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

[Trystero]

I think you mean clams - it has clams + 2 grass hills. Still, 3 tiles isn't a lot to base an early city on.

Yeah - I caught that right after posting. I agree it's not much, but at least it's something non-jungle that could be used if we had to grab the site pre-IW. (edit: Also, if we had the GLH it might at least pay for itself.)

I've never tried to steal a tech very early in a game. It's probably something we should play-test.

 

[SteelHorse]

Good work Great to have a warrior survive the first turnset - a bit of a change for US

On the dot map, what about moving the blue city, 2N and settle on the silk. It looks like it would be an awesome cottage site. 8FP + 2 grass river with a couple of plains hills!

With regard to EP, I thought when you mouse over the leader score you saw the points "Ratio with Louis IV: 47/100" that this meant that Brennus has 47 on us and we have 100 on him. This would indicate that he has met someone else. Is that an incorrect interpretation?

 

[neilmeister]

Good questions!
The Celts UU requires IW, so I think they will research it soon enough.

At least kcd has made the espionage requirement an interesting choice. I really don't like the idea of trying to steal Physics or Astro.

City 3 south times really well. After 1st settler is built, part build a WB for 3 turns until Paris gets to pop 4, then switch to settler. Regardless of if the settler is chopped or not, the WB finishes 2 turns after the settler and nets the clams the same turn city 3 is founded.

I will try and see how City 3 to the west goes.


edit: whoa, x-posts. 8 FP's and several PH's, this sounds like an excellent commerce city.
No idea about espionage points.

 

[neilmeister]

With regard to EP, I thought when you mouse over the leader score you saw the points "Ratio with Louis IV: 47/100" that this meant that Brennus has 47 on us and we have 100 on him. This would indicate that he has met someone else. Is that an incorrect interpretation?

If this is true, we are golden for stealing IW. I very rarely research IW before Alpha anyway,

edit: I really like the idea of settling on the silk for an uber commerce city.

 

[Trystero]

With regard to EP, I thought when you mouse over the leader score you saw the points "Ratio with Louis IV: 47/100" that this meant that Brennus has 47 on us and we have 100 on him. This would indicate that he has met someone else. Is that an incorrect interpretation?

This is correct. We met Brennus on turn 6 so we have 31-6=25 turns * 4 EP/turn = 100 EP against Brennus. If he had met no one else he would have 100 EP against us. The fact that he has 47 points against us indicates he meet another AI.

Edit: If he had met one other AI before us, he would have 50 EP against us. The fact that the EP points against us are an odd number suggests he's met more than one other AI. (Assuming I am understanding AI EP usage correctly).

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Well, actually, I think he'd have 104, since the AI get a one turn jump on meeting you. Even so, it seems he met another AI *before* he met us, or the ratio would be 54/100 or 50/100 or some such. Less than 50% likely means he met his first friend/target before he met us.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

I'm not sure I get the uber commerce city. Why not settle 1S or 2S of the silk? Too many floodplains = health problems, doesn't it? And won't settling on the silk encroach on the red west sheep/pigs/fish too much?

 

[Trystero]

We should start the next turn set by focusing our espionage on Brennus, so that we keep our EP being applied to only him if we met another AI.

 

[neilmeister]

We won't have any health problems, as we have 7 visible different food resources.
There is an overlap with the sheep coastal city, but only 4 tiles (2 or which are desert).

The limiting factor in settling is workers, we have only 1 and he will be very busy. If we setup city 3 with clams then it can build its own worker.

Interestingly, we can settle the sheep city 3rd or 4th, as it is connected via the river system.

 

[neilmeister]

Thinking about city designation.

Paris is probably going to build workers/settlers/workboats for a while, with city 3 supporting it.
City 2 will whip overflow a lighthouse and maybe a settler into the GLH.

Does this sound sensible?

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Mostly. Are we going to research hunting for the deer?

We definitely need a second worker soon.

 

[neilmeister]

I have been trying combinations of worker->settler 2 and settler 2-> worker to see if this changes the dynamic.

Hunting is probably a good idea, as we learn AH several turns before we are ready to pasture the pigs. I will put that into the mix

 

[Trystero]

We will need warriors to escort settlers, fogbust city sites, and continue exploration.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Here is a new dotmap.

Spoiler :

 

[neilmeister]

Agree that we need more escorts/fogbusters.
Agree that City 3 needs to have more than Clams.

Just doing sloppy testing (I am having issues getting to the spreadsheets reliably from work) I think that the best is to go:

Hunting->AH->Sailing (Hunting delays pigs by 1 turn, but I am hopeful I can do some micro to fix this. It is still worth it, especially if we settle west coast city as #3) edit: fixed!

City 2 settled Fish/Pigs/Deer to the north. It concentrates on lighthouse/GLH
City 3 settled west coast for sheep/fish/deer

Builds:
City 1: Warrior->Warrior(part)->Worker->Settler->Warrior(finish)
City 2: WB->Warrior->Lighthouse(part)->Settler(part)->Lighthouse(2 pop whip)->GLH (grow to 4)->Settler(whip)->GLH.
City 3: WB

Worker 1 services City 2, building PH Mine, Pasture then 2 chops to finish GLH.
Worker 2 chops & mines around Paris then goes to City 3. No need for any roads, as everything is connected via Sailing.

edit: I can't see the dotmap from work, they appear to be blocking the site.

 

[Brian Shanahan]

Yep - I verified this. The other French leaders cannot be on the map, or the Paris city name would not be available to us on turn 1.

Unless... they were pre-settled, and with a different name given for the city.

 

[Brian Shanahan]

Sorry, I don't know of any such guides and a quick search didn't turn up anything.

One thing you could do to empirically test is worldbuilder a non-expansionist AI so they have all forests in their BFC, and compare that to an expansionist AI that has zero forests available. You could do the same with all floodplains setups too.

Isn't one forest in the BFC equal to 1/2 (actually) 0.4 of a health point for a city? It's less for forests within culture but further out (have no backup on this one, just remember a gchat from a RB PBEM), which should not matter so soon.

 

[Brian Shanahan]

What if we went Hunting->AH first, or maybe skip Hunting and go straight for AH. The deer at each site is the worst resource, so there is no hurry to improve them.

OTOH Hunting gives a 20% bonus to AH, and in the long run we'll spend less beakers going hunting first.

OTOOH going AH first could be better to stand up city two (and the other red site if that is city 3), and we will gain more beakers by growing quicker than we save through efficient tech path.

 

[Brian Shanahan]

I'm not sure I get the uber commerce city. Why not settle 1S or 2S of the silk? Too many floodplains = health problems, doesn't it? And won't settling on the silk encroach on the red west sheep/pigs/fish too much?

In general:
Farm up to size 20, and when you reach there cottage back to food neutrality @20. It'll take away early cottage growth for early pop growth (which will be hell to do later) and also ensure population stability in the long run.

Now here we don't need to farm to size 20, as we won't be using 20 tiles for cottage cheese. There are 8 FP tiles, 5 Grass tiles and what looks like a plains/FP confused:, check that in game it may be just tile effect bleed from the surrounding FP's) giving 13/14 usable cottage tiles in the BFC. So the best bet is to farm everything early, and replace farms with cottages (on FPs first) when we start hitting 8-9 on the pop count, slowly retarding our growth until we hit food neutrality at 14. Hills and plains can be farmed mined windmilled or watermilled and given to the other cities sharing BFC tiles.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

That's a plains, not a FP/plains. I will update the test game accordingly.

edit: Test game updated

I count: 8 FP, 3 riverside plains, 5 riverside grass, 2 plains hill (one riverside), 2 desert (one riverside hill). 1 riverside grass & 1 riverside plains are shared with Paris, and 2 FP and the two desert are shared with Orange.

The hills and plains aren't in any other city's BFC. Why not farm the 3 riverside plains too at the start, to add 3 hammers and 3 commerce to the mix? And then later they can be windmilled or whatever.