SGOTM 06 - Xteam

[leif erikson]

Our next BIG move should be building the Stonehenge.

I think we can build Stonehenge in Timbuktu in 20 turns time with this plan. [Whip monument and chop 4 forests for the Henge.]

Why do you want to whip the monument? Stonehenge doesn't require it, can't we build SH directly and save some time?

Thinking a bit more, SH sure seems a better alternative to Oracle. But we will need to get to Code of Laws rather soon.

As far as military goes, we keep our axes in place outside AI capitals (don't risk the Carthage attack - we don't really need that city right now anyway), send our woodsman warrior exploring around the coast, build enough axes to defend our core, and if we have spare we send them to Hannibal to fish for settler escorts.

I agree and we need to have at least two Axes near each capital. Most important is keeping them from expanding and keep their resources pillaged.

I also like Fred's idea of trying to get another Work Boat out. We need to try and find the other civs.

Research:
Myst->Writing->Math (the beeline for construction and also get superforest chops soon for making our sword army)

I have been thinking about this a bit, especially since I have been advocating to get to Construction.
Now that we have the AI on our continent contained, perhaps we should consider getting to Math for the chops and then going Currency and to Code of Laws, and then Construction. With all our Gold Hills, Currency would boost our income while Code of Laws would reduce our expenses. Then we will be in a position to take out the AI Capitols, keep them and build on them without losing our ability to research. This sets us up to go after the other AI, if we can get to them. If not, we have a financial base to research to Astronomy.

The only other tech that is becoming important here is Calendar. Looking at the map, we seem to be forming a Banana Republic and we will have a hard time growing and setting up GP Farm without Plantations on those Banana tiles.

Having said all that, it looks to me like all this will take a fair bit of time. Do we have that time? Is there a better way forward?

 

[Frederiksberg]

We spend the next turnset going combat-light and builder-heavy.

I think it makes sense to consolidate for a while. That does require some more units, I think. We need an extra axe for both Athens and Carthage in order to intercept settlers. I also think we need an axe for defense of Timbuktu - right now we would be in big problems if a barb archer showed up over there. Finally we don't have any garrison for York so maybe we should build an axe or warrior for this purpose. We already have an axe in the area, but three units is the minimum we need IMO. When the CR2 axe reaches Carthage we can bring back the warrior - maybe to fogbust the iron city spot and later for MP duty in this city.

Also, with the assurance of swords in the future we can lay off building too many axes since we won't be using them to capture cities.

The problem is that we need some axe's for defense now that we don't have archers. I see an immediate need for 3-4 more axes. (Currently we have 3 warriors, 3 axes and 3 workers + 1 axe and 1 worker that are almost built).

Research:
Myst->Writing->Math (the beeline for construction and also get superforest chops soon for making our sword army)

I like this tech path and I'm wondering if Pottery should be on it soon. We have lot's of happy faces and could use some granaries to speed up growth. No matter how the game progresses (tech for Astro vs. build up army) adding Granaries to our cities is not wasted. A Library in London soon would also be nice. Sailing is another tech we would need no matter how things develop.

PS: We need 781 tiles for domination, we have 348 land tiles visible on our continent and an estimated (CONSERVATIVE) 80 land tiles on our continent behind the black fog.

This means that we obviously need more land to achieve domination and it underlines the importance of the work boat scouting to find out if we can go in unit building mode and shut down tech.

 

[ShannonCT]

We spend the next turnset going combat-light and builder-heavy.

I like this. Build just enough units to keep the AI hemmed in and the barbs away. Concentrate on tech and expansion.

Thinking back about the Oracle suggestion, as well as diverting our immediate research, we won't have a reliable way of spreading the religion (border expansion) to further cities. We need Meditation for monasteries but we don't want it incase we need to bulb our way to Astronomy in the shortest period of time.

Oracling CoL does get us free border expansions in 2-3 cities. one where the Oracle is built. Another where Confucianism is founded if different from the Oracle city. Another where we send the free Confucian missionary. And then as you said, CoL gives us the artist expansion method.

I think we can build Stonehenge in Timbuktu in 20 turns time with this plan. [Whip monument and chop 4 forests for the Henge.]

I dont see the need to build the monument if we build Stonehenge in Timbuktu. The hammers lost to chopping forests outside our borders would just be going into a redundant monument.

Research:
Myst->Writing->Math (the beeline for construction and also get superforest chops soon for making our sword army)

Do we need to beeline for Construction if we can keep Athens and Carthage lightly defended by killing settler/archer parties?

5th city goes on top of the northernmost of the 4 ivories. It gives us elephants and horses, can connect to iron easily from the river, has more food and production potential than our northern horses site, has enough forests to chop into a good sword army once maths is in and is close to our enemies.

This should be a nice city for our intercontinental war machine.

PS: We need 781 tiles for domination, we have 348 land tiles visible on our continent and an estimated (CONSERVATIVE) 80 land tiles on our continent behind the black fog.

It would be a pretty boring game if we could get an easy domination.

I would be tempted to build a 2nd work boat for exploration - it's crucial to determine as early as possible if we can stop research and go all in for an attack on some of the 3 unknown AI.

We can find any potential paths off the continent with land based explorers, and then explore those potentials with a workboat.

I'm not sure how long we can rely on barbs being only warriors - what does the testing suggest? A warrior does not defend well against archers.

Someone should test this out.

Regarding the Oracle discussion I don't think the CoL slingshot is interesting if it involves chopping before Math. I would rather do the hammers for gold conversion suggested by Shannon after Math when we get more hammers from each forest and thus more gold. Would the slingshot be possible after Math? Probably it's too late but we have to remember that this is Prince level... And maybe we could go for a more expensive tech than CoL?

I think Oracle may still be possible after Math. Hannibal and Alex are tied up. Stonehenge and Hinduism have yet to appear according to your turn report. We could try to Oracle Construction or Metal Casting and self research CoL.

Yes, that would be very interesting. I would like to know how many teams decided to pay Mansa an early visit with an axe. Those who come too late and find fortified skirmishers in a hill top city will have great difficulty taking Timbuktu early on. Looking at the power graph I doubt that CRC have done the early axe rush on Mansa and it's hard to tell what the other teams have done since they have not played very far yet.

Hard to say, since our big power graph is as much from researching IW as it is from our military units. But it looks like CRC is going for peaceful expansion.

 

[Frederiksberg]

I dont see the need to build the monument if we build Stonehenge in Timbuktu. The hammers lost to chopping forests outside our borders would just be going into a redundant monument.

Chopping Stonehenge without stone hooked, no Math and forests outside borders sounds expensive to me. Maybe we should try to get CoL fast. An artist can expand borders 3 times faster than a monument and we could use Courthouses when we capture Athens and Carthage.

Do we need to beeline for Construction if we can keep Athens and Carthage lightly defended by killing settler/archer parties?

I don't think so. There should be time to go for CoL and as I said earlier I think Sailing and Pottery are useful techs that fit into our plans no matter if we can reach domination without Astro or not.

I think Oracle may still be possible after Math. Hannibal and Alex are tied up. Stonehenge and Hinduism have yet to appear according to your turn report. We could try to Oracle Construction or Metal Casting and self research CoL.

I'll have to check the save. I played with the sound off and may have missed the foundation of Hinduism.

We can find any potential paths off the continent with land based explorers, and then explore those potentials with a workboat.

There will most likely be many places where you see the start of island chains on this type of map. An extra work boat would speed up this exploration. If domination is possible without Astronomy then every turn without this knowledge will potentially delay our finish date.

 

[ShannonCT]

I am feeling rather negative about building Stonehenge. Our commerce cities will want libraries anyway, and any non-commerce city will have several other options for border expansion - build a cheap monument, take a missionary, hire an artist. The last two options assume CoL, but the monument option is always there. I am more concerned about our teching relative to other teams. We need to have at least one GP farm. Timbuktu and Athens are prime candidates. We should have a couple cottage cities - London, Tim, iron city would work. And we need to use the wood to gold trick to keep our tech rate at 100% as much as possible, especially when we capture the remaining capitals.

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

I am feeling rather negative about building Stonehenge. Our commerce cities will want libraries anyway, and any non-commerce city will have several other options for border expansion - build a cheap monument, take a missionary, hire an artist.

Chopping Stonehenge without stone hooked, no Math and forests outside borders sounds expensive to me. Maybe we should try to get CoL fast. An artist can expand borders 3 times faster than a monument and we could use Courthouses when we capture Athens and Carthage..

OK, I agree with you guys, we don't want Stonehenge.

Further to the Stonehenge discussion (and this counts against getting the Oracle too); we don't want to get great prophet points in Timbuktu since we need to reserve it for the possibility of popping scientists.

Timbuktu and Ironsite both need border expansion, and both would be well suited for libraries. I think we should keep it simple and chop libraries in both. Timbuktu should be one of our GP farms if needed, and could hire 2 scientists as soon as it gets to pop4 with a library.

I'll have to check the save. I played with the sound off and may have missed the foundation of Hinduism.

There will most likely be many places where you see the start of island chains on this type of map. An extra work boat would speed up this exploration. If domination is possible without Astronomy then every turn without this knowledge will potentially delay our finish date.

Hinduism is not founded yet.

I agree, exploration is vitally important. Capturing Carthage opens up the east side of our continent for boat exploration and makes and excellent port city. We could fast-track Carthage capture after we have Iron.

Tech path:

skip myst altogether at this stage and go for
writing->math
We can chop the 2 forests in Timbuktu into a library and then whip for 2 pop. For Ironsite we can chop the two forests once we have Math and either build the rest of the library or whip for 1 pop.

Build another 3-4 axes (1 more for each AI capital and the rest for defence) then build settler for Ironsite. Build second workboat for scouting (one can return to fish resource for Ironsite once we have popped borders there. After that build swords in London/York.

Depending on when we get some swords (if London can pump out 3-4 in time), we could make Carthage our 5th city and then settle 6th city by northern horses to hook stone and start our first chop/whip/overflow to balance out our growing maintenance costs.


Hmmm...

Even better, we could also consider speeding up the capture of Athens, it is on top of plains hill stone tile and might actually be the fastest way to connect stone.

By going for Athens/Carthage as 5th/6th city we reduce the number of settlers we need. It is more of an ambitious plan, but since we are competing for fastest victory sometimes we have to fight the temptation of going the conservative route. We could whip library in Athens on capture since it has two fish and gold, and then save all forests to chop into gold. We may never have to face cashflow problems again??

We currently pay 4 gpt in Timbuktu for maintenance, looking at the tiles in Athens/Carthage I would be happy to have them even if the maintenance was more like 7-8 gpt.

I'm sure we will surprise ourselves about how fast the AI capitals will fall if we do it right.

4-5 swords go to Carthage and sack. The victorious swords (say 3?) get promotions and move to Athens with the two original menacing axes. One more sword comes from London to Athens and joins the two menacing axes that were originally there, so we have:

4 swords 4 axes to sack Athens. We can lure archers out easily enough and in the worst case scenario will fight 3 archers on the hill. We can do it!



Question: Do we need Currency to get gold from hammers with the chop/whip/overflow by building wealth on the turn after?

 

[Frederiksberg]

I checked the save and Hinduism has not been founded yet.

I also played a bit with one of the test games. BW was discovered by the barbs around turn 90 and archery not before turn 130 . Maybe barb research has been changed so that they need the prerequisites (Hunting) - as far as I remember from SGOTM5 Archery was one of the first techs we learned through barb research. The knowledge of BW didn't seem to spawn any barb axes.

Other things I noticed was that the first Trireme was built around turn 125 and the first wonder, the Great Wall, as late as turn 145! This indicates that we have a reasonably big time window for work boat scouting and apparently also lots of time before any wonders are built.

 

[ShannonCT]

We don't need currency for the overflow to turn to gold. When we overflow while building walls, 75 hammers will overflow into the next build and the remainder converts to gold.

 

[Frederiksberg]

I would like to take a step back and look at the overall strategy.

Our main objective is to win as fast as possible. This normally means conquest or domination depending on the shape and accessibility of the land masses. So now our main problem is: Can we achieve either of these victories without having researched Astronomy?

Case 1: Yes, enough land can be reached by galleys. In this case we more or less know from SGOTM5 how to proceed. The only techs we miss are Sailing, Pottery, Writing and Mathematics (and maybe Mysticism for cheap border expansion). The only infrastructure our cities need are barracks and granaries. All other hammers must go to unit production. The Henge might be a good investment in this scenario.

Case 2: No, we need Astronomy. In this case we still need the techs mentioned above and also all the techs on the beeline to Astronomy and probably also CoL for Caste System + Courthouses and Alpha+Literature in order to build Nat. Epic. Caste System and the NE are part of a strategy to produce 4-5 great scientists that can bulb Optics and Astronomy. In this scenario the Oracle might be a good investment if we can get an expensive tech like Metal Casting or Machinery.

So how do we proceed given no knowledge of which case is valid? Since the techs and buildings needed for case 1 is more or less a subset of the techs and buildings needed for case 2 I would suggest that we put emphasis on those and of course also put emphasis on the exploration that will eventually reveal what case is true.

How to handle either case is, of course, open for discussion and my point is merely that we should choose a flexible approach meaning that we don't spend a lot of gold and hammers on techs and infra structure which is not needed in case 1 and that we don't commit ourselves to maintain a large army early on just to find out that we are in case 2 and will have a hard time getting Astronomy researched.

 

[leif erikson]

So how do we proceed given no knowledge of which case is valid? Since the techs and buildings needed for case 1 is more or less a subset of the techs and buildings needed for case 2 I would suggest that we put emphasis on those and of course also put emphasis on the exploration that will eventually reveal what case is true.

How to handle either case is, of course, open for discussion and my point is merely that we should choose a flexible approach meaning that we don't spend a lot of gold and hammers on techs and infra structure which is not needed in case 1 and that we don't commit ourselves to maintain a large army early on just to find out that we are in case 2 and will have a hard time getting Astronomy researched.

This is a great post because this is where we are and we need to estimate, somehow, where we need to go.

The other important factor is that we control our continent at this point, unless we discover something to the east that we don't expect. Given this, we should not need a large army to maintain our hold on this continent.

As the continent is so large, I think we need to decide whether the Gold Hills produce enough so that we can continue research and out pace other civs or whether we will need some infrastructure. If we need more infrastructure, what does that look like. Some cities for research, some producing Gold, others to produce units and some coastal cities to crank out shipping, whatever that may be.

What are the optimal number of cities we need to do this and what will we need to support them and an Army of conquest (or domination, of course)?

 

[ShannonCT]

Case 1: Yes, enough land can be reached by galleys. In this case we more or less know from SGOTM5 how to proceed. The only techs we miss are Sailing, Pottery, Writing and Mathematics (and maybe Mysticism for cheap border expansion). The only infrastructure our cities need are barracks and granaries. All other hammers must go to unit production. The Henge might be a good investment in this scenario.

Barracks in London and York are going to be needed sooner or later. They can build any needed axemen and warriors first but swords should be built after barracks.

So how do we proceed given no knowledge of which case is valid? Since the techs and buildings needed for case 1 is more or less a subset of the techs and buildings needed for case 2 I would suggest that we put emphasis on those and of course also put emphasis on the exploration that will eventually reveal what case is true.

Information is probably the most important thing we need now. I would think the workboat is best used going south from York, and west along the land bridge if it leads somewhere. A warrior could be sent north from London or York, along the western border, attempt to locate any other crossing points for boats, and then check out the north of the continent. A warrior from Timbuktu (a new one perhaps, or an existing one after an axeman is defending the area) can explore the eastern shore (notice the coast north of Tim). And after the first axeman arrives at Carthage, the woodsman warrior can explore the southern shore and the land SW of Athens. The second axeman sent to Athens can explore the western shore on his way if the workboat hasn't done so already. It's not yet clear if a second workboat out of York would be useful for exploration. Carthage could build another workboat if it is revealed that one is needed to explore potential routes on the east coast.

How to handle either case is, of course, open for discussion and my point is merely that we should choose a flexible approach meaning that we don't spend a lot of gold and hammers on techs and infra structure which is not needed in case 1 and that we don't commit ourselves to maintain a large army early on just to find out that we are in case 2 and will have a hard time getting Astronomy researched.

We can all agree that capturing Carthage and Athens are necessary in both case 1 and case 2. The supply costs for sending out the units to capture those cities will hurt in the short term if we haven't executed our cash generating strategy yet, but we can minimize the costs by having a good road network, and once the cities are captured, Carthage and Athens will pay for themselves. And both cities will fit well into our strategy whether we face case 1 or case 2. The maintenance of Iron City is also going to be a temporary drain on our economy, so we should try to time the founding of that city with the completions of barracks in York and London. We should be able to build two swords in York and three in London in approximately equal times, and then send them all out together to minimize unit supply cost.

After the continent is cleared, our newly conquered population should be sufficient for unit support, so that army maintenance will not slow down our tech rate at all. Athens, Carthage, and Timbuktu can all support large populations. The sooner we conquer Athens and Carthage, the faster we can execute any endgame scenario.

Perhaps it is best to tech towards Writing and Math next. Writing will open up the library border expansion option, and after Math, if is appearing that we will need Astro, we can try for Oracle, and the increased forest yield will mean being able to chop Oracle with 5 forests. With prechopping, the Oracle would not come much later than if we had gone for Myst-Poly-Preist immediately.

Since I am not at home, I'm not sure how all these plans really work together, how many turns we can expect for the techs, and which city should be producing what. Leif's offer to update the practice map would be very useful, as would testing out whether the AI really do send out multiple settler parties to be killed by axemen.

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

I would like to take a step back and look at the overall strategy.

Your post gives an accurate description of how we need to play.

How to handle either case is, of course, open for discussion...

In terms of flexibility, the Carthage/Athens for 5th/6th city works well:

I just read ShannonCT's post after I typed this and agree with what he says.

Exploration takes priority, workboats and extra warriors go explore.
Build 3 axemen for AI hassle and core defence (Case1 & Case2)
Settle Ironsite, get gold for research (Case2), get iron for military units (Case1 & Case2)
Target Carthage and Athens as 5th/6th cities (strongly useful for both Case1 & Case2)
Carthage = production centre on eastern coast. Useful for early exploration, building military and ships. 7 forests give flexibility for hammers or commerce.
Athens = resource capital of the world. Gives us stone, has a balance of food/hammers/commerce and is coastal for fast navy construction. 7 forests give flexibility for hammers or commerce.

The more I look at it, Carthage/Athens are the best city sites on the whole island and we can have them for an investment of 6 swords (360 hammers) ( 2 settlers cost 300 hammers). We could have Carthage in 50-60 turns and Athens in 70-80 turns (rough guess).

The tricky thing is estimating the timing and the upkeep costs. The gold in Ironsite will quickly offset the cost of settling. In my opinion we almost can't get it settled soon enough...

I'd love to play an updated test map, no pressure leif!

writing->math... and then ->sailing->pottery

 

[Mad Professor]

I also played a bit with one of the test games. BW was discovered by the barbs around turn 90 and archery not before turn 130 . Maybe barb research has been changed so that they need the prerequisites (Hunting) - as far as I remember from SGOTM5 Archery was one of the first techs we learned through barb research. The knowledge of BW didn't seem to spawn any barb axes.

In SGOTM5 the AI's had archers (and archery?) to start the game because it was a monarch game. This one is only prince, so the barbs will be longer getting archery in this one since they are not getting free beakers towards it from turn 1 like they were in SGOTM5.

 

[ShannonCT]

More graph analysis:

I was looking at CRC's culture graph. From turns 0-72, they average slightly less than 2 culture per turn. That's from the capital. From turns 72-93, they average around 3.3 culture per turn. Could be they built a couple monuments, or a library, or even a wonder near the end of the turnset. From turns 93-104, they average around 4.3 culture per turn. So they didn't build a wonder the previous turnset. or they would have averaged more during 93-104. Between turns 104-105, I'm seeing a significant jump in culture. Then, from turns 105-121, they average 20 culture per turn. So it's looking like they finished a wonder. Stonehenge gives 8 culture, not nearly enough to explain the jump. Most likely, they Oracled CoL and got 8+5 culture per turn for Oracle and the Confucian holy city. So it seems Oracle is possible at least through turn 105.

 

[Cactus Pete]

In terms of flexibility, the Carthage/Athens for 5th/6th city works well: Okay, but we will want a seventh city for war elephants.

Exploration takes priority, workboats Not sure a second workboat is such a priority that it can't wait until Carthage is captured. and extra warriors go explore.
Build 3 axemen for AI hassle and core defence (Case1 & Case2) Not so sure about this. The real danger is the AI connecting a metal. Founding another city shouldn't be a great problem, given how soon we'll have swords and then cats and WE's. Let's at least consider a settler for the iron next in London before we add units.
Settle Ironsite, get gold for research (Case2), get iron for military units (Case1 & Case2)
Target Carthage and Athens as 5th/6th cities (strongly useful for both Case1 & Case2) No question about Carthage. We might be wise to wait for cats on Athens, if the wait is not too long.

The more I look at it, Carthage/Athens are the best city sites on the whole island and we can have them for an investment of 6 swords (360 hammers) ( 2 settlers cost 300 hammers). We could have Carthage in 50-60 turns and Athens in 70-80 turns (rough guess) I think we can have Construction around turn 60, if we get the iron city founded quickly and work the gold..

The tricky thing is estimating the timing and the upkeep costs. The gold in Ironsite will quickly offset the cost of settling. In my opinion we almost can't get it settled soon enough...Yes.

writing->math... and then ->sailing->pottery

I do think we should go ahead and research Mysticism before Writing and Math. Besides needing it eventually for CoL and possibly the Oracle after Math, it will allow us to whip a monument in Timbuktu, giving us access to all the forests. The library seems a waste there to me, as there's not going to be enough commerce, and we can run scientists through Caste System soon enough. Library in the iron city makes sense.

It's not inconceivable that we will be able to build Stonehenge after capturing Athens, which is yet another reason not to chop it.

 

[Frederiksberg]

It seems like we are close to a consensus on the way forward. Allow me to suggest a draft plan:

Tech: Mysticism (4) - Writing - Math
Builds:
London: Axe(1) -> Axe -> Warrior -> Barracks -> Sword
York: Work boat (11) -> Barracks ->Sword
Timbuktu: Worker (4) -> Monument (chop) -> Settler (chop+whip) -> Barracks

Worker actions:
York workers: Mine gold, Mine plains hill, move south of London and build road.
Timbuktu workers: farm grassland (4), chop Monument, chop settler, road SW until border expansion then farm bananas and mine hills.

We could let York grow to size 3 working rice and cow and then let it stagnate working rice, gold and plains hill mine. That would allow us to start growing London again by working the cow instead of the copper for a short while. Can we afford the hammers lost at this moment?

The above draft plan should be consistent with fast settling of the Iron City and with a speedy attack on the AI. It also means that we delay the 2nd work boat for a while and we only build 2 more axes: 1 for Timbuktu and 1 for iron city and a warrior for MP duty in York. This also means that the axe on the hill NE of York should probably be pulled back and placed somewhere on the road connecting York and London. I put in Mysticism first as suggested by CP because it has great timing with the development of Timbuktu. We have two workers ready to chop the monument exactly when Mysticism is done. And we desperately need that border expansion in order to farm bananas and mine grassland hills. Timbuktu does not have copper so it seemed best to produce the settler there. It will take the settler about 4 extra turns to reach the Iron City spot compared to a settler coming out of London - see picture:

Spoiler :

Yellow line marks the settler route and the red lines are a warrior (W) and an axe (A) that are moved into position before the settler is ready. The axe could probably be the second axe built in London with the first axe moving directly to Timbuktu.

The brown lines are proposed roads. The road connecting to the river has lower priority but it does give an extra 2gpt and connects Timbuktu with copper and gold.

I haven't worked out the timing for all this so I don't know if the Iron City is settled soon enough to enable the sword builds. Anyway this is only a draft.

EDIT: Maybe the fastest way to get the settler is to build barracks for a couple of turns after the Monument until Timbuktu reaches pop 4 and then switch to Settler and whip as soon as possible.

 

[leif erikson]

Since I am not at home, I'm not sure how all these plans really work together, how many turns we can expect for the techs, and which city should be producing what. Leif's offer to update the practice map would be very useful, as would testing out whether the AI really do send out multiple settler parties to be killed by axemen.

Good discussion. There are so many options but there can be but one road traveled!

I will try to update a map in WorldBuilder as soon as I can. As I am new still to it, it may be a bit longer than I initially thought, having relooked at the map. But I accept the challenge...

 

[ShannonCT]

Not so sure about this. The real danger is the AI connecting a metal. Founding another city shouldn't be a great problem, given how soon we'll have swords and then cats and WE's. Let's at least consider a settler for the iron next in London before we add units.

Remember that there is iron near both Athens and Carthage. If we have only one axe near each city, we are most likely unable to defeat a settler party of two archers. And if one of them settles on top of iron, at least that new city would be able to build axes.

If Timbuktu builds our settler, London and York could still focus on building the axemen we need to harrass Athens and Carthage. Since Tim doesn't have any high hammer or gold tiles to work right now, it's no problem to whip a settler there at Pop4 and get it done just as fast as London could. With London free to grow, it can continue to approach Pop6, when it can work rice, cows, and four hills for 17 hammers per turn.

I do think we should go ahead and research Mysticism before Writing and Math. Besides needing it eventually for CoL and possibly the Oracle after Math, it will allow us to whip a monument in Timbuktu, giving us access to all the forests. The library seems a waste there to me, as there's not going to be enough commerce, and we can run scientists through Caste System soon enough. Library in the iron city makes sense.

I was thinking a library would be useful for Tim because eventually it's going to be either a cottage city or a specialist city. Clearly a library isn't going to increase beakers there right away like it would in Iron City. Could we chop/whip a library there at Pop4 and then chop whip a settler at Pop2? I can't look at the save. How many turns are we from Writing if we skip Myst, and how many turns would it take to get to Pop4 in Tim after finishing the worker?

We could let York grow to size 3 working rice and cow and then let it stagnate working rice, gold and plains hill mine. That would allow us to start growing London again by working the cow instead of the copper for a short while. Can we afford the hammers lost at this moment?

This is what I was thinking for London and York. Let York grow to Pop3 and then give the cows back to London. How many turns would it take to grow London to Pop4 if switching from copper to bananas? Or from gold to bananas?

I will try to update a map in WorldBuilder as soon as I can. As I am new still to it, it may be a bit longer than I initially thought, having relooked at the map. But I accept the challenge...

I think the most useful thing would be the ability to test out the production orders and worker actions for our three existing cities. I don't think you necessarily need to get the southern half of the continent right. The AI in the real game wont necessarily behave the same as in a practice game. We can separately test AI behavior on different maps that don't need to match the real game.

No rush here folks. There are a lot of choices at this point and we don't want to waste the great start we have.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Remember that there is iron near both Athens and Carthage. If we have only one axe near each city, we are most likely unable to defeat a settler party of two archers. And if one of them settles on top of iron, at least that new city would be able to build axes.

That is a concern. We could move our axe on top of the iron if the settler draws near to prevent the AI from settling there. The axe could then return to the capital when the city has been settled elsewhere. By skipping two axes we get more swords and we get them sooner.

I was thinking a library would be useful for Tim because eventually it's going to be either a cottage city or a specialist city. Clearly a library isn't going to increase beakers there right away like it would in Iron City. Could we chop/whip a library there at Pop4 and then chop whip a settler at Pop2? I can't look at the save. How many turns are we from Writing if we skip Myst, and how many turns would it take to get to Pop4 in Tim after finishing the worker?

Building a Library in Tim now does not fit well with case 1 and it could turn out to be a waste of hammers. A monument is much cheaper, it gives the border expansion we need and one more happy face which is also nice in a city that grows fast and should host 4-5 scientists at some point.

This is what I was thinking for London and York. Let York grow to Pop3 and then give the cows back to London. How many turns would it take to grow London to Pop4 if switching from copper to bananas? Or from gold to bananas?

We have 8/39 food gaining 1 per turn. If we switch copper -> cow we gain 4 per turn. York is 14 turns from Pop 3 working cows+rice at which point London would be at 22/39 so maybe switch after 15 turns when London could grow to pop 4 in 4 turns. Or switch away from gold to cow in turn 14 and then from copper to gold in turn 15.

I think the most useful thing would be the ability to test out the production orders and worker actions for our three existing cities.

And maybe also the Iron City site.

No rush here folks. There are a lot of choices at this point and we don't want to waste the great start we have.

Yes, lets keep the discussion going, rrau said she can't play until after Christmas anyway.

 

[Cactus Pete]

"Remember that there is iron near both Athens and Carthage. If we have only one axe near each city, we are most likely unable to defeat a settler party of two archers. And if one of them settles on top of iron, at least that new city would be able to build axes." This wouldn't be a disaster and probably not very likely.

If we build the settler in London, we will not only get the iron settled quicker, but will also be able to both chop and whip swords in Timbuktu -- plus London is growing much slower now than Timbuktu, so less is lost by switching to settler there.