SGOTM 03 - The Real Ms. Beyond

[Kodii]

I am going to suggest you either move the summary post forward, or post a link when updated. It took me forever to find the summary.

One step ahead of you. We have an index on page one.

 

[LKendter]

One step ahead of you. We have an index on page one.

Well that still requires me to keep going back to page one to find the link. How including the link in all posts that say summary updated?

 

[Iainuki]

Lurker's comment :
You're contradicting yourself.
Btw, Bureaucracy works also for the hammers of a merged priest, IIRC.

It's a matter of timing. With Philosophical and the Oracle, chances are our first and second great persons will be prophets unless we work to avoid it, with a strong chance for more prophets later. With Angkor Wat, our first, second, and third great persons will not be prophets, being scientists, engineers, or merchants instead. Prophets later are not nearly so bad: we can burn them on golden ages (we're Philosophical, we'll have lots of great people), where they're just as useful as any other great person. The early great persons are the most important.

Yes, merged great prophet hammers work for Bureaucracy. That's another approach we can consider, once we get there.

 

[LKendter]

The number one thought I agree with is ASAP for those 4 settlers, and ASAP cultural border expansions. It is too easy to get screwed with a really stupid city location with no city razing.

While the dot-map has a problem of lack of cultural coverage allowing a dumb AI city, I can't offer a better idea with the location of copper city being so restricted to get the fish. I agree that without the fish, the copper city would be useless.

Technology -
Wheel - Agriculture - Pottery - Animal Husbandry - Mysticism - (Writing/Iron Working)

Where is masonry within these plans? No quarry means we lack stone for Pyramids. Why mysticism? I couldn't find why we had this one the list, but if we have no interest in religion or Stonehenge, what good is this?

If we aren't planning on the second city for ages, then why research agriculture and animal husbandry so soon? Sorry if this is a repeat question, but 17 pages for the first turn is more then I can recall.

Builds -

Workboat (whip), Warrior (to grow), Worker (whip), Warrior, Granary (whip), Warrior, Worker (whip), Settler (whip), Settler (whip), Pyramids

Has someone worked out how many turns before we start the Pyramids? My gut fail says with other industrious civs out there we WON'T get it. Without whip anger are looking at another 105 turns at least. With whip anger, and NO happy sources until after iron working the other possibility is we start the Pyramids with Moscow stuck at a very small size.

Could we move the settler way up, and let red dot city supply some of the military and workers?

 

[Kodii]

I was thinking about that too. A few posts up I asked where we should put Masonry and/or Sailing. Keep in mind that the tech order and build order are taken directly from Compromise's last post. There is a definate need of revision from everyone. At this point, I'm thinking that the first settler should come in before the second worker. The first worker can go with the first settler and then then second city will build our new settlers. After all, our red dot cannot be a GP farm until we get Writing. I'm thinking:

Workboat (whip), Warrior (to grow), Worker (whip), Warrior (to grow), Settler (whip), [Granary/Worker (whip), warrior]?, Pyramids

As for techs, I think we wanted mysticism for border pops. We aren't creative. Because the red dot won't have rice, fish or gems until the border pop, I think we should delay Agriculture. As a revised tech order, I'm leaning towards:

Wheel - Pottery - AH - Masonry (not particularily in that order)

After that, we can go for Mysticism for the border pops, or Iron Working for chopping jungles.

 

[Compromise]

Keep in mind that the tech order and build order are taken directly from Compromise's last post. There is a definate need of revision from everyone.

Yes, yes: A big need for revision and refinement! My lists should be taken as very rough draft to edit rather than a final script. I should have been more clear that my lists were tentative, but I rushed the post.

Mysticism was solely for the obelisk/border pops. Our cities are useless without them.

On a sidenote: is religion more likely to spread to us across the coasts if we don't meet the other civs? If we have closed borders and they are annoyed with us, will that slow the spread of religion?

I think we need to do two things re: the pyramids: 1) Estimate when we think they'll fall on this map. And 2) figure out how long it will take us to build/chop/poprush them once we start with stone hooked up.

That would give us a Must-start-by date for the pyramids and focus our preceding build discussion.

Pyramids are 675 hammers on epic....

I might be able to come up with that number somewhat soon, but if anyone else wants to make the calculation too, feel free.

Note that we could make settlers while building the pyramids by rushing them when our pop got high. Not the most efficient way of making them, but maybe a way to aim for two birds with one stone. (Yes, I know how the proverb is properly worded.) It would mean we'd have to work both seafoods all the time and deal with a happy-cap of 4. Maybe not a good idea, but one to consider.

 

[Iainuki]

The number one thought I agree with is ASAP for those 4 settlers, and ASAP cultural border expansions. It is too easy to get screwed with a really stupid city location with no city razing.

While the dot-map has a problem of lack of cultural coverage allowing a dumb AI city, I can't offer a better idea with the location of copper city being so restricted to get the fish. I agree that without the fish, the copper city would be useless.

The "can't found a city within two squares of another city" gives us as much protection as we're going to get: the second border expansion is too far away. Culture doesn't matter except for resources.

Where is masonry within these plans? No quarry means we lack stone for Pyramids. Why mysticism? I couldn't find why we had this one the list, but if we have no interest in religion or Stonehenge, what good is this?

The only purpose for Mysticism is an obelisk to get the second border expansion in the copper city.

Has someone worked out how many turns before we start the Pyramids? My gut fail says with other industrious civs out there we WON'T get it. Without whip anger are looking at another 105 turns at least. With whip anger, and NO happy sources until after iron working the other possibility is we start the Pyramids with Moscow stuck at a very small size.

Could we move the settler way up, and let red dot city supply some of the military and workers?

No, no one has, and it's something I'm worried about.

That was my thought behind spending the first two chops from Moscow to get an early settler. (Note that we'd also mine those hills, so we can work two mines and the seafood at size 4, maximizing our early productivity. Cottaging our one floodplains should take priority, though.)

But a strong counter move could be an Oracle->Metal Casting slingshot that nets an early Colossus in the iron city. Both won't work, but after Literature a beeline to Metal Casting will probably still net the somewhat less valuable Colossus (this really wonder decreseaes in value over time) (if Mansa gets the colossus- watch out!). However I would favor a move towards the Hanging Gardens for more engineer points.

There are two powerful tech slingshots in the game: Pyramids -> Great Library and the Oracle Civil Service slingshot for Bureaucracy. We don't have a prayer at succeeding at the latter, so I think we have to try for the former.

Oracle to Metal Casting and the Colossus is not that strong. We're talking maybe three-four commerce at each city maximum, and we get prophets and merchants instead of engineers and scientists. We're going to get the Colossus anyways unless an industrious civ builds the Oracle and goes for Metal Casting; but I'd say it's at least 50-50 odds that someone will pick Code of Laws with the Oracle and build Chichen Itza. If we get the Pyramids and the Great Library, we'll have a tech lead for Metal Casting and we have copper, so I don't see why we'd lose it to the AIs at that point. We don't need to make special provisions for the Hanging Gardens, since we're going to have to develop Mathematics sooner rather than later anyways, the AIs are very slow to build that wonder because they don't prioritize aqueducts, and we have stone. Unless we're very slow on it, we should get it.

With that knowledge, I prefer the workboat first. Then build warriors until we can whip a worker.

I think the most valuable service the worker can provide is roads. Both to new city sites and on forests.

I think early road-building is a priority, yes. Should we consider roading to blue dot to save having to develop Sailing as soon?

I think the forests should be saved to chop the pyramids after stone is hooked up. With all our seafood, we can produce workers and settlers pretty darn well at size 2 or 3 while waiting for whip penalties to abate.

Maybe. The reasons I'd consider getting out the settler ASAP is that it gives another city, which can start building workers right off the bat if nothing else, and busts most of the fog on the eastern half of the island..

I think we want to whip the worker as soon as we get to size 4 and not worry about the whip anger.

If the double-whip anger will cool before we get to size three, that may be the smartest option.

My preference would be to save the forests for the pyramids after we have stone hooked up (open to debate, though). Roads to the forests would be great though. Pre-chopping is okay, but I usually end up forgetting and chop the forest on something I don't want chopped.

The one reason I'd suggest chopping now is that we can then a mine a hill so we can work the (eventually) cottaged) floodplains, mine, and seafood at size 4 while waiting out whip anger. Once we have a granary we'll spend the lion's share of our time at size 4. We only need one mine for that, though, and I just didn't know what else to do with only one chop (since we need two to whip a settler).

Super early settlers won't help terribly much before we have mysticism. I think getting two workers out first and having animal husbandry will be best before settling a city.

Red dot can work the cows (3 food/hammers towards a worker, e.g., or grow towards a cheap whipped granary. I admit it won't be that productive until Animal Husbandry.

For our second city (red dot) to be productive, we need animal husbandry. We could save a little in research cost for pottery by researching agriculture before pottery. So, the tech path could be: Wheel, Agriculture, Pottery, Animal Husbandry, Mysticism, (Writing/IronWorking). While granaries rock, we could probably spend the 10 or so turns getting Agriculture first.

We don't have time for Agriculture before Iron Working. It will reduce research costs, but not enough to pay itself back. Remember we also need to get Masonry, possibly Sailing, and possibly Writing, all before Iron Working. Agriculture is useless to us until we can cut jungles, so it has to come after Iron Working.

 

[Iainuki]

This is really important!

I suggest moving Iainuki's red dot (the cow city) one tile west. It's a net loss of one grassland and an ocean for a coast, but it brings the fish in range, sharing it with the copper city. This is good for two reasons:

First, it lets our GP farm support 2 more specialists.

Second, we can probably whip a library (or maybe an obelisk) there much more readily than in the copper city. This means we don't need a cultural border pop to have food in copper city.

Wait, doesn't that mean red dot is going to be the only city able to work the fish? (It's two squares orthogonally, whereas blue dot is one orthogonal and one diagonal square. My understanding in Civ4 is that cities are assigned workable tiles based on their date of founding and their positions, so we have to avoid overlapping blue dot or it will never be able to work the fish. If I'm wrong about this, please tell me now and why.) We wouldn't be able to use the fish for red dot anyways because blue dot will need the food to work the copper, so the border expansion is the only issue.

 

[Compromise]

Okay, here's a rough analysis for the pyramids. I'm away from a civ computer for the weekend, so I'll have to rely on others for exact amounts:

Tiles to work (ignore commerce): City(2F1H), Fish(5F), Improved Stone(1F5H), Mined Plains Hill (0F4H), Mined Grass Hill (1F3H), Mined grass hill (1F3H). At our full happy of 5 (which requires a warrior in the capital), we're even on food, making 16hpt. With stone, that counts as 32hpt. That's 22 turns with a lot left over. I think that's 660 years pre-1000BC.

Roughly speaking (correct me here), a forest chop is worth 30 (x2 w/stone). So each chop saves us about 2 turns. If we rush the pyramids, I know we don't get the full 45H, I think it's 30H for poprushing wonders (is that right?) so we can sacrifice 2 pop at the end and save another 4 turns.

We'd have 4 forests left to chop (the hill forests have to go to mines before this analysis is accurate), so if we were all set with this configuration as we started the pyramids, we could do it in about 12 or 13 turns (22-2x2(poprush)-4x2(chop)) depending on how much those forests all average out to be.

This requires a lot of worker action during the build: 4 chops.

It also requires a lot of worker action for setup: road over 2 squares to the stone, quarry on the stone, 3 forest chops on the hills and 3 mines on the hills.

Note that a mine only adds one hammer to the production of a forested hill (e.g. grass hill goes from 1F2H to 1F3H). We might be better off creating the mines while we're building the pyramids. That's probably a better return on the forest than improving it earlier without the stone bonus.

While I normally chop first, then build the mine, in this case we'd want to click directly on the "Build Mine" worker action because that takes as many turns as both operations but preserves the forest throughout the build. If built quickly enough, we could probably only make 1 mine from scratch during the time it would take to construct the pyramids: but this might be a perfect opportunity for pre"chop"!. We pre-mine the hills, leaving a turn or two left, then finish the mine when we have the stone bonus. (If we have worker time, this is the way to do it!)

On a related note: a stone quarry is a 1F5H square. In terms of raw F+H+C, that's ties our seafood at 6. For production (F+H) it's the best tile we could have unless we popped a metal on a mine (not likely).

So, I'd like to revise my tech order suggestion: Wheel, then Masonry next! Get a worker out asap. First priority is hooking up the stone with roads and a quarry. Second priority is pre-mining (not pre-chopping; the worker-turns don't add) those hills. I wouldn't road the hills, except that the plains hill should be on the way to the quarry (for faster return to finish the mine).

(This post was made quickly to get a baseline thought-stream out there. Feel free to point out errors or more exact numbers and I'll include them.)

 

[Compromise]

This is really important!

Ah, I wondered if you knew this (based on your other posts).

No! In the city screen, a tile "owned" by another city is dimmed out. But if you left-click on it (in the city screen, not on the big map), you can bring it to the current city and use it. (It automatically dims in the other city and the other city's citizen is auto-reassigned elsewhere.)

So, cities can share tiles, but not at the same time.

When you found a city, I think it takes the first ring of tiles automatically, but you can reassign them by hand immediately.

That's also why founding on the southern spice is fine: it can use or not use the floodplains, spice and other tiles that are in the capital's radius.

A good use for this is to pre-work cottages for a super-commerce city: Have the lesser city build up the cottage by working it, then let the bigger city with better multipliers (which has been working other cottages) take it over as it grows.

Which reminds me: I think I'd like to plant that southern spice city for just this reason. Our capital is going to be a hybrid production/commerce monster under bureaucracy.

 

[Iainuki]

On a sidenote: is religion more likely to spread to us across the coasts if we don't meet the other civs? If we have closed borders and they are annoyed with us, will that slow the spread of religion?

The only thing that matters for religion spread is if you have trade routes with another civ. War cuts trade routes, but it's the only diplomatic status that matters: annoyance, closed borders, and even not having not met them don't make any difference.

I think we need to do two things re: the pyramids: 1) Estimate when we think they'll fall on this map. And 2) figure out how long it will take us to build/chop/poprush them once we start with stone hooked up.

That would give us a Must-start-by date for the pyramids and focus our preceding build discussion.

Pyramids are 675 hammers on epic....

Yes! I don't have time right now, but I'll see if I can derive some numbers on this later tonight. I think we should aim to finish the Pyramids by 800 BC or so--that should give us a decent margin on Monarch. If we want to be really safe, we'll probably want them done by 1000 BC, which means massive forest chopping. If we chop all the forests for the Pyramids, that's 420 hammers with stone hooked up, though it will take awhile to get all that chopping done. If we chop two forests now for a settler, that's 300 hammers. Compromise may be right about saving our forest for the Pyramids, depending on the finish date we need.

Note that we can mine (with combined chop) instead of chopping our hills right away, then build roads so that when we start the Pyramids it will only take our workers one turn to create instant mines on our hills.

We really need to decide if we want to chop the first settler now or not!

Workboat (whip), Warrior (to grow), Worker (whip), Warrior (to grow), Settler (whip), [Granary/Worker (whip), warrior]?, Pyramids

Wheel - Pottery - AH - Masonry (not particularily in that order)

I think The Wheel to Pottery is obvious. If our second city is going up fast, we want Animal Husbandry, if it's slower, we want Masonry first. After that, we'll look at Mysticism (only needed for blue dot!), Writing, and Iron Working. I'm inclined to chop an obelisk at blue dot if possible, if we go that direction.

 

[Compromise]

On sharing the fish between cow and copper cities: Copper city only needs the fish to grow. The city center provides 2F which it can use to run the copper and a plains cottage with stagnant growth. With a lighthouse, it has lots of food-neutral coast to work too (which could be whipped away when a new building becomes available).

Get another happy, steal the fish to grow, go back to stagnant condition. With copper and 2 gems mine, production will be a little slow so we won't need the whip (except maybe at the very beginning).

 

[Compromise]

I'm crossposting like crazy with Iainuki, but that's fine.

Note: Iainuki is right. We need to decide about that first settler (among other things) right away. Greggo, please don't play the next turnset until we hash out this out a little more. These early decisions are critical.

Also, LK is (presumably) doing some thinking and dotmapping. I think we need to get (and digest!) his input before proceeding.

 

[Iainuki]

Ok, thanks! I'm not sure if it's just that I've never read the manual carefully enough or if it's just not there (I know there are some things that are just never mentioned in the manual), but I never noticed that. So the question, at that point, becomes: is it worth sacrificing long-term potential for the easier border pop now? I'm leaning to "yes" at the moment.

 

[Kodii]

This basically all comes down to build order. Considering greggo has 15 turns, not TOO much will happen. We need at least a preliminary build order.

I think we all agree that we should whip the workboat first.

Then overflow to a warrior, perhaps not for fogbusting, but for MP.

After that, what do we want? A worker? A settler?

Remember, WE CANNOT AFFORD TO START THE PYRAMIDS TOO LATE!

 

[Compromise]

Immediate term production (suggestion): Overflow to a warrior. Stay with the warrior and grow at max speed. (I forgot to do this: click "Emphasize Food" in the city governor panel!) As soon as we get to size 4, put a turn into a worker and then whip it. Overflow into: warrior? I think so. Or granary (half price!) if that's available by then. You're right that is probably the next turnset when the settler vs 2nd worker comes up.

It's the tech order I'm less clear about. Wheel next is clear. I'm still mentally debating Pottery vs. Masonry. I think our workers will be doing more chopping and mining--to get the pyramids out asap--than cottage building, so the real value of pottery in the very short term is our ability to build a granary in the capital right away.

But masonry gives us that great stone tile. A quarry is 9 (!) worker turns on epic (right?). So getting it improved is:

Move to plains hill (1)
Road plains hill (3)
Move to/build road at stone (3)
Build quarry (9)

Okay, let's see here...

It's 16 turns till we get stone hooked up. And only 7 can be done before Masonry.

I guess it depends on how long pottery will take. My screenshot shows Wheel at 12 turns. Judging from the tech cost list, Pottery and Masonry are both 33% more (~16 turns). Wheel->Pottery->Masonry is 44 turns (till quarry start); W->Masonry is 28T

We can probably whip that worker out in about 12 turns, so that gets us the wheel and worker at about the same time. (Note: he can pre-mine if he gets out early, then switch to roading when the wheel comes in.)

Mines are 11 epic turns (5 chop + 6 mine, right? [But don't do it like that, do them in one operation!]) on a forest, so I guess with 3 forests to pre-mine, there's plenty for the worker to do.

Assuming we start the quarry as soon as we get masonry, that's 3Hx16T or 48H in lost production for delaying the quarry.

On the other hand, with 2 seafoods, a turn nets us around +7F. A 16T delay for the granary (again, assuming we get it asap) is 7Fx16Tx50%=56F.

The food is a better return, but considering that we'll be in double-whip anger (from whipping the workboat and the worker), we might not be willing to whip the granary immediately. (We'd want to do it right before growing, I think.) So, the estimate of the food benefit for the granary might be high.

Another thing: we can swap our production queue to the Pyramids (just to receive the chop hammers) and finish those mines immediately if we have masonry. No need to return to mines to finish them when building the pyramids. This saves worker turns during the pyramid rush. Hammers in wonders never decay (I think. Negligible here regardless).

Bottom line (open to revision): Wheel is the next tech regardless. Then, masonry would allow us max production, whereas pottery gets us more food. With a happy cap of only 5, this first-granaried food might have a little less productive value than normal. Earlier Masonry also saves us worker turns if we don't have to return to pre-chopped forests.

(I hope somebody's double-checking my figures in these posts. Remember, I'm the guy who said we needed to be sure to consider getting Mining right after we finished BronzeWorking! )

 

[Compromise]

General note in these early years: If we're at the happy-cap, I think the best way to use our high food is to grow until we're just about to grow,then build workers/settlers (use the food for their production) then grow when there's just one more turn of whip anarchy ("+1 unhappy for 16 turns"). At that point: switch the production queue (if necessary), grow and whip.

(Unless we're building up population for a building whip, of course. E.g. a library will take 3-pop and will require a city size of at least 6. We'd probably want to whip it from size 7 so we get immediately to the then-max-happy size of 4.)

 

[Kodii]

As a quick comment, I think I would go for Masonry first. I'm started to get paranoid about losing the Pyramids...

 

[Compromise]

The only thing that matters for religion spread is if you have trade routes with another civ. War cuts trade routes, but it's the only diplomatic status that matters: annoyance, closed borders, and even not having not met them don't make any difference.

I think in epic 9 (always war), some people got religion spread to them from random-personalitied Tokugawa. It happened when both civs could see the same coastal squares, but neither could see a full border or unit of the other civ so they hadn't met (and auto-declared war) yet. So it's something about potential trade routes (from the holy city) rather than actual in-city trade routes.

 

[Compromise]

As a quick comment, I think I would go for Masonry first. I'm started to get paranoid about losing the Pyramids...

I'm leaning that way myself. Every industrious civ is in the game. Since a meteorite obviously blew up in the atmosphere and dropped stone all over this planet, one of those industrious civs is going to get a jump on the pyramids.

Actually, my biggest argument for this is mostly that--in addition to getting that quarry going asap, that's priority #1--we can adjust the production queue and chop/mine the forests rather than premining them. This will save worker-turns, but it does add some micro-management (swapping the pyramids in and out of the build queue) that we might or might not want.

HoF mod question: In the latest warlords patch, I've read that chopped hammers are added to the production queue during the inter-turn time when the other production hammers are added. That means you have to leave the item in the build queue for a turn. Is that the way it works under the HoF mod too which has "production overflow handled as per warlords?" (See, I knew that query was relevant!) This will affect how we micro this if we want to chop forests before we want to build the pyramids to completion.