The second Finnish succession game: struggle for immortality

According to my math growing to size 4 and 2-pop whipping the settler wins ~25:hammers: but delays the settler 1 turn (which in turn costs 3:food:1:hammers:).

Anyway - why you shouldn't stagnate at size 2 building a settler when whipping is available: when slow-building, 1:food:=1:hammers:. When whipping (without a granary) it depends on the city size. Growth from size 1-> 2 -> 3 requires 22:food: -> 24:food: -> 26:food: etc. Less than 30 anyway. 30 is a magic number, since whipping transforms 1 pop into 30:hammers:. So whipping is a favorable :food:->:hammers: transformation even without a granary. Slow-building a settler is not.
 
Thanks for the math. Anyway what do you think about my suggestion about worker action?

Worker: farm the northern fp. That way it can go improve the hill, when finished. I think mine is better than another fp farm since we want to cottage the fp eventually and fp is slower to improve than other tiles.

I was planning to use some chops to hurry the settler. I don't think that changes the fact that whip is favourable but it speeds things up.
 
:food:>:hammers: and we want to grow to 4 asap, so farm both floodplains, then chop forest imo.

Capital isn't strong enough for cottages. 2nd city is. I think techpath will be BW-wheel-pot.
 
I'm a bit late to the party, but I just noticed today that you had started a new game and that I was invited.

I'm at work atm. I'll read through the thread and will give you my suggestions later today or tomorrow morning.
 
Welcome, JSS! You aren't too late :)!
 
:food:>:hammers: and we want to grow to 4 asap, so farm both floodplains, then chop forest imo.

Capital isn't strong enough for cottages. 2nd city is. I think techpath will be BW-wheel-pot.

I agree with both of these points. I don't have time to do any math or in-depth planning now, but I trust that your math regarding whipping the Settler is correct. Therefore BW -> Wheel -> Pottery seems like a good tech path.

Let's not forget that we have a resourceless UU Spearman. Teching Hunting before Pottery might be a good idea. Choking an AI (especially with no metal) is easy with Holkans. If we can get one to Woodsman II, stealing workers would put us massively ahead.

Hunting would also have these minor additional benefits:
1) Speeds up AH (that cow tile will have to be improved)
2) We have elephants to grab with our 3rd/4th city.

Then again, there lies a possibility for micro mistakes when choking an AI, so we might want to play this more cautiously and just build our own workers and piss the AIs off later.

It's up to the player in turn to make these decisions, but that's my 5c.
 
Yes, choking Zara would be great! Time of the worker steal with a warrior is possibly over, as the AI starts to protect the workers with archers. We can think more about the techpath after BW.
 
I decided to play until BW was done. I moved our first warrior to secure our future city site so no barb city spawns there. We met inca at about T23 and JC after that. Also our western scout found out that Zara's borders are pretty close, though he's creative and has already got his 3rd border pop. That means it's less likely to see his workers at the borders.

The west:
Spoiler :



So what now?

Choking an AI (especially with no metal) is easy with Holkans.
And even if they have metal we can deny it, making future conquest easier. Minus is that ai starts focusing more on building archers and less on settling and developing land for us.

Oh and there's copper 2s1e of the eastern gold. We could hook up corn, gold and copper by settlin 1s of the fp. I know it's bad to have all the good stuff in the 2nd ring but 1. we have myst 2. now we can go for TW-pot and still have even better choking/barb def unit than holkan. It would have some tundra tiles ok, but it wuld have so many good tiles still that the tundra wouldn't matter for quite a long time.
 

Attachments

Well played, everything seems good. I assume I am up next? We haven't directed :espionage:, so maybe put it to HC?

Where to put the 2nd city is not that clear anymore. 1NE of corn leaves both ivory and copper outside BFC. Then again, I really don't want to spend :hammers: into monuments very early unless it's absolutely necessary.

I see early commerce as a slight problem and I suggest a site which deals with the problem instantly.

Spoiler :
Civ4ScreenShot0192_zps9fb6dcff.jpg


Long-term it's not great of course, but it takes only 8 turns to grow to size 2 and then it generates 12:commerce: working oasis+gold. It requires no buildings. Other sites require much more worker turns, too.

Going hunting (for holkan-trollage) next is tempting btw, but wheel would allow us to connect cities for +2:commerce:...


edit:
Spoiler :

This looks like an alternative for the same reason, too:

Civ4ScreenShot0193_zps000b30ae.jpg


It's a bit further away and doesn't have insta 3:food:3:commerce:-tile, but long-term it's better and claims +1:). It fits well with settling corn+copper+gold 1S of that floodplain like sinimusta suggested.
 
I thing that the city above is horrible.. 5 desert tiles are terrible! Does that really pay the hammers and maintenance costs back to us??
 
Oh, there's edit now! The alternative site looks much, much, much more promising to me compared to the awful Sahara city.
 
I don't think that Sahara site is terrible, just not a great 2nd city. We should found it at some point, maintenance is definitely not an issue with a city that close and with that many commerce. Not every city needs to get big, only cities like bureau cap, HE-site or GP-farm need to get big.

If we go for early holkans (which would be fun:D) that 2nd suggested site would actually net us +2:), which is imo a luxury and we really wouldn't have worries with the happy cap for some time. Getting a woodsmanII-holkan would require some xp farming and I think the fastest way for that would be a barb def mission in the east. But if we want to choke Zara, I think the earlier the better so he doesn't get copper. A warrior should be enough for a scout mission to find out whether or not Zara has copper, but no need to start it before he adopts slavery. Though warrior isn't strong enough to pillage protected copper mine, warrior could only sit next to copper and prevent improving it in the first place.

Esp target: HC should be better techer than warmongering JC, but he's quite low on score possibly indicating a bad start. Btw Seraiel pointed out the strenght of espionage in this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=508976
I've personally used esp mainly for city revolts during cuir wars, would it enhance our game to use esp to backfill some techs?
 
I thing that the city above is horrible.. 5 desert tiles are terrible! Does that really pay the hammers and maintenance costs back to us??
It doesn't only pay the maintenance back, it pays it back instantly upon settling. 2nd city is almost always commerce positive (if it's connected or can work a high :commerce:-tile), that's why we want to settle it asap.

I know the way you are thinking: that city will never be big and powerful. Does it mean it is bad? No. In 8 turns that city can start working the gold which almost doubles our :commerce:.

That gold+phant -site isn't much better long-term even. It has lots of brown hills (almost as useless as desert) but ok, after border pop those river-tiles are good.

I think Sahara-site pays itself back faster, but phant+gold will eventually be more developed. There is no way we could lose phant+gold to an AI, but Zara might claim Sahara before we do. For :) we need to claim phant at some point anyway.

If we are choosing which site to settle next between these two sites, without doing any math I'd say Sahara wins.
 
If we go for early holkans (which would be fun:D) that 2nd suggested site would actually net us +2:), which is imo a luxury and we really wouldn't have worries with the happy cap for some time. Getting a woodsmanII-holkan would require some xp farming and I think the fastest way for that would be a barb def mission in the east. But if we want to choke Zara, I think the earlier the better so he doesn't get copper. A warrior should be enough for a scout mission to find out whether or not Zara has copper, but no need to start it before he adopts slavery. Though warrior isn't strong enough to pillage protected copper mine, warrior could only sit next to copper and prevent improving it in the first place.
Yes, the sooner we can start the war (to get a worker) the better.
Esp target: HC should be better techer than warmongering JC, but he's quite low on score possibly indicating a bad start. Btw Seraiel pointed out the strenght of espionage in this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=508976
I've personally used esp mainly for city revolts during cuir wars, would it enhance our game to use esp to backfill some techs?
Are you referring to building the Great Wall? We do have stone and settling on top of it would be insta-connected to the capital. Too bad we don't know if there is seafood.

My game plan at this point would be to found those 4 sites we have discussed (Sahara, phant+gold, corn+copper which requires a border-pop) and abuse Zara. Right now I think I'd settle them in that order, too. I'm open to completely different ideas though and waiting for JSS's input. I think this is strategically a key moment with long-term consequences and we shouldn't do rash decisions.

@Robert: read this post by Sera: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12763444&postcount=3
Spoiler :
"All other tiles (!!!) , so basically all tile's that are not special-resources, riverside grassland or grassland hills, are not worth working!

Examples:

Non-riverside-grassland-cottage gives you 1:commerce: , but the citizen costs you 1:gold: = not worth it.
Plains-hill-mine gives you 4:hammers: but costs you 2:food:. 2:food: = 4:hammers: via Slavery, so only worth working when having to reduce Food, otherwise, whip away."

Just to make you understand that a good city doesn't need 20 decent tiles, it just needs few good tiles...
 
@Sampsa: Thanks for the link! It was really informative post, indeed! I've done work for my Civ-understandment. This week I made own list of buildings and their cost, reqs, effects, possible obsoleting and etc. on paper since I learn by writing the most effectively (reading can be very helpful too). I've done list of the leaders before that. I'll start working on the list of units next. The lists have been helpful! I can remember traits of ~90% leaders just from my head and I remember really much details of buildings. Sounds good?
 
And about the rivals of this game: We had bad luck.. Zara and JC are annoying overexpanding jerks especially Zara. JC is warmonger too and he has OP UU. HC is nice but we have to be careful, he can sneak for cultural victory!
 
At least no protective ones yet. Zara may try to expand like crazy, but can't do that if we choke him.
 
At least no protective ones yet. Zara may try to expand like crazy, but can't do that if we choke him.

That's right! We'll choke him to death :devil:!! Let's see if he expands after that, haha :D!
 
Are you referring to building the Great Wall? We do have stone and settling on top of it would be insta-connected to the capital. Too bad we don't know if there is seafood.

Just referring to using esp for tech steal in general. We didn't do it in our last game but there wasn't really need for that. We do have better places to settle. But the north coast should be checked for seafood.
 
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