SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

[havr]

So, I think we are converging on Riverdale first (is that name good?).
Shall I prepare a first-version of the PPP, so we can start do discuss something concrete?

Just let me write the risk involved in Riverdale-first. Just that we see them and say to ourselves "we can live with them":
1) We delay Oracle by 2-3 turns.
2) If Zara has no option to settle West (ocean, another AI or really bad places) we have a big risk of losing wheat.
3) We are delaying 'Mids by an unknown number of turns (we didn't do tests involving Stonyville first to see when we get 'Mids).

We should start to reach a decision on:
a) Should we let a barb city spawn on the wheat-area?
b) where should we settle Stonyville?

Let's try to reach decisions on these issues.
I am currently leaning into against barb city. Too much headache.

 

[Mitchum]

OK, I ran a test game up until T106. I 100% fogbusted the N and NE. 1 barb warrior spawned on the southern silver peninsula.

Here is what I did and how it stacked up against Dhoomstriker's test:

T80 - Settler River (2 turns after Dhoomstriker). I would delay this even more if there are no roads leading to this spot. Havr, can you check the real save to see if there is a road on flood plains tile N of the cows or on the cows?
T92 - Writing and Oracle (same as Dhoomstriker)
T94 - Library in Delhi (same as Dhoomstriker)
T96 - Temple in Delhi (1 turn after Dhoomstriker)
T99 - Wheel (same as Dhoomstriker)
T106 - Meditation (3 turns sooner than Dhoomstriker) 13 gold in the bank.
T109 - GPro will be born (same turn as Dhoomstriker)

I'm not sure how, but it appears that I am 3 turns faster than Dhoomstriker in getting Meditation (could have been Pottery). I did revolt out of Slavery and OR while building a settler in Delhi and after whipping the monument in River. This could be the difference.

I support researching Pottery before Meditation. If we also delay settling Stone by a few turns while waiting to learn Meditation, we should only delay our Theology date by about 4 or 5 turns, not 10 turns like Dhoomstriker says. If we can get Pottery on T106 and Meditation on T114, we should be fine. Since we don't need Stone's settler so soon, we can build another worker (i.e. cottage maker) to help with our research. Math will be our gating factor here, so anything we can do to pull in that date should speed up completion of the Pyramids.

By the way, we may have some leeway on the Pyramids, but the sooner we get them, the sooner we get Representation-powered specialist!!

Have I mentioned that I don't want barbs in our lands? I was 100% spawn busting the N and NE and still was able to keep up with Dhoomstrikers test. I think it's safer to do it this way.

Regarding River, Zara owns the cows with 60% culture going down 2% per turn and the flood plains with 89% culture going down 1% per turn. River's borders will pop in 16 turns (a bit more depending on when we revolt to Christianity for Stone's border pop) and Zara's won't pop for another 64 turns (a bit less if he builds a monument and quite a bit less if he builds a wonder). So, we should really start putting pressure on those tiles soon, ensuring that they will be ours for the rest of the game.

Note that Zara is willing to take Stone, so it could be a good gifting city.

 

[unclethrill]

I'll try to run some test tonight. We are celebrating my wife's new job right now but I should have some time in an hour or two.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

It's mainly about saving on the Maintenance Costs and less about the Cultural Border Expansion

But i don't think we need to delay too much the Stone city: basically, just the time to build one more settler and a missionary, if we already founded Christianity, to build a temple there and to quickly expand our borders.

I think that you're missing the main point of delaying the Stone City, which is to save on research costs.

If we go for Pottery before Meditation, then when we have Pottery, yes, we can consider immediately settling Stone City, as we can begin work on building a Flood Plains Cottage only once the settler has sat down and the square falls under our cultural influence.

If we go for Meditation before Pottery, the main point of settling a bit later is not the "perfect assurance" of where the religion will be founded, but is the faster research rate achieved by not settling the City sooner.


A Missionary won't fit in our build order but I will grant you that a Religion could automatically spread to our Stone City. Still, this situation takes a LONG TIME--a minimum of 14 after the City is settled, before its borders expand

Spoiler :

I do not see anywhere in our build queue that we could build a Missionary in time.

However, what I do see is that a religion could spread automatically. If it's not the same religion that we're running elsewhere, we'd have to switch to No State Religion or to that mostly-useless religion (as far as using Organized Religion is concerned) for 15 turns. We wouldn't be able to whip a building, though, until after 11 Turns have passed since Stone City was settled, as, growing off of a Flood Plains square gives us 3 Food per turn and City Growth to Size 2 = 33 Food. 33 / 3 = 11 Turns. After that point, on Turn 12, you can whip a cultural building (a Monument or a Temple, it's all the same, culture-wise, we won't even need the Happiness anytime soon, so assume a Monument). That Monument delivers 1 culture at the end of the Turn, such that on the next Turn, Turn 13, we'll have 1 more Culture added to the City.

Assuming the "ideal" case of a "random religion" spreading at the end of the Turn that Stone City is founded, it would then be on Turn 14, not Turn 15, that our borders would expand. So, the Monument or Temple would save us 1 Turn of cultural expansion in the ideal case.

In a less-than-ideal case, a religion spreads to the City after several Turns of the City being settled, say, 6 turns after it was settled. Also, Christianity does not spread here when that religion is founded. In this case, we'd have no choice but to build and whip a Monument, which is fine, because a Temple isn't really needed in its place.

So on Turn 13 after the City was settled, we'll have 13 - 6 = 7 Culture from the Relgion and + 1 Culture from the Monument, giving us 8 Culture. In 15 - 8 = 7 / 2 = 4 more Turns, i.e. on Turn 17, our borders will expand.

Analysis of the Results

Spoiler :

So, while you are CORRECT in saying that our borders will eventually expand when we get a religion and a building whipped in City 4, it will take AT LEAST 14 Turns for our borders to expand if Christianity is not founded there.

So, although the primary reason for delaying the settling of City 4 is for saving on unsupportable Maintenance costs, the secondary reason of expanding its borders within a 3 Turn time period allows us to SAFELY DELAY SETTLING CITY 4 for quite some time before the other scenario (14 to 17 Turns instead of 3 Turns) can "be equal" culturally.

Add to those 14 Turns the following costs:
a) The Maintenance costs of City 4 will drag down our Science Rate by 4 to 5 Commerce per Turn (the City itself will cost us an additional 6 per Turn in Maintenance, being offset by 2 Commerce per Turn from working the City Centre square and a Flood Plains square, add to that 1 more Gold per Turn of Civic Upkeep if we are using Slavery from having recently whipped in the capitol)
b) A chance of not having the Organized Religion bonus in the capitol during that time period, say, if Silverado's religion were to spread to City 4
c) A chance of 14 or more Turns where River City's borders were not putting cultural pressure on Zara's Cows, should Confucianism not be the religion that spreads (it is least likely to be, with 2 Holy Cities that are closer to Stone City than the Confucian Holy City is). What about the 5 Turns to switch to Christianity, you might ask, for the "delaying settling path"? Well, Mitchum suggested using No State Religion for those 5 turns, thus during that time period, River City will indeed have its borders continue to expand, so it really is 14+ Turns if Confucianism isn't the religion which auto-spreads. The tradeoff would be spreading Christianity to the capitol and running Christianity, still saving us 14 - 5 - 9 Turns for River City's Cultural expansion, should the capito be building a building where we though that its Organized Religious bonus was more important than River City's borders expanding sooner

We WILL settle Fish + Incense regardless, for the Diplo Voting population points--it's just how weak will this City become by our Stone City settling actinos?

Spoiler :

the incense/fish city is useless if we settle the wheat and the stone cities.

I would still say that we will settle the Fish + Incense City, if for no other reason than it's a City which will be relatively close to our capitol (in mid-to-late game terms) that can help to increase our total number of Diplo votes. Why wouldn't we build it?

So, even if the Fish + Incense City is marginalized, we will build it, but it's value will be diminished by having to work Ocean squares in favour of Grassland Cottage squares..

Marble for the Medium-term and Cow for the Medium-to-long term could be put to better use in Stone City. Plus, Stone City is weak on Food and settling beside the Stone also removes one of its Flood Plains squares

Spoiler :

We'll also have less overlap with that poor 3-clams-city, which will become not-so-poor if can work marble and cows.

In the medium-run, if we make the Clam City out to be a Specliast City, then at least the Marble and possibly also the Cow will be given up in favour of working a Specialist.

But what also concerns me is that Stone City is weak on Food and we would rob it of yet another Flood Plains square by settling 1E, making it so that it might take ages before the Stone City even gets to work many squares.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Research Timing

Spoiler :

I'm not sure how, but it appears that I am 3 turns faster than Dhoomstriker in getting Meditation (could have been Pottery).

If I recall correctly, I let The Wheel's Science Overflow get overflowed into Pottery.

More of the discrepancy can probably be explained by you possibly growing before starting on Settler 4 (since I got the Temple faster, I might have had less time to grow Delhi, but probably not if you started on a Settler or Worker immediately afterwards) and also you settled River City a bit later.

I did revolt out of Slavery and OR while building a settler in Delhi and after whipping the monument in River.

And that could easily make up for the rest of the difference. I think that I forgot about switching out of Slavery and certain I didn't switch out of Organized Relgion, but as you calculated, there is a window of time where we can do so. Nice find!

Fog-busting the NE

Spoiler :

OK, I ran a test game up until T106. I 100% fogbusted the N and NE. 1 barb warrior spawned on the southern silver peninsula.

Have I mentioned that I don't want barbs in our lands? I was 100% spawn busting the N and NE and still was able to keep up with Dhoomstrikers test. I think it's safer to do it this way.

It's going to be very hard to convince you guys, I see, but "messing around" with the AIs certainly favours at least keeping Barb units alive where we don't want Zara to settle. If a Barb unit happens to wander onto the square that an AI wants to settle, they will turn away.

If a human who is not at war with the AI has a unit there, then the AI will laugh at the human and settle there ASAP, as no Barbs will block their way.

I haven't seen a Barb City spawn, so the chances of that are still pretty small, with the high amount of land area that we have fog-busted.

Far more important to me than seeing a Barb City would be the "Barbs messing around with the AIs factor" of having Barb units staying alive up there.

So, instead of contemplating whether we'll see a Barb City, which has a pretty low probability of happening, due to the small number of un-fog-busted squares, consider more the value of having a Barb unit or two wandering over Zara's chosen Wheat location, messing Zara up into running back and forth without settling. Surely, that's what could be happening in our game now to the east of Zara, where he has a Barb unit that isn't yet ready to enter borders (or else the Barbs on our continent would have entered our borders too), but is instead dancing back and forth of Zara's chosen City location.

If an AI has 2 Cities, they usually ignore this problem, but since they are so "dead set" on settling their City #2 so close to their capitol, this kind of a Barb situation can really mess Zara up in the short term, while the NE Barb units can mess up his settling in the medium-term.

Gifting Cities

Spoiler :

Note that Zara is willing to take Stone, so it could be a good gifting city.

Be careful with what the AIs are willing to accept now. When they only have a few Cities (usually 1 to 3 or so, on a Standard Sized Map), they will accept just about ANY City that you have to offer, because they recognize that they are weak and could easily be wiped out, thus more Cities = a better situation.

Stone City will go off of the table once Zara has founded enough of his own Cities in order to feel "safer" than he does now of being wiped out as a Civ.

What would be more interesting would be if he is currently refusing to take Silverado--that just tells us how sucky of a location an AI thinks it is!

River City Cultural Pressure

Spoiler :

Regarding River, Zara owns the cows with 60% culture going down 2% per turn...

Thank you for giving us those numbers, so that I don't have to...

 

[Mitchum]

It's going to be very hard to convince you guys, I see, but "messing around" with the AIs certainly favours at least keeping Barb units alive where we don't want Zara to settle. If a Barb unit happens to wander onto the square that an AI wants to settle, they will turn away.

Zara had a barb archer to his east, but still settled his second city there. I don't think the archer was on his planned square on the turn before he settled, but he still settled with the barb in the area. What are the odds that a barb unit is on the EXACT square Zara wants to settle in the NE?

I can see the benefit of what you're suggesting. My only concern is that it takes something that we can control 100% by spawn busting and leaves it up to chance. We could get 3 archers or a mix of archers and axes. Maybe I'm a bit gun-shy since I lost one of our warriors to a lion in the real game at unfavorable odds and then two more warriors in a test game at favorable odds yet again.

I would prefer that we not have to interupt our MM plan for 2 turns to whip an axe in an emergency situation. Then having lost 2 turns into whatever we were building and one or two less citizens would send us back to the drawing board with test games to re-work our MM plan...

I've shown that we can fogbust without affecting our science too much. For most of the turns, they were not costing a single coin. The exceptions were: before settling River, the 8 turns the Confucian missionary was alive (I had him sit in Delhi 6 turns before using him) and once the third worker was completed.

So, allowing barbs in the NE does two things: it saves a few coins and it MAY prevent Zara from settling the wheat. I've proven that the coins aren't a huge deal as we can save additional coins in other ways. The real question is: Is it worth the risk of a barb invasion to capture the wheat tile? I'm not even talking about the cows or the oasis, which we should get even if Zara gets the wheat.

Personally, I don't think it's worth the risk for a single wheat resouce which we may get anyway!! We still don't know what Zara has to the east. I think he sent his first settler that direction. Maybe he's got good land that direction. We could get the wheat in trade or by settling city 5 there (although I'm still not conviced that city 5 should go there anyway).

I vote to contain the barbs as best we can. I still think it is the lesser of two evils.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Riverdale

Spoiler :

So, I think we are converging on Riverdale first (is that name good?).

That name works for me.

Now, to ask the more important question: Betty Cooper or Veronica Lodge?

Or maybe Kevin Keller?

Write a PPP all that you want, just be prepared to wait to play until we've got test games to back up our choices before you play

Spoiler :

Shall I prepare a first-version of the PPP, so we can start do discuss something concrete?

As long as no one expects that we'll start playing it until we've decided upon a lot of the main issues and have subsequently worked out the timing details that support our decisions, I see no reason why you can't get started on writing a PPP now.

I'm not sure how many comments that I'll have to offer on a PPP now, though, until we're more firmly aware of what the order of our next steps will be.

Risks of Settling Riverdale as City 3

Spoiler :

Just let me write the risk involved in Riverdale-first. Just that we see them and say to ourselves "we can live with them":
1) We delay Oracle by 2-3 turns.
2) If Zara has no option to settle West (ocean, another AI or really bad places) we have a big risk of losing wheat.
3) We are delaying 'Mids by an unknown number of turns (we didn't do tests involving Stonyville first to see when we get 'Mids).

I can live with those things:
1) It will be 2 turns. We'll make sure of it through micro
2) He won't go for Wheat for City 2. The longer that Barb units are wandering around Zara, the longer that he'll delay settling City 2, which means the longer that it will take for him to getting around to settling Wheat
3) You raise a fair point that we didn't really test a Stone-City-first scenario. Since I like the River City (err, Riverside), I have no intension of running such a test, but you're welcome to do so and to present your arguments in favour of that approach, should you think that it will be a better way to go

Other Hot Topics

Spoiler :

We should start to reach a decision on:
a) Should we let a barb city spawn on the wheat-area?
b) where should we settle Stonyville?

a) As I said from the start, it's a small chance of even happening. The more important question should be: "Do you want to put a Warrior out there who will kill off the nearby Barb units and then prevent others from spawning, leaving the Wheat completely open to Zara?" That's the real risk that we should be worrying about
b) I think that we're in agreement that the Stone + Marble location is a better site overall and that the only reason we'd settle 1E of there is to possibly get Stone faster. Test games will tell if this worse settling location is a worthwhile tradeoff for an earlier Stone

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Barb Talk and a proposed Compromise

Spoiler :

What are the odds that a barb unit is on the EXACT square Zara wants to settle in the NE?

The odds are pretty good if there is another AI's City nearby, forcing a Barb unit to walk back and forth between borders.

Zara can become "locked" into a walking-back-and-forth behaviour this way when having only 1 City, as he won't expand his search range, should his chosen location be temporarily unavailable. If he is escorting a Settler, then he has 2 less Archers that will be randomly exploring--possibly none, possibly the odd one or two, so there won't be many or any units to "take the hits."

My only concern is that it takes something that we can control 100% by spawn busting and leaves it up to chance. We could get 3 archers or a mix of archers and axes

To be honest, I think that this scenario is very unlikely until we go killing one or more of the wandering Barb Warriors. After we kill one or more, THAT is when those units will be potentially generated.

Proceed with caution, or you may unleash the hellfires!

I would prefer that we not have to interupt our MM plan for 2 turns to whip an axe in an emergency situation. Then having lost 2 turns into whatever we were building and one or two less citizens would send us back to the drawing board with test games to re-work our MM plan...

That's very easy to avoid with 1 to 2 Warriors placed strategically just inside of our borders. As I said, a Barb would have to fail his Courage check 3 times in order to not fight our defending Warrior. With 2 such Warriors in place in a "mini-line" the odds of Barbs not attacking them are astronomially low.

I'm not even talking about the cows or the oasis, which we should get even if Zara gets the wheat.

We can't make that claim for sure. The AIs "see" Aluminum, Coal, etc. If any such Resource is in the area, Zara can settle differently than our test game will predict.

Believe it or not, blue circles also tell you about hidden Resources, although the suggestions by the blue circles aren't PURELY Resource-based, so the choices are often stupider than a location you could pick yourself. If blue circles can be proven to be affected by the precense of hidden Resources, it should not be too hard of a stretch for you to believe my claim that the AIs are also affected in this way.

We still don't know what Zara has to the east. I think he sent his first settler that direction.

He likely doesn't even have a Settler yet, or else he'd be settling.

The only thing stopping an AI from setting in a location that is otherwise not overlapping other cities would be Barb units or someone he is at war with.

An ongoing war with an eastern AI is another possibility.

So, if he does have a Settler, I claim that it is being forced to wander back and forth due to a Barb unit or (very unlikely, but possible) an enemy unit from an AI that he is at war with.

The exceptions were: before settling River...

Then don't send out a Fog-buster immediately, if it will cost us valuable Gold. There's no real rush.

, the 8 turns the Confucian missionary was alive (I had him sit in Delhi 6 turns before using him) and once the third worker was completed.

Other than the short time that the Confucian Missionary is outside of Riverside's borders, you're talking about Unit Cost Maintenance, not Unit Supply Maintenance.

Unit Supply Maintenance deals with how many units we can have outside of our borders for free (5, with our given population levels). Unit Cost Maintenance deals with how many units we have total and will be the same cost whether we are fog-busting Zara a path to the Wheat or whether we are safe behind our borders, preaparing to stand between the Barbs and our empire.


Compromise
I would suggest the following compromise:
Keep our Warriors outside of the NE until the Barbs rush into our borders. After that point, we can push our units out to the NE to fog-bust for Barb Cities, since there will be a greater chance of a Barb City spawning once all of the units have cleared out of the NE area.


A Possible Further Compromise
If you don't like that compromise, then I suggest we at least delay pushing out our fog-busting line until we have built River City (to keep our Unit Supply Maintenance costs down) and until we've got TWO Warriors within the NE part of Delhi's borders, so that they can walk on top of each other.

A loss to a Barb unit can be followed up with an attack, unless the Barb unit went unscathed, and can be followed up by a defence if the Barb unit did go unscathed.

A win to a Barb unit can have our Warrior be defended until he heals up.

 

[Mitchum]

He likely doesn't even have a Settler yet, or else he'd be settling.

I guess I wasn't clear when I said "We still don't know what Zara has to the east. I think he sent his first settler that direction."

What I meant is that I think he sent the first settler he built to the east, which got killed by a wild animal. I mentioned this in my test game notes a few days back. Since we haven't seen any wounded animals running around between us and Zara, my guess is that the battle happened to the east of Zara. So, I would assume that he will send the second settler he builds (due out soon) to the east once again to lay claim to the same spot he tried to get the first time.

There are SO MANY VARIABLES being discussed that I'm having trouble playing a focused test game...

 

[Dhoomstriker]

We are celebrating my wife's new job right now

Woohoo! Tell her congrats from your online buddies!

That is, if you don't mind occasionally breaking the "4th wall" (i.e. crossing the line between the real world and the online world).

 

[unclethrill]

I ran 6 test games with nothing but clicking of enter to see when stuff we want goes. Here are the results:

Item ''As early as'' ''As late as'' ''Average''
Oracle 97 115 102

Confucianism 120 167 135

Christianity 159 176 165

Pyramids 141 177 166

Of course these numbers are from the test game with likely different opponents than the real game but they are at least in the ball park for what schedule we need to work towards.
These dates are much later than we are planning to get any of this so I think in general we are pretty safe on all of our immediate goals.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Theories: What has Zara got and what's he been up to?

Spoiler :

I guess I wasn't clear when I said "We still don't know what Zara has to the east. I think he sent his first settler that direction."

What I meant is that I think he sent the first settler he built to the east, which got killed by a wild animal. I mentioned this in my test game notes a few days back.

Yes, that is a plausible theory.

So could be any of the other things that we've mentioned, as well as some new ideas that I'm just coming up with as I focus my braincells on the task:
2. He was dumb like Bismarck in our last test game and built a Settler at Size 1. And then maybe lost it, like you suggested!
3. He delayed Pottery and didn't feel like Irrigating his Flood Plains squares. Maybe his land within the fat cross was thus very Food + Hammer poor.
4. He went for Animal Husbandry for the Cow, only to improve it and then realise that he couldn't use it as part of his fat cross. I've seen newbs make that mistake (trying to "use" Resources within their cultural borders but not within their fat crosses. AIs can make mistakes, too, you know!
5. He teched something awful, such as straight to Iron Working. Maybe he didn't find Iron, or else he'd have had more production.
6. If he is on the Coast (as Sailing may or may not suggest), then building a Work Boat while working a Flood Plains square might have delayed him. If that's the case, then all other players might be in a similar situation as ours. There was an XOTM recently... oh yes, the last WOTM, where an English AI took forever to get going, due to a similar situation.
7. He got into an early war. With Shaka. Either he lost his Settler or has been hiding it since the hostilities began, as the site to the SE is just so juicy (like in our test game with Louis) that he will "hold out" for that City site, no matter what.
8. He built 2 to 3 Workers at Size 1. I have NO IDEA why an AI would do that, but with randomness, who knows?
9. He could have done what you often see AIs do: start on a Wonder, lose a unit, and then produce a unit to replace it. Sometimes, they "forget" to go back to completing said Wonder. Maybe he even then started on a different Wonder. Who knows what these crazy AIs have in mind?
10. He lost his capitol. His Creative borders have expanded the range of a second City, which is the city that we now see. Very, very unlikely, but who knows?
11. He's had a Settler for ages and Barbs are making it roam back and forth. The Barb unit or units are roaming back and forth due to another AI's borders to the east, plus the low number of Cities on the continent preventing the Barbs from rushing, meaning that this Barb unit will stay there for a long time, as Zara won't send out his Settler + Archer party and why would the dude on his east send out anything if he knows that Zara's borders have him blocked in on his west?

So, I would assume that he will send the second settler he builds (due out soon) to the east once again to lay claim to the same spot he tried to get the first time.

So, you are saying the same thing as I was: "due out soon..." i.e. if he hasn't settled yet and if nothing is blocking his way, he must have either just built the Settler or else doesn't have it yet.

There are SO MANY VARIABLES being discussed that I'm having trouble playing a focused test game...

And there are so many theories, suggetions, and proposals flying around that I'm spending most of my time just coming up with replies to them!

 

[unclethrill]

And there are so many theories, suggetions, and proposals flying around that I'm spending most of my time just coming up with replies to them!

I feel your pain!

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Game Years to match Turn Numbers
Feel free to use these values for making the detailing of your Test Game results easier.

Also, you can use this list to "translate" Turns that people list in this game to "Game Years" from other games that you have played, so that you can get a feel for "ohhhh, Turn 141 roughly equates to such and such a date on a different game speed."

Spoiler :

Turn 76, 2100 BC:
Turn 77, 2075 BC:
Turn 78, 2050 BC:
Turn 79, 2025 BC:
Turn 80, 2000 BC:
Turn 81, 1975 BC:
Turn 82, 1950 BC:
Turn 83, 1925 BC:
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[havr]

OK, here is what I am proposing till T90.
Note that the settler for Stonyville will be built & settled after my TS, so maybe we can progress on this TS while still discussing this issue.

NOTE: all my edits are spelling only.

=============================

Civics & Research
=================
Research - 100% at till PH @ T79, 0% on T79, T80, T81, T82, %100 from T83 till end. This will give writing at T92.
Civics + Religion - switch to Hinduism + OR once Delhi starts building Oracle

Units
=====

Worker- finishes Copper, and starts to pre-chop.
Warrior 5 - spawn bust NE (need to find best spot).
North Warrior spawn bust N (on the Hills Forest, 2N of the cows).
New warrior (from silverado) sent to police Delhi, otherwise unhappiness will come.
New worker - pre chop
Warrior 4 - heal then defend Riverdale.

Cities -
========
Delhi -
Work tiles - will work copper only once pop is 5. Till then work stays the same.
Build - Finish worker -> Oracle (we can probably insert a few settler turns after growth for copper at the cost of an additional chop).

Start final choping for Oracle at T88
(num choping per turn: T88 - 1, T89 - 1, AFTER MY TS: T90 - 0, T91 - 1 --> got it)



Silverado -
No change to work tiles.
Finish warrior, build GW for failure cash (another warrior will start costing us).

Riverdale -
Founding - move settler into position, 1W of Zara's cows, settle once see a settler (T81 in my test).
Important - once founded must work River Grass for extra +1 comm, otherwise Writing only at T93.
Build - Monument.

 

[havr]

I feel your pain!

The thing is he is the one bringing up a theory and then replying to himself...
He is confusing and de-confusing himself.

 

[havr]

Let me also say that tomorrow and the day after is an holiday, so I will have more time to play than on Thursday. If we can finialize our plans for me to play tomorrow or the day after that will be great... (on work days I get to play only at 12:30, which is gr8 for test games, but not so gr8 for the actual game)

 

[Mitchum]

The thing is he is the one bringing up a theory and then replying to himself...
He is confusing and de-confusing himself.

I was talking about the fact that there are so many variables because I was in the middle of a test game and I am unsure about research (Pottery -> Med or Med -> Pottery), to fog bust or not, delay River or not, delay Stone or not, chop ASAP or wait for Math, etc.

My comment was not only about the where Zara will settle, although I can see how you read it that way.

 

[Mitchum]

OK, I finished my test game. I back tracked and researched Pottery before Meditation. This delayed Theology from T109 to T116, a delay of 7 turns. This delayed Stone and the quarry by 7 turns as well. However, I was waiting for Math before chopping, so it actually sped that up (T132) due to reduced maintenance of not having Stone settled yet.

So, I completed the Pyramids on T135 (625 BC) with just 5 chops. I was only building the 'Mids for 10 turns with 90% of it coming in on the final 2 turns = reduced chance of losing a lot of hammers. I realize that this is 13 turns slower than unclethrill, so we need to compare the number of forests chopped. My chopping resulted in Delhi only having +8 health, so I was losing a food per turn at 9 pops. How many forests did you chop and what is your situation?

I have 9 pops, a granary, library, 2 temples, Pryamids and Oracle in Delhi. I have a monument and library in River (4 pops IIRC) and a granary??? in Silver (not sure why I built this as this city seems stuck at 1 pop until hunting). I am working 7 of 9 cottages (8 of 9 next turn). I am running break even at 70% slider with 44 beakers/turn.

Regarding culture, the cows are ours (70%) as is the flood plains 2N (50%). Zara is hanging on to the FP NE (67%).

Attached is the save.

 

[Mitchum]

Havr, did I miss your response about the roads on the cow or flood plains tiles? If they are not there, I would like to consider delaying River.

EDIT: I will look at your PPP in more detail later tonight.