SGOTM 16 - U'nu'sual S'us'pec'ts

[ChrisShaffer]

At size 3, it can run 6 specialists, at size 4-6, it can run 6 specialists as well. Higher population size this early in the game will just cost us more and give us very little.

This is crazy? At size 3, it works clams/pigs/deer and zero specialists, right? We will have city center (+2 food) fish (+3 food) pigs (+4 food) fur (+2 food, needs camp) = 11 food. That supports 5.5 specialists. So we need 8-9 population. A granary will help us get there faster, and in the meantime, we have two mined hills (one still needs a mine) to work to produce buildings and units, so we want at least 5 population ASAP.

GP farm needs a camp, Production needs a camp, Commerce needs cottages... we could use some more workers. For long space games, I like a ratio of 1.5 workers per city.

Edit - also, large cities are good to power the Great Lighthouse trade routes!

 

[Revent]

Oops, I am SO stupid. For some reason, I was stupid enough to forget that the city needs the population to work specialists and can't just work them off of surplus food! Epic fail if I do say so myself! My apologies all!

I did fix the micro as much as I can, however, there is still half an idle turn. I hope that's not too much of a big deal! It was pretty difficult to do it all to get the oracle out in one turn and I don't think I can do anything better than that. I myself am against an idle turn, but it does guarantee us a one turn oracle.

At size 3, it will have +12 Chris

 

[Revent]

This is crazy? At size 3, it works clams/pigs/deer and zero specialists, right? We will have city center (+2 food) fish (+3 food) pigs (+4 food) fur (+2 food, needs camp) = 11 food. That supports 5.5 specialists. So we need 8-9 population. A granary will help us get there faster, and in the meantime, we have two mined hills (one still needs a mine) to work to produce buildings and units, so we want at least 5 population ASAP.

GP farm needs a camp, Production needs a camp, Commerce needs cottages... we could use some more workers. For long space games, I like a ratio of 1.5 workers per city.

Edit - also, large cities are good to power the Great Lighthouse trade routes!

Yes, you are right. That was me being stupid! Just one of those moments. I'd like to say it happens to all of us, but I think this moment of stupidity did cross the line.

 

[Trystero]

I was thinking along the lines of this:
At size 3, it can run 6 specialists, at size 4-6, it can run 6 specialists as well. Higher population size this early in the game will just cost us more and give us very little.
At size 7+, the number of specialists we can run decreases until Bio where plain farms will get extra food and then every two farmed plains tiles will get us one extra specialist. I'm not saying we keep it at size 3, for now, whatever size is fine, but post caste, size 3-6 would be optimal (with all water tiles being worked and 3 food).

But we are in Slavery at the moment, so excess pop can be converted to hammers. And the the faster we can grow back after a whip, the more we can whip. I'm going to vote for a granary or chariots to take the barb city over Pyramids for possible fail gold.

 

[Trystero]

Yes, you are right. That was me being stupid! Just one of those moments. I'd like to say it happens to all of us, but I think this moment of stupidity did cross the line.

No worries. This is why we discuss plans before playing.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Yes, no worries, we all make mistakes (I make lots of them, including basic math adding up food!).

So what are the choices for GP Farm production?

* Granary to grow faster
* Worker to make faster improvements
* Chariots to take barb city

I vote for Granary, but could be persuaded otherwise.

 

[Revent]

You forgot Pyramids as an option (Clearly it won't be getting any votes though ) I'm obviously thinking long long term where we should have lots of cities with lots of specialists and each specialist will obviously boost our research but I'm probably wrong about them anyway. But from the map, I see very few happy resources. Speaking of happiness, we should build temples to for that extra happiness because we will eventually need them anyway. Besides, if we build them sooner rather than later, they double culture out put.


I think chariots should not be an option, or if it is, we build one. The capital SHOULD be able to get 2 chariots out before the oracle anyway.
Granary will get my vote from the three mentioned.

Are you fine with the idle worker turn? I will be double testing this now just to be sure everything runs smoothly.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

One idle turn is OK with me. I'm at work so can't check it closely. Neil is our worker micro king, maybe he or someone else can review the worker orders?

 

[Trystero]

Granary is fine by me. I will have a look at the micro plan.

Edit: I'm a work so I can't play through the worker micro, so I can't comment on how optimal it is, but one idle worker turn seems OK.

 

[Deckhand]

I lost track:
Did you end turn to see what the barbarian did?
Are we building a chariot before lighthouse in Paris?

 

[Revent]

Sorry, I'm having a look at something right now. I think if we DON'T do binary research, we save a turn on our tech path...

Anyway, some more trial and error needs to be done with worker movements since it seems we can get to Priesthood faster without binary.

 

[Revent]

Turn 82 Oracle in the test run, it however takes two turns to build which means that we waste lots of forests into gold which is bad.
One adjustment to tile made in GP farm (pigs to water tile), however, I believe the effect of that is negligible. Will try a test run without it in any case.


Oracle comes out one turn faster:
-It is not an insta build meaning if we lose it after investing hammers in it, those forests go to waste
-We do have a higher chance of getting it however if it comes out one turn earlier.
-Worker management becomes less of a pain. If you actually read it, it is really complicated as it is. It took me a very long time yesterday to calculate the optimal route.

So in layman terms, we can choose to have a higher chance of getting the oracle, but the cost of that is that we lose a lot if we miss the oracle. If we stick with the slightly lower chance, we lose nothing actual (just an opportunity loss).

 

[ChrisShaffer]

If we lose it, can't we cancel the chops? Or do you mean the trees will be wasted because we will be turning them into gold?

 

[Revent]

Turned into Gold.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

How many forests would be turned into gold?

 

[Revent]

3.
One other option is we could cancel the mine from being built half way (or before) through and send that worker over to start chopping as well.

Edit: I could try playing around with overflow a bit, but I don't think it'll net us a one turn oracle anyway.


Edit Edit: We could also now research polytheism and still get a one turn oracle I THINK. will play through and test out.

 

[Benginal]

1) I think it wouldn't be a huge waste if the forests turn into gold. Remember they'll be double golded since we're industrious. Also, revent, make SURE to check right before you try to build the Oracle that it's not in a foreign city somewhere, you'll be able to see in the top cities / built wonders window.

2) Medi over Poly is fine by me.

3) I prefer units to granary at least at first in GP farm city. We'll obviously want a granary soon. But we have TGL, so it's just a travesty not city spamming as much as our defenses and worker turns allow.

4) Long term why are we so into specialists? I think specialists are not going to be as good as usual compared to massive cities. Does anybody know the math for how trade route size is calculated. I know pop is a huge part of it. So do we want to focus on getting huge cities? Or running specialists? Because those two are obviously mutually exclusive.

 

[Revent]

Yeah, but those forests could have gone into another wonder instead! We do want to wonder spam as well of course

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/trade_routes.php trade routes.

and +50% gold, not double

Yeah, will definitely check out for TO before I chop any hammers into it

I was thinking more along to generate lots of golden ages towards the end game, so we need a mixture of them to keep up the GA's which will really help our game I think.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

I would rather take a chance on turning 3 forests into 90 gold (which is useful in itself) than take a chance on losing the Oracle. I vote for building the Oracle faster.

A couple of questions about the spreadsheet:

Worker 4 is idle on turn 82. Can't it at least build half a road in that space?

Worker 1 builds a road on turns 76-77, then finishes a half road on turn 78. Doesn't it have to move somewhere to finish the half road?

Paris starts building a Chariot on turn 77. The notes say "Paris Chariot" on turn 79, but then don't say what it builds on turns 79-82. Does it return to building the workboat?

GP Farm now shows Worker -> Pyramids/Granary. I vote Worker - Granary.

 

[Revent]

This game will be the end of me
I can get us the Oracle on turn 82 without any risk of losing forests into gold if we don't get it.