Phaedo's 1st basic skills training game: patience required

Start settings 1
Start settings 2

Start #1
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Not terribly exciting

Start #2
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Ditto

Start #3
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Two gameforests and fresh water are nice but...

Start #4
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Floodplains ;)

Start #5
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If only it had a river...

Start #6
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Now we're talking.. by far the best one. Irrigate all the wines and pump out some settlers! You can either get one town to +5 food in despotism or split the wines to two cities.
 
Thanks to Salarakas for fine and fast work.

My initial reactions:

1) I like sugar. I like rivers. Not a bad start. Also not a terrific one.

2) I like tobacco (but not as much as I like sugar). I like BGs. Again, I like rivers. Another "not bad but not great" start.

3) I really like the game and the fresh water, but we'd have to invest a ton of worker-turns to clear that area for our capitol to flourish.

4) Yep. Floodplains. . . . and little else. Blech.

5) No river, but I do see water on three sides. May or may not be fresh water, though. Nice, immediate access to silks though. And 4 BGs in the first 9 squares.

6) A river, 3 wines, and a BG! This is my favorite. Yeah, irrigate the wines for now, take advantage of their food bonus, look to trade them later.

My vote: 6
Second choice: 5
 
A couple of lurker comments:

"(-- turns)" means no money is being allocated to research. If you allocate any gold to research (either a scientist or a % of the slider that gives some gold, you will have a # of turns there.

It may not look, at the beginning, that 80% or 100% makes a difference, but that is because the # of turns calculation is based on the current gold output, and the maximum number of turns research can take is 50 (at least in conquests, which is what you are using I think), as long as have allocated some research to it.

However, 80% vs. 100% at the beginning can have a large impact on the final outcome, because as your civ grows, the amount of gold allocated grows.

"If you decide to go with research, don't forget to temporarily switch to something that you don't want before you pop a GH; you cannot get what you are currently researching"

Just don't do this in the middle of researching a tech - if you switch from 1 tech to another and back, you lose all your allocated research. It's a pain.
 
Thanks Sal for keeping things moving:)

I don't mind 1 but 4 has too many flood plains for me:cringe:

It's hard to argue with 6:D I love food:drool:

3 is risky. The 2 game are nice but if you hate floodplains, marshes bring the same problem and take forever to change.

Hands down #6
 
Salarakas said:
Now we're talking.. by far the best one. Irrigate all the wines and pump out some settlers! You can either get one town to +5 food in despotism or split the wines to two cities.

I think it's obvious that we should take start 6 indeed (again ;)), so I don't even bother putting a second choice here, or does anyone else disagree? :)

If we take 6:
It's always better to split the resources, because in the beginning our towns don't need that much tiles anyway. Though, I don't like tight city build, and that is inevitable if we split the wines.

If we decide to split, the settler could obviously go south and still be at a river and taking a BG and a wine. But could he also go east, or does the beach that is next to the water point towards a non-fresh water source? If so, that possibility is of course ruled out.
If we decide on a solo town, the place to go is obvious (SW).

The worker should irrigate the wine he is standing one immediately, because no matter what we choose that tile will always be in the first city square. Our scout should head west, to reveal what this area has to offer next to these lovely wines.

But hey, that's just my $0.04 :)
 
Everything AutomatedTeller says is correct. Always go max science in the beginning unless you are planning on spending 50 turns researching the tech.

An example: alphabet costs 150 beakers at the start. If we made e.g. 3 commerce a turn it would show 50 turns left whether we put 1, 2 or all 3 of our commerce into science spending. However, once we build a road our commerce increases to 4 which of course decreases the number of turns left if we go 100% science. And when we meet civs which have discovered alphabet it will get cheaper for us and again the number of turns left decreases. This is why it's important to get contacts early on.

When you get a tech from a hut I believe you always get the cheapest one that you are not researching at the time. In our case ceremonial burial is the cheapest one so if we started researching alphabet (150 beakers) and got a tech from a hut it would be CM (60 beakers). If we started researching CM we would get the second cheapest tech which is warrior code (90 beakers).
 
Do we lose all research immediately. or only into the new turn? If it doesn't change over the turn, is it possible to switch just before popping the hut and then switching back without loosing research? You don't immediately loose the research fi you don't close the advisor screen.
 
Since it seems like #6 is the one we all want I'll upload the save so we can finally get started.

Based on what we see now I would definately go one tile south with the settler and found the capital there.

But then comes an important question: which is more important to us now... shields or food? Irrigating the wine would give us 3 food, 0 shields and 2 gold. Mining the bonus grassland would give us 2 food, 2 shields and 2 gold (with a road). We definately want to build a scout or two asap and therefore it might actually be better to emphasize shields rather than food in the very beginning. Remember, the wine won't give us extra food in despotism until we irrigate it.
 

Attachments

I mostly agree with Twix. I think the opening moves are:
1) Scout -> first: 1 tile SW; second: depends on what he sees from the hill. His view will help us decide whether to put one town or two on the three wines.

2) Worker begins irrigation immediately. I'm inclined to emphasize food over shields at this point. I'd like to pop another worker pretty quickly.

3) Settler's destination depends on what the scout sees and whether we want to emphasize food or shields. The hill offers a defensive bonus (right?), but I'm inclined not to build on it because I don't plan on letting anyone get that close.
 
I'm inclined to emphasize food over shields at this point.

That was my first thought too but then again we are expansionist. The only good thing about that are the scouts which we need to get out asap or they will do no good to us. The more we wait the less chance there is of getting something useful from goody huts. If we empasize food first we might pretty much waste the advantage that being expansionist gives us in the beginning.

I'd like to pop another worker pretty quickly.

In this situation building another worker would be pretty low in my build order in the capital. I would build one or two scouts, one or two warriors for military police (and defence) and then probably a settler. Also remember that barbarians are on restless so we need to protect all settlers we send out into the fog.
 
lurker's comment: Since you guys have already discussed irrigating the wines right off the bat... what are you going to do with the settler? And will you move the scout or settler first?
 
@ Salarakas: I was not very clear. I do want to get a worker (probably) before the next settler, but one or two scouts and at least one warrior would be first. I still think that food comes before shields at this point. I don't think the food is wasted. It may slow us down a turn or two in getting that first additional scout out, but scouts are two-move units, right? So he'll be moving twice as fast as non-exp units. I guess the bottom line is that I think creating citizens faster will make up for a short-term shield loss. I may be wrong. What say you emphasize shields and I'll emphasize food for the first 10 turns? Then we can compare notes. Isn't that what this is about?

@ scoutsout: I think scout moves first. Get him up on that hill to the SW for visibility. I don't know if it will affect which direction we send Settler, but it might.

Where are we on research plans?
 
Aabraxan said:
@ scoutsout: I think scout moves first. Get him up on that hill to the SW for visibility. I don't know if it will affect which direction we send Settler, but it might.
Fair enough. But let me see if I can make my point with a little "Socratic Method":
  1. What type(s) of terrain are hardly worth worker turns in despotism?
  2. What's the fastest way to work a hill in Despotism?
  3. You're going to move the settler anyway... do you
    • Risk a wasted scout move? ... or...
    • Risk a wasted settler move?
Bear in mind, there actually is a difference between a calculated risk and a stupid gamble. :D
Where are we on research plans?
With all that riverside and lux commerce... It's high time you guys gave the ol' Republic Slingshot a try at this level.
 
scoutsout said:
Fair enough. But let me see if I can make my point with a little "Socratic Method":
1. What type(s) of terrain are hardly worth worker turns in despotism?
I'll go with hills and mountains.

2. What's the fastest way to work a hill in Despotism?
Build a city on it.

3. You're going to move the settler anyway... do you
a) Risk a wasted scout move? ... or...
b) Risk a wasted settler move?
Under these circumstances, I'd say scout. Here's why: Every turn that the settler does not build a city is a one-turn setback for the entire empire. Every citizen, scrap of food, gold piece, shield, horseman, sword and worker that we will ever produce is delayed by one turn for every one turn delay in building this first city. So in this case, I'd prioritize my settler's move as more valuable than the scout's.

One of my first reactions to this start was to send the settler SW onto the hill to settle. On further reflection, I think we send the scout up first. If the scout goes up and we discover another lux or a resource, say 1 S and 1 SE of current position, it may make more sense to send the settler 1 S to settle, thus (possibly) capturing two luxes in the first nine squares. If we send the settler up and make the same discovery, we have to choose between (a) settling on the hill and capturing three of the same lux (wine); or (b) capturing two luxes.

The odds of us not being able to capture the other two wines that we can see are pretty slim. There's nothing wrong with having two furs, but we won't be able to trade them for a while. So for the time being, their value is: +1 food, +1 commerce, + happiness. And we don't get any happiness out of the second or third wine.

Yes, I know that putting the settler up there is a calculated risk (that I'll miss something), but I don't think putting the scout up there qualifies as a stupid gamble. If I'm wrong, I'm hoping you'll explain why.

With all that riverside and lux commerce... It's high time you guys gave the ol' Republic Slingshot a try at this level.

I'm all for it.

[Edited: I was unable to make my list look quite as nice as scoutsout's, so there may be some slight differences.]
 
lurker's comment:
Twixmeistah said:
It's always better to split the resources, because in the beginning our towns don't need that much tiles anyway. Though, I don't like tight city build, and that is inevitable if we split the wines.
I may be misunderstanding what you are saying, so bear with me.

What I hear you say is that there is some reason to split the wines between two cities.

I don't think so.

Once you have a luxury connected to your capital, all the cities that are connected to the capital benefit from that luxury. So one wine would be enough to make citizens happy throughout the empire.

Now if by resources you meant BGs and plains, etc, you are correct. Improve what you can work and work what you have improved.
 
lurker's comment:
Aabraxan said:
[Edited: I was unable to make my list look quite as nice as scoutsout's, so there may be some slight differences.]
What scoutsout did was nest one LIST inside another LIST, like so:
(LIST)
point 1
point 2
(LIST)
point 2A
point 2B
(/LIST)​
point 3
point 4
(/LIST)
The indentation and the change of bullet points is automatic; just part of the LIST command.
 
Here's what I suggest we do with the worker:
1. Irrigate the wine he is standing on (4 turns)
2. Build a road (3 turns)
3. Move 1SE to the bonus grassland and mine it (1+6 turns)
4. Road the BG (3 turns)
5. Move 2NW to another wine square and irrigate and road (1+4+3 turns)
6. Either do the same for the third wine (1+4+3 turns) or mine and road a second bonus grassland (1+6+3)

As for the city:
1. Move the settler first, either 1SW (hill) or 1S (grassland)
2. Even though our worker is irrigating the wine I would work the bonus grassland tile for another shield. This way we could get a second scout out in turn 6 instead of turn 11(?).
3. After that I would start working on the now irrigated wines. Once the city grows to size 2 I think we need to work the bonus grassland for some shields.

What about a granary? If we worked all the irrigated wines we could get a city with +5 food and (most likely) at least 8 shields a turn. With a granary this would make a great 4-turn settler factory. I'd say we definately want to build a granary but not before we get another scout and a couple of defenders out and founded a second city.
 
As you may be able to tell, I have a certain sft spot in my heart for the socratic method; taking one of Socrates' favourite students' name as my screen name:D
scoutsout said:
  1. What type(s) of terrain are hardly worth worker turns in despotism?
  2. What's the fastest way to work a hill in Despotism?
  3. You're going to move the settler anyway... do you
    • Risk a wasted scout move? ... or...
    • Risk a wasted settler move?
  1. jungles and marshes take forever to clear and it would seem your worker could be better used doing other things so I'd put those terrain types as wastes of worker moves under despotism. The Time/reward trade-off for mountains isn't one I think you should take and generally, I agree with Abra about hills as well (although I think there are limited situations that call for a mine on a hill)
  2. Yes, fastest way would have to be build on it
  3. I also vaue worker moves in the early game so if I had to choose, I'd risk wasting the scout move. With this start, the scout will lose its movement after crossing the river but will reveal more total squares by moving to the hill first than if it moved onto the NW grapes and then crossed. It will also get its 2 turns of movement in an EDIT:westerly direction next turn. Most importantly, we wil have more information to make better decesions regarding our worker and settler.

I also agree with Sal on worker and settler moves. I think we will end up on the hill but that decesion should be made after we see a bit of what is around.
Also, I think that the main value of those grapes is the possibility of a strong settler pump, so a granary will be in order. I think we will have to see what develops to exactly determine the builds but another scout is a must and security is a priority as well.

The save is posted so let's make sure we keep notes so we can figure out the causes of the differences between our starts once we post them:)
 
With this start, the scout will lose its movement after crossing the river

What do you mean? If the scout moves 1W or 1S it will still have one move left. Personally I would probably go 1S and then 1SW on top of that hill. After that I'd probably move the settler 1S as the hills can make this city a real powerhouse once we get out of despotism. It could probably churn out well over 20 shields in size 12 which would mean three turn knights and possible even cossacks for our conquering mission. We should have enough cities by that time too to get settlers out even without using the capital as a settler-pump.
 
Really? I though the scout would lose its movement after it crossed the river like other units on a road. I haven't played much with expansionist civs. I stand corrected:)
 
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