The City 5 and Horses Issue

[Krill]

We have a small problem with the location of city 5 and horses. The land Barentz has uncovered in the last turn has turned out to be quite...polarised in it's ability to support growth. One of the original positions, the site marked as city 5 in the screenshot below, may no longer be ideally positioned for the requirements of our empire. While it is the best single city site in that area, the requirements for a seperate city for the horses means that unless we uncover food in the FoW, which is becoming increasingly unlikely (of the 7 covered tiles, 5 are hills, which may hold food resources, but there are not always good food resources), the proposed horse city is becoming an increasing inviable.

Our plans to sustain research via representation powered scientists requires cities that can grow fairly large (up to size 10 including specialists), so each city site qould require 20 food including that provided by the city. This basically requires each city has it's own food resource, or enough food to grow to size. Now, as I see it, there is another option, shown below

Spoiler :

The orange site is the site currently leading as the position of city 5. (So far only 3 people have voiced an opinion on that city site...). The down side of the orange site is, as said, an inherent gamble on the horse city.

The other optons are the yellow city and the red city. The Yellow city is capable of supporting up to 6 specialists, and because it has two flood plains, it is slightly better than orange in supporting specialists at a lower happy cap. It also has horses, although it only has 2 hills; it is a slightly worse production city than orange. It wold also be settled slightly later than orange.

Red is frankly a really bad city for most things (it is effectively a filler city), although it has 2 things going for it:

1. it can share the wheat with yellow, so that it can grow quickly to the happy cap, and when it gives back the wheat so yellow can go on tech duty, it can grow using irrigated grasslands.
   
   
2. Later on, these grasslands can be cottaged over and it can just sit at the happy cap working x cottages (it has 7 grasslands that only it can work, a further 3 it can share with JD to speed cottage growth for the future bureaucracy powered capital, and shares 3 grasslands with yellow that yellow isn't always going to be working, which can be left irrigated for both cities to be using concurrently to grow). It has 4 hills to itself, which later on can be windmilled, but early on provide it with a decent amount of production; it is a decent city to be pumping workers from if required.

We do have another options here, however, the best one IMO is this:

• Send Barentz west to uncover all of the FoW.

Now, I know the arguements, but allow me to play devils advocate; we need to find as many other teams as we can as quickly as we can, but the cost is that we may end up settling cities in sub-optimal positions, and we will meet all the other teams at some future point in the game anyway. OK, that's not that good an argument, but a we don't where any of the other teams are anyway, nor their scouts, we don't know for sure if south is any better to explore than west.

There may be a better dotmap out there, but with our current knowledge of the map, I'm not sure if there is a better one that we can be 100% certain of atm.

 

[Dreylin]

Seems to me that you're missing option3: 1NW of Orange. Yes, there's Peaks aplenty in the FC, but it does pull in both Wheat and Horses ... and a Sugar. It also relies only on tiles we can see and leaves us the maximum option or other cities to the SW, S & E.

 

[1889]

I west of orange was also proposed at one point, does anyone remember where I can look to review those discussions.

As far as continuing to explore to the west I say thats far enough. We have seen all we need to see to place city 5. Settling further west than yellow is a bit far away for right now. Uncovering those tiles will be important before settling city 6 or 7 maybe but right now seeking out other teams is higher priority.

 

[Krill]

The problem with any city to the east of orange is that there is zero for use as food (we can only see rice and that wheat in all of the land around JD, that is some really crap land), so any city to the immediate west of orange either has to share the wheat, or use it's own food resource and give up the wheat to another city. If we don't scout out the west, then we either play it safe and plant a city for the horses and wheat, or we gamble that there is food over there to support a horse city.

If a city NW of orange was built, then a city to the east is a massive drain on our resources and is completly useless until we get it up to size (which requires lots of worker turns as all of the grasslands need to be irrigated and then cottaged); a city to the south would have to be built for the pigs and/or the flood plains, and has alot of desert and desert hills. The city to the NW wouldn't be particulary decent either; we need at least one city in this area to be able to grow large and work lots of specialists; yes, it could do this, but no better than orange and it would be worse than yellow, as well as scewing up all of the other city sites. And the city to the east would probably be identical in either case, in fact could be better placed with the yellow/red because there are exactly 5 tiles between the best city location in the west (the banana/corn city sites eastern borders) and the western borders of yellow, so there is very little wasted space.

So, after analysis, settling NW actually leaves us with less options for the east and south and unkown possibilities for the west.


1889, the discussion was posted in the general turn discussion, but it is now probably better done in here now.

And as to scouting, for all we know the south is a dead end; we have no certainty where anyone is, that's why it's called exploring. We know for certain that heading west will help us decide on a city location for city 5 (if we had enough infomation about where to build the city site why would we be having this discussion?) as well as possibly leading to the discovery of another team, whereas heading south only has the possibility of discovering another team.

Also, we have enough workers to road over to the south west of the horse, we can settle there fine if we want to. There would have to be a good reason to, but if, for instance, we uncovered silver we would have a damned good reason to settle there.

PS. City 6 or 7 should probably be for the gold, we will need the extra happiness around that time.

 

[azzaman333]

I like orange, and 1SW of Yellow.

 

[dutchfire]

I think yellow + red isn't half bad. Red will greatly help JD develop it's cottages, and it could also produce some workers. Nothing spectacular, but not bad either.

 

[Memphus]

I like red and yellow. Ultimately you very very rarely end up using all of your tiles, so anything that

1. helps out JD, where oxford will be built is huge.
2. gives us more cities = more pop = more building potential
3. let's us have another strong city (yellow) is a bonus.

Also gives us more cities tighter packed prior to our core.

 

[Krill]

Problem with 1 SW of yellow is that it has a grand total of 2 flood plains for food, unless we find food on one of the hills; even then, it's not a great long term city, with at least half of its' hills being desert hills. In the short term, it can only support 4 specialists...although admittedly, if red and that city were both on specialist duty, then 4 more specialists, but it's also between 7 and 10 less cottages being developed.

Something that does need to be taken into account though is that orange was a proposed IW site, but yellow may not be in the same league.

Red I would envisage just as being a cottage city; grow it to size 7 and let it work 7 cottages and give to food to yellow for specialists; that's still 7 cottages that we would have growing that we otherwise would not have growing, that extra 21 commerce a turn is another, what notch on the slider or 2 cities. When yellow isn't growing or is smaller than size 14, there is at least 1 tile that can be given to red, along with 3 grasslands in the capital, so that's size 11 just working grasslands; even if JD and yellow were both working all 20 tiles, red would still be size 13-15 depending on improvements. Yes, it isn't a great production city, but we don't need another production city (although it wouldn't be awful if it worked all 4 hills), we need cities that can generate commerce for us. It's not quite as strong as orange, but the combination of red and yellow is better than the combination of any other two sites that we can see, as the only city in that area that would be a better cottage city would be orange (with 10 grasslands), but then we would not have a city capable of working enough specialists for research.

So it's (almost) a catch 22, either we cram cities together and grow them large or we spread them out and keep them small.

 

[Krill]

just a fyi, but no one has suggested any city names for city 5; we do need a couple of names to put on a poll sometime next week...

 

[Krill]

Spoiler :

We now know that there is no food to the west of the horse.

We have another 4 or so turns to decide where we want city 5 to be, so that's proably until the end of next weekend.

As stated above, I think yellow and red are the way to go. Does anyone hav any reasoning against that plan?

 

[azzaman333]

My gut feeling says orange as an IW city will benefit us most. Sticking a city 1SW of yellow to pick up horses strikes me as being a decent spot, we can stick windmills on each of the hills for quite a bit of commerce too.

 

[Memphus]

Alright Krill Let's

Krill's Proposal:

Spoiler :

Memphus Proposal:

Spoiler :

Krill has made the following arguements for his proposal:
(some were made by me as well)

Spoiler :

1. helps out JD, where oxford will be built is huge.

2. gives us more cities = more pop = more building potential
3. let's us have another strong city (yellow) is a bonus.

4. it can share the wheat with yellow, so that it can grow quickly to the happy cap, and when it gives back the wheat so yellow can go on tech duty, it can grow using irrigated grasslands.

5. Later on, these grasslands can be cottaged over and it can just sit at the happy cap working x cottages (it has 7 grasslands that only it can work, a further 3 it can share with JD to speed cottage growth for the future bureaucracy powered capital, and shares 3 grasslands with yellow that yellow isn't always going to be working, which can be left irrigated for both cities to be using concurrently to grow). It has 4 hills to itself, which later on can be windmilled, but early on provide it with a decent amount of production; it is a decent city to be pumping workers from if required.

Rebuttle:

Spoiler :

Where does IW go? the sooner this site is piked the stronger this city is.
We are creative why not gets a muc hland as possible and increase chances of oil?
Does the horse city need to grow super fast? Can it be an "outpost" to begin with?

Reason to do the Option 2:

Spoiler :

1. Orange site is a VERY VERY powerful city (IW), and won't interfer with JD power.

2. Allows for the potential Red city which is our "eastern" gate (heavily defended city from Kaz)

3. Allows for the Yellow city with Pig to incoporate Floodplains, (this city could potentially be a port city)
Yes this city has desert, but i bet there is oil there.

4. Is the purple city really that bad? Irrigate the FP, and the grass and we have +4. we can work the horse at no penalty. So this city can stil quite quickly get to size 5, and then grwoth slow but can get to size 9 (size 10 if it temporairly steals the Grass from orange city) Then with Biology and windmills this can become another good city.

5. It allows for a optimal city pick to the south of the blue (gems banana) city and keeps our empire in line.

So I think we need a vote...

 

[Krill]

First of all, the rebuttle of the rebuttle:

1. Where does IW go? the sooner this site is piked the stronger this city is.
2. We are creative why not gets a muc hland as possible and increase chances of oil?
3. Does the horse city need to grow super fast? Can it be an "outpost" to begin with?

So, here is the reasoning:

Spoiler :

1. As you can see here, the Yellow city is not that much worse than Orange as the IW city, it is off by a couple of base hammers (both could increase slightly as there is room for another engineer in each city).
   
   • Yellow has 5 workshops, 11 watermills, 2 mines and a farm, base 67
     
   • Orange has 6 workshops, 8 watermills, 4 mines and a farm, base 70
   .
   
   That suggests a slight favour for orange, but it is negligable.
   
   
2. We are creative why not get as much land as possible and increase chances of oil?
   
   Memphus dotmapped an additional two cities; we are not able to afford either of those cities for the next 50 turns, but after that we should be able to find the commerce to support those cities. In my settling plan, we have an extra cottage city to support the growth of more cities, so we would be able to afford more land with my plan than with Memphus', so we would
   
   In Memphus plan:
   
   Orange has to be irrigated to run specialists; that isn't an option, we either do that or we stop teching completely.
   
   Pink has 1 flood plain for food, it's pretty much a dead weight city. It could be cottaged to support 8 cottages and the horse at 0 fpt, or irrigated to support 4 specialists, but it is incredably slow growing and so takes along time to get up and running.
   
   We dont know enough about the land for red or yellow in Memphus plan, that's why I didn't dotmap them in; the city in the peaks to block access to our core would only have 2 tiles overlap with the red site I proposed, and as that city is designed solely to act as a gate, it's not as important that it is an important production city. The pigs site is idle speculation, we'll almost certainly know no more than we do already about it when we settle city 5, so it's not worth worrying about, but we would be able to afford a pigs city sooner under my plan cokmpared to memphus'.
   
   
3. Does the horse city need to grow super fast? Can it be an outpost to begin with?
   
   The strength of the horse city is that it is as good as Orange at running specialists, thus in the short term, the horse city gives us everything that the orange city does, and more:
   
   • It gives us horses sooner for quicker scouting.
   • It allows another cottage city to fund expansion.
   
   That's the benefit of the horse city being a quick grower. The downside is it is a slightly worse IW city, but by no means is it bad.

-

Now for the rebuttle of Memphus' plan

Spoiler :

1. Orange site is a VERY VERY powerful city (IW), and won't interfer with JD power.

2. Allows for the potential Red city which is our "eastern" gate (heavily defended city from Kaz)

3. Allows for the Yellow city with Pig to incoporate Floodplains, (this city could potentially be a port city)
Yes this city has desert, but i bet there is oil there.

4. Is the purple city really that bad? Irrigate the FP, and the grass and we have +4. we can work the horse at no penalty. So this city can stil quite quickly get to size 5, and then grwoth slow but can get to size 9 (size 10 if it temporairly steals the Grass from orange city) Then with Biology and windmills this can become another good city.

5. It allows for a optimal city pick to the south of the blue (gems banana) city and keeps our empire in line.

1. Indeed, Orange is a very strong city, but as indicted above, it not that much stronger than Yellow. Does a 5% difference in production necesitate the worse city placements for the other cities however?
   
   
2. Your Red is still plantable with the city sites I suggested, with only 2 tiles overlap. It's supposed to be a gate keeper, so it's not intended to be a massive inductrial city, and the extra 5 peaks mean that it never would be.
   
   
3. We have so little knowledge of that land, it's very iffy to state that any one city site is better than another at this stage. Getting horses online sooner would help alleviate this lack of knowledge.
   
   
4. Well, if yellow is worse than the Orange, by 5% in the late game, and better in the short term, purple should be able to offer something in the short term that we otherwise would not havbe, and it is not capable of doing this, compared to red. It is not that good a cottage city, and hence later expansion would be harder to fund, and it only really comes into it's own when we get biology, whereas my red is by that point, starting to weaken, but it should have let us expand faster earlier on leading to stronger cities sooner to carry us on later on. At around that time it would be an ideal city to just have building workers constantly for railroading; it's an ugly job, but some city has to do it.
   
   
5. Purple is two tiles further to ther west than my yellow; the ideal city spot on the plains hill with the corn and bananas is a rpetty strong candidate, and combined with purple, would lead to definate overlap with the blue city directly to the south of gems,. whereas my yellow would not have to have overlap.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

The big problem I have with the memphus plan is that the pink an blue cities are set up in a way that makes it hard to use the land between them, which seems to be rivergrass and river grass hills - which is nice land, especially if there is any bonus there at all.

My big reason for Yellow is that it gets the two most powerful tiles down there (wheat and horse) into use quickly, which I think tips any balance - yes, making the best size 20 IW city is important, but also making the best size 3-15 cities is important, as well.

 

[dutchfire]

@Krill: Your production sites rely on State-Property driven watermills/workshops. Are we sure we're going to run SP?

we are not able to afford either of those cities for the next 50 turns

I think production and food are in general more important in multiplayer than commerce. If you're slightly backwards, you're so much more likely to get "handouts" diplomatically. (Yes, I'm thinking SABER in civ3 MTDG II Ancient Age, I'm looking at you General ) On the other hand, it's almost never possible to be so strong economically that you can beat an alliance of two teams in techs, and still be a match in production terms to avoid military loss.


Note: This doesn't mean I favour either plan, just playing Devil's advocate.

 

[Memphus]

@DF, state property has to be the choice given our terrain....no other civic is even close. it is also the way to maximize our strategy (lots of cities) and eliminates trying to mess aroudn with corperations.

 

[Krill]

Look at it this way:

We are 100% certain that if we reach Communism, we can always run state property, but we are not certain to be able to run a corporation; if we do not run state property, then both proposed city sites lose a similar number of food, as shown below.

5 grasslands, 9 plains, 2 flood plains, 2 grass hills, wheat and desert = 32 food
10 grasslands, 4 plains, 4 grass hills, wheat and desert = 33 food
Yellow loses 2 extra food as it has two less hills to mine (loses 16 food from not being in SP), so that would require an extra farm which would decrease base hammers by two compared to the decrease at Orange (which loses 14 food from not being in SP).

OTOH, we don't have an awful lot of resources around that would make use of corporations, we only have 3 visible sea food and 1 rice, and we would not be able to trade for excess resources (no team would give us a winning advantage like that), so unless we uncover a load of food, corporations only make sense if they provide resources that we do not have in our lands that are critical to our economy such as oil or aluminium.

I think production and food are in general more important in multiplayer than commerce. If you're slightly backwards, you're so much more likely to get "handouts" diplomatically. (Yes, I'm thinking SABER in civ3 MTDG II Ancient Age, I'm looking at you General ) On the other hand, it's almost never possible to be so strong economically that you can beat an alliance of two teams in techs, and still be a match in production terms to avoid military loss.

Not going to argue the point about commerce, production and food, because at varying stages the balance changes, and is very difficult to take trade into account. However, there is a difference between teching, and being on strike; all 7 of the unique grasslands in red are on rivers, so when they are cottaged that is an immediate 21 commerce per turn, which should be between 10 and 20% of the slider by the time the city is size 7 and working all of the cottages, which could support 2 other cities, not taking into account growth.

That's probably tangential to your point, but then, your point spans quite alot of ideas and meta game strategies.

 

[Krill]

So, does anyone else have any other ideas? Or are we ready to put it to a poll by paw?

Also, we would need a name for city 5, whatever happens.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

How long until we get the settler? Reason I ask is that the location of iron may make a difference and we get that in 5 turns.

 

[Krill]

6 turns until settler. Iron isn't that important in a strategic sense just yet; we don't need swords right now, so the only effect it would have is on possible city locations. We have to start building the road in a few turns though, ie before IW is researched.