Building Improvements on Forests versus Forest Chopping and then building the improvement on the Chopped square
btw a cottage build over the forest is best here than chop + cottage
What's the difference?
A Forest takes 5 turns to Chop. A Grassland square takes 6 turns to Cottage.
A Grassland Forest takes 11 turns to Cottage.
5 + 6 = 11
In fact, if you start to Cottage the Grassland Forest, say, for 3 turns, then turn around and Chop the Forest for 5 turns, you will correctly have only 3 turns remaining to complete the Cottage.
The only way to go wrong is to pre-build the Cottage on the Forest for longer than 5 turns, then to turn around and Chop the Forest. The reason here is that if you Chop a Forest, as opposed to building a Cottage over top of a Forest, then no Cottage will "appear" once the Forest Chop has been completed.
Your invested turns into building a Cottage while the Forest exists will be maintained, up until a cap: the cap is that there will be at least 1 turn remaining to complete the Cottage no matter how many turns you were building the Cottage for when the Forest existed.
Examples:
"Okay to do" example:
When the Forest exists, build the Cottage for X turns, where X = 1 to 5 turns. Next, Chop the Forest for 5 turns. It will take you 6 - X turns to complete the Cottage (5 turns to 1 turn).
Note that in the above case, there is no difference in the total number of Worker turns required compared to either:
a) building a Cottage on top of the Forest
or
b) first Forest the Chop and then building a Cottage
The difference is the timing of when you will receive the Hammers for the Forest Chop
"Bad to do" example:
When the Forest exists, build the Cottage for Y turns, where Y = 6 to 10 turns. Next, Chop the Forest for 5 turns. It will still take you 1 turn to complete the Cottage. So, you will have spent (6 to 10 turns) + 5 turns to get to a point where you will still need to spend 1 more turn in order to finish the Cottage.
That means that it will take you between 12 to 16 Worker turns instead of 11 Worker turns.
Maybe you knew all that, but if you did, then I don't understand why you said that one method was better than the other. The difference, as long as you ignore the "Bad to do" possibilities, is the timing of when we get the Forest's Hammers.
Take your Time--Testing counts as being active, too
I think I won't play tomorow as I posted yesterday considering the amount of tests I need to run before going live...
That's fine, as far as I am concerned. I'd rather that you feel you were able to spend sufficient time testing and feel happy about your turnset than to have you feel that you were rushed into playing too soon. As long as you are spending the time usefully (trying out additional test runs, for example), then as far as I am concerned, you are properly fulfilling your role as the "active" player.
3-pop-whipping versus 2-pop-whipping a Settler
THe delay is due to maintenance.
I suppose that it becomes a balance between Hammers received and whipping Unhappiness.
For example, unless we start to incur Unit Costs for having too many units, there is nothing to say that you can't 3-pop-whip (instead of 2-pop-whip) a Settler for maximum use out of our Food and then have the Settler sit around waiting within our Cultural Borders until you have learned the required techs.
Of course, if you find that we are whipping too soon and are thus accumulating too much whipping Unhappiness, then delaying the Settler has some merit. We will temporarily no longer be getting a roughly 2-to-1 conversion ratio for our excess Food into Hammers and will instead only be getting a 1-to-1 ratio for that 1-population-point worth of whipping. Still, if Unhappiness is becoming an issue, then delaying the whipping action can make sense.
Early Library
RRRaskolnikov said:
t82: writing...
t85: wb done in paris (size 5), starting a new one to grow size 6...
Maybe a lib in the capital could help
It is certainly worth considering building a Library... say, start to build it and keep building it for as long as it is possible to remain a 3-pop-whip, switching to a Work Boat only if the Library becomes a 2-pop-whip before growing to Size 6. Then, on the turn that you grow into Unhappiness at Size 6, you could 3-pop-whip the Library.
The idea would be that you'd turn off research after learning Writing, in order to accumulate a bit of Gold, then resume research on the turn after whipping the Library.
Further, we wouldn't have to worry about delaying a Settler, since we'd be building a Library in place of a Settler, so our research rate wouldn't suffer in the short term by placing another City.
Stone City Location
RRRaskolnikov said:
but with a work boat ready for the fish -settling north east of stone-
Hmmm, settling there means that we will only get a Magical Fish + Pig City by settling on top of the Pig Resource.
At least we could delay researching Animal Husbandry for a while, but it does make for a relatively marginal Pig City.
Ideally, I would suggest that we place the Pig and Stone Cities as follows, in order to be able to work the Pig, get access to the Stone square without a border pop, and to be able to keep Maintenance Costs on the Stone City down a bit. Further, it means that if we recently pop-whipped a Settler in the capital when we go to settle Stone City, Stone City can probably temporarily borrow a GH Mine from the capital.
This approach gives us several possible options:
a) Settle the Pig City sooner, since our capital's Cultural Borders will have expanded over top of the Magical Fish, allowing for instant netting. The undesirable part about this approach is that we get 1 less Food working a Desert Hills square as our City's second improved square than we do by working a Grassland Hills square. Note that we won't be able to work the Pig as our second improved square for quite some time.
OR
b) Settle the Stone City where I suggested, but plan to initially borrow the capital's GH Mine, then work the GHStone Mine once it is completed, while building a Monument. We'll have to wait a while before we can net the Magical Fish.
OR
c) Settle the Copper City location that I indicated before we settle the Stone City. The Magical Fish can be netted immediately and we can begin work on a Monument that will be whipped. By the time that we are ready to settle Stone City, it's Magical Fish will also be nettable, since the Copper City's Cultural Borders will have expanded over top of the Stone City's Magical Fish.
The Steps for your Test Runs?
RRRaskolnikov said:
I went on with this version
How are you recording your test run's steps? Using a spreadsheet? If so, would you mind zipping-up and uploading the relevant spreadsheet alongside the test saved game?
Even if you are recording your steps using a method other than a spreadsheet, can you kindly provide us with those steps? Not only does it help us to understand what you did, but it also means that you will later remember what you did.
Wonders
RRRaskolnikov said:
maybe emperor AI isn't that fast on the mids
I'd say that it will go somewhere between 500 BC and 500 AD, with most games it not being built until around 1 AD or afterwards.
RRRaskolnikov said:
isn't 1100 bc too risky? (I don't like 1375 bc already tbh)
I would agree that these dates are a bit risky. It wouldn't hurt to have a backup plan in place (such as building The Oracle in the capital) if, for example, we find that Stonehenge is built early (which is often a good indication that The Oracle will be built early-on, too).
I think that for anyone who does not want to build The Oracle in one of our established Cities, such as the capital, they need to decide which possibility they prefer the most:
a) We lose The Oracle to an AI
OR
b) We get The Oracle and take a relatively-cheap tech like Code of Laws or Metal Casting AND our first Great Person ends up being a Great Prophet
Which possibility is worse?
) for a border pop.
