SGOTM 13 - T'dr'duzk b'hazg t't

[AlanH]

BtS SGOTM 13 - Napoleon's Revenge

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[Benginal]

Round 1: 4000 BC to 2475 BC (turns 0-61)
Played: by Neilmeister.
Settled: 2E1N on the plains hill.
Built: Worker, Workboat, Workboat, Galley, Lighthouse
Teched: Fishing -> Mining -> Sailing -> Mysticism -> Meditation
Links: Part 1, Part 2

Spoiler :

Our discussion began with an analysis of what we were trying to do and the best way to go about doing it. We were assigned the task of what to do, namely win a domination or conquest victory. We didn't know if the other AIs were all on one landmass, reachable only by caravel, what their disposition towards us was going to be, and many other things. We agreed that it was unlikely we were going to be able to mount an effective early rush against an AI and concluded we were going to have a to wait quite sometime before the war part of this sgotm began. As such, we realized the need to establish a significant home empire before going on the offensive. That would mean many cities at least a few of which were useful. Unfortunately, the Great Lighthouse was not available. We decided on pursuing the next best wonder for water heavy maps, the Colossus. This would make the many water tiles in our empire useful tiles and ones we wouldn't mind working. The other key components of our strategy would be high population cities that could work those water tiles and be whipped hard. After our empire was set up we could whip it down and take over the world. With a macro scheme in mind we set about attempting to optimize our early game micro.

The settling discussion was obviously a huge part of our beginning discussion. We moved the warrior up to the hill first to give us as much information as possible. Settling in place would give us a lot of food for fast growth and the ability to whip heavily, it would be short on production outside of the whip though. Settling on the corn was also considered, but was abandoned when we realized it didn't have enough food to merit the extra hills. Settling on the plains hill was appealing for several reasons. It would get off to a quick start with the double hammers, claim two grassland hills that could be mined right away, and still claim three food resources. We decided that despite wasting the forest by settling on it, that the plains hill would be the best long term site and thus our capital was founded.

Our tech path was designed to give us the ability to improve all the tiles in our capital and then get us to the Oracle for a Metal Casting bulb. We researched Fishing first for the ability to build some workboats to improve our clams. Next up was mining so we could improve our grassland hills. Sailing would let us build explore galleys and a lighthouse, which some testing proved was a worthwhile build before we started on a settler. After Sailing we went Mysticism -> Meditation for the quickest route to Priesthood and the Oracle. Unfortunately, had we gone for Polytheism, we could have founded Hinduism. We decided Meditation was better because thorough testing showed that the Oracle was built around turn 100 and as early as turn 95 and we definitely did not want to miss out on the Oracle.

Builds went worker first. One of the reasons we moved to the plains hill site as it would validate a worker first build. Settling in place meant the worker had very little to do and we'd end up building a warrior. Moving to the plains hill let us build a worker first who could then farm, mine, mine, and road up the corn for health and the forest to be chopped later. After the worker we went workboat, workboat both of which were turned into fishing boats on the two clams. A galley for some quick exploration came next to see if any adjustments to our grand plan were needed. We were also hoping to get a settler soon and we wanted some idea on where to settle our next city. After the galley we built a lighthouse which was proven in some micro testing to be worth it.

The round ended with us building our first settler, our capital significantly improved from 60 turns ago, Priesthood started, and stone discovered.

Round 2: 2450 BC to 1950 BC (turns 62-82)
Played: by Trystero.
Settled: Orleans 1S of the pigs on the island directly to our east.
Built: Settler, Oracle (partial), Workboat
Teched: Priesthood -> Bronze Working
Met: Joao, Victoria
Links: Part 1, Part 2

Spoiler :

The round began uneventfully. We continued for our goal of bulbing Metal Casting with the Oracle. Neilmeister spent too much time looking at the team graphs and deduced from the power graphs that many teams were going early Bronze Working. We decided that we really wanted the Oracle and therefore beelined Priesthood leaving Bronze Working for later, not too much later though. We explored with the galley a little bit so that we would have some idea of what to do with our first settler. Trystero stopped the round in the middle to allow for some discussion on where to build Orleans.

Funnily enough the city site we eventually settled was not any of these three, but one east of the northernmost dot, directly south of the pigs. This was done once we realized we could settle there and still work the fish as our capital would get its second border pop and claim the fish. Unfortunately, it meant a detour to Animal Husbandry. We decided that with two 6 food resources, and the small distance from the capital, the city where we put it would give the best short term return and also be a decent city for the entire game.

Much debating was done on building the pyramids. We eventually voted against it for two reasons. The first is that we didn't think we had the hammers to spare on it. The second was that we had already agreed on a strategy of growing very big cities and working lots of coastal tiles. For this strategy to work we'd need to be in Hereditary Rule and therefore nerf the benefits of the Pyramids. It was however noted that Police State might also be useful later on. So we kept the idea open of rushing the pyramids with a forge taught Great Engineer, but decided that building it honestly would not be a part of our game plan. We had similar, but less conclusive, discussions about the marble, Aesthetics, and the Parthenon and Great Library at this point. The marble was a less attractive site and any important thought about that discussion could be put on hold, so they were.

The round continued with Hinduism being founded on turn 71. We were disappointed that it went so late since it meant we could have easily founded the religion had we researched to Priesthood through Polytheism instead of Meditation. But we had decided that running the risk of missing the Oracle was too great and so clenched our teeth and continued marching.

The next 10 turns saw us meet Joao and Victoria, both of whom we met coming from the northeast. These two AIs were not already displeased with us which was a relief since we were worried they might have been programmed as such. Neither of them had founded a religion or researched Alphabet yet. Victoria had 1 city while Joao had 3 and the two of them were pleased with each other.

This round also saw us discover the I'm sure infamous copper under the jungle tile. Our desire for the Colossus made the copper extremely attractive, but our lack of Iron Working made the city site incredibly lame. Either we settled on the copper and couldn't work what would be a huge boost in hammers to our empire later. Or we settled next to the copper and then didn't have access. A tricky move by the map maker and one we would discuss at great length later.

The round finished with our empire looking something like this and plans for a Metal Casting bulb almost complete.

Round 3: 1925 BC to 1125 BC (turns 83-115)
Played: by Alamankarazieff.
Settled: Lyons 1N of the stone on the island directly to our east.
Teched: Pottery -> Metal Casting (oracle) -> Animal Husbandry -> Writing -> Masonry
Built: The Oracle
Met: Catherine
Links: Whole Part

Spoiler :

The first two rounds were played very much as a team. We had worked out the micro so that there was not very much room for creativity for the players. But after the initial excitement of the game wore off we all remember how busy we were with our other activities. As such, Alaman played this round almost entirely by himself. Kudos to him for doing a great job!

The round started with a revolt into slavery. We had deduced from the power graphs on the SGOTM home page that many teams had researched Bronze Working much earlier than we had. This might have been because those teams settled in place and were thus missing the extra hammer. But whatever the reason our revolt on turn 82 was probably one of the latest. We made up for it by whipping extensively both in this round and throughout the rest of the game, never even leaving slavery. The first thing we whipped was the Oracle. Extensive tests were done and it was determined that it was possible to lose the Oracle any time after about turn 95. So on turn 92, to be very safe, the Oracle was whipped and Metal Casting chosen as our free technology.

Infrastructure was also whipped and built in all of our cities. The capital constructed a granary and a monument, in that order, and then started on boats. It would build our second galley and an emergency whipped trireme before the round was ended. The second city first built a settler that would settle on the same island south of it to claim the stone and then started on a library so that the fish and pigs could feed two scientists and get us an Academy for the capital as soon as possible. This was a key part of our plan of using Paris as a sort of one city challenge city. We also planned on running Bureaucracy, and building both the Moai Statues and Heroic Epic in Paris. The city would become a powerhouse producing two units every three turns for much of the game. You'll notice that there was no mention of Oxford. We were optimistic that this game could be well wrapped upfinished before the expense of six universities and the national wonder paid off. The new city, Lyon, started on a monument to pop its borders and be able to work the fish.

Techs this round were required. Pottery for the ability to build granaries and pop Metal Casting. Animal Husbandry to improve the pigs in our second city. Writing to build libraries and work scientists. Masonry for a Quarry on the stone. Looking back we decided that Masonry probably could have been delayed, but we wanted to keep the option of building the Pyramids open.

Our galley continued to travel east and eventually met Catherine, sigh. We were all pretty sure that she was going to be one of the AIs on the map, but her presence is never welcome, even when expected. Our second galley was sent west to find a spot for our fourth city, and it did just that. The excellent gold, fish, clam, clam site was discovered and the settler that was being worked on in Paris at the end of the round was all ready to get over there and give us both a happy resource and some more commerce to fuel further expansion. Unfortunately, as Alaman was finishing his turnset, not one, but two barbarian galleys appeared north of Paris with the plan to "raid, pillage, plunder and otherwise pilfer their measly black guts out" - Jack Sparrow. As a neccesary response, Alaman whipped a trireme in Paris to protect its seafood. This left Paris with 43 turns of whip anger to work off, but hopefully protection enough.

Round 4: 1100 BC to 525 BC (turns 115-139)
Played: by Benginal.
Settled: Rheims on the 2 clams, fish, gold island to our west.
Teched: Alphabet
Met: Willem van Orange, Isabella, Ragnar
Circumnavigated: The World
Links: Whole Part

Spoiler :

Yay, my turn! This was my first ever SGOTM turnset, a historic moment indeed. It was quite fun to play, if not stressful. I spent quite a while working on my report. So if you want a super in depth report feel free to go see the link provided for the turnset. But for the lazies out there I'll rewrite some of the key happenings and discussions.

Most of the discussion was about the tech path. We were trying to keep in mind our overall goal of expansion and eventual domination. But there were several different paths that all seemed attractive. Monarchy was a very attractive tech for us as we wanted to get some HR garrison in place quickly. Alphabet for trading looked nice as did code of laws and aesthetics to serve as trade bait and wonder/religion allowers. In the end, we chose Alphabet -> Currency followed by Aesthetics -> Lit. We hoped that we could trade for the other techs we needed like Iron Working and Monarchy with Metal Casting and Alphabet and then build the ever welcome Great Library. These would come later though. For my turnset Alphabet was all that was teched.

We settled the gold fish clams site at the beginning of this round and hooked up the gold soon. The cities continued to build a mix of infrastructure, settlers, and workboats. Along with a few galleys and triremes. Too few as it turned out. The trireme that was emergency whipped at the end of the last round died to the second barb galley but we were able to defeat that second one with a galley of our own. Whips continued to be a central part of our strategy and whip happiness was becoming a problem. We were very hopeful that Monarchy could be acquired quickly.

In terms of exploration this round was very exciting. There have not been many times when I have actually yelled out when playing civ. Usually they are bad yell outs like, "HOW THE ** DID I LOSE THAT?". My roommates have grown accustomed. But in this case I realized that the minimap had stopped expanding and I was just a few turns away from circumnavigation. A good thing we just sent that galley due east because it allowed us circumnavigate the world at a very early date. The galley met Willem Von Orange, Isabelle, and eventually Ragnar, the closest AI, on the way. So by the end of my turnset, at 525 BC we knew all the AIs and had circumnavigated the globe.

Knowing who the AIs were also validated our decision to not research Monarchy ourselves. There were a lot of HR as favorite civic leaders out there. The relatively short round ended with some interesting options. Ragnar would declare war on Izzy for all of our techs. And a what we thought was nearby London had Stonehenge and the Temple of Artemis and Victoria didn't have metals. Come the end of the round our empire and map looked like this:

And our tech situation like this:

Round 5: 525 BC to 200 BC (turns 139-160)
Played: by Brian Shanahan.
Settled: Tours, 1NW of the Copper
Tech Traded: Alphabet for Iron Working & Polytheism
Lost: A defending galley at 70% odds, a defending Trireme at 96% odds, all our fishing nets
Links: Part 1, Part 2

 

[Benginal]

Round 6: 200 BC to 100 AD (turns 160-180)
Played: by Drlake.
Settled: Two Cities
Tech Traded: Metal Casting for Code of Laws, Mathematics, Monarchy, & Calender; Alphabet for Monotheism
Teched: Currency, Aesthetics, Literature
Built: The Colossus
Links: Part 1, Part 2

Round 7: 100 AD to 520 AD (turns 180-208)
Played: by Trystero.
DoWed: by Willem (took Chartres)
Teched: Music, Civil Service,
Built: The Great Library
Links: Whole Part

Round 8: 520 AD to 900 AD (turns 208-235)
Played: by Neilmeister.
DoWed: Ragnar (took three cities)
Declared Peace: Willem, Ragnar
Teched: Construction, Machinery, Paper
Tech Traded: Music for Theology & Compass
Built: Maces & Catapults
Links: Whole Part

Round 9: 900 AD to 1160 AD (turns 235-261)
Played: by Alamankarazieff.
DoWed: Ragnar (took 3 cities)
Declared Peace: Ragnar (Hunting & Horseback Riding)
Teched: Education, Philosophy
Tech Traded: Music & Civil Service for Feudalism, Drama, Archery, Engineering & Optics


Round 10: 1160 AD to 1355 AD (turns 261-291)
Played: by Benginal
DoWed: Ragnar (took 3 cities, razed one, destoryed civ), Isabella (took 10 cities, destroyed civ)
Lost: 6 macemen, 6 trebuchets, 7 catapults, 4 galleys
Teched: Chemistry
Tech Traded: Philosophy & Gunpowder for Guilds, Guilds & Education for Astronomy
Born: A Great Merchant at 17% odds
Links:Part 1, Part 2

 

[Benginal]

Round 11: 1355 AD to 1505 AD (turns 291-321)
Played: by drlake
DoWed: Willem (took 8 cities)
Declared War: Victoria (we took 1 city from her)
Teched: Steel, Liberalism (beaten by WvO), Communism
Tech Traded: Steel for Banking, Printing Press, Scientific Method, Economics, & Constitution; Scientific Method for Nationalism; Economics & Liberalism for Military Tradition
Revolted: to endgame Civics (HR, Buro, Slavery, SP, FR)
Links: Part One, Part Two


Round 12: 1505 AD to 1615 AD (turns 321-343)
Played: by neilmeister
Continued Warring: Willem (took 3 cities, Corporation for Peace, took 1 city, destroyed civ), Victoria (took 6 cities)
DoWed: Catherine (took 4 cities)
Settled: 8 cities
Teched: Replaceable Parts, Rifling, Slider off
Links: Whole Part



Round 13: 1615 AD to 1704 AD (turns 343-362)
Played: by Benginal
Continued Warring: Victoria (took 2 cities, destroyed civ); Catherine (took 2 cities)
Declared Peace: Catherine (city and world map)
DoWed: Catherine (took 4 cities, razed 1 city, destroyed civ)
Settled: 18 cities
Teched: Biology, Divine Right (GP bulb)
Won: The Game (Domination)
Links: Whole Part

 

[Brian Shanahan]

Ok good Benginal, and from now on you shall be known as Grag Benginal (as is due to our scribe). I of course am the Low King, which means ye all get to argue with me as much as ye want, and I can try to tell ye what to do. Other posts will be filled shortly.

So we finally get an SGOTM that fits the name and nature of our team. Today is a good day for someone else to die indeed.

For role-play purposes were a group of drunken dwarfs (note the spelling, and remember that 100 drunken dwarfs consist of about 150 alliances), who've had it up to here with all the humans calling us "lawn ornaments" and making short jokes. So we've decided to get revenge on them by decapitating them at the knees, with the help of our friend and honorary dwarf Napoleone Buonaparte. Of course if we see any trolls, it's Koom Valley all over again, the treacherous swine.

I'll crib over the two tests that Neil stole for our benefit too.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=281918&d=1297027666
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=281919&d=1297027666

If ye want to make yere own go ahead.

Final edit: Last person to sign up gets to be Cheery Littlebottom.

 

[neilmeister]

And were off........

At last, man I have been busting to get started on this.

I haven't played any test games yet, as I wanted to wait for this thread to open first.

First thoughts: Tiny Islands, this normally means that Food & Commerce are OK, but there aren't many hammers. This does give us one advantage, in that our home islands are almost invulnerable to attack, apart from barb galley's pillaging our nets. Each city can have 1 warrior defending.

Colossus could be a critical wonder, since we are stuck in a tiny island zone.
Oracling Metal Casting could be a very useful strategy.

We start with Agriculture & Wheel, and we are Charismatic & Organized, so we get half price lighthouses & courthouses, and get +1 happiness for free, and +1 from monuments. Half price lighthouses in a tiny island zone is a nice bonus.

This is what I am going to try first:

Tech order: Fishing -> Mining -> Sailing -> BW -> Myst -> Poly -> PH
Build order: worker, WB, WB, galley, settler, warrior
Worker order: farm corn, mine hill (either), mine other hill, road corn.


edit: this worked pretty well. I Oracled MC in 1375BC, could have taken CoL instead.

Fishing must come first, so that Paris can start the WB when it finishes the worker. Mining is completed before the worker finishes the corn farm. If Sailing is next, we can complete 2 WB's just before Sailing is teched, so we can build a galley. The settler is built while we are at pop 5.


edit2: I have updated the test save, to correct some of the tiles, and also to give us Copper close by. I am convinced we will have copper, somewhere in the starting. region.

 

[Trystero]

Well, I'm not particularly keen on the moniker "Cheery Littlebottom", so I'm signing in.

Hey guys! And welcome to our new members Benginal (The Eager) and Alamankarazieff. I too am glad to get started again, and anxious to give the d'harak what they have coming. "Today is good day for someone else to die!"

Most of my thinking about this game so far has been along the lines of Neil's: Oracle MC for Colossus.

Edit: I'm willing to host the team spreadsheet on Google docs again for this game. I've set up a private one and given Brian, Chris, and drlake full editing permission. I think you should be getting an email to the addresses you gave me last game. If not, I can post a link. Benginal and Alamankarazieff: you can PM me your email address and I can add you to the permissions list.

Edit2: ParadigmShifter: I never got your email last game, so you might need to PM it to me so you can look at it, even if you are not going to use it.

 

[drlake]

signing in!

Edit: Went through password recovery with Google Docs, so I can now access the micro plan. The starting plan neil lays out sounds promising to me. I hadn't thought it through in that way (almost never go for the Oracle) but with the GLH gone the Colossus is going to be a valuable wonder to have. We'll see about Copper, but I sure hope it is in close!

 

[Brian Shanahan]

Try could you link to the spreadsheet for us please. Nice to see responses too. I'll PM PS and Alan to let them know about the thread.

And I'm going to quote Gumbolt from the maintenance thread:

I think all team captains should advice their team members to use the subscribe to thread options or bookmark your teams page directly. This is especially true on mobile devices where touch screens can be hard to control.

If everyone does the above it leaves very little excuse for accidentally clicking on a wrong thread.

Perhaps also remind them to view the maintenance thread(This thread) and the reference thread to make sure they are up to date with possible game issue and the way these games work.

 

[Alamankarazieff]

And here I am. Sailing dwarfs ? Hmm, I hope we packed enough dwarf bread.
Oracling Metal casting seems good, I mean, I don't know who started to think that putting a young girl on drugs and doing as she said was a great idea, but well 2500 years later, we still perpetuate the tradition in video games.
Metal Casting also allow us to build triremes, which are vital to protect fish and clams against barbarians. Nothing more annoying than this 50/50 fights between galleys.
I might also add that even though we are surrounded by tiny islands, the map is NOT an "archipelago tiny islands" map. Accordingly, heavy scouting is in order to be sure how precisely the mapmakers tried to screw us.

I'll try a test game too soon.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Signing in.

 

[Brian Shanahan]

Signing in.

Here at last Cpl. Littlebottom.

 

[drlake]

Here at last Cpl. Littlebottom.

LOL.

Started a game with Napoleon on a standard sized tiny islands archipelago map, emperor/epic, to get a feel for the basic situation. Regenerated the map until I got something like what we're looking at. Did not go for the GLH. Followed the tech and build paths for the first part indicated by neil above.

Observations:
Definitely need Triremes to keep barb galley depredations under control. Without them, we'll lose way too many galleys defending our sea resources.
The map script (and presumably the one we'll be playing on) is pretty hammer poor. Slavery ftw!
It's worth pushing out scout galleys and triremes early to get the circumnavigation bonus to sea movement.
With luck we'll have copper, but even without it we should be able to get the Colossus as long as we aren't stupid and don't trade MC away too soon.

I haven't gotten to the stage when I would be doing any warring yet. Definitely a different type of map to play, though.

 

[Benginal]

My thoughts

Settling: As I see it we have two options of where to plant Paris. We could settle in place or we could move to the plains hill 2E1N. Settling in place is going to be my vote as it saves a turn, saves a forest, gives us an extra clam, and gives us the ability to put another city on our starting island. Moving to the plains hill means we sacrifice 20 early hammers, but get an extra hammer for maybe ~200 turns )). I'm going to say that the hammers from the chop has the potential to be almost as useful as the extra hammer from plains hill settling. Overall, I'm all for going with settling in place (this seems to be the group consensus as well)

Early Techs: I'm going to agree almost completely with neil m. We start with Agriculture and the Wheel. So the corn is already taken care of. Fishing will allow us to improve the clams and start on a workboat asap. I think we'll need to talk about when to start on the boat, I'll talk about that below. Mining is a good next tech. I'm undecided atm about what our third tech should be. I agree that the next two should be Sailing and BW, but I'm unconvinced that Sailing should come first. Bronze working will let us chop two forests and revolt to slavery. After that I agree that beelining for the Oracle is a good move. While we build the Oracle we'll research Pottery (note to self: finish pottery before you finish the oracle ... I have done this before, )

City Builds: Worker first makes sense to me. He'll be busy enough with farming the corn, mining the hill, and building a few roads, not that these are uesful. I'm unsure if we should finish the worker first before starting on the workboat. We'll be trading 3f for 2f and 3c. So it's not a completely obvious decision. The 2f 2c will also be online sooner (I think, I'll test game to confirm). So maybe interrupting the worker for a workboat will make sense. After those two first units come out I agree that another workboat is a good idea. But what do we want to do with him -- explore or improve a second clam?

Next Cities: I think that this map is going to represent, at least somewhat, Europe. That is, we're on a silly little island. But then five of the other AIs will be on a large mainland (Catherine, Frederick, Isabella/Louis/Charlemagne/others) and then on another larger island will be one more AI (Victoria). Therefore, I think we should do our very best to find this mainland as quickly as possible and then SETTLE ON IT. This I think is going to be key to a faster finish time as attacking from land is immensely easier than attacking amphibiously. A few more cities on islands is alright, but I want to get to that mainland asap. If we have to wait for galleons then obviously the plan is different, but I find that unlikely.

I'm pretty busy this week with midterms, but I'll try to get in a few test games on the first 50 turns or so. The hard part of the first few turns, as with all stupid water starts, is going to be managing improving the seafood and exploring.

 

[Trystero]

Try could you link to the spreadsheet for us please.

Sure! Here's the link: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc...HBXcDhpOHBwVi1rOWVnRnc&hl=en&authkey=CN-zsO0E

Note that posting it here means that lurkers can look at it as well as team members, but only team members (who've given me email addresses) can edit.

Edit: Benginal, you are signed up for the spreadsheet.

Edit2:

LOL.

Started a game with Napoleon on a standard sized tiny islands archipelago map, emperor/epic, to get a feel for the basic situation. Regenerated the map until I got something like what we're looking at. Did not go for the GLH. Followed the tech and build paths for the first part indicated by neil above.

Note that the map description says:

You start surrounded by tiny islands (you are after all in exile). Your European opponents have rather more land available.

So a Big and Small map might be a better testing option. Especially since the AI doesn't do as well on Archipelago maps.

 

[Brian Shanahan]

No problem with lurkers looking, if they're dedicated they may even give us a tip or two.

 

[drlake]

@Benginal: Game speed is Epic, so it is 30 hammers for the chop. I personally don't like settling on hills when there are so few available, since you get a lot more total production out of mining them (1h for capital +4 for mined PH > 2h for capital + grassland with workshop until quite late), so I'm with you on SIP. I do agree that we should consider doing the first WB before finishing the worker, and maybe the second as well.

@Trystero: I'm guessing Medium and Small, rather than Big and Small. That said, trying to get a small island start using one of those scripts is harder than just going Tiny Islands. I tried several, and kept getting put on a large island or small continent. Since I'm mainly doing this to test basic approaches, it doesn't seem to matter that much if it is not an exact match to the game map, and the initial phase of the game will probably play out closer on an archipelago map than it will on a large island or small continent. I could use WB to mess with things, but would rather play it straight to get a feel for it.

 

[Trystero]

City Builds: Worker first makes sense to me. He'll be busy enough with farming the corn, mining the hill, and building a few roads, not that these are uesful. I'm unsure if we should finish the worker first before starting on the workboat. We'll be trading 3f for 2f and 3c. So it's not a completely obvious decision. The 2f 2c will also be online sooner (I think, I'll test game to confirm). So maybe interrupting the worker for a workboat will make sense. After those two first units come out I agree that another workboat is a good idea. But what do we want to do with him -- explore or improve a second clam?

Note that if we settle in place, the worker can't mine any of the hills in the BFC prior to chopping, so farming the corn is only immediate improvement that can be made. I think this might argue for BW before Sailing: We can chop for hammers/mining, whip for production, and see if we do have copper nearby for the Colossus. I'll have to run some test games, though.

Next Cities: I think that this map is going to represent, at least somewhat, Europe. That is, we're on a silly little island. But then five of the other AIs will be on a large mainland (Catherine, Frederick, Isabella/Louis/Charlemagne/others) and then on another larger island will be one more AI (Victoria). Therefore, I think we should do our very best to find this mainland as quickly as possible and then SETTLE ON IT. This I think is going to be key to a faster finish time as attacking from land is immensely easier than attacking amphibiously. A few more cities on islands is alright, but I want to get to that mainland asap. If we have to wait for galleons then obviously the plan is different, but I find that unlikely.

My concern with beelining for the mainland is that it will depend how far away it is. If we settle too far from the capital early on, the maintenance costs will kill us.

Also, drlake: The other problem with archipelago for tests vs big and small maps is that the AI is more likely to prioritize Sailing, which will lead to earlier barb galleys. On a B&S map we might have more leeway before the barbs show up.

 

[drlake]

Good points, Trystero.

Tech order does favor BW > Sailing, so we can actually use those hills. Might want to hold off chopping them until we're working on the Oracle and Colossus, though.

Where we settle depends on the map. Thankfully, with Organized we are slightly better able to handle the likely city sprawl we'll be forced into.

 

[Benginal]

@Benginal: Game speed is Epic, so it is 30 hammers for the chop. I personally don't like settling on hills when there are so few available, since you get a lot more total production out of mining them (1h for capital +4 for mined PH > 2h for capital + grassland with workshop until quite late), so I'm with you on SIP. I do agree that we should consider doing the first WB before finishing the worker, and maybe the second as well.

Ah right. I forgot about that whole epic speed deal. I usually avoid epic, so I'll have a brief period of adjustment.

Note that if we settle in place, the worker can't mine any of the hills in the BFC prior to chopping, so farming the corn is only immediate improvement that can be made. I think this might argue for BW before Sailing: We can chop for hammers/mining, whip for production, and see if we do have copper nearby for the Colossus. I'll have to run some test games, though.

Good point. I somehow got it into my head that that eastern green hill was in the BFC. So yeah, I'm even more inclined now to leave off the worker for later and get out some workboats instead.

My concern with beelining for the mainland is that it will depend how far away it is. If we settle too far from the capital early on, the maintenance costs will kill us.

Indeed. Scouting is going to be more important than normal as we try to figure out what's going on. We'll see what's going on, but I still really like the idea of having a beach head on the mainland.

Also, drlake: The other problem with archipelago for tests vs big and small maps is that the AI is more likely to prioritize Sailing, which will lead to earlier barb galleys. On a B&S map we might have more leeway before the barbs show up.

Interesting. This didn't occur to me. Look at me learning stuff, .