RR17 - Team A

[r_rolo1]

This is the thread for the Team A of RR 17

r_rolo1
Thrar
LKendter
Sengir
vanatteveldt - in auto skip until mid August

Just to remind the OP of the now common thread:

Here is our variant:

- Industrial era start

- Space and time win disabled. Only military victories allowed for the human player ( Conquest or Domination )

- Can't declare war before turn 50

Map options

Spoiler :

Leader

Spoiler :

Start

Spoiler :

Tech tree, for those not used to non ancient starts

Spoiler :

(...)

>>Save<<​

 

[Sengir]

Checking in.

So now we have three settlers to discuss before we really get to do anything. Not to mention all those units that can be moved to reveal fogged tiles.

There's a bunch of FP's in the north, that's one city-site for sure, I'm not too sure about SIP though, as it means we don't get the levee bonus (which is only 1 tech away).

 

[r_rolo1]

I agree in checking the north FPs... in fact we should first move all of our units diagonally and check all of the area around before settling anywhere. But I think that SIP will most likely needed, even if because of the -4gpt we are having ...

BTW someone wants to get moved in the roster order? ... This being summer and all

 

[LKendter]

My vote based on what I see:

1 settler 1S to have a levee.
1 to the north for food happy corn and FP.

At the moment no clue on city #3.

 

[Thrar]

I agree with the levee considerations, SIP doesn't look too good. We have 100g in the bank so we don't have to settle on the first turn.
Can you move the explorers and rifles first, then provide another screenshot? S of the starting location isn't bad, but depending on what we uncover, SW, SS or SSE might also be an option.

 

[r_rolo1]

Ok, I'll put the units moving when I get home

 

[vanatteveldt]

Checking in! I agree with the above, SIP is not ideal. Two cities south and north seem to make sense.

I've not played industrial start, but if settlers are so expensive it seems we'll stay sort of smallish for a while, so it might be good to aim for a production buro capital to get things started. In any event we should revolt this turn if our settlers are still walking around anyway, also prevents the maintenance. What options are available now?

 

[LKendter]

so it might be good to aim for a production buro capital to get things started.

In any event we should revolt this turn if our settlers are still walking around anyway, also prevents the maintenance. What options are available now?

If we want a buro capital, we need to be careful about settler order. I think corn / flood plains will be a great income city.

I agree - we may as well suffer the revolt when we no cities settled.

 

[r_rolo1]

Ok, I moved all the non-settler units for maximum coverage ( even the workers ) and we get this:

Spoiler :

It looks indeed that our starting spot is not that hot , that there is a bunch of FPs north of us and jungle south.

BTW regarding the bureau discussion, here are our civic options at this point:

Spoiler :

We can change 3 civics now with a 1 turn anarchy, more will take 2. I think that Merc and FR are obvious for the time being and probably bureau as well ... anyone has suggestions ?

BTW , I just want to point out that settlers are expensive ( 310 hammers in the save ... just to put in perspective, a tank is 144 ) because, being this a non-ancient start, you get some buildings for free with the settler. In our case we get a aqueduct, a harbour ( where apply able OFC ), a granary, a forge, a market and a library ( I think this is all, but I can have not noticed some building ) shiny and ready when we settle the cities. We should take that in consideration when planning the cities and the civics ( we can run a free sci, merchant or eng from the start if we want to run Merc, for a example ) ...

P.S We can also start discussing tech paths. We don't actually have much of options for first tech ( Steam, Steel and Sci Met ), but ...

 

[Thrar]

For city sites, I'd say 1N of silk and SW of cow (2S of start). We won't be able to expand a lot early and those two are both very strong cities and cover some nice ground.
I don't see an obvious 3rd site at the moment.

For bureaucracy the northern one would be the nicer capital, but it can be settled only on T3. Still I think it's worth it, and that way we can do a full 2-turn revolt right away.

Civic-wise, I suggest Rep, Bureau, Emancipation, Merc, FR.

 

[Sengir]

I'm not sure on 1N of Silk, why not 1N of Corn? Get's more FP's, though it misses the gold. If we settle 1N of Silk, we can probably settle the third city in the floodplains-area to the NE.

Then again, I might be valuing the city-sites wrong because of the industrial start.

 

[r_rolo1]

1N of the corn looks nice IMHO, especially if we watermill those FPs and run SP. Anyway we are going to take 2 turns to get to either there or 1N of silk ...

BTW do you agree with Thrar suggestion for the civics switch? To be honest I'm not convinced on Emancipation ...I think that at game start even serfdom would be more useful than emancipation :/

 

[Thrar]

I guess we may need to decide on the type of economy we want to run first.

My assumption was cottages, therefore Emancipation and the N of silk settlement for decent production. N of corn is very low on hammers going cottages, seems wasteful with Bureau.

If we go SE, the floodplains area is perfect for a GP farm. The best spot for maximum food seems to be NNE of corn imo. We could settle that third along with my proposed choices; having the capital run lots of specialists would let half the Bureau bonus go to waste. In this setup, I agree that Serfdom is better for us.

I don't really see how watermills could carry the economy. Sure, hammers are nice, but where does our income come from if we don't use the floodplains for that? 2S of our start location looks like a very nice production city with hills, riverside forests (levee'd lumbermills?) and just enough food.

 

[LKendter]

How do industrial starts play out. This is my first ever, so I have very little sense on how things develop. It makes it hard to me to comment on things like economy path.

FR to me is a must - let us avoid this religion convert hits. A lot of the other stuff depends on a better understand of economy type.

Sorry I'm not commenting more, but I am in unknown territory.

 

[vanatteveldt]

Cottages feel like they take too much time to mature? Why not play a mainly hammer based economy?

Are great people costs the same? If so, we should certainly run some specialists to get some quick great people...


Edit: I would vote for 1N of silk. That would make a great capital with gold, copper, wet corn, three extra hills and at least four flood plains. Second city 2S or S+SW, we need to wait to turn 3 anyway if we want north-of-silk to be capital. Third makes sense in the NE flood plains, but exploration will show.

For civics, assuming we settle on T3 we have time for a full civic change. I would vote for

Rep / Buro / Caste / Merc / FR

I'm assuming serfdom is not worth giving up the caste benefits for? Do cities start at size 1? If not, we will have a serious improved tile problem until we get more workers...

[Random grumble: my laptop has a "page back" key next to the up arrow, which makes my browser lose the text input. I've type this at least three times now. Grrrr... Good excuse to finally learn key rebinding commands ]

 

[Sengir]

@vanatteveld: If you're using firefox, this might help: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lazarus-form-recovery/?src=search

Anyway, I think cottages will be too slow to help out, and would go for a hammer/se economy instead. How fast are our workers at this point? Don't they get a speed up sometime during the game? We will need a bunch of extra's in any case. I think we start at size 2 or 3, should run a test to see (not today unfortunately).

As we're starting with a market and a Lib, we might not need caste. As the AI will undoubtedly go Emancipation, I'm afraid we're going to need it as well to fend of the unhappiness.

 

[vanatteveldt]

@Sengir: Cheers. I've rebinded the keys to page up/down, so I'm fine now...

I agree that we might not need caste, although the workshop hammer bonus is nice if we go down that route (although in between the specials and watermills we won't have that many for a while. We also won't need emancipation for a while, with no AI met and happiness from the resources and free religion. So, we could start out in serfdom + mercantilism and switch to emancipation+free trade after we've met and connected to some non-merc AI?

Workers get a speed up with steam power, which is 1 tech away but probably a loooong time since we will have very little science for a while...

Edit: If we won't settle before T3 anyway, another option (depending on what the explorer reveals) is 1W of rice. Riverside coastal with at least wet rice and horses. This leaves a cow+copper+hills production city in between. Probably inferior to the earlier options unless the explorer reveals something juicy, though, but good to keep in mind...

 

[Thrar]

With emancipation, towns are only 5 + 10 + 20 = 35 turns away. Using free speech and US, they are far stronger than specialists (even under Rep) at this point in the game.
Bulbing isn't as valuable as with an early-era start since techs cost way more; in my experience an SE in the late eras is relatively weak.

We could start out with Rep to get the eco going, then once cottages have matured (this could still be before our first war!), switch to US and FS.

In any case, I now think we should go Serfdom initially. We badly need to improve our lands. The faster work rate and therefore higher tile yield early should easily make up for the one turn lost by switching to Emancipation later. As little as 20 turns of Serfdom could make a big difference already.

 

[r_rolo1]

I'm not so convinced as that in going cottages. though, but anyway, that is a issue for later. What I really wanted was a consensus on city sites, tech and civics , to get out of t0.

Anyway, I agree with Thrar that a couple of turns in serfdom will be extremely beneficial and that emancipation for the time being is not useful for us. I'm also for Rep/Merc/Bureau and as long as we don't have religion, FR is the better way ( and maybe even later ).

 

[vanatteveldt]

My proposal would be:

Cities: Capital 1N of silk, cities 2 and 3 east (desert hill?) and south (2S of start?)

T0: Move settlers (1) NE, (2) NE, (3) SE+SW, revolt to rep+buro+serf+merc+fr
T1: Move explorers, move Settlers (1) N + NW, (2) NE+E to where worker is now unless better spot revealed, (3) idle unless better spot revealed
T2: Move settler (1) W + settle, (2) settle, (3) settle, unless betters spots revealed, start improving lands and massive worker construction

My vote for improving lands: hammer and sickle! We want to be flexible to switch between science and construction, and a hammer/food based economy is ideal for that. So, improve specials, build watermills, farms, and workshops.

Science: If hammer economy, priority techs are communism and steam power; steam power first due to immediate benefits (worker sppedup, levee, reveal coal).

Do we have a culture expander available? If not, caste might be interesting again...

Edit: in any case, I think we have broad consensus on the revolt and the approximate city locations, so I think you can play to T2 or end of T1 if you want to to get going and to show some more of the surroundings?