Qualification Poll, city after Quatron?

[Provolution]

Gentlemen

We can now choose to settle on the mainland first, or to settle Singularity, which option do you prefer (name only one option please, as its hard to clarify positions of ambiguity).

 

[Arakhor]

I think that settling on the mainland might be a good to mark out our expanding sphere of influence.

 

[cav scout]

3rd city on our island.

 

[RegentMan]

3rd city on the island.

 

[Bowsling]

I vote for Resonance (landmass)

 

[TyBoy]

3rd city on our island

 

[CharlemagneXLII]

I vote for Resonance.

 

[Provolution]

I vote for Resonance (4-3)

 

[Earthling]

Third city on our island.

If somehow we do vote for Resonance though, I would then urge for making Asymptote 4th, it only makes sense, cause we'll already have presumably built the galley/workboats for clams, and that's also an important spot for cutting off Vikings - it really will become the essential border city, at least unless we manage to get even further onto the Vikings' side.

 

[Provolution]

The vote is 4-4, and I much prefer this way to make team decisions, than to conduct "verbal squeezing" as I saw in the previous team demogame I found a bit overwhelming in terms of joint decision-making.

I hope someone can break the tie before the next 3 turns are gone, as it may affect the general production plan.

 

[Earthling]

Yeah, I prefer having plenty of votes, it encourages everything important about activity and team-decision making, the same happened in the last demogame. Again, this is another call between two pretty good options, and we can work it out whichever way we choose, so anyone more who wants to share please do so. We do have a few turns as everyone mentioned while we're still doing stuff we'd already decided, which is another good thing of course too.

(But my team in particular last game was awful about one thing, which was never posting discussion on the CFC forum itself, because like 70% took place outside - not that I wasn't there too when I could be, but for team members who missed it things were impossible to follow, and decisions were made hastily.)

 

[MrBanana]

Settle the mainland.

 

[Provolution]

Ok, I think Resonance or Asymptote made it for the majority vote (mainland), with a 5-4 vote. (Unless the vote changes radically by 2 more votes to the island this weekend).

This means I would do the following: Build Galley straight, as Cavscout wants, and ship a warrior directly for scouting, then a settler and another warrior for settling the preferred spot. We will build two workboats for the 2 clams and such more, allowing Continuum to grow to size 8, then we will need to make settler and workers in the capital for a while.

The advantages by moving to the mainland now is actually there.

1.
We mark our presence on the mainland earlier, culture will grow out the needed 10 for the border pop sooner, we get the clams

2. We may get access quicker to copper, if its to be found on the mainland

3. The mainland may have other resources we dont have on the island

4. We can allow ourselves two growth regions at once, not only one (both island and mainland can grow organically)

5. Militarily, we can specialize our cities much better, with more military buildings and such on mainland

6. We can lock in the maritime border, so workboats cannot sail through our waters any longer. This gives us a negotiation advantage later.

 

[cav scout]

So now the worker is put on the backburner?

Yikes my head is spinning!

 

[Earthling]

Going overseas now I would say Resonance is the clear call, and that seems to be an acceptable choice. Just for formality/closing up discussion I'm onboard too.

Anyway discussing more technical things in turn thread. I like just a galley => settler too for this. Not sure about 1 or two workboats after - workboats aren't usable till Resonance culture expands and we might not need 2 out of Continuum right away, but those are details.

Resonance does what you say though - it will build up as the strongest mainland city we can see ourselves settling right now, and have a lock on the sea as well as culture inland.

@cavscout - yes. I think the problem was discussing multiple plans. There isn't a strict necessity for the worker yet with this, I would say, but otoh it would have been absolutely necessarily to get any gains out of settling Singularity, so that was probably confusing.

 

[Provolution]

Going overseas now I would say Resonance is the clear call, and that seems to be an acceptable choice. Just for formality/closing up discussion I'm onboard too.

Anyway discussing more technical things in turn thread. I like just a galley => settler too for this. Not sure about 1 or two workboats after - workboats aren't usable till Resonance culture expands and we might not need 2 out of Continuum right away, but those are details.

Resonance does what you say though - it will build up as the strongest mainland city we can see ourselves settling right now, and have a lock on the sea as well as culture inland.

@cavscout - yes. I think the problem was discussing multiple plans. There isn't a strict necessity for the worker yet with this, I would say, but otoh it would have been absolutely necessarily to get any gains out of settling Singularity, so that was probably confusing.

Very good, couldn't have said it better myself, this is exactly what I think we should do.

Yes, we had multiple plans being discussed in a matrix format, with overlapping dialogues, but I am not alone to fault for this. Maybe next time, we can present more coherent plans as we get more constants into place. The very odd technology discussion, as we meet 4 teams, and plan tech trade, yet not is ready to go for Alphabet, was the real trouble for me, when addressing which spatial plan to go for.

The backfilling of iron working, animal husbandry and such, possibly hunting, is of interest to several of us, so I thought alpha as a good compromise between the resource and the ambiguity party.

 

[TyBoy]

I think we're showing a lot of tendency to think of this game as something more than a computer game governed by a strict set of rules. I certainly love to think of my civilizations in the context of the real world and imagine how we appear on the world stage and how citizens within might think of it. Making in game decisions because they adhere to a more real-world logical storyline for our empire only leads to weaker decisions though.

I disagree with a lot of those numbered points because it seems like they are based on rules and conditions that do not apply within the limited scope of the game of civ4, here is what I mean exactly in response to prov's points:

As I mentioned elsewhere, the health thing is in no way limiting continuum's growth. It won't experience any unhealthiness until it is at max pop. For a city with two food resources the effect of unhealthiness is small, only slowing hitting max pop by a couple turns and sometimes causing the city to work a food tile over a commerce or hammer tile, but not always. People in our cities can be unhealthy and it doesn't reflect poorly upon us beyond the 1 food/point/turn that we lose from it.

1. There are a couple mentions here of things like "sphere of influence" and "marking our presence." While these are important concepts in the real world, they don't really apply within civ4. The effects of civil resistance and public opposition to wars of conquest are only applied very lightly in civilization. We are present where we are militarily present. Our sphere of influence applies in areas where we can project military strength. There are no natives inhabiting this land that we need to impress or anything like that. With basically no chance that anyone beats us to any of our next 3-4 most desirable city locations the only effect of settling particular ones sooner or later is making use of the resources around them sooner or later.

2-4. These points are all tied to a very real-world idea that population sprawls outward from hubs which does not apply to civ4. Founding resonance sooner only allows us to found other cities that might grab resources sooner if it will be better at building settlers than other cities. Culturally, established cities in centralized locations have almost no effect at all. Well established culture only has any effect in a few, absolute border cities. Founding and establishing them earlier can have an effect as far as territory. Establishing any other cities earlier has no effect on territory.

4. "Organic" growth sounds nice, but within the rules of civ4 it is worse than unimportant, it is actually a bad thing. It is preferrable to have specialization where a small number of cities which are highly efficient at a particular task, such as building settlers, perform that job over and over again. Resonance, for example, appears to be a very economic city which will be weak for building units. It is likely it will spend most of its precious hammers building improvements and settlers and workers will need to be imported from the mainland anyway. It will be very inefficient to stunt the growth or economic improvements of a strong economic city by building settlers or military there.

5. Resonance shows no signs it will be a worthwhile military city. There are no hills around it that we can see. If we are actually concerned about enhancing our military capacity we should be looking at other city sites. As a mentioned before, founding Resonance now in no way enhances our ability to found a different overseas military city sooner.

6. Borders don't stop exploring boats. All it takes is a phony DoW and they can sail right through. It takes a boat of our own to actually stop another boat from moving past and the boat can stop other boats on it's own We could just as effectively stop exploration through that point by sending messages to the owners of any workboats we see that we would be offended if they explored past that point. If they didn't mind offending us a little they would sail right past, just as they are free to with a city there. If they don't want to offend they would stop, just as they would not make a phony DoW to move through our culture.
The main difference between single player and a game like this is the complex diplomacy that is possible. A fake DoW is one of the new options that are opened by being in multiplayer. Claiming land that we don't occupy with a city would be another. Founding the city doesn't enhance our ability to stop exploration along that coast or increase the consequences for doing it without our blessing. It just changes the mechanism of the communication.


There are good reasons to found Resonance sooner, but it really bothers me to see the decision being made with what appears to be a pretty substantial misunderstanding of the effects it will have. Resonance will be a strong economic city and founding it earlier will increase our commerce production noticably over the next 50 turns or so. It is unlikely it will contribute a lot of hammers beyond what it uses for it's own improvement for quite a while and so it will slow our expansion and military capacity compared to the alternatives over that time frame. It will increase the growth of our other cities by only a very very small amount if anything compared to building it later. It will not have any effect on where our eventual borders with our neighbors appear or what resources we eventually grab beyond the influence of the greater commerce and lesser production it will generate compared to the alternatives.

 

[Earthling]

Well, we did end up with like 5 team members voting, which is the bottom line, but this could still be changed after all. I know you've given a lot of thought here and since I personally agreed I'm not trying to disparage that.

Again, I too would probably be in favor of not worrying about some things more fluffy like our "people's well-being" or sphere of influence, etc... than functional on these issues. So the real question I think has to be asked, though, is are people favoring the mechanical benefits enough anyway. Because there are some tangible differences - we establish the mainland cities, culture, and commerce quicker, if that's what is viewed as really necessary, though it does cost some production/growth/whatever. For what it's worth, since we'll have a galley, that pretty effectively does prevent enemy explorers from getting through, after the sole Vikings boat at least and also importantly, it denies any sort of trade routes without open borders. The visibility from those cities eventually makes sure we have 3-5 turns warning if the Vikings ever do anything.

But again, this wasn't my hugest concern - what we've got to ask is just for the sake of trying to claim/beat the Vikings to land, are we worried enough that we go with settling off-island.

I also think we really need a holistic approach, which is why I also agree with those of you (I know cav_scout in particular, has been saying again and again ) that we also need time to actually see what is going on and adapt. Who we will actually end up allying/trading with can really influence things - it's hardly worth going all-out to settle against the Vikings if it turns out completely unnecessary, or on the other hand, if we are deciding to go against the Vikings, establishing this early, getting the team on the other side with us, and simply making a go of it is possible. We just don't know yet, and we haven't made decisions on diplomacy. Rightly, I think, let me say that - I wouldn't commit in diplomacy to anything too long-term just yet, but that means we have to be flexible elsewhere. Still, it's coming up soon enough.

 

[TyBoy]

As you say, the vote is the final word and that's fine.

As I said, there are compelling reasons to found resonance sooner. It just bothers me that none of them were listed by anyone supporting that course of action. It makes me worry about our ability to make well founded decisions in the future if we can't assess the results with reasonable accuracy.

 

[Provolution]

From a technical viewpoint, Resonance does this:

1.
It allows a forward base onto the mainland, as we dont know how diplomacy pans out, and the desert peninsula is of less interest.

2. It blocks off other trade routes around the continent, which could be said to be a huge advantage in terms of diplomacy and use of open borders.

3. It allows us to grow the border culturally there, saving scouting moves of warrior, which could be sent elsewhere.

4. The obvious benefits of 2 health resources as well as the commercial potential of the city, with rivers and so on

5. We need to define local hammers there, otherwise we may need to use Singularity for troop production, other than that, it would be a good thing to have a local strong base to hold troops.