SGOTM 03 - Peanut

[DaviddesJ]

I think the first is east. Then, not sure. Based on what we see, either NW or NE.

I tend to agree, but let me raise the counter-argument.

The advantage of NW first is that we will get a good look at the water to the northwest. There could be a coastal resource out there, which would be good to know. We may also find out if there's a land connection to the lands to the west.

If we're willing to commit to moving the settler and searching for a better spot, then the settler can go E-NE, while the scout goes NW-E (or NW-NE). We gather more total information that way.

My own preference is scout E-NE, but that's because I don't think settling in place is so bad.

 

[MailMan]

Hello All,

First let me apologize for leaving in the middle of SGOTM2, my free time took a very deep dive as my first born came to life.
I hope that I will be able to play all my turns without any delays or skips.

One thing that I want to ask you all is pictures. usually I have time to read the turn logs and participate in the thread, but do not have time to open up a the save at home and look at the situation.

I think that at least a picture per turn log would make a great difference for keeping up in the game.

Now for my thoughts on the current game:

1. Food is king - much more than hammers.
Therefore I think the current location of the settler is great.
In the start of the game we will use the whip a lot, and in the later parts it will become a GP farm.

2. tile improvements
I think we should focus the capital on food and therefore build farms on the FP and the grass tiles.
we may build a cottage or two on tiles that overlap with our second city.

3. CS and techs
if we good the food route there is no much point in pursuing CS. CS do not give boost to food.
I think we should first go for fishing (work boats), than BW and writing. we should get library soon for the GS.

4. granary is half cost to us, we should take advantage of that as soon as we can.

5. contacts.
we need 3-4 work boats soon. 2 for the clams, and 2 for making contacts.
contacts will help us research faster.

6. settling.
I think that we will have just 1 more city on the mainland (the island seem to be small from the curve in the north)
we will want to expand fast in this crowded world even if it hurts our economy at first.

Summery:
I think that I agree with DaviddesJ, settle in place, research fishing, build work boat, go for settler early.
All that pending on what the scout will see (E NE for the scout)

 

[DaviddesJ]

The screenshot has been updated to show blue circles for the settler, at the start location and at 2NE. (Click on the small version in post #1.) Certainly this suggests that there are some nice resources on the tiles north of the hills.

By the way, moving the scout E-N is also a serious option. This would guarantee that we get visibility of all 3 tiles reachable from the 2NE location, which probably include all available resources. Just a thought.

I do think settling 3NE or 3N2E are realistic options. I don't like 2NE because it blocks building a city in our current location, later. The AI algorithm doesn't take that into account. It may be suggesting 2NE over 3N2E just because it gets an extra floodplain.

 

[MailMan]

We can see from the enlarged screen shot that the land curve in the north and east, which suggest that we are on a very small island. my guess is that there are about 2-3 more land tiles on our little island.
If that is the case, the scout will see that on the first turn (E/NE is still my proffered move) for the scout.

 

[DaviddesJ]

P.S. Another possibility we should be considering is that there could be a resource 2E of our settler. It would be slightly embarrassing to go traipsing around when we're giving up a location that's better than we suspect.

 

[civ_steve]

Well, civ_steve, your math about expansionist workers is wrong. ...

I'm not surprised; I really shouldn't try to do even simple math at 3 am. Somehow I thought Workers were built using all food, not just excess food. (It made sense at the time.)

With your corrections it's still pretty obvious that founding 1N gets us to Size 3 after 20 turns, vs 23 turns if founding on the Floodplains (11+12). And 9 hpt vs 8 hpt (forest/spice, 2 forest/grass = 5 h, +2 bonus, +1 excess food) is 2 turns faster to a Worker.

1N has the initial advantage; getting the extra food longterm by settling in place will yield long term benefits. We may be on a rather small island, so Sailing might be desired fairly quickly, either through direct research or trade, and a Lighthouse can be obtained fairly quickly realizing the benefit of 2 Oysters.

Initial scouting will help; perhaps we should move the Settler 1 East (see what's in the unknown square) then 1 North (or NW) into the forest. From there it can found next turn in either location, or head off to the NE if the Scout sees something better.

I'm not aware of the updated GP Techs for Warlords; is there a link to that list? In general it would seem that Great Scientists would be most useful.

@MailMan - good to hear from you! Hope fatherhood is agreeing with you!

Regarding CS - it doesn't help food directly, but I believe you get the 50% bonus applied to shields generated from pop-rushing.

Agree that we should at least keep open a possible city site at our current starting spot or 1N of it; so founding 2NE isn't feasible, but there might be something nice at 3NE or 3N2E. There may be additional water-based resources near 2NE to justify the blue circle.

 

[klarius]

I'm not aware of the updated GP Techs for Warlords; is there a link to that list?

It's mentioned in the patch readme.
DaveMcW has updated the list in his article.

 

[civ_steve]

OK. malekithe starts us off. Saves should be available in about 12 hours give or take. Any final comments before we start? malekithe - you did a great job of keeping us informed over the first few turns of SGOTM2; please feel free to do so again if interesting things are uncovered. Everybody else - stay tuned in case malekithe would like some quick feedback.

 

[malekithe]

I'm going to be out to dinner when the save is released. Anyone who wants, though, should grab the save as soon as they can and do any fog-gazing they deem appropriate. If there's nothing else interesting that can be gleaned from the starting save, I'm going to be moving the scout E-NE and then reporting back.

 

[ainwood]

Fog-gazing doesn't tell me much - except confirms the coast on the plains NW of the scout. Note that our version of the starting save doesn't calculate the two blue settling circles - because its a game loaded from a scenario.

 

[malekithe]

The scout has been moved. Spotted more seafood, stone, the source of a river (in the fog), and the start of a jungle.

Given what we know now, and making no assumptions, there are two very good city spots where the settler and scout are located. Between those two, my gut says to go with the current settler location for the capital. I could see arguments for putting the capital to the NE, though, as it definitely has lots of potential. I don't think getting the stone in the inital city radius is very important, though. As long as we go with a quick settler, I think we'd have stone in time for any use we could put it to.

Despite all that, though, my favorite starting spot is probably 2E of the settler. I know it loses us the clams to the SW, but it brings both floodplains into play and lets us use the fish in the starting city (that's a lot of food). It would allow for 2 additional cities in the immediate area, likely: one on the stone and one to the NW. This all depends very heavily on another available food resource to the NW. It'd be a bit of a gamble at this stage of the game.

If we're willing to tolerate a turn's delay, I'd like to send the settler 1NE and then send the scout SW-NW next turn to scope out the NW coast. That should give us enough information to make a well-informed decision.

I'm definitely curious what the team thinks. I'd hate to set us in a spot that most of the team is against.

 

[DaviddesJ]

I can see quite a bit through the fog:

4N is water
4N1E looks like grass/flat/no forest
4N2E looks like grass/hill/forest
4N3E looks like plains/flat/no forest

I suggest moving the scout E-N rather than E-NE, so we can see all three of the 4N tiles.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Oops, posts crossed. Oh well.

My instinct is to settle 3NE. The site has good potential, with a quarry, and eventually two mines, to complement the two food resources.

Another possible advantage of settling farther north is that we might reserve the southern space to ourselves, if we're not alone on this island. While, if we settle in the south, it's conceivable that an AI will take our desired space to the north. We should keep in mind that this is a crowded map (with no razing!).

Also, while it's true that we can connect the stone "in time" to use it, even if we don't put our first city near it, the advantage of building the capital near the stone is that we will have a fully developed city with good production, and access to stone, so we can very easily build stone-based wonders. If we put our capital in the south, then, when we connect the stone via a 2nd city in the north, we'll have one mature city with low production, and a second immature city---no good place to build wonders quickly.

Also, malekithe's suggestion of founding our 2nd city directly on the stone is unappealing to me, because that will be a poor city due to insufficient food (unless another food resource turns up). I like the plains hill site better, but that isn't so consistent with the 2E idea.

The arguments by klarius for 1N are also growing on me. Trading 1 clams for 1 floodplains is not really so much of a loss. Still, even moving 1N gives us pretty low production; the way to start with a good production city is to go 3NE.

 

[ainwood]

The tile the scout is on could actually be a very good capital - a nice balance of production & food that would support civil service quite well. It would then allow us to move our first settler back to the starting position as a GP factory.

X-post as well! But looks like daviddesj & I have the same thoughts (assuming that he means the other west

 

[MailMan]

I also vote for 3NE (the location of the current scout).
2nd city should probably go on the starting location. up north theree seems to be too much jungle.

I suggest go with fishing and workboats. after we get two workboat out, switch to settler, only than produce a worker

 

[DaviddesJ]

I suggest go with fishing and workboats. after we get two workboat out, switch to settler, only than produce a worker

Hmm. If we go 3NE then I was thinking that we would start with one workboat, then a worker who could build a quarry, chop down the forests, and build mines. I don't see the 2nd workboat as a high priority (and building a worker leverages our expansive trait).

I think we might even go with a worker as the initial build, then switch to workboat when we learn Fishing, and back to worker when the workboat is done. Might as well see the rest of the terrain before making that decision, though.

We should also seriously consider building the Great Wall early, using the GE for the Pyramids, and then perhaps using the 2nd GE for Great Lighthouse or Great Library. With 18 civs, there's a risk of being beaten to wonders, but, we have a good position for this.

 

[malekithe]

Great discussion. I'm on board with settling to the NE; it's a great spot. Leading with fishing is almost a no-brainer as well (I'm mildly considering BW to get a jump on the chopping and mining). It's not so easy to decide what the first build should be. In light of that, I'm going to get the first city up, post a screenshot, and then we can discuss over the next 24 hours what the next steps should be. Of course, if anything else interesting pops up in the NW (or 2E) I'll be reporting back here very shortly.

 

[DaviddesJ]

If we settle on the plains hill, and work a 1/2 tile, we're getting 7 hpt toward the worker, at size 1! It's tempting to build the worker (13 turns) before starting a workboat. But, until we research Masonry or BW, it doesn't have anything useful to do. And if we go Masonry or BW first, it delays the workboat a lot. So, I think it may make sense to build warrior and grow, after all.

If it's 8 turns to Fishing, then:

8 turns working (2/0/2) => +16 food (16/33), +16 hammers in warrior (16/22)
8 turns working (2/1/0) => +16 food (32/33), +24 hammers in workboat (24/45)
1 turn working (1/2/0) => +1 food (size 2, 0/36), +4 hammers in workboat (28/45)
3 turns working (1/2/0, 1/2/0) => +0 food (0/36), +18 hammers in workboat (done, 1 carryover to worker)
1 turn working (1/2/0, 1/2/0) => +0 food (0/36), +9 hammers in worker (10/90)
8 turns working (5/0/1, 1/2/0) => +0 food (0/36), +80 hammers in worker (done)

If we research Fishing-Masonry-BW, then we should get Fishing around turn 10 (keeping in mind we lost two turns moving our settler), Masonry around turn 25, and BW around turn 47. The above plan gives us a worker on turn 31, we complete a quarry on turn 40, and we have to wait about 7 turns to start building mines on the forest hills.

Alternatively, we can go Fishing-BW-Masonry, which gives us BW right around the time that the worker comes out, and we can schedule 2 chops and 1 mine while we learn Masonry.

P.S. As written above, this scheme lets most of the hammers in the warrior decay. We probably should finish the warrior before building the workboat (this delays the workboat by 1-2 turns), or after building the workboat and before starting the worker (this delays the worker by 1-2 turns).

 

[ainwood]

Sounds good - but I'd like to reserve a decision until we've got settled, and more importantly, had another couple of turns of exploration - see how big this place is.

 

[civ_steve]

The discussion sounds good to me. Trading off a bit more early food (Floodplains) for more production at all phases. I also like the argument about capturing more territory this way as well; going NE projects us towards more open territory while reserving the initial spot for later.