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[BTS] NZ's Shadow Game - Immortal Zulu

^ Hum... so, you mean we don't have the beakers to go AH -> Mining -> BW if we settle on the gold (and go worker, farm, pasture, chop) ?
That could need some consideration :thumbsup:

Inserting The Wheel is always a possibility (SIP vs 1N) but certainly comes at a hammer cost.
The issue with SIP is the low production (yes we have a forest spam but that means we need to burn through them faster and less efficiently), the inability to share the gold (3N spots do not show promise) and, thus, the difficulty to grow onto tiles (likely requires to stop working the gold for a number of turns to go past size 3 and maybe even some more).
The gold spot, otoh, gets an easy 12Hpt towards settlers, which is extremely convenient with double chops (5T settler).

To be honest, I'm not sure about the tech timings. I was more focused on the growth and production side of things.
There could be something to be said about "what's in the dark". I don't mean BFC but potential city locations. I think that, generally speaking, working the gold tile itself would be most missed in the case of a poor and/or cramped map, whereas a richer and more open land area would compensate for it (+ faster expansion / easier growth). You know, the tile doesn't have the same importance in a 3-4 cities breakout as it does in a 8 cities REx.
It would seem to hamper a REx but you make a very good point about timings :hug::sleep:
 
Heavily forested start can indicate a shortage of resource tiles in initial bfc, by all means have a look but its more in hope than expectation.
 
Heavily forested start can indicate a shortage of resource tiles in initial bfc, by all means have a look but its more in hope than expectation.
Sure. I think this was covered before.
To clarify : a normalized start offers 4 resources in BFC. Here we can see 2 resources and 2 floodplains that both count for 1/2 each for a total of 3.
So the mystery ph tile 2E1S has to hold a resource. That is a given. The quality of that resource is not a given. It can be sheep, it can be wine, maybe it is alluminium. If it is copper, I wonder how we grow Cap to 4 to work it...

Sometimes you have a lake in BFC and that is a bummer because it can bump a resource tile outside of BFC, making it weaker than standard.
 
I don't think settling on gold makes sense when we put a microscope on worker turns. If we SIP we've got things to do immediately: farming FPs and mining gold. Plus, once we work the gold we unlock more options with BW/AH/Pot faster. If you settle the gold, worker can't improve the mine and doesn't need to farm FPs. This is even more important because we're an EXP leader with a lot of trees to chop as well, so I would want to go heavier on workers early and unlock granaries faster than I otherwise would.
Honestly not sure if I understand the argument. You are saying you free up worker turns (settling 1N) but you do less with them because you don't NEED to farm fps? True, it's the best you have then for a while, I guess I just don't see why it's a problem. You are correct that 1N needs AH, BW, pot to shine. I think you can get there in a reasonable time while having a better expansion due to a faster start :hammers:-wise. Maybe 1N is a weaker play on deity compared to immortal due to higher tech costs.
My more reasoned take: It's not obvious to me that sip or gold are such strong settles that we should immediately cast out the possibility of spending two turns settling on better food to the west or southwest.
I think it's maybe a top 40% start (from what we can see so far), in the better half for sure. Extra :), river, lots of forest, all great things. Somewhat :food:-poor of course. Honestly I'm not sure how good moving to the west is even if there is double corn or something like that. Moving off the river is very bad (cottage:commerce:, :traderoute::s). And I'm not talking about bureau cap or stuff like that, just a few cottages in the BCs.
 
Fascinating debate, I think I need to move the Scout 1 tile to give us more information.

So let's focus the debate - 1NE or 1SW, which is more likely to give us information to help our settling decision? I lean towards 1NE and seeing what's along the river but 1SW works as well :crazyeye:
 
Indeed :D

SOG >> better scouting, fogbusting and earlier city 2.
 
That's not automatic though, from my experience.
Well, the thing is that not all map types use the normalizer, isn't it ? Pangaea certainly does.

re : scouting :
What are you hoping to find in the north ? Say you go NE, E with the scout, you reveal :
A jungle tile 2N of the scout, the floodplains 2E of the scout, 2 forested tiles and a floodplains 3E of the scout.
It's exactly the same if the scout goes NE, SE, except you reveal a different forested tile 3E. Any additional tile the scout could reveal would be a hill past the floodplains, somewhere 4E.
It seems to me that most of those tiles are, in fact, already known :blush:

Scout SW immediately reveals a hill 2W of the cows and then some flatland.

Consider that :
- The gold BFC is 100% known before any scout move ;
- Moving the settler any tile east (NE along the river ?) guarantees to lose the plains cow ; I humbly believe this is unacceptable without any other power tile in sight ;
- Moving the settler some tile west (1SW, 1W, 2W) can retain cows and gold ; moving the settler W also opens the possibility to share the gold with an Eastern city, which is way more likely than SIP + sharing from the north.

ps : yes, I am discounting the possibility of forest/jungle resources.

:)

edit : tech timings :
Spoiler :
Civ4ScreenShot0147.JPG


the location for the 2nd floodplains is a little different in your game but it doesn't change anything up to this point. The worker is supposed to waste 2 turns on its way from the cows to the 2nd fp.
Improving the 2nd fp does shave a turn from the settler, bringing the build to 9T. Ulundi does 12hpt towards settlers at this point.

The alternative is to start with a 2nd worker (5T) but that would delay Bronze by a turn and said worker would not have anything to do ('cause no Bronze).
 
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I'd strongly consider size 1 settler (immediately after worker)
 
I'd strongly consider size 1 settler (immediately after worker)
It certainly is good practice to at least consider different build orders any time you hit a new size, yes ! You could consider it at size 2 as well.

Sometimes earlier is not better, especially if you create different problems down the line.
For example, with an active worker, you wanna make sure city growth follows the tile improvements rate. If you're going to improve a tile, then a city should be growing onto it. Put otherwise : if the settler isn't out before that extra tile is improved, I would strongly consider growing another size ;)
The other issue is improving food surplus. The gold BFC has a poor best food tile in the farmed floodplains. However, working more tiles keeps improving the food surplus. And that keeps speeding up growth. So : growing from 1 to 2 is slower than growing from 2 to 3, which is slower than growing from 3 to 4. The incentive to keep the growth going is very real (not to mention the incidental commerce from those floodplains).

And, finally, it's really tied to point a) : once the cows are improved, they really are a tile you want to work. If you start stagnating at size 1, then growing to 2 on the cows takes 8 turn. Let's say it's around T25, having the cap doing basically nothing for 8 turns is a huge loss.

If we're talking about stagnation, then we could also say that the objective when stagnating is to do so for the least number of turns possible. This is why securing production is, in general, the much better way. I'm sure you know that. Exploration can reveal stuff and maybe there's a quad corn city that needs to be settled asap but that remains to be determined.
In the blind, I wouldn't think that the low food of the initial farmed floodplains makes for a convincing argument to stagnate at size 1 :hug:

To go your way, if the newly improved tile is a shared tile, it can give an incentive to start the settler from a lower size. But this is really projecting ourselves. Locking on to city 2 location isn't really a turn 0 thing... :mischief:
 
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For me the question is how fast can I grow to size 2?
7 turns is a lot. I think size 1 settler pops in 14 turns.
 
I didn't do that math but I trust you.

Say you pop 1 the settler : every other build from the capital is delayed because the production has not been set up. If you want two settlers from the capital or even another worker, then that becomes an issue.
An apparent advantage at turn 30 can turn into a backwards situation 10 turns later if the dynamics were not set up for further development. This is exactly the issue with Sampsa's SOG(tm) in the Immortal Monty thread.
 
Maybe continue this discussion after NZ has decided where to settle the capital. In terms of scouting I'd be tempted to suggest move settler onto gold then decide where to send the scout.
 
I would also scout SW to see if settling west is best.

@sampsa Even if there's nothing better, it still strikes me that some of the advantage of settling on gold is saving worker turns that we don't need to save. It's more of an IMP-settler first setup than EXP-worker first. Then we're immediately hit with a tough choice of going AH first and idling until BW, or go BW first and playing without our only great tile for a while. Maybe the timing isn't as bad as I first assumed since it's IMM, you get a couple extra pennies, and you could also spend some worker turns improving the further fp from the cow if that was to be shared with a second city.

My main point though was fast pottery. I always bemoan how overrated EXP is because it's only amazing if we have lots of forests to chop, good tiles to cottage, extra happiness and can get to pottery quickly. Here we can actually do this!!!! And you don't want to :(. Fast pottery here is a true snowball unlike most games where it's more meh. With many leaders I'd agree with you, but with Shaka and this setup I want to open with double worker and rush pottery.

That said, I'm going to be super busy for a week and feel guilty advocating a minority opinion and then bailing :blush:
 
Fair enough, move scout west before moving settler.
 
@sampsa Even if there's nothing better, it still strikes me that some of the advantage of settling on gold is saving worker turns that we don't need to save. It's more of an IMP-settler first setup than EXP-worker first.
I mean yeah, it would be better to be FIN (earlier extra penny) or IMP (extra :hammers: towards first settler), but that doesn't mean it's not a good play regardless of traits. 1-chop granary will be good later anyways, and not only in capital. For me 1N is not only about worker turns, it's also for faster expansion. Anyway, the lower the level the better it is to expand very fast.
 
So the mystery ph tile 2E1S has to hold a resource. That is a given. It can be sheep, it can be wine, maybe it is alluminium. If it is copper, I wonder how we grow Cap to 4 to work it...
I don't think copper can be on PH in map like pangea. Otherwise I would recall wonderful times of 3 hammer capitals.

IMHO, it could be a sheep, stone, aluminium or coal. I would bet on the latter two.
 
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