain and the pigs) could spawnbust the entire southern area from spawning barbs, giving the settler a free passing through to all the way towards the gold site (only on the last movement turn escorted by the fogbusting quecha).

Improving an FP that turn wasn't possible: No pottery yet and the only other FP we want to farm (irrigate corn after CS) was out out of reach. Hence the road.

 

[happyturtle]

I see points in favor of both cities, and am indecisive. Definitely BW first though.

Edit: After re-reading the arguments, I am tentatively in favor of gold. I have never lurked any deity games though, so my knowledge here is very limited. I'm Prince/Monarch on my own.

 

[Mikehendi]

Just randomly throwing rosters around...

Roster:
Happyturtle - UP
Stochastic - On Deck
Mikehendi - Just played

MIA:
Ichabod - MIA since a week or so
Asaf - MIA since a week and a half or so

I'm not trying to hurry up playing, just asking what to do here? Both players haven't posted for quite some time now, without further notice. That's not really showing interest in the game, is it?

I'm happy to continue with the 3 of us if they don't show up anymore. If they do show up again, I'll put them at the end of the roster I think (so they have some time to get back into the game before playing). Is this ok with you Stochastic, Happyturtle?
Or do you think I should attract new players?

I'm Prince/Monarch on my own

Well, that's the idea

 

[happyturtle]

Well, that's the idea

Yeah, but I'm just barely Monarch, and haven't lurked Deity games, so I feel my judgement is somewhat suspect here.

As for players, I'd rather have 5 or 6, than just 3, so I'd say recruit more, if we can find any. I wasn't expecting it to get back around to me so fast.