SGOTM 13 - One Short Straw

[LowtherCastle]

In fact, iirc, what I did was adjust the slider on the last turn of writing to minimze the beaker OF. That way, we could go 0% on hunting or CoL till we get the Oracle and it's all the same. How's that sound?

 

[mdy]

A couple of queries about the early MM in LC's save:

1) Is it necessary to put hammers into a monument in the capital? Once we have representation happiness here should not be an issue.

2) I can't see us researching priesthood anywhere, I assume this is a typo?

Okay. I think there must also be somewhat of an intrinsic difference though, because the MC/Mids is free to focus on REX rather than beakers, starting with Priesthood. Then of course, there's also the early forge, which helps REXing cities 5 and 6.

True Oracle-philo loses hammers due to working scientists, but it makes up for them by not having to build the Pyramids.

The MC/Mids can bulb it too.

Yes, but without a religion+pacifism it would come too late unless we got lucky.

 

[Mitchum]

Just to be clear, you intend to play through T103 (1425 BC), which includes:

Mysticism -> Masonry -> Mediation -> Priesthood (not seen in the PPP but it was in the game log) -> Writing

Settle Gold -> Marble (on the marble, complete Oracle here in 1400 BC) -> Stone (1N of stone)

The plan going forward from there would be to trade for Alphabet, current GS bulbs Philosophy (hence researching Mediation rather than Polytheism) and then continue on the Astronomy beeline, hopefully picking up at least Calendar and Iron Working in trade. Other than the two GSs needed to bulb Astronomy and the one for Philosophy, what other great people are we targeting?

Would it be better to skip CoL/Philosophy altogether and research Polytheism instead of Meditation? That way, we'd need one less GS. If we only need two GSs for Astro, do we really need Pacifism (and the headache of spreading our religion around) and/or Caste System (Slavery is good on this map anyway). This may have been discussed before but I've gotten confused between the two approaches (i.e. Oracle MC vs. Oracle Philosophy).

EDIT: x-post with mdy

 

[Mitchum]

Reading back throughLC's plan, there will be four GP farms. This implies that we'll want to run Representation-powered scientists, Caste System and possibly Pacifism. If we minimize the number of GPs needed, does it make sense to trade for CoL when possible and skip Philosophy?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Reading back throughLC's plan, there will be four GP farms. This implies that we'll want to run Representation-powered scientists, Caste System and possibly Pacifism. If we minimize the number of GPs needed, does it make sense to trade for CoL when possible and skip Philosophy?

If we skipped Pacifism, then we almost might as well skip Representation.

To me, the big draw of the Great People are the GPP, which makes Pacifism far more valuable in my mind than Representation for running multiple Specialists.

If we were to go for Representation without Pacifism, then I'd even advocate for mostly using Representation for its Happiness bonus and just working a lot of Coastal squares in most Cities, which would mean that we'd hardly be hiring any Representation-enhanced Specialsits.

In fact, I'd even consider saying "let's scrap The Pyramids and build The Colossus instead."


To me, the big draw of The Pyramids is that it synergizes with the Pacifism approach. Take away Pacifism and I'd rather just build a stack of Axes and Galleys and go eliminate Vicky before she becomes a big headache.

Yes, eliminating our only potential trading partner could be risky, but with her only having 1 City, that's really only +1 Commerce for us, while the Hammers saved from eliminating an AI early on would be substantial.


Note that I'm not really advocating this approach of scrapping the Wonders; really I'm just showing strong support to getting Philosophy. On this Food-heavy, low-production map, its a great opportunity for us to leverage Pacifism's multiple GPP; Representation just makes the decision a bit sweeter.

If The Pyramids were at great risk, then I'd probably even be suggesting that we skip them altogether, but the date that LC presented is quite good in my books (500 BC to 500 AD are roughly my observed dates for Emperor AI Pyramids), in that he's building it close to the earliest point that I see AIs build this Wonder, so I'm content to try to get Representation alongside the Pacifism. But it's the Pacifism that's the real draw for me, particularly after seeing how incredibly painful it would be for us to generate more than 2 Great People without this Civic AND having some of the team being not too comfortable with the idea of Oracling Machinery (I'm one of those people, since the late date does put The Oracle at severe risk).

Two Great People will cut it if we Oracle Machinery. Even with Representation, though, I am not too enthused about only having 2 Great Scientists when we set our sights on Oracling Metal Casting.


Also, I think that we'd have to manually research Code of Laws eventually, anyway. It's one of the hardest early-to-mid-game techs to trade for, since, unlike the first 3 Religious techs, it tends to remain a Monopoly tech for a very long time.

 

[babybluepants]

If can agree on that much, I think we should just advance the game to Oracle MC as per LC's plan.

Still not crazy about Pac - if we could get COL in trade later, Philo is a lot of beakers we don't need to research.

'Mids are great here, if we can get it without sacrificing development too much. We can easily make back the hammers in Police State later (with stone, it's 20 maces with forge but without HE, more with HE). Colossus makes no sense to me with the slow hammer start and Astro beeline.

 

[LowtherCastle]

1) Is it necessary to put hammers into a monument in the capital? Once we have representation happiness here should not be an issue.

I'd have to study it again, but I'm pretty sure we need the monument because I'm whipping so much. In fact, the early monument was a "revelation" to me in that it allowed me to postpone Furs for a long time.

2) I can't see us researching priesthood anywhere, I assume this is a typo?

Yes, I forgot to type PH into the PPP. Sorry.

True Oracle-philo loses hammers due to working scientists, but it makes up for them by not having to build the Pyramids.

What we're talking about is prioritizing REX versus Research. REX is how soon the cities get built and how fast they get improved. The Philo route saves hammers on the Pyramids, but the Pyramid hammers don't delay the MC/Mids REX at all. To the contrary, we whip settlers to speed up the Mids. The Philo route simply builds the last two cities later, because Paris has to work 2sci to get CoL by 1175BC, right? Plus, the Philo route poprushes an early Paris library (research), whereas the MC route builds a second wkr (REX). Finally, the Philo route revolts to Confu+Pacifism around 1100BC, thus prioritizing GP spamming over REX. Those two GSes get made, then sit there (perhaps even costing 1gpt in unit costs) for turns and turns. The MC/Mids route waits to build those GPs, because it will score an extra 3 to 3.75/spec.

The Philo route prioritizes research while REXing, the MC route prioritizes REX while researching. Simple as that. It's not inherently good or bad, it's just a decision.

Similarly, you're suggesting we delay the growth of City5 (the Pigs GP Farm in the MC/Mids route) by going CoL-AH. That's also delaying REX by prioritizing research.

In my MC/Mids test I went htg-AH. In fact, that's prioritizing research (+20% bonus on AH) over getting CoL first. Here I agree with you completely. Hunting is not needed yet and is definitely a weak move. I still think we should go AH-CoL, though, because Pigs is one of our two 5sci GP Farms, even though it risks us not being first on CoL, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it. Hopefully, we'll have a better idea of where the AIs are at research-wise around T103.

Yes, but without a religion+pacifism it would come too late unless we got lucky.

Well, I can't see us NOT hving a religion+pacifism. What makes you think an AI has a decent chance of beating us to Philosophy? They would have to research Meditation (only 1 to 2 have so far) AND Mathematics AND Alphabet AND CoL AND pop a GS to bulb Philosophy. Now that's an AI on turbo-steroids!!!

Frankly, I think it's more likely we get beat to Oracle. THe AI slingshots COL. Later pops a GS (least likely in this scenario) and also beats us to Philo.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Just to be clear, you intend to play through T103 (1425 BC), which includes:

Mysticism -> Masonry -> Mediation -> Priesthood (not seen in the PPP but it was in the game log) -> Writing

Settle Gold -> Marble (on the marble, complete Oracle here in 1400 BC) -> Stone (1N of stone)

The plan going forward from there would be to trade for Alphabet, current GS bulbs Philosophy (hence researching Mediation rather than Polytheism) and then continue on the Astronomy beeline, hopefully picking up at least Calendar and Iron Working in trade. Other than the two GSs needed to bulb Astronomy and the one for Philosophy, what other great people are we targeting?

You got it. Mdy is suggesting also bulbing Optics (GS) and/or Engineering (GS or GE).

Would it be better to skip CoL/Philosophy altogether and research Polytheism instead of Meditation? That way, we'd need one less GS. If we only need two GSs for Astro, do we really need Pacifism (and the headache of spreading our religion around) and/or Caste System (Slavery is good on this map anyway). This may have been discussed before but I've gotten confused between the two approaches (i.e. Oracle MC vs. Oracle Philosophy).

The basic idea is to begin loading maces and trebs onto galleons at 1AD.

For starters, CoL is on our Civil Service path for macemen. We beeline Astro for galleons AND beeline CS for maces (AND Engineering for trebs?). Mdy has shown that by bulbing or slingshotting Philo, we can get CoL+Philo "for free" by leveraging pacifism+castes (so the actual cost is spent GPs). But if we add the Pyramids to the mix, then we get an extra 3-3.75 per spec at a cost of 334 and 1t revolt to Rep. That's 1960 over 25t.

Other teams might use their GPs for golden ages. That's another route to go.

Reading back through LC's plan, there will be four GP farms. This implies that we'll want to run Representation-powered scientists, Caste System and possibly Pacifism. If we minimize the number of GPs needed, does it make sense to trade for CoL when possible and skip Philosophy?

Too slow. Pacifism doubles our rate of GP spamming. In other words, we're turning 1 GP (bulbing Philo) into 4GPFarms*TwiceAsFastPerFarm=LotsOfGPs.

EDIT: On second thought, we could think in terms of a GA instead of the Philo bulb. That gives us +100% gppt for 10t, free revolt to CS+Rep+Confu(if possible), doesn't require religion, gives us the hammer+coin boost. Question is, how many more GPs can we produce in that time?

 

[LowtherCastle]

Here's a quick and dirty GP Spam Calculator. Turns out, if we want to avoid a GProphet from Marble, we should run only 2 specs there. Starting at T0, we can get these specs:

T09 Paris, GS or GE
T15 Pigs, GS
T25 Gold, GS
-------------
T31 Paris, GS or GE
T45 Pigs, GS

The first three are enough for Astro+Engineering, if we research Optics by hand. At any point we decide we want any GP, Marble can produce one 5 turns later at most (with proper advance notice, of course).

This also tells us that a golden age instead of bulbing Philo is not a good alternative.

Note that to bulb Engineering with a GS (more beakers than a GE), we need to know Aesthetics.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

EDIT: On second thought, we could think in terms of a GA instead of the Philo bulb. That gives us +100% gppt for 10t, free revolt to CS+Rep+Confu(if possible), doesn't require religion, gives us the hammer+coin boost. Question is, how many more GPs can we produce in that time?

Okay, the Golden Age +100% to GPP only lasts for 10 turns, so it's definitely not as good as Pacifism.

However, there has been some concern over the possibility of not founding a State Religion. In that case, the Golden Age could be our save-our-bacon backup plan.

Skipping Hunting if we aren't founding Fur City for a long time but going for Animal Husbandry before Code of Laws sounds acceptable to me.

If we're okay to try that approach, then, after researching Animal Husbandry, here's what I suggest that we do:

1. Try for Code of Laws in the hopes of founding Confucianism

2. a) If we found Confucianism, then we're in the money, as we'll have a State Religion. We're done.

2. b) If we miss founding Confucianism, we will not complete research on Code of Laws.

3. Upon missing Confucianism, we'll start and complete research on Alphabet.

4. Hopefully, we'll be able to get Math in trade, but if not, then will start and complete research on Math. Obviously, we'll trade for Math, if possible, if we're part-way through researching it when it comes up for trade.

5. We should be close to getting our Great Scientist if we don't have it already.

6. After getting Math, we'll continue to research Code of Laws up until we have 1 turn of Research remaining on it.

7. We won't complete Code of Laws until we are also able to complete the Great Scientist.

8. a) If the Great Scientist already exists, we will complete Code of Laws as soon as possible.

8. b) If we need to wait on the Great Scientist, we'll aim to complete research on Code of Laws on the same turn that the Great Scientist will be born.

9. a) If someone founds Taoism before we can complete our Great Scientist, then we will avoid completing Code of Laws until a Religion randomly spreads to us and we have gotten it manually spread around. This way, we won't HAVE to Lightbulb Philosophy (which is a higher priority than Optics and even Astronomy for a Great Scientist) and we will only complete Research on Code of Laws and get Philosophy if we see the possibility of being able to run a State Religion. Otherwise, we'll use a Great Person for the inferior approach of spawning a Golden Age, but it's still better than getting Philosophy without any Religion in our borders. We might even just choose to go with a 2-Great-Person approach instead of using the Golden Age, but at least our first Great Scientist won't want to Lightbulb the nearly-useless-at-that-point Philosophy tech.

9. b) Ideally, Taoism will still be unfounded on the turn that we learn Code of Laws, which will only happen if we are also able to get the Great Scientist on that turn or earlier. Then, we'll follow the plan as written and will Lightbulb Philosophy, getting Taoism as our State Religion.

9. c) In the even that we are extremely unlucky, someone will found Taoism on the turn that we learn Code of Laws. In that case, we'll have to evaluate the situation--spawning a Golden Age won't necessarily help because any Great Scientist that we spawn will still want to Lightbulb Philosophy first. So, we'll probably end up taking Philosophy but will be unable to get any extra GPP from Pacifism. We might also just decide to forget about Great People and just spam Axemen and Galleys for a late run. We might also just build an Academy and cry. Probably we'll still Lightbulb Philsophy, but this case has such a small chance of happening that we can deal with how to handle this disaster when it happens.


Situation 9. c) really sucks and 9. a) isn't amazing, either, but at least 9. a) gives us the flexibility to avoid "wasting" a Great Person on Philosophy, since Pacifism won't give us any extra GPP without a Religion.


Does that approach sound like a reasonably fair way of reducing the risk of being stuck with Lightbulbing Philosophy but without a State Religion?

 

[shyuhe]

I doubt we'll be beaten to philosophy against emperor AI if we're looking at a BC date.

 

[Mitchum]

I'm fine with LC's current plan of following his PPP through T103, stopping if anything happens that would require a discussion.

@LC I can't open ODS documents, but I'm sure that I could find a converter to XLS if I tried... It seems that you used to have Excel since we used it extensively in the last SGOTM. Are you going to be using Open Office going forward?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

@LC I can't open ODS documents, but I'm sure that I could find a converter to XLS if I tried... It seems that you used to have Excel since we used it extensively in the last SGOTM. Are you going to be using Open Office going forward?

If you're talking about his PPP from message #859, then I have already converted the file for you into Excel format in message #864.


If you're talking about a different file, let me know which one and I can get it converted easily enough.


For your reference, I used the http://www.convertfiles.com/ website, which, at least for me, fails to provide an instantaneous file conversion in Firefox (it could be due to my browser settings or their site sucking), but the "email me a link to the file" functionality works for me as a work-around. If you can find a file conversion website that doesn't require you to enter an email address in order to get your file, please let me know about it.

 

[Mitchum]

@ Dhoom

I was talking about the GP Spam file in post #889. I did see your conversion of the PPP in post #864.

 

[Mitchum]

I was able to convert it for free here without providing an e-mail address. I used Internet Explorer.

Spoiler :

www.freefileconvert.com

 

[LowtherCastle]

I no longr have a copy of Excel, but I checked and can also save my spreadsheets as Excel spreadsheets, so I'll do that in the future. Hopefully, they'll work fine.

 

[Mitchum]

I've seen explicit aggreement for LC to play forward to T103 per his PPP from bbp and myself (sorry if I missed anyone else who has already agreed). At least mdy, shyuhe and Dhoomstriker have been active lately and others are welcome to chime in as well.

How much longer do we give for additional comments/questions before LC can play?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I've seen explicit aggreement for LC to play forward to T103 per his PPP from bbp and myself (sorry if I missed anyone else who has already agreed). At least mdy, shyuhe and Dhoomstriker have been active lately and others are welcome to chime in as well.

How much longer do we give for additional comments/questions before LC can play?

I think that we need slightly clearer communication than that.

For example, we've thrown around a lot of ideas, but I'm not sure which ones we're exactly using.


For example, is the following tech path the current plan?
Mysticism -> Masonry -> Mediation -> Priesthood -> Writing -> Animal Husbandry -> Code of Laws (but stop if someone founds Confucianism) -> Alphabet (stop for certain)?


Are we still building a Monument in Paris? The idea was raised to skip it and LC said that he *thought* that it was needed, but then the conversation kind of died, so I'm not sure of the final outcome there.


I'm still uncertain about the level of detail versus the level of correctness in the "PPP oracle-MC-pyramids" spreadsheet for managing citizens. For example, on Turns 111, 115, and 119, we seem to have discussed citizen assignments for Gold City, particularly in regards to hiring an firing Scientists. However, for Paris' Turn 74, I see no mention of the discussed suggestion to switch either the Corn or a Clam (although I thought that we were doing the Corn, it doesn't matter as much which square we switch as does the fact that we make a switch) to a GH Mine. Then, I see that we're actually completing the Lighthouse in Paris later than indiciated in this discussion of the desire to build an early Lighthouse, such that the PPP has us completing the Ligththouse on Turn 79 while the approach that we discussed has us completing it on Turn 77, then growing while building a Work Boat on Turn 78, only then starting on Settler 2 on Turn 79.


We TALKED about pausing play for certain events, but then the conversation may or may not have made some of those pausing points irrelevant. For example, we had been thinking for a few days there that we would pause play before choosing research of Meditation or Polytheism. Now, it SEEMS that the discussion has gone towards purely Meditation, but MAYBE someone is expecting us to pause play there. It's currently ambiguous, so I wouldn't mind seeing a quick one-line of text in either the PPP document itself or in the PPP forum message stating the intended "pause play" timings.


Do we want live screenshot updates of any "interesting" results that the Work Boats find? Should we therefore be indicating "pause play" sessions not only based on a particular date that we will learn a tech, but also upon in-game events?

For example, should we aim to pause play whenever (if it happens) we happen to meet another AI? It's POSSIBLE that when we meet a new AI, we might want to do things like switching our Espionage Target, declaring war immediately, or other things, like trying to determine which techs that new AI has and then potentially altering our tech path as a result (if, for example, we see that the AI knows Priesthood--I'm not sure the "trick" to know how but I've seen some top players claim to know how--then we might try to research Priesthood before Masonry, so as to shave off some research and then possibly shave off some research if that AI learns Masonry before we finish Priesthood, allowing us to save on research on Masonry). It could even be as simple as needing to make the decision to "explore the lands close to that AI" versus "keep pushing the Work Boat further in the direction that it was traveling (east versus west)."

Do we want periodic screenshots of interesting things that the Work Boat reveals, such as every new Resource within a reasonable distance to our capital? Would we want the Active player to potentially pause play so that people will have a chance to suggest a different settling order? If yes, should we pause play at ANY new Resource or should we perhaps, say something like:
If you see a 2-Food-Resource location within a reasonable distance (say, the inner ring (which isn't possible anymore), the 2nd ring, and the 3rd ring of cities), pause play
If you see a pre-Calendar Commerce Resource within the same reasonable distance, pause play

It might be that the Active player feels that it is not worth building a City for a discovered Silver, but someone else on the team might want to argue for it, hence pausing play at least for a short time might not be a bad idea.

If any Wonder gets built, maybe we should inform the team and temporarily pause play?


Out of those "event-based" pause plays, I would think that we'd consider stopping the playing session if we met another AI, since there is the greatest potential for altering our approach if we meet one.

For the other two things, where we spot a new Commerce Resource (or a group of 2 Food Resources) within a reasonable distance or if a Wonder gets built, it would be nice to see a screenshot of the Resources and at least a message about the Wonder, then probably resuming play in 2 hours or less (probably less time if others are active at the time, potentially even more time if no one else seems to be reading LC's messages). The "2 hour" value is completely an arbitrary recommendation and can thus greatly vary, but it would be nice to have the Active player report this info and then give at least a short period of time for potential responses.


It's probably also a good idea to pause play once Writing is learned, so that we can confirm whether we'll stick with settling Pigs as 5th and Fur as 6th Cities. The techs that we will learn or not learn post-Writing will have an effect on how good these Cities will be to settle.

For example, we might even choose to settle 2-Clams in the east instead of Fur, should we skip Hunting.


I would still like a chance to try to see if I can further optimize the Science Rate for the first few turns of play. However, I can't really do so until I'm certain what those turns are going to be. Yes, it sounds like we're coming towards consensus of following LC's approach, so I can at least know which of the first techs we plan to research are, but until I know for certain what he plans to do with our citizens in Paris on Turn 74, which may or may not affect our Commerce, it's going to be hard to perform that particular optimization. I'd like to assume that he will switch the Corn to the GH Mine on Turn 74, but I don't feel like "making an azz out of you and me," as the saying goes for making assumptions.


I'm not 100% certain, but is the Turn 139, 525 BC date in the PPP the currently-planned Great Scientist birth date? Are the micro decisions for hiring and firing Scientists in Gold City up-to-date in the PPP? It sounded like LC made a slight optimization to the timing just before he uploaded the PPP, but I wasn't certain if he updated the PPP or not after coming up with the optimization, regardless of when he uploaded the file.


Pop-rushing non-Granaries is usually a pretty-straight-forward thing to time, but I would like to know if LC spent the time to optimize the timing of Granary-whipping. For example, would it be worth my while to double-check the timing and see if we could gain a bit by whipping a turn or two earlier or later? Or has this effort already been performed by LC?


So, I would greatly appreciate seeing an updated PPP. I would also appreciate having a chance to review some of the finer details of the updated PPP before the turnset gets played. Less details if LC has already done the work (Granary-whipping timing, for example) or more details if he didn't already try to optimize these dates and if he doesn't mind me volunteering in this way to help out.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Work Boat Exploration?
Also, LC's spreadsheet PPP was about optimizing the turnset but not about exploration, which makes perfect sense.

However, that means that the PPP (and the message that the PPP was attached to) do not discuss what we're going to do with our Work Boat explorers.

So, are we going to go with my suggestion of settling 2-Clams (whenever we get to settling it) on one of the three southern locations, as indicated in the second screenshot in my message #822? If yes, are we then okay if our eastern-most Work Boat heads directly east for exploration purposes?

If yes, is the plan to "generally head east, trying not to cut corners, but not aiming to explore every island, just trying to head east as quickly as possible without cutting any corners along the way"?


Similarly, we will follow a similar algorithm for heading west with our western Work Boat Explorer? Are we cool with using the western-most Work Boat for the exploration, which gets us to the west faster but also leaves the area around the Dyes hidden for now? Or does anyone want to reverse the Work Boats, in that the western-most one nets the Fish while the slightly-less-western Work Boat would first head SW for 3 moves, then NW for 1 move, and finally west along the southern edge of the island that the currently-westernmost Work Boat is sitting to the north of?

My vote is just to use the westernmost Work Boat of those 2 Work Boats in the west and to follow the non-cutting-corners but head-as-directly east/west as possible algorithm that I suggested above.

If we find Vicky, I would ask that we deviate from the above algorithm such that we would clear a path of hidden squares towards her... such that you can trace a line of unhidden squares along the Coast squares to "get into" one of her Cities, in order to open up the chance for Trade Routes with her. I'd suggest that we would do the same with any other AI that we were to meet as a higher priority than heading further east or west, but then resuming our east or west direction of travel after uncovering such a Trade Route path.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Another thought: there are turns where we are working a Coast square for 2 Food and 2 Commerce.

Earlier, we had figured that we would build The Colossus, such that we'd have 2 Food 3 Commerce squares to work, making Cottages seem somewhat silly to work, as the payback time would take too long.

Then, we talked about getting Moai Statues in the capital, a decision which seems to have been delayed to sometime after LC's PPP, since we're mostly building The Pyramids in the capital up until the end of the PPP.

So, now that we aren't aiming to get The Colossus and aren't planning on getting Moai Statues early on, do these facts that put working the capital's Cottage back on the table?


We would need to invest 15 turns of losing 1 early Commerce in a Cottage compared to working a Coast square.

We would then need to spend 30 turns of getting equal Commerce as a Coast square, after which we'd have grown our Hamlet to a Village and would be beating out a non-Colossus-enhanced Coast square.

Probably this discussion only applies to the single Cottage in the capital, since Bureaucracy can actually enhance the value of said Cottages and also since we have already had the "excess" Worker turns to build such a Cottage. In other Cities, even if we do eventually have Workers with nothing better to do than build Cottages, it is probable that we won't have enough time for the investment in Cottages to pay off.

LC gave us two test saved games, with the second one being an updated version of the same turn. The first saved game has us being at 4 turns away from a Hamlet while the second saved game has us being 7 turns away from a Hamlet.

In both saved games, he is building a Workshop on the Grassland square to the NW of Paris.

Also, in both saved games, he is working Coast squares instead of a Cottage on the last turn of play.


So, I am going to venture a guess that the City Governor was the culprit for working the Cottage and that during the real game, he will be able to focus more on the micromanagement of each City and thus will be able to either work or not work a Cottage, as per what we agree.

But, it begs the question... do we want to try to sacrifice this early 15 turns of +1 Commerce for a potential later-game benefit? If the Grassland square had a River (are there going to be ANY Rivers on this map, I wonder?), then working it with a Farm or a Cottage would be a "no brainer" choice compared to working a Coast square. However, without a River, there is that initial investment that has to be paid.

After those 15 turns,we will certainly find time to work the Hamlet, since there are times that we would otherwise work a 2 Food 2 Commerce Coast square, so, given the option of working such a Coast or a 2 Food 2 Commerce Hamlet, we'd obviously work the Hamlet, as the Hamlet would mature but the Coast would not mature. It's just those 15 turns of 1 less Commerce of getting there that's the question.

Then, of course, if we have thoughts of turning the Cottage into a Workshop, then we will likely NEVER recuperate the turns invested in growing the Cottage into a Hamlet, since we'll almost certainly pave over the Hamlet and/or Village before we have had a chance to work it for 30 turns as a Hamlet and 16 or more turns as a Village (at which point we'd make up our investment "on paper" but would actually be getting Commerce later instead of now and might also not be "enjoying" Bureaucracy for a while, so we'd probably STILL be behind at that "supposedly break even" point). Thus, if there is any thought at all of turning that square into a Workshop, then we should try our best to avoid working the Cottage (if the City Governor does it and we don't notice--oh well, no worries).

But, if you think that we might actually want to keep a Village (and later possibly a Town) around, then we should be deciding before LC plays whether or not he should be working that Cottage square in favour of a Coast square.