SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

[Dhoomstriker]

Executing more tests...

 

[BLubmuz]

Just to make you feel better, it's only 15 turns of exploration.

Turn 21 Warrior vs Turn 36 Warrior

Or, optionally, in the Worker-first scenario, we build another Warrior immediately after Warrior 2

Still, your math is not fair: you cannot count the silver, since the city will be settled after that mine is completed.
2 warriors in a row is what i suggested, provided Dehli can grow to 4 when warrior 2 (3 if we count the free one) is completed.

Unclethrill, unless we find another mineable resource East, not knowing pottery we can't find anything useful.
I remember that the mined silver has an important role in giving us the needed techs to Oracle CoL or Theo.

Also, even if i see Dhoom's point about having Dehli double-Holy, i don't want delay city #2 by a single turn.

 

[unclethrill]

I assure you that my calculations are accurate, although you are right that I may have missed something.

We Irrigate the north Corn 1 turn sooner.
That's 1 more turn of 6 Food + 1 Commerce versus 1 more turn of 3 Food + 1 Commerce = 3 Food

We also Irrigate the west Corn 1 turn sooner.
That's 1 more turn of 6 Food + 1 Commerce versus 1 more turn of 3 Food + 1 Commerce = 3 Food

City 2 will be settled before we complete the Silver Mine, so it will be working an unworked Silver Mine or else another square that equivalently provides 4 Basic Inputs, such as a Lake for 2 Food + 2 Commerce.
That's 1 more turn of 3 Hammers + 6 Commerce versus 1 more turn of 2 Hammers + 2 Commerce (or, if you prefer, 2 Food + 2 Commerce).

City 3 will be working a 3 (Food + Hammers) square before the Plains Hills River square is mined.
That's 1 more turn of 4 Hammers + 1 Commerce, instead of 3 Food+Hammers (or, 2 Hammers + 1 Commerce, if you compare it to the unmined Plains Hills River square).

3 Food + 3 Food + (1 Hammer + 4 Commerce) + 2 Hammers = 13 Basic Inputs.
If we grow to Size 4 by the time that we Irrigate the Grassland River square (which was in our original plan), then that would be 14 Basic Inputs.


You CAN calculate these values in this way because we have the citizens ALREADY WORKING those undeveloped squares. You CANNOT add up bonuses this way if you do not have the population to support citizens that could work said squares.

So, for an empire that builds a Worker first and improves 2 Resources before growing to Size 2, only 1 of those Resources can be worked, thus the extra Worker turn has a smaller impact. FOR AN EMPIRE LIKE OURS, where we have CITIZENS WORKING MULTIPLE UNDEVELOPED SQUARES, there is a GREAT OPPORTUNITY COST for each Worker turn delayed.


Please ask further questions if you don't understand why the math works the way that it does, but the math is right.

Dude, where did you learn to do math like that?

Okay here are the problems I have with this:
1. I showed in a previous post why the silver can be mined prior to city 2 being settled.
2. I'm pretty sure that we can't possible get city 3 down before we can get the PH mine done (at worst 21 turns). Plus I don't think we have decided where city 3 will go.
3. We won't be growing to size 4 if we plan to have 2 settlers out in less than 25 turns (which isn't possible).

I'll give in on the 6F form the corns and the 2 hammers from the PH. But anyway you slice it, it is 8 total not 11 or 13 or ... . A settler costs 149 so the extra 8 from the 1 turn is 5% of the costs. I don't disagree that there is a cost associated with not getting the worker 1 turn sooner but the numbers you are putting out are inflated and making it look bigger than it is. As a team we need to decide if 15 turns of exploration is worth 6F and 2H. Now to be clear we are talking about a 1 time 6F and 2H. This isn't something that carries on. In fact as soon as we have 1 turn where the worker has nothing to do, the whole argument falls apart. we have the extra 8 floating through our city until that point and then one turn of idle means that the 6 + 2 is applied and no longer a bonus.

Are 6F and 2H worth 15 turns of exploration? That is the long and short of the situation.
Again I think the exploration is a higher priority at this point but that is my opinion and my vote is still for A.

 

[unclethrill]

Unclethrill, unless we find another mineable resource East, not knowing pottery we can't find anything useful.
I remember that the mined silver has an important role in giving us the needed techs to Oracle CoL or Theo.

I agree that unless we find a mineable resource to the east then we have to settle the silver city to make the Oracle slingshot work but unless we explore we won't know what is out there. I think it is a little early to turtle up with an expansion monger right next door.

Also, even if i see Dhoom's point about having Dehli double-Holy, i don't want delay city #2 by a single turn.

I can see Dhoom's point. Having a religion in the silver location doesn't net us much since the extra culture will be a waste but how many turns of that silver mine are we willing to waste to get a double holy capital. If we agree that as soon as we settle the second city it will be working the mined silver (and not growing) and that we can have the settler ready by T45 but Mono is not in until say T55 (will need to test to see how accurate those Turns are) then we are looking at 10 turns * 1H + 10 * 4C = 50 total lost by delaying settling the city.

Even if we only had to delay by 2 turns then we are looking at 10 Basic Inputs lost. A delay of settling the second city costs us 5 BI every turn. It isn't a one time thing like the 1 turn on the worker. So I have to go with BLubmuz on this one. I would love to have a double Holy City but the cost to delay city 2 are too high.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Here are some more facts, obtained as the result of additional testing:
Building a Warrior while growing after building Settler 2 takes:
4 turns to grow
5 turns to complete the Warrior


The Silver City will for certain get Judaism founded in it
City 2, if settled where Irgy indicated, will be done several turns before Monotheism is complete (6 turns by using Binary Research--which goes down to 5 turns if we are using the Silver Mine). For those of you who are sold on the idea of getting Monotheism in that city, you can be happy that we won't need to delay settling City 2.


City 2, if settled ASAP in the spot where Irgy indicated (REGARDLESS of whether we go Warrior 2 -> Worker 1 or Worker 1 -> Warrior 2) will be settled before the Silver is mined. Thus, the calculations of the Silver Resource DO MATTER.

The Mined Silver Resource can be used after 1 turn of working an unimproved square with the Worker 1 -> Warrior 2 scenario, while it will only be Mined after 2 turns of working an unimproved square with the Warrior 2 -> Worker 1 scenario. Thus, the cost of building Warrior 2 first does include the 1 Hammer + 4 Commerce from the Silver Mine.


City 2 as an early Warrior-pump
Building a Warrior in City 2 immediately, while working the highest Basic Input square available (the Silver square), will take only 6 turns to complete.

We could easily use the Silver City as a Warrior-pump while the capitol focuses on the Settler-pump, getting us out an exploring unit for the east before Settler 3 is ready. We can get 3 such explorers out before Settler 3 is ready if we build a Warrior in the capitol while growing to Size 4 immediately before building Settler 3. Two of those three exploring Warriors would come from City 2 and would come out before Settler 3 is complete. Will 3 exploring units for the east and north before we get Settler 3 built be enough for you?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Still, your math is not fair: you cannot count the silver, since the city will be settled after that mine is completed.

I can count it and I did, but at the cost of giving up on the double Holy-city idea...

Also, even if i see Dhoom's point about having Dehli double-Holy, i don't want delay city #2 by a single turn.

Well, you'll be happy then, since City 2 will come out so early that I see no reason to delay settling it based on where a religion gets founded. Settling it immediately, though, means that the Silver counts in the calculations.

 

[Mitchum]

Far better would be to keep him in place, ending his turn (by pressing the Spacebar at the end of each turn), which, by the way, gains you the Fortification bonus but has the bonus over Fortifying of centering the screen on the Warrior on each turn, so that you can respond to Barb threats.

I didn't realize that you got a fortification bonus unless you actually hit the "Fortify" button.

With just 2 Warriors in the west, we will hardly ever spawn a Barb unit. Without those 2 Warriors in the west, somewhere between 3-4 Barb Archers will appear by turn 60. We will have NO AI units on that side of us to take out those Barb Archers.

Agreed. I had two worriors out there in my test and not a single human barb spawned.

However, WE NEED to be in that area on or just before Turn 50. Can we honestly justify sending Warrior 1 away and then back again? Can we get him back to there safely past Lions in flatland terrain? It's unlikely. If we have to get him there past Archers, due to having to dodge the Lions, it won't even happen.

So, my recommendation is to keep Warrior 1 out there, partially fog-busting for new Animals, while preparing to eventually go to the FOG BUSTING 1 location.

Yes! I left warrior 1 out there and he unfogged the northern half of the peninsula just fine. I had him fortified 1W on the marble.

Yes, exploration to the north and east will be ideal, but let's do it safely with a later Warrior 3 (possibly inserted into our build order before Settler 3 is complete), as even 1 Archer appearing to the west can cost us 3-10 Warriors in sacrifice (due to dying and then more Archers spawning due to not having more fog-busters out there, possibly allowing Axes to spawn as a result)--not worth it.

I agree. Warrior 1 should stay near the marble. Warrior 2 should explore silver city and then fogbust the southern half of the peninsula. Warrior 3 can come before settler 3 for scouting east. In fact, it may even make sense to complete warrior 4 before settler 4 depending on how well we can synchronize settling city #2 with the completion of the silver mine.

 

[Mitchum]

The cost of that, 11* Basic Inputs, is half of the cost of another full Warrior!

Wouldn't it be better just to put the other half of the Warrior into our build queue immediately after Settler 2, gaining us half of a Warrior at a time when we will soon need one (for eastward exploration and fog-busting) instead of now, when exploration gained that can't be done later will be minimal?

* 10 if a Forest grows on the Grassland River square

Certainly, we need a vote for this issue.

When I was advocating delaying the worker, it was when we were bulding the warrior at 2 pops for 1 more turn. This got the worker out 1 or 2 turns after learning Agriculture. Now, we will have learned Agriculture well before the worker is completed and he's got a lot to do. Again, the sooner we get worker 1 out, the better I'll feel about only having one worker and we can slot in settler #3 before worker #2. We cannot delay the worker another turn.

 

[unclethrill]

I can count it and I did, but at the cost of giving up on the double Holy-city idea...


Well, you'll be happy then, since City 2 will come out so early that I see no reason to delay settling it based on where a religion gets founded. Settling it immediately, though, means that the Silver counts in the calculations.

So by getting the worker 1 turn earlier, the mine will be ready when the city is settled?

 

[Mitchum]

Another reason why Judaism in our capitol is a Good Thing
....

We hardly need border expansion in the south:
- The Silver is already available for use, no matter whether we settle next to it or 1 square away from it
- City 2's borders themselves, without expansion, will still do most or all of the fog-busting needed down there, depending upon where we place the city
- Even if some fog-busting is missed, there's very little room for a Barb Person (Archer) to spawn there
- Border expansion will happen soon enough, anyway, as with 2 Holy Cities within a few squares, religious spread will take only a couple of turns, then only 15 more turns to expand the borders. Any additional border expansion will be wasted down there
- Our capitol, which will be building a Great Prophet Wonder, will be a Double Holy City--Holy Shrines also produce Great Prophets, thus helping to generate more Great Prophets for more Great Shrines

So does that mean that you want to delay settling city #2 until after we learn Monotheism? That will be a 5 or 6 turn delay...

By the way, I settled Silver City near the lake, so my cities were connected. This netted a trade route in each city and Hinduism spread almost right away to Silver City.

I'm not sure that we want a bunch of great prophets or a bunch of Great Shrines. I think after our first great prophet, we should be shooting for great scientists and a great engineer.

Although, I'd like to see a plan of our ideal scenario of when we spawn great people, what flavor we would like them to be, and what we plan to do with them. Before we can really do that though, we need to know which victory condition we're shooting for...

 

[havr]

I vote A.

I also vote that you play tonight, but that will not happen.

 

[Mitchum]

I don't understand this. We finish the worker on T35 or T36 (depending on vote) He has 18 turns of improvements (2 farms, 1 mine :6 turns each) Add 2 turns for movement and then 6 more turns for the silver mine= Total of 26 turns to improve all 4. The improved silver will be in the BFC of city 2 immediately due to capitals border pops. That means we have All 4 done including silver mine by T55 (or 56). It will be at least T60 before we finish Mono and we don't want city 2 down until after we found Judaism.

I'm writing as I'm reading, so this may have been addressed already, but farms take 8 turns.

 

[havr]

I agree that unless we find a mineable resource to the east then we have to settle the silver city to make the Oracle slingshot work but unless we explore we won't know what is out there. I think it is a little early to turtle up with an expansion monger right next door.


I can see Dhoom's point. Having a religion in the silver location doesn't net us much since the extra culture will be a waste but how many turns of that silver mine are we willing to waste to get a double holy capital. If we agree that as soon as we settle the second city it will be working the mined silver (and not growing) and that we can have the settler ready by T45 but Mono is not in until say T55 (will need to test to see how accurate those Turns are) then we are looking at 10 turns * 1H + 10 * 4C = 50 total lost by delaying settling the city.

Even if we only had to delay by 2 turns then we are looking at 10 Basic Inputs lost. A delay of settling the second city costs us 5 BI every turn. It isn't a one time thing like the 1 turn on the worker. So I have to go with BLubmuz on this one. I would love to have a double Holy City but the cost to delay city 2 are too high.

We can also a double holy city if we delay City 3 after Oracle. If we want Oracle as early as T90 we might have to delay City3 in any case, and then to get a double holy we delay a single more turn. The double holy city might be Bombay, which will be shame...

In any case, once we get our 4th religion we will surely have a double holy city... unless we found a City4 by then.

 

[Mitchum]

We can also a double holy city if we delay City 3 after Oracle. If we want Oracle as early as T90 we might have to delay City3 in any case, and then to get a double holy we delay a single more turn. The double holy city might be Bombay, which will be shame...

In any case, once we get our 4th religion we will surely have a double holy city... unless we found a City4 by then.

The reason why I wanted to found religion 2 in city 2 is that I want religion 3 to be founded in city 3. We will likely be putting city 3 in a key choke point location. It would be best if we could put it in the ideal spot and then let the borders pop 3 turns after founding a religion in it. Without roads, it could take a while for a religion to spread to city 3 organically.

 

[havr]

The reason why I wanted to found religion 2 in city 2 is that I want religion 3 to be founded in city 3. We will likely be putting city 3 in a key choke point location. It would be best if we could put it in the ideal spot and then let the borders pop 3 turns after founding a religion in it. Without roads, it could take a while for a religion to spread to city 3 organically.

Yes, I know that. And I agree with you.

It is just that they really wanted a double holy city. I was offering a way...

In any case, I don't see the fuss about getting the double holy, as there is a good chance Christianity (using GPro) will give us a double-holy... unless we build City 4 before...

When do we plan to build City 4?

 

[BLubmuz]

I've found some minute to run a small test.
Building a settler right after the worker or, to be more accurate, after the turn we need to complete our queued warrior will require 25 turns. Those will decrease once the corns are improved, but not that much.

Instead, i built another warrior, which is completed 1 turn after size 4 (no way to synch build and growth). This way settler 1 asks some 15 turns, actually less since the 2nd corn is only 3 turns to be farmed.
Actually i started on turn 45 and it was ready on turn 58 (finished 57)
After corn #2 i mined the PH near Dehli and this generated an 8H overflow on settler 2, which can be ready in 11 turns.
We lack 1 H (1 measly hammer, yes) to have it ready in 10 turns, thus we can try to mine the PH before to irrigate the 2nd corn to see if we can gain that hammer.

The cons in all this is that the silver will be delayed by 3 turns.

 

[havr]

BTW, don't you think that Firaxis got the concept of Holy Cities wrong?
In reality the holy cities are never the cities a religion was founded in!

Also, I wanted to say that I, too, like chicken pizza.

 

[BLubmuz]

BTW, don't you think that Firaxis got the concept of Holy Cities wrong?
In reality the holy cities are never the cities a religion was founded in!

Also, I wanted to say that I, too, like chicken pizza.

Maybe, but i think it's the only way it can work for a game. But let's try this exercise:
Hinduism and Judaism were not actually founded, they were "just" the religions of the Hindu and the Jews, grew over the centuries.
Like could have been the Greek/Roman "paganism" if JC won't have such a great success.
Buddhism: i think that we can also consider its Holy city the one where Siddhartha was born.
Same for Christianity.
Not sure about mueslims, but Mecca was important.
I admit my ignorance about Tao and Confu.

Oh, well it's enough for one convinced those all are just superstitions, despite many of them have good thoughts.

 

[havr]

Maybe, but i think it's the only way it can work for a game. But let's try this exercise:
Hinduism and Judaism were not actually founded, they were "just" the religions of the Hindu and the Jews, grew over the centuries.
Like could have been the Greek/Roman "paganism" if JC won't have such a great success.
Buddhism: i think that we can also consider its Holy city the one where Siddhartha was born.
Same for Christianity.
Not sure about mueslims, but Mecca was important.
I admit my ignorance about Tao and Confu.

Oh, well it's enough for one convinced those all are just superstitions, despite many of them have good thoughts.

Where was Christianity founded? Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, or Nazerath where he lived? Certainly not Jerusalem since he was there only in the last week. And what is the Christian holy city? It is either Rome or Jersualem, but not Bethlehem or Nazerath...

BTW, the holy shrine for Christianity in Civ4 is Church of Nativity which is in Bethlehem. So at least Firaxis implies that there Christianity was founded there...

Judiasim - It is unclear when it was founded. It did evolve... but in any case earlier versions of it existed before David conquered Jerusalem so it couldn't have been founded in Jerusalem.

Islam - true that Mohammad came from Mecca, but the people of Mecca rejected him, and he actually founded Islam in Medina, conquered Mecca and turned it into the holy city. Medina is actually considered the second holy city (Jerusalem the third).

As for the others - I don't have enough knowledge.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Dude, where did you learn to do math like that?

Okay here are the problems I have with this:
1. I showed in a previous post why the silver can be mined prior to city 2 being settled.

Here is what I did with the Worker:
T20 City grew to Size 3, started building Worker 1
T35 Worker 1 is built. Worker 1 starts irrigating the north Corn
T42 The north Corn is completely irrigated on this turn
T43 Worker 1 moves to the west Corn and starts irrigating it
T50 The west Corn is completely irrigated on this turn
T51 Worker 1 moves 1SE onto the Grassland River square. He has 2/3 movement left. He can waste all of his movement immediately moving to the Silver square, or he can gain a Worker-turn by irrigating. I Irrigated the Grassland River square and then stopped the irrigation of it on this turn
T52 I moved Worker 1 onto the Silver Mine and started to mine the square. The Mine will be complete after 5 turns. The Settler will be complete in 2 turns.

In fact as soon as we have 1 turn where the worker has nothing to do

Yes, when the Worker has nothing to do, or when the Worker is improving a square which isn't workable by a citizen on the turn that the improvement is complete, whichever comes first. If we weren't beelining religions and went for Bronze Working earlier, the cost per turn would be unfathomably high.