Riddle - Fishing Boats

[DigitalBoy]

I have a question to pose for all the knowledgable posters on CFC. If my capital is on the coast and the first thing I want to build is a workboat, is it better to emphasize food, resulting in slow production but allowing the city to grow, or to emphasize production, slowing or even halting city growth, to get the work boat out as fast as possible? If there are 30, 21, 1 2, and 03 tiles, which tile would I be best off working?

 

[fed1943]

Production to build the workboat fast, as it will give good food.

Best regards,

 

[cabert]

depends on what you're researching.
If you're researching BW, you can work 3F or 2F1H, to grow in time to whip the boat asap.
If you're researching something else (like mining before BW), 1F2H may be better (timing the pop growth with BW)
I wouldn't go 3H, except at the very end, when it cuts down 1 turn on the boat.

I should do the maths to put this straight, but I have this feeling that if you don't grow, you may just as well build a worker .

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Wow, I finally managed to hit the image limit, using two smilies?

Edit: quote removed because my search and replace changed it, and I don't have the interest to restore the original. Look up three posts if you've forgotten.

Start with an easy case, and work from there.

You can't possibly grow until after turn 8, which means that how ever you manage the tiles until then your surplus food + hammers must add up to 32, and must have at least 8 hammers.

So look at the break points first - would you rather have 22F+10P or 2F+30P?

Let's assume that you have crabs adjascent to the city, so that the workboat can kick in immediately, converting that tile from 2F to 4F right away. Thus the production city immediately goes from 4 F+P / turn to 5 F+P / turn.

This keeps it exactly even in overall production with the growth city, which with the extra citizen can now work a second tile. To keep the model simple, lets have both citizens now working 1F 2P tiles.

So the over all production in the second city (which is no longer growing) is 5 P / turn. With 10 P already invested, the workboat is finished in 4 more turns. Meanwhile, the production city is working the crabs, picking up 16 F and 4 P, plus 4 turns of 2 C

But this isn't quite square, as the production city needs one more turn to grow to size 2, whereas the growth city can already work another tile in addition to the crabs, therefore earning extra food or hammers as preferred. I'll continue for growth, just to stay consistant.

Therefore, after 13 turns you have
Growth-22: 27 F, boat + 1 P, 2 C
Production: 22 F, boat + 5 P, 10 C

So the growth strategy basically trades one turn faster on the growth curve for 4 P + 8 C.

Now that you have a base line to work from, try wiggling it a bit. What if the growth city focuses even more on growth, starting 24F/8 instead of 22/10? Well, after four turns at size 2, the boat will be two hammers short, so that "extra" turn of growth goes away.

Growth-22: 27 F, boat + 1 P, 2 C
Growth-24: 27 F, boat

[you get the same kind of problem if you overdo the production - your city grows a turn late, without offering a benefit in exchange, which cuts into your profit.]

Second change - what if you have fish instead of crab? In that case, the production city doesn't need the extra turn to catch up in size, because it earned the extra four food needed working the fish earlier. The tradeoff is then:

Growth-22: 22 F, boat
Production: 22 F, boat + 4 P, 8 C

That sure looks like an easy call.

What about the more balanced choices (the 1/2 and 2/1 tiles)? I haven't worked out the math, but if you don't manage to grow or finish the boat during turn 8, then you are spending one or more turns at +4 when you should be +5, which I don't expect to show a lot of upside.

The more violent changes in conditions (Epic speed instead of normal, settling on a plains hill or resource, etc) probably require that you refigure the baseline as well.

 

[darrelljs]

depends on what you're researching.
If you're researching BW, you can work 3F or 2F1H, to grow in time to whip the boat asap.

Hmm...I generally like to time it so that I hit size two WITH the Workboat fastest, as I role right into a Worker. If you whip, the hammer overflow might make it the quickest way to a Worker even though you'll only be working the seafood resource. I'll have to try that out.

Darrell

 

[cabert]

^^VoU, you certainly did a good job but you lost me.

What's the result?

You can't possibly grow until after turn 8, which means that how ever you manage the tiles until then your surplus food + hammers must add up to 32, and must have at least 8 hammers.

what do you mean by that?


A work boat is 30 hammers.
If you work the 3 hammers tile for 8 turns, you have
(3 from tile+1 from city center) hammers * 8 = 32 hammers = 1 workboat + 2 hammers overflow. You could also switch to 2F1H one turn from completion, to start growing 1 turn earlier.

So from turn 9, you can start working the clams/crabs and start growing.
4 food surplus will make you grow to size 2 in 5 turns. If you switched to 2F1H on the last turn, you would grow in 4 turns.

So it's possible to be size 2, with a workboat on the crab or clam after 12 turns.
The overflow hammers from there would be 4 hammers from city center, and you also have 4*2=8 commerce from the clams (+ city center commerce from the start and palace commerce from the start, but this never changes so I don't count it).

Output at the end of turn 12, going 3H for 7 turns, then 2F1H, then 4F2C:
1 growth,
1 workboat,
4 free hammers,
8 commerce.

If you go 3F (other extreme), you grow to size 2 after 6 turns, putting 6 hammers into the boat. If you don't have BW by now, you can grow further or not. Let's assume you switch to "no growth mode" to make it nearer to case 1 you can follow by running 2F1H+3H + city center = 5H / turn. You need another 5 turns to get the work boat, with 1 hammer overflow.

After 11 turns, you have the workboat and are size 2.
Output at the end of turn 12, going 3F for 6 turns, then 2F1H+3H, then 4F2C+3H:
1 growth, 2F surplus
1 workboat,
5 free hammers,
2 commerce

This is from the 2 extremes.

What you notice is you give up some growth and hammers for commerce if you go fullspeed workboat first.

Variant 2F1H :
after 9 turns, you grow to size 2, having stored 18 hammers.
You can stop growth by running 2F1H+3H for the next 3 turns.giving you the workboat at turn 12, with 3 hammers overflow.

Output at the end of turn 12, going 2F1H for 9 turns, then 2F1H+3H for 3 turns:
1 growth,
1 workboat,
3 free hammers.

It seems the extreme (3F or 3H first) are better . I need to revisit my strats .

variant 1F2H:
After 10 turns, you have finished the workboat, and have stored 10F.
Then you work the crabs for 2 turns, and grow to size 2 at the end of turn 12.

Output at the end of turn 12, going 1F2H for 10 turns, then 4F2C for 2 turns:
1 growth,
1 workboat,
2 free hammers (from city center)
4 commerce.
This variant is less powerful than the full speed workboat.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

You can't possibly grow until after turn 8, which means that how ever you manage the tiles until then your surplus food + hammers must add up to 32, and must have at least 8 hammers.

what do you mean by that?

Precisely what it says. If you max out food, then at normal speed (ok, I could have specified this) seven turns at full food leaves you at 21/22 + 7P. There's no way you can grow until AFTER turn 8 (when you can finally hit 22F).

Also, while you can generally choose to generate during those 8 turns anywhere from 32P/0H to 8P/24F, you cannot trade those last 8 hammers for food by any arrangement of your tiles.

Ah... I see the problem. I was distinguishing between growing (increasing your population) and accumulating food surplus.

You also got trapped in your calculation of the food route, since you need 22 food, not 18, to grow to size two (normal speed); this again leaves you with two units of food left over, which for best timing need to be switched to production.

But my conclusion is that after the first eight turns, you need to either be at 22F/10P, or 2F/30P. There are second order reasons why you might prefer one to the other.

 

[OctavianFlu]

Okay -- So if I understand all this mathematical mombo-jumbo you would recommend production over growth to obtain the workboat sooner -- Do I understand correctly?

 

[Ecofarm]

With Carthage, the timing is almost perfect for a boat whip into worker (Micromanage: work the clams/something else for 2 pop + BW at about the same turn). W/o financial (2f3c clams) + fishing + mining, it would take a long time to get BW - especially if you do not work a commerce tile. If you are Carthage: whip the boat, put overflow into worker, grow back to a 2 pop on barracks, then build worker.

Assuming you have fishing, without at least one of the following:
1.mining
2.financial
3.working commerce tile(s)
You might be a 3 population and/or have excessive hammers before you get bronzeworking and can whip.

I think you would have to build w/o whip. I would like to see if u can whip a workboat lacking mining and/or financial faster than u can get 30 hammers.

I'm quite sure that -Carthage, the answer is hammers.

 

[cabert]

You also got trapped in your calculation of the food route, since you need 22 food, not 18, to grow to size two (normal speed); this again leaves you with two units of food left over, which for best timing need to be switched to production.

But my conclusion is that after the first eight turns, you need to either be at 22F/10P, or 2F/30P. There are second order reasons why you might prefer one to the other.

OK, right it's 20 + 2 per pop food required. I don't why I thought it was 16 + 2 per pop .
Now I understand.
But I'm still lazy doing the calculations .
IMHO it gives the 3H a further advantage.

 

[Ecofarm]

One catch (pun intended): fastest boat is a short-sighted goal.

How about boat + worker as goal
Lets see:

Option 1: Using 3h tile to boat

2f1h from cap tile? + 3h tile = 4h/turn excess. At turn 9, when boat is complete, you start worker.
There is 2 hammer excess.
Cap tile gives 1 hammer/turn
Clams give 2f/turn
Worker requires 60 production

2f1h1c + 4f3c = 6f1h4c per turn, -2f/turn for 1 pop.
= 4f1h production per turn
5 production per turn = worker in 11 turns.
9 turns + 11 turns

That’s 20 turns to boat + worker
You are still a 1 pop.

Option 2: Growing to 2 pop while building boat

2f1h from cap tile? + 22f for growth + 30h for boat = 52 total production needed

2f1h + 3production per turn -2f for 1 pop = 4 production per turn (you can micro manage this to exactly 22f + 30h). 52/4 = 13 turns to 2 pop and boat.

2f1h + 4f2c + 3 production -4f (for 2 pop) = 2f1h + 3 production per turn excess
6 total production per turn excess = worker in 10 turns

That’s 23 turns total to worker + boat
You are a 2 pop

At turn 24
I'll take the 3 worker turns from Option 1 instead of 2 pop. But just to be sure....


Now lets look at which option is faster to 3 goals: boat + 2 pop + worker

Option 1
You have 3 turns until Option_2's turns are spent (turn 24 Option 2 is complete)
3 turns working 4f2c at 1 pop = 12 food extra, not enough to grow.

At turn 24, you are 3 turns behind option 2 for reaching 2 pop + worker + boat. But compared to Option 2, you have, at turn 24:
3 extra hammers
And 3 extra worker_turns.

Option 2
in the 3 turns until option 1 reaches 2 pop, can produce 2f1h1c + 4f3c + 3 production - 4f for 2 pop. = 2f1h + 3 production x 3 turns =
6f3h + 9 production

Final results at turn 27, when both are 2pop, boat, worker
Option 1:
6 worker turns
4 food
7 hammers

Option 2:
3 worker turns
8 food
3 hammers
9 production of choice

At turn 27
I'll take the 3 worker turns and 4 hammers over 4 food and 9 production of choice: Option 1 wins.

Since only one tile produces commerce, and it is not worked until nets, Option 1 also produces more commerce.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Worker costs 50 production.

Nope, worker costs 60.

 

[Ecofarm]

I did all calculations at 60. The 50 is a typo. I'll edit that typo now.
Thanks
Looking it over, I found a misscalculation. It's 20 turns to boat + worker in Option 1. I adjusted the numbers through the analysis. I could be off by a couple production after turn 27, but the important thing is the worker turns, since the commerce bonus of Option 1 is not calculated and the extra gold/reseach alone could be equal to the small (9) production bonus of Option 2 (after both options have reached 2 pop, a boat, and a worker). I also tried to clear up using "after turn x" and "at turn x" inconsistantly.

 

[bardolph]

How in heck do you get a 3H tile without building a worker?

EDIT:
Oh, nevermind, it's Forested Plains Hill.

 

[DaviddesJ]

How in heck do you get a 3H tile without building a worker?

Forest on a plains hill. Not too common, though.

You can also have stone or marble on a plains hill.

 

[Ecofarm]

I used production tiles as per OP.

Now, just to throw everything off, the OP will reply: "no, it's a fish!"



If it is fish, that only makes Option_1 (3h to boat) even better.