[BTS] SGOTM 26 - Home Slices

[Mitchum]

All good. Waiting for green light from Kait (and MG if he's still hangin' around).

 

[Mitchum]

S7 could also look to see if SB’s still working the plain river.

I assume you can only tell this is the settler can see that tile. I will move S7 into position this turn.

Also curious if the max AI hammer production goes higher than the 4 it’s been. (I forgot to check t13)

Rival best production is still 4.

SB has 0H invested in a build so he must have just completed something.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Ok, I've gotten encouraging results by focusing on getting our 4 cities up as fast as possible.

Spoiler :

Canal City will be completing Monument fast and will have a 11/30 workboat after monument. (No lost since Monument was completed in exactly 10 turns)
Silver City will be settled after Sailing on T36 with improved seafood and will only be a drag on our economy for 6 turns until it grows to Size 2 and can work fur.
The worker at silver city can then mine the other hill after fur and wait for us to get Mining finished to improve silver.

Science City can make a 3rd Worker at Size 4 in about 5 turns whenever we decide we have enough Stonehenge gold.
It can keep improving capital or join the Galley for new lands.

The tradeoff is our 1st workboat (exploration workboat) can only explore the south for 4 turns before it heads to Canal City twenty coast tiles away from Cow City to net seafood on T34.
So we will have no dedicated exploration workboat up until T33.

The upside is we will have 4 cities coming online for maximum commerce in good time, and we can still get a Galley carrying 2 Settlers south even if only towards unexplored lands.


Worker Micro:
#1 Pasture Cow -> Farm plains river -> Fur improved -> Walk to Silver City
#2 Farm 1N or 1NW of capital -> Pasture Sheep -> Farm Rice -> Pasture Horses -> Farm Wine -> Improve Cow City Deer or Fur?

Canal City
Found as soon as possible + build workboat, grow to Size 2 on seafood tile, work 2 forests to get Monument in 10 turns.
It costs our empire 2 per turn to settle Canal City on T13, but we gain 2 and 1, and isn't nearly as terrifyingly expensive as Silver City.

Cow City
Workboat (explores 4 turns then head to Canal) -> Workboat (2 turns and switch) -> Monument (5 turns) -> Complete Workboat for Silver City -> Start Workboat for Cow City
At Size 3, always work fur for the money and not the forest hill to speed up builds slightly.

Capital
Barracks (49/50) -> Warrior for 1 turn (waste of 3 hammers) -> Stonehenge

Silver City
Monument 1st.
At 500 I think it can grab 6 sushi resources all by itself?


Basically, I like this approach because even if we find cities to settle overseas, it will cripple our economy worse than silver to settle them very early.
There will be no workboat to jump start things, nor workers to improve the tiles.
It is just a Galley dropping off settlers to grab spots before the AI.
With 4 cities racing to get big while sharing fur and silver, we can afford to grab the best city spots overseas if we tech The Wheel and Mining after Sailing.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I assume you can only tell this is the settler can see that tile. I will move S7 into position this turn.



Rival best production is still 4.

SB has 0H invested in a build so he must have just completed something.

Right by seeing that little hut on the tile it’s getting worked. Yes, SB must’ve just finished his worker.

 

[Mitchum]

I just looked at the T12 save and SB had 47 into a build. I wonder what he just built...

In the test game, it looked like a Settler costs the AI 95 so that's what I'll be looking for.

 

[Mitchum]

Thanks for running the test, Kait. So the tradeoff with my two tests are:

Sailing delayed by 2 turns compared to settling Canal when Myst is done and by 4 turns compared to settling Canal when Sailing is done.
No wb explorer = lower chance of meeting other AI which lets us know if an Alphabet beeline makes sense.
Either Science and/or Cows will have to work unimproved tiles with only a single worker to cover both cites.
Canal settled way sooner - similar population to my test where I settle Canal after Mysticism. I worked a coastal tile for food and commerce, you must have worked a tile with hammers.
4F+Silver has a worker en route and can settle soon.

The biggest concern I have is the lack of an exploring wb. I put a high value on this, especially in this game, but it's hard to assign a hard Food, Hammer or Commerce value to it.

Did you run any testing where:

a) Settle Canal when Mysticism finishes
b) we use our first wb to explore

 

[Mitchum]

Without Slavery, Canal city will grow faster than we can manage (assuming we don't self-tech Mining -> BW). I wonder if it's possible to actually settle Canal too soon and it grows into unhappiness?

Another option might be to have it settle on T13 but have it build its own wurk boots. That would slow down its growth a bit and let us use that first wb to explore instead.

Maybe there is a happy medium here.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Okay. I can run a test or two. Shall we assign tasks to not repeat each other?

 

[Kaitzilla]

Without Slavery, Canal city will grow faster than we can manage (assuming we don't self-tech Mining -> BW). I wonder if it's possible to actually settle Canal too soon and it grows into unhappiness?

Another option might be to have it settle on T13 but have it build its own wurk boots. That would slow down its growth a bit and let us use that first wb to explore instead.

Maybe there is a happy medium here.

Well, Canal could just complete its own workboat 7 turns after Monument (T41) by continuing to work both forests.
Then it could grow with 4 per turn working unimproved 2 2g seafood starting Turn 44.
It won't really grow explosively until a 2nd seafood gets improved.

If we like this idea, I need to test whether completing Workboat before or after Monument is the best path for Canal.


Letting Canal City support itself entirely would free up the 1st workboat Cow City produces to just explore full time.

**Edit**
I am out of time to keep testing.
Will test more in 6 hours.

I think I stored 2 settlers inside our borders while walking Worker to silver city.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Cows-to-Canal Workboat

Since the canal crabs are 20 tiles away we can use 21 tiles to get there. At the ocean crab at cows-6S. the wb goes to crab-ne, then se-se-e then straight to Canal. This is obvious but note that it exposes 5 land tiles and two water tiles, most of what gets exposed in KZ’s test.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Letting Canal support itself is definitely an option to consider.

 

[Mitchum]

Letting Canal support itself is definitely an option to consider.

So are we behind PR then if they settled Canal (or some other city) on T5? Said another way, we have to leverage the fact that we delayed settling City #3 into some benefit whether it be faster teching, more exploration or something else. If we just settle Canal now on T13, we're essentially 7 turns behind PR in City #3's development.

I'm not saying that we should definitely NOT settle Canal now on T13. I'm just wondering if we can turn the fact that we delayed Canal into some tangible benefit.

 

[Mitchum]

Okay. I can run a test or two. Shall we assign tasks to not repeat each other?

I can't do any more testing today. I think I have a pretty good run with settling Canal on T21 (after Mysticism) and T31 (after Sailing). Kait has a good test run settling Canal now (T13) is there any more testing to do (other than the Canal supports itself starting T13 scenario which I think is pretty close to Kait's current test but with the wb exploring rather than going to Canal)?

I think we have to decide:

1. Settle Canal now (Kait's test), after Mysticism (my uploaded test) or after Sailing (my other uploaded test).
2. Is wb#1 a scout or an eventual net for Canal (or another city)? This can be decided on T21 when we complete the wb and learn Mysticism though.

It feels like settling Canal now is the smarter move and something we probably should have considered more closely on T5 because we've just lost 8 turns of hammers into a wb. Unless Canal with 3 nets grows into unhappiness way too soon which we can probably calculate.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I can't do any more testing today. I think I have a pretty good run with settling Canal on T21 (after Mysticism) and T31 (after Sailing). Kait has a good test run settling Canal now (T13) is there any more testing to do (other than the Canal supports itself starting T13 scenario which I think is pretty close to Kait's current test but with the wb exploring rather than going to Canal)?

I think we have to decide:

1. Settle Canal now (Kait's test), after Mysticism (my uploaded test) or after Sailing (my other uploaded test).
2. Is wb#1 a scout or an eventual net for Canal (or another city)? This can be decided on T21 when we complete the wb and learn Mysticism though.

It feels like settling Canal now is the smarter move and something we probably should have considered more closely on T5 because we've just lost 8 turns of hammers into a wb. Unless Canal with 3 nets grows into unhappiness way too soon which we can probably calculate.

I’m going to test some variations on settling T 13 and optimizing that or T20 one or something in between or whatever. I am re-motivated now the Kait gave it a shot.

 

[Mitchum]

Looking at Kait's test, it looks like there was a delay in Mysticism with settling Canal early so rather than finishing the barrack he put some hammers into a warrior which are decaying right now. So was that one or two turns of production? Not a huge deal but it is an argument for delaying Canal until we learn Mysticism so that the timing is better for when we can start SH in Science.

It seems as though there should be more partial farms at Science-N or Science-NE (i.e. walking to the sheep, walking from sheep to horse and walking from rice to wine). Not a big deal, just minor MM improvements.

I like that 4F+silver could be settled shortly. Maybe we should do this. Shepherd could build one more plains-river farm in Science and then go camp the deer/furs in Cows. That would give us one more improved tile to work in Science before the worker abandons it. The only think the worker at 4F+silver can do though is the fur camp unless we plan to tech Mining before Writing->Alphabet.

EDIT: Actually, if Cowboy is going to walk all the way to 4F+Silver to camp the fur, we pretty much have to research Mining otherwise that long walk will have been wasted if all he can do is build a fur camp for 2o to 30 turns.

 

[LowtherCastle]

The silver fur is meh. The silver mine is something. With Mining and wkr on mine and nets T0, Silver is p2 when the mine is finished.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Note: Silver is 18 tiles from Science. The other 3-food is 22!?!?! By contrast, the land tiles to the south start at about 8. Up north, they’re a few more. Silver could easily be a trap city. Easily.

Also, SB’s land could loop around to the south below us and yield something close.

Look and count...

When I dreamed of being a map maker on a few occasions, one of my favorite scenarios was one that benefited those who explore…

 

[Kaitzilla]

So are we behind PR then if they settled Canal (or some other city) on T5? Said another way, we have to leverage the fact that we delayed settling City #3 into some benefit whether it be faster teching, more exploration or something else. If we just settle Canal now on T13, we're essentially 7 turns behind PR in City #3's development.

I'm not saying that we should definitely NOT settle Canal now on T13. I'm just wondering if we can turn the fact that we delayed Canal into some tangible benefit.

We already got the benefits.

Animal Husbandry 1 turn sooner and a shot at stealing Sitting Bull's 2nd city. (No luck there)
Mysticism will also arrive 1 turn sooner which helps Cow City.

We also got the west explored which shows triple seafood might not be as rare as we thought.

T13 is a perfectly reasonable time to settle triple seafood after unfogging over 25% of the land tiles.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Looks like Kait’s gets Myst t23. I already have that back to t22 with t13 Canal. We’ll see if we can pull the Sailing back to something acceptable.

Xpost

 

[Kaitzilla]

The silver fur is meh. The silver mine is something. With Mining and wkr on mine and nets T0, Silver is p2 when the mine is finished.

Silverfur will be size 2 around the time its fur is improved.
Silver mine can wait.

Fursilver has 4 food sources and 2 commerce tiles.
Every single forest in the northwest can be chopped into it outside its borders if it needs production.

I don't see how it is a trap if we wait until workboat + worker + sailing is in place before settling it.

Cow city after 3 improvements can afford to lose a worker.
At size 4 it can work the new seafood, and at size 5 it can work deer.

Capital with 4 improvements can work the forest plains at size 5 just fine.