Micro Challenge 7

[kossin]

Micro Challenge Central

After another even long(er) hiatus, the 7th instalment is here: granary galore!

I'd ask for spoilers to be used so that nothing is given away too easily. You're free to talk about anything else though.

Be advised that you may find answers if you look at spoilers...

Micro Challenge VII

You are Tokugawa. [Civ Illustrated]

​

These are your cooked starts.

Spoiler :

A few relevant techs have been given for the task at hand: Pottery, Animal Husbandry, Monarchy, Fishing, Agriculture, Bronze Working, Iron Working, Future Techs, Machinery.

Spoiler :

Tokugawa wants to build an army... what better way than to accumulate population and food in all your cities! He is also investigating the strange water wheels in a far away region...

The challenge: complete the following tasks:
Normal : have 60 population total in all your cities by turn 25. Have 14 Watermills in Watermill me!

Spoiler :

14

Hard : have 66 population total in all your cities by turn 25. Have 15 Watermills in Watermill me!

Spoiler :

15

Nightmare : have 70 population total in all your cities by turn 25. Have 16 Watermills in Watermill me! You are also required to get a perfect score on your food count.

Spoiler :

16

and perfect

You should not research any technology, you are already given everything you need to accomplish the objectives.

Settings
Not really important but events are off.

Difficulty
Normal difficulty may take a few tries but most optimizations are easy.
Hard is where the fun gets started
Nightmare.... well, if you solve it. If you can't manage to get the perfect food count, you still did very well!

The hint I would give is to concentrate on one city at a time to avoid going nuts.

Solution
Video solutions

Spoiler Expected sizes and food counts :

City Pop Food WMs
One 7 29
Two 8 30
Three 7 16
Four 8 27
Five 10 28
Six 9 20
Seven 7 16
Eight 7 28
Nine 5 19
WM 2 7 16
Total 70 220

 

[kossin]

Given this one's complexity, feel free to quote this post and post in your results in table format as spoilered below. Just replace the numbers with your results.

Spoiler table format, no spoiler here :

City Pop Food WMs
One 5 18
Two 6 19
Three 6 18
Four 5 19
Five 6 18
Six 5 19
Seven 6 18
Eight 5 19
Nine 6 18
WM 5 19 14
Total 55 185

 

[pomthom]

The hint I would give is to concentrate on one city at a time to avoid going nuts.

I haven't started and I think I'm going nuts already

 

[Izuul]

At least it's "only" 25T.

 

[kossin]

Usually, the critical parts in optimizing a granary happens in the first ~12 turns. The 25T mark worked out nicely for a few cities and also the watermill city.

You'll mostly only have to micro workers in the watermill city for most of the turns.

 

[Izuul]

Just the order of the watermills is going to take me awhile.

I assume we are allowed to research things? I don't see anything saying otherwise.

 

[soundjata]

Can I build a few samurais?

 

[drewisfat]

What does perfect food count mean?

 

[soundjata]

Where is Dhoomstricker post about the order for watermills by the way?
5000 posts can't dig into :/

OK here goes ladies and gentlemen Champollion anyone?

 

[Manco Capac]

^
Food score being equal to denominator or better? Seen while hovering your cursor over your civ name to the down right.

 

[soundjata]

Guys (and anal torture spider thingies) my watermills jump from one river to another is it normal?

 

[kossin]

Perfect food count means getting in as much food as possible in the bin in the 25 turns. I'm keeping my solutions hidden at the moment to:
1) Push you to look
2) Maybe you can find better and I don't want to influence you.

Watermills: always start with the tile that has fewest riversides available... I thought this was widely known but apparently people don't build enough watermills.

EDIT: is there anything worth researching?

 

[Benginal]

In the situation that there exist multiple potential places a tile's watermill could be built how is its location chosen?

EDIT: It seems that this question becomes irrelevant once I realize that in this case the possibility of building other watermills on rivers shared by that tile is nerfed. Sheesh.

 

[soundjata]

Is this normal or a bug

Spoiler :

In between turn, the watermill on the tile West of "watermill me" jumps from the south river to the west river

 

[soundjata]

EDIT: is there anything worth researching?

Spoiler :

Biology

 

[soundjata]

OK 16 watermill'd me:

Spoiler :

Concerning my question related to "jumping mills", it appears the apparent location of watermills (as displayed by the game) is just a mirage so yeah... Just follow Kossin straightforward advice and we are fine

Sorry for too much spam. Quality threads always get me excited.

 

[Benginal]

@ soundjata:

Spoiler :

My watermills also jumped around. See the upper left corner on my map below where there are two on top of each other.

My working solution to the Watermill Me part of this challenge:

Spoiler :

My notes go as follows. The first term is the order the watermills need to be finished in -- 1 means it's of first order importance. The second term is where on the tile the watermill will be built. The third term is how many more worker turns are needed to complete the watermill.

Turn 0: Build a farm

Turn 1-4: Spend some worker turns on starting watermills. There are a variety of ways to do this. I want the workers to end up north in time for the border pop.

Turn 5: Borders pop. Send the workers up to start on watermills up there. Revolt into slavery. Granted, I'm not sure what the optimal time to do this is since I haven't looked at the other cities yet. So long as the revolt is after the border pop, it's all the same to Watermill Me, I think? It might be better to revolt after the worker is finished. But this is likely too late for the other cities. I'll have to mess around with this later.

Turn 9: Grow to size 2, start on worker.

Turn 15: 1-pop whip worker.

Turn 19: Finishing up.

Turn 24: All ready to go. Notice we keep the farm until the very end. We comfortably make 2-pop and are far away from 3-pop.

Turn 25: Order matters.

1 worker turn to spare. 7/24 food in the bin.

@ kossin:

Spoiler :

Can I have a hint? . What size do you have the watermill city on turn 25 when it gets 16 watermills?

 

[soundjata]

^ Lol I have not considered we need to finish on T25 omg omg

 

[GKey]

State Property would be nice to have!

EDIT: Seriously, Kos, was about to tech mysticism, then realized - we got palace in every city

EDIT2: And you definitely want tech math to chop granary with 2 forests rather then with 3! I also got Music and started GA, cuz it's cool.

EDIT3: No way you call this Micro challenge! It's 10 micro challenges in one!

 

[kossin]

Uhhh yea, stay away from Mathematics, I completely forgot...

WMs looks fine, but yes you need to keep in mind the slavery revolt has to occur early for the other cities.