SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

[Dhoomstriker]

Everyone likes a nice screenshot...

Well, it looks like when Silverado's borders expand, we'll have one less unbusted square to the south to worry about (the square to the S + S + S of the Pig Resource).

Other than that, I don't see any better spot for our Fog Busters to be.

Once the animals disappear, there will be one square to the W + W + W of Warrior 3 and 2 squares to the W + W + W (and 1S of that square) of Warrior 1 that will potentially spawn Barb units.

Finally, there will be one more spot on a hidden square (so I had to use a white circle, as a black circle wouldn't show up on top of a black background very well, would it?) that could spawn a Barb unit. I'm not very concerned about that square, as Barb units need you to both have multiple cities as well as for them to have many Barb units collected before they are allowed to enter our borders. So, if any unit spawns there, it will likely simply wander around, possibly preventing other Barbs from spawning slightly to the north-east of it.


Overall, in my eyes, there is no rush to get a 3rd Warrior out to the west. Even if a Barb spawns out there to the far west, it'll be a while before they become a major pest. By that time, The Oracle might have even expanded our capitol's borders enough for us to just send Warrior 3 (and possibly Warrior 1) one square west each (although we'd want to do so cautiously, in case a Barb unit WAS lurking in the area at the time of pushing out our fog-busting line).


Also, despite what Mitchum said, if I were to upgrade a Warrior instead of just building an Axeman or Maceman, I'd at least want to use one that had 5+ experience, usually from a Barracks + Theocracy/Vassalage. Therefore, I would not complain if BLubmuz' PPP said that he'd give the Woodsman I promotion to Warrior 1, although I would be even happier if he saved the promotion and did not Fortify Warrior 1, simply ending Warrior 1's turn on each turn played. That way, if we do push out our fog-busting line to the west, then we'll have a "backup" Combat I promotion to assign if we do spot a Barb unit beside us on the turn that we decide to push out our fog-busting line (which could happen after The Oracle helps to expand Delhi's cultural borders or after we get a 3rd Warrior out there, say, sitting on or near the Stone Resource).

 

[Mitchum]

Other than that, I don't see any better spot for our Fog Busters to be.

I was thinking about this same thing when you talked about 100% containment last night.

Units prevent barbs from spawing within 2 tiles in any direction, which gives you the 5x5 box. Do you think that the same holds true for cultural boundaries? Or is it just what you can "see" from the borders (which you've already said is harder to program than a more simple 2 tile rule)? Or is it just 1 tile in any direction?

If cultural borders give safety for just one single tile, your pictures look right. If it's 2 tiles, then we have a bit more leeway.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I was thinking about this same thing when you talked about 100% containment last night.

Units prevent barbs from spawing within 2 tiles in any direction, which gives you the 5x5 box. Do you think that the same holds true for cultural boundaries? Or is it just what you can "see" from the borders (which you've already said is harder to program than a more simple 2 tile rule)? Or is it just 1 tile in any direction?

If cultural borders give safety for just one single tile, your pictures look right. If it's 2 tiles, then we have a bit more leeway.

Cultural borders are "what you see is what you get," in terms of which squares will not spawn Barb units. That's why people thought that units must do the same.


So, Forests just outside of our borders do mess up with our visibility (such as the Forest line to the north), as they block part of our view and "what you can't see, can hurt you."


EDIT: But, for those of you who like test games, don't take my word for it. In a test game, set up a line of Forests, for example, just outside of your cultural boundaries. Then, set up units just beyond those Forests, so that they'll fog-bust all but a thin line of squares just past the Forests. With a big enough area like that, over time, a Barb unit should spawn, if they are allowed to spawn there. Just end the turn a lot, if you've got a "wall" of units and culture, such that no Barb unit can "sneak past" your line--any Barb unit that appears in that line would then be for certain to have spawned in that "hidden area" just beyond the Forests. Put your Fog Busters on flat-land (but also in Forests is fine) just to keep their visibility to a minimum.

 

[Mitchum]

The Pyramids

......

By pre-chopping the Forests with Fast Workers, we don't have to put stupid Roads on the Forests (which ARE stupid because those Roads prevent most Forest-regrowth). So, if we are close to the time to chop out The Pyramids and someone else builds it, we'll have pre-chopped Forests available for another task.

The Pyramids cost 750!! With stone, each chop give 60. If we use 3 chops for the Oracle, we'll still have 12 forests left in our BFC (2 of them are shared with Silverado). So, we could potentiall pre-chop all 12 forests. Then, with 3 workers, chop all of them in 4 turns netting 720. We should be able to generate the extra 30 hammers in that time to build them, start-to-finish, in 4 turns.

This minimizes the risk that we get mostly there and lose the race and all waste of the hammers we've invested (we do get fail gold, of course). If they go before we start our four-turn rush, we've saved all of our chops for something else. If they are still available, we just pray that no one completes them during this 4-turn window. The down-side of this is that we use ALL of our forests for the 'Mids and the Oracle.

Or, we could build them slowly for 10 to 15 turns then put 8 to 10 chops into them (pre-chopped, of course) in the final few turns to finish them off. This would preserve some of our forests for other things or for forest re-growth. Plus, if we lose them in the first few turns, it won't be such a big deal.

As I proved with my test, the AI does NOT get a bonus when building World Wonders, so at least it will be a fair race. Although, we have a huge advantage because the AI does not know how to chop with a purpose like we do.

We've already talked about the up-side, so there in no need to address it further.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

The Pyramids cost 750!!

I did say that they have become a very expensive Wonder! Still, if both are available, I'd rather build The Pyramids over Hagia Sophia. Even though Hagia Sophia helps Fast Workers more than other Workers, since the Worker turns it can't speed up are movement turns, while we already have speedy movement turns, that Wonder still isn't high up on my "must get" list of Wonders.

With stone, each chop give 60

24 or 30 base Hammers, depending upon where we chop from, but sure, let's go with the 30 number for our basic value, to keep calculations consistent.
30 * 2 for Stone does = 60
Org Religion with Stone would make them 30 * 2.25 = 67
Math with Stone would make them 45 * 2 = 90
Math plus Org Religion with Stone would make them 45 * 2.25 = 101

I have no idea how long it would take us to research:
Writing -> Meditation -> The Wheel -> Mathemtacs

However, if we can't trade for a while anyway, Alphabet has little to no value for now.


Mathematics plus Masonry (hmmm, we have both, yaaa!) opens up Aqueducts + The Hanging Gardens. Not as great of a Wonder, but still a nice one to get, even for the Great Engineer points. The Pyramids could go at any time, but we'd almost for certain have a good chance at the Hanging Gardens if we wanted it.


However, all of this stuff is "nice to think about," but perhaps not as easy as we'd like to think. We'll be busy in the capitol with The Oracle and Settlers, and we'll be low on Workers.

Silverado can eventually help in making Workers, once it's through pumping Warriors, but Cities 3 and 4 will probably be too small to have a noticeable impact, other than increasing our Maintenance and slowing our tech rate towards Mathematics.


It's nice to dream about Wonders, but now you test-game-lovers (and those who have some spare time, now that it is Thursday) can see if they can get The Pyramids afloat. We have a tech path. We have suggestions of how to maximize those Forest chops' Hammer outputs. Settler 3 can be settled SOMEWHERE to the east in the test game--it doesn't really matter where--just try and fog-bust all around it with your exploring Warriors in your test game. Or else skip the settling part of the test game, but be aware that your Science Rate may not match our real game's Science Rate if you skip the settling of City 3 (which will probably drain our economy more than help it, if we truly want to use it as a "blocking city").


If you play a test game through until that long, you'll also get a feel for how secure the western front will be from Barbs.


We'd said that we'd get a Temple in there for a Priest, so if we do that, then The Pyramids and City 4 might not actually be able to come in time... but we should still be able to get them in time for The Hanging Gardens, no?


Be prepared to chop about 3-4 Forests into Workers, in order to help speed up the process. Please keep accurate notes of what you do, and regular saved games, so that we can always try to tweak what you've done in order to improve upon it.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Random comments about where we settled vs others teams' likely Plains Hills square location
Yes, other teams may have settled on the Plains Hills square for more production over time. However, they then get 2 Tundra Hills squares to work in place of our Grassland Hills square and our Plains Hills River square (they'll get the same other 2 Grassland Hills River squares).

Yes, other teams may have gotten to the Silver as a result, but we got to it early enough, as well. Their tech rate won't be THAT much higher. Plus, we'll have the benefit of an early trade route connection, while they may not.

They'll be stuck with the same trading situation (no trading, unless Zara isn't the only AI around).

They also will have an inland capitol, so if they do build a city on the Coast for one of the Fish Resources, it'll still take them a while to build an exploring Work Boat. We probably won't do so until we trade for Fishing, so that's a tradeoff.


The related fog-busting
Without religions and with them hiding their capitol even further to the SE than we did, they'll have much bigger Barb problems. I would not be surprised to see them settling City 2 as a Great Person Farm in the SW for 4 Food Resources or a bit to the east of that, to grab a Grassland Hills Forest square, as well as several Lakes. Another spot might be near the Stone.

Regardless, most of them will have to whip Obelisks in their newly founded cities and will require a lot more Warriors for fog-busting. If they can't even easily build Warriors, they may end up Axe-rushing Zara, which may or may not work out to their advantage (I would think that if he's our only trading partner for a while, we'll want to curry his favour, but what do I know about Diplo games where our war targets are limited? ).

Anyway, it is likely that at least a couple of teams are whipping Obelisks (there is evidence of at least one doing so in the Cultural graph), while others are certainly going to have problems with Fog Busting. Likely, that will mean that Barbs will create cities for them, for which they'll have to build Axes. We'll be more likely to choose our city locations, which may or may not work in our favour.


Basically, our game is going to be quite different from the challenges that many other teams face, mostly because of how much cultural expansion our religions will allow for, as well as our risky-but-so-far-paying-off strategy to fog-bust the west. Time will tell if our fog-busting line will crumble.


Accessing other AIs before Astronomy?
Another option to early-Wonder-chasing does become getting Fishing and building a Work Boat. If we find another AI that has met at least one other AI, we might open up some trading opportunities. In so doing, Alphabet may become more of a factor, although we'll almost certainly give up The Pyramids. That could work, too, as we might be able to trade for Mathematics. But, that's all a big "IF" right now. It would depend if Astronomy is required to meet other AIs or not. Just something else to think about.

 

[Irgy]

If even one other AI is reachable with a workboat, then reaching them sooner is going to provide a large advantage. I'd certainly be tempted to sneak in fishing at the first point we have a bit of leeway in the tech tree. It's another gamble though basically.

As for the pyramids, don't forget about whipping. Whipping multiple population is very efficient in terms of production-per-happiness-penalty. I would be inclined to whip at least 3 population, preferably 4, particularly if we can get our happy cap to 7 somehow (so that we can grow from 7 to 8 without an unhappy face). Each whip saves 1 math-chop or 1.5 pre-math chops, which not just saves the forests for later but will save time because I suspect the worker turns to chop the forests will be a fairly big limitation.

I'd also be very dubious about chopping 10+ forests pre-math.

We should keep an eye on what dates the great wall and stonehenge go, that will give us an idea of whether we have a shot at the pyramids. I don't know the typical dates.

Looking at Dhoomstriker's fogbust squares map, we need a fogbuster north more than we need a third one west. Maybe the north one can let the northwest one move one square further west and cover those two missing spots.

 

[Mitchum]

Sorry, I still didn't see any good argument why +3 beakers are better than +1.5 GP-points... this is exactly the difference between Pyramids and Parthenon.

I know that the +3 beakers "sounds" fantastic, while the +1.5 GP-points looks something "not-so-great", but this is exactly why we need to focus our discussion on numbers and implications, not intuition.

You continue to discount the +3 happiness with Representation. This is actually a big thing. Our 5 biggest cities get 3 extra pops, which can add up to a lot of F/H/C to our empire.

Also, the Pyramids are more flexible. In addition to Representation, they allow three other civics. Dhoomstriker already mentioned that Police State can be good when building up our army. We could also run Universal Suffrage if we have some hammer-poor cities and we need to rush buy something in them. Some cultural strategies rely on US, although I don't think using it is mandatory. Also, we can switch civics with no anarchy, which is HUGE with the 'Mids.

We would have to run the numbers and take several variables into account (e.g. number of cities running specialists, number of specialists, timing of said specialist, etc.), but I've heard that Philosophical adds 2 to 4 extra great people during the course of a game. Half of the Philosophical bonus (50%) would then net an additional 1 to 2 extra great people. Unused GPP are wasted.

FYI: the first GP takes 150 GPP. The next one takes 300, then 450, 600... unil you get to 11. The 10th GP take 1500 and then, the numbers jump to 1800, 2100, etc. up to 20, where there is another jump.

So, in general, I think the Pyramids have more applications, each of which can be tailored to what is needed in the game at that specific time.

 

[Mitchum]

EDIT: But, for those of you who like test games, don't take my word for it. In a test game, set up a line of Forests, for example, just outside of your cultural boundaries. Then, set up units just beyond those Forests, so that they'll fog-bust all but a thin line of squares just past the Forests. With a big enough area like that, over time, a Barb unit should spawn, if they are allowed to spawn there. Just end the turn a lot, if you've got a "wall" of units and culture, such that no Barb unit can "sneak past" your line--any Barb unit that appears in that line would then be for certain to have spawned in that "hidden area" just beyond the Forests. Put your Fog Busters on flat-land (but also in Forests is fine) just to keep their visibility to a minimum.

I would like to test this just for my own satisfaction. Why do the fog busters have to be on flat land? I thought that they busted a 5x5 area, so what they see shouldn't matter.

 

[BLubmuz]

OK. Here's the test save at T60. Everything is synchronized.

I thought of something a while back but I'm just remembering to mention it now. On the turn we learn BW, if there is copper in that hill, any warriors in our queue will become the more expensive (and more powerful) axeman (52 vs. 22). We should try to have all of the warriors that we want built just in case. We can always set the slider to 0% for a turn or two to squeeze out that last one if needed.

Although, if there is copper in that hill, the sooner we learn BW, the earlier we benefit from the extra hammers copper provides.


BLubmuz is up. I'm taking a breather...

I'll base my PPP on the save you posted in this one.

You're wrong about the forced switch warrior/axe. We can continue build warriors until we learn Hunting even if the copper is auto-hooked being riverside. The basics!

Fogbusting question: if i continue to move the fogbusters to cover the tiles otherwise uncovered, do i actually cover them or do i screw all the toy?
I remember i sometime used this trick with success but long time ago, probably with a chariot

Example:
warrior N contine moving between the present position and the marble
warrior S moves between the present position (0) and 1W-1S-0

I'll start the plan with the builds, and i update it once this question will be answered.
i'll use the test to verify, but i can also be lucky.

 

[havr]

Let me take the devil advocate on this issue. You are all so convinced someone should play this role

You continue to discount the +3 happiness with Representation. This is actually a big thing. Our 5 biggest cities get 3 extra pops, which can add up to a lot of F/H/C to our empire.

I know that +3 happiness is great, but I don't think this is a big issue in our game.
We are going to have a lot religions + cheap temples. We can get plenty happiness there. Also we will discover Monarchy quite quickly and use military units to make happiness. This is useful in the small cities which will not get the constitution happiness. Also, remember we are going to keep 4 warriors unemployed for quite some time, they might as well police the streets.

It may well be the case that the +3 beakers of Rep are overrated. Lets crunch some numbers. Let compare Pyramids to Great Library.
Suppose you build the Pyramids and you hire 10 (!!!) specialists. Over the course of 100 turns you will get +3000 beakers.
On the other hand, if you build Great Library you will get +6 * 100 = 600 beakers AND 1200 GPP (remember you are philo) in those same 100 turns. Those 1200 GPP are worth, alone, 3.5 GP. If each light-bulbs a 1000 beaker technology (or settle and produce it over time) you get 3500 beakers. Together you get 4100 beakers in 100 turns, more than Pyramids.

Now, this was assuming you are hiring 10 specialists. I am not sure you can hire so many early in the game...

Now suppose that in addition to the Great Library you build the Parthenon...
This is not out of the questions. Pyramids are 750 but Parthenon is 600 and Great Library is 525. We may be able to squeeze those two, but no way we can get both Pyramids and one of those two (we need stone and marble for that...).

Also, the Pyramids are more flexible. In addition to Representation, they allow three other civics. Dhoomstriker already mentioned that Police State can be good when building up our army. We could also run Universal Suffrage if we have some hammer-poor cities and we need to rush buy something in them. Some cultural strategies rely on US, although I don't think using it is mandatory. Also, we can switch civics with no anarchy, which is HUGE with the 'Mids.

True, this is an advatege for the 'Mids. But:

- Police State is not that useful for us. Remember we are not really planning to do too many wars. Actually, we are planning exactly 2. We will use this twice in the game.

- US is not that useful in early game. It seems better to use the money to speed research, and in the small cities you might as well use whipping. Whipping is a waste later in the game when your cities are big.

 

[BLubmuz]

I'll participate later in the Pyramids vs. Parthenon discussion.
Just this, for now: running 5 Scientist specialists under Repr. will give the same amount as 10 without in term of beakers. Surely not in terms of GPPs. You must also add that we need a GE to rush the UN if we decide to go for Diplo. Pyramids are almost a guarantee you'll have one.

My PPP until turn 75, to be refined (read decided) starting on turn 73:

Fogbustind moving seems to work.
I met Shaka, so i deleted his archer to avoid influence the test.
While doing this i could count no less than 6 mixed barb warriors and archers in the E.

Warriors from Dehli and Silverado heading E
t61: Judaism founded in Silverado, Dehli size 4.
started BW, research to 0
t62: 21 in the bank, BW will arrive in 10 (-2g/t) note: this won't change 'til the end of my TS
t63: both warriors completed, both heading E Silverado builds another, Dehli settler in 12
the exp. borders of Silverado help to fogbust S of the pig's lake
t65: the mine is completed, moved citizen there - settler 1 turn early, +1C
the warrior from Dehli goes NE, the one from S. straight E walkin' S of Dehli. Still inside our borders.
t66: worker re-start farming
t71: farm completed: undecided if move there to gain 1C or stay on a 1f+2H to gain more overflow edit: probably i got the answer myself: move on the farm, then move on the 1f+2H the last turn i build the settler (t.73)
t72: BW in, start PH, research to 0
my active fogbusting E seems to work, i keep it verified in WB.
while doing this, i noticed that Shaka already has 3 cities, Louis has a archer/settler party on his way for city #3, Biz is behind with 2 cities.
t73: our worker start mine a Forested GL Hill (11 turns) PH in 5.
t74: this has to be decided: in my test i started a settler in Dehli and another warrior in Silverado.
It's what i think it's better, but we need more scouting and to discuss this.
t75: cruising, finished TS.

I used Mitch's latest save to run this test. I hope everything is working like in the actual game. I got the save, but not opened yet. The screenie is enough and i don't need more for my PPP. In red the things to be discussed.

I can play at any time after your comments.

 

[havr]

Just this, for now: running 5 Scientist specialists under Repr. will give the same amount as 10 without in term of beakers. Surely not in terms of GPPs. You must also add that we need a GE to rush the UN if we decide to go for Diplo. Pyramids are almost a guarantee you'll have one.

The GE argument is a good one, as for the other argument:

1) What is important is the bonus. If you run 5 specialists under Repr. you get +15 beakers vs. the ordinary. That is the bonus you get from the Pyramids.

2) What you said *might* make sense if all beakers are generated from specialists (scientists). In that case the +3 means a x2 on science rate. But unless you are running a SE most of your beakers will not come from specialists, only, say, 50% (probably much less). In that case the bonus in science rate drops to 1.5x.
If you are only 25% of your science is from specialists, then you get only a 25% increase in science output. Surely the GPP are worth more.

This two return me to the basic arguments:
unless we are going to use specialists a lot, (that is atleast 50% of our science will come from them) then Pyramids are a waste of good hammers.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I would like to test this just for my own satisfaction. Why do the fog busters have to be on flat land? I thought that they busted a 5x5 area, so what they see shouldn't matter.

You're right, the terrain type where the fog-busters stand won't matter at all. World Build them onto a Peak, if you want. It's hard to get over the "line-of-sight" mentality for units when you're thinking about it for cultural borders...

If your tests somehow prove that cultural borders do not give line-of-sight coverage, but more as you suspect of a set number of squares of cultural fog-busting radius, that would be info unique to our team in this SGOTM.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

As for the pyramids, don't forget about whipping.

Okay, I won't. At the same time, don't forget about the Mined Hills squares that we can also be working by that point.

Whipping multiple population is very efficient in terms of production-per-happiness-penalty...

... for anything but whipping a Wonder.

Whipping Wonders is not very efficient Food-to-Hammer conversion.

What you'd be better off doing is spending 1 turn working non-Hammer squares while building an Axeman. The next turn, as long as you didn't mess up and have more than 45 Hammers to go on the Axeman, then you can whip the Axeman for 2 population points. Axeman = 52H - 45H for a 1 population-point whip + 1H for the second population point = 6H is the maximum number of Hammers that you can invest into the Axeman without goofing up the trick.

Essentially, you'll get as many as 44 Hammers of overflow per population point whipped. Whipping directly into the Wonder will only give you 45H / 2 = 22Hammers (the floor operation truncates the half-of-a-Hammer). My way gets you an Axeman for free for whipping 2 population points. However, my way also requires you to stop working the Mines for a few turns and will still garner your unhappiness like your way will, so you'll only want to perform the whipping near the completion time of the Wonder, as we would with your way. We'll just start the process a lot sooner with my way.

We should keep an eye on what dates the great wall and stonehenge go, that will give us an idea of whether we have a shot at the pyramids. I don't know the typical dates.

Good point, we'll keep an eye out. Particularly to see if an AI appears to have Stone connected, based on their potentially early completion dates.

Looking at Dhoomstriker's fogbust squares map, we need a fogbuster north more than we need a third one west. Maybe the north one can let the northwest one move one square further west and cover those two missing spots.

That 3rd Warrior could stand 1NW of the Stone on flat Grassland for maximum coverage, probably allowing both Warriors to go 1W for 100% coverage. That 3rd Warrior would be a bit vulnerable, though, as he wouldn't have a Forest to stand in.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

We would have to run the numbers and take several variables into account (e.g. number of cities running specialists, number of specialists, timing of said specialist, etc.), but I've heard that Philosophical adds 2 to 4 extra great people during the course of a game. Half of the Philosophical bonus (50%) would then net an additional 1 to 2 extra great people. Unused GPP are wasted.

FYI: the first GP takes 150 GPP. The next one takes 300, then 450, 600... unil you get to 11. The 10th GP take 1500 and then, the numbers jump to 1800, 2100, etc. up to 20, where there is another jump.

Although what you say is generally accepted, don't forget about the fact that The Parthenon, while it might not get us that many MORE Great People near the end of the game, will help us to get the earlier Great People MUCH FASTER than without this Wonder. Earlier Great People are immeasurably more valuable than later Great People.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Fogbusting question: if i continue to move the fogbusters to cover the tiles otherwise uncovered, do i actually cover them or do i screw all the toy?

I remember i sometime used this trick with success but long time ago, probably with a chariot.

I am going to continue my "lazy programmer" example. A programmer who isn't going to keep track of the visibility of units is not going to go out of their way to "track the movements" of EACH UNIT in a given turn and then create a massive array of where Barb units can and cannot be placed.

Chariot or not, I'm going to put my belief in the laziness factor making the calculation of where Barb units can be placed happening at the end of the turn--either the end of our turn or the end of the last AI's turn--essentially the same for our discussion. I.e. wherever our units end their turns is where they will be fog-busting from.

You are free to run a test game to disprove my theory, but given that a big array of units' visibility was not created, why would the programmers use a similar data structure, but only use it for where units moved on that turn? Besides, if it were true, then you could just build a Road or two out in the wilderness and have a Chariot roam it back and forth, covering a huge swath of land. That's probably the best way to test this stuff... World-build yourself a couple of Workers and a Chariot, complete a Road, and have the land layout set up that Barb-prevention coverage would be 100% if every square where the Chariot moved to on that turn worked.

I.e. Build an island that is 5 squares wide. The 3rd square down from the top middle, start building your Road network. Build that Road network for 5 squares straight south. Then extend the land for another 2 squares beyond that, all with a width of 5. The height of the island would thus be 2 + 5 + 2 = 9. Move the Chariot from the north end of the Road to the south end of the Road, and do so for a few turns. If a Barb ever spawns, then you will have disproven the Chariot myth. You did say that you were able to run test games as of Thursday, so now is your chance.


If your Chariot test actually seems to work, then more testing will need to be done (say, give yourself the Engineering tech and make your island and road longer, or even give yourself the Railroads tech and build Railroads... just to really try and "prove" the theory). If the theory still holds true, then we'll have to try it out for units that move only 1 square per turn.

 

[Mitchum]

Just this, for now: running 5 Scientist specialists under Repr. will give the same amount as 10 without in term of beakers. Surely not in terms of GPPs. You must also add that we need a GE to rush the UN if we decide to go for Diplo. Pyramids are almost a guarantee you'll have one.

Also don't forget, if we're employing a lot of Representation-powered great people across our empire to get the +3 beaker bonus, we'll be creating a few great people of our own along the way. Your calculations seem to ignore the fact that these great people have a value too. The comparison gets quite complex.

Fogbustind moving seems to work.

Barbs can spawn at any time in any non-fog-busted square. So, if an AI happens to kill a barb on the other side of the continent, a barb could spawn in any available square on the map. If it just happens to spawn when your warrior is "out of position", one could spawn near our capital and move right it. Or it could spawn near our warrior, who moves right next to him on the next turn since you're moving back and forth. This could easily get him killed because he is not fortified and no longer in the forest. I think it is best to leave the fog busters in place and fortified.

t71: farm completed: undecided if move there to gain 1C or stay on a 1f+2H to gain more overflow edit: probably i got the answer myself: move on the farm, then move on the 1f+2H the last turn i build the settler (t.73)

I think it best to work this farm as much as possible. It adds an extra commerce, which will help in our current situation where research is our critical path to the CoL / Theology slingshot.

t73: our worker start mine a Forested GL Hill (11 turns) PH in 5.

In general, I think this is a bad idea. It's better to chop first and to build the mine second. The reason for this is two-fold. Let's say we have 2 workers (which should happen soon). If we want the second worker to help, he'll lose a turn moving onto a forested hill. However, if the forest is already chopped, he can move onto the hill and start helping with the mine on the same turn. Also, if you change your mind a few turns into building the mine straight away (11 turns) and decide we need the chop sooner, you have to start over (Chop = 5 turns and mine = 6 turns) and lose those initial worker turns.

t74: this has to be decided: in my test i started a settler in Dehli and another warrior in Silverado.
It's what i think it's better, but we need more scouting and to discuss this.

A lot of this will depend on what our scouts find. In general, we'll want to have city 4 out ASAP to claim land and block Zara. We could also use settler 4 to claim the stone for a shiny wonder. Or, we may need to build an axe if there are a lot of barb archers around. We need to be ready to defend our cities to the east around T100 when those archers start marching toward our cities. Or, we may want to build worker 2. Depending on what tiles are in city 3, we may need a worker to give city 3 a jump start. I'm open on what to build next, but a lot of it will depend on the situation.

 

[Mitchum]

World-build yourself a couple of Workers and a Chariot, complete a Road, and have the land layout set up that Barb-prevention coverage would be 100% if every square where the Chariot moved to on that turn worked.

Or, if you're real lazy like me, forget about the workers and just World Build the roads...

 

[BLubmuz]

OK guys, tell what you want, but my moving fogbusters worked well in my test.
Thus, i can't see why not in the real game.

Anyway, if you ask me to keep them fortified to gain more chances to win a possible fight, i can do so. On your head will be it!

Our "scouts" will reveal nothing, or almost by turn 74. So we have to decide before i start. I'll stop and ask about not planned events, not about what we can decide now.
Unless you ask me to stop on the start of turn 74.

Good point about the chop/mine. With a settler in production he can be ready 3 turns sooner.
OK for the farm. I'll switch only the turn before the settler is finished, then back.