Turn 1-50

[Caledorn]

Not sure about my thoughts on the Borda Count method. I need to read more about it before making up my mind. My primary concern is that we need to define whether we want a true democracy, a semi-democracy or a monarchial style team. As far as I can tell the general consensus is semi. And the challenge then is finding a consensus on how to best implement that.

I suggest we move this discussion to the Team ethos thread instead of derailing the turn discussion thread though.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

 

[Arkipeller]

I think what we should do is to first find out:

What is our goal with the first turns?
Obviously getting a second city and having a great commerce is at high prio.
In that case we should all quickly try to do some scenarios each and post them. For instance we could do it till turn 50.

I did try not to Poly my last try and I had great results for turn 50.
Still (if my vote counts) I prefer SIP, but I can agree on Agriculture instead Poly at start.

I dare you to beat me by research at turn 50 (25 best so far), bcool

 

[vranasm]

3 cities 23 bpt on bananas T50... yeah 1 bpt difference

tried a bit different approach with agri->tw->pottery->hunting and actually there was no worker wasted turn

maybe would be better delay hunting after pottery, delays timing of 3rd city though

one could argue I should have cottaged different tiles, but that's the question of finding city spots

edit:

put slider to 100% in both saves... the sip has overall 27 bpt on 100% (-3 gpt), bananas have 29 bpt (-5 gpt)

 

[bcool]

I think what we should do is to first find out:

What is our goal with the first turns?
Obviously getting a second city and having a great commerce is at high prio.
In that case we should all quickly try to do some scenarios each and post them. For instance we could do it till turn 50.

I did try not to Poly my last try and I had great results for turn 50.
Still (if my vote counts) I prefer SIP, but I can agree on Agriculture instead Poly at start.

I dare you to beat me by research at turn 50 (25 best so far), bcool

vranasm did it, so I'll pass if you don't mind.

I would like to point out that vranasm's save at T50 has 32 crop yield and your save has 21 crop yield.

A 50% difference in crop yield has to be significant doesn't it?

 

[Arkipeller]

3 cities 23 bpt on bananas T50... yeah 1 bpt difference

tried a bit different approach with agri->tw->pottery->hunting and actually there was no worker wasted turn

maybe would be better delay hunting after pottery, delays timing of 3rd city though

one could argue I should have cottaged different tiles, but that's the question of finding city spots

edit:

put slider to 100% in both saves... the sip has overall 27 bpt on 100% (-3 gpt), bananas have 29 bpt (-5 gpt)

I need to find that map of yours. It gave me a great idea! But yeah... it gives sence to have more food, since we are going to whip some slaves.

 

[2metraninja]

Food is important

 

[Arkipeller]

vranasm: I like that placement of cities. Have we considered Stonehenge?

 

[vranasm]

vranasm did it, so I'll pass if you don't mind.

I would like to point out that vranasm's save at T50 has 32 crop yield and your save has 21 crop yield.

A 50% difference in crop yield has to be significant doesn't it?

and AH and almost finished BW... wasn't bad to prefer a little bit of commerce before food (aka delaying huting after pottery)

and 3 workers out

not sure people really realize that the worker is out t11 (couple of deer turns syncs agri and worker to T11) almost matching the time of RB worker (in mirrored starts they would get t10 worker on bananas)

 

[vranasm]

vranasm: I like that placement of cities. Have we considered Stonehenge?

stonehenge in competitive settings is a bit meh.

it has great synergy with Sse, but there is almost no evidence we could use SSE and another problem being I think I won't convince enough people to do it...

add to it we would build nice big target mark above our heads if we go SH+Mids combo (which is mandatory for SSE)

edit:
and after checking the save... well the game is a lot behind compared to SIP and my poor attempt on bananas... don't like it.

stonehenge to me is the same trap as early game religion ;-)

 

[2metraninja]

Excuse my ignorance, but what stands for SSE? The last two must be Specialist Economy, but the first? Semi? Super?

 

[Aivoturso]

I took the liberty to create the voting thread to finally get the decision made (only 35 h of turn timer left, guys!). Please, go here to vote.

And yes, you guys got me converted. I'm interested in seeing what you can do with the bananas. Though I'm not convinced that the bananas runs well with bureaucracy, I'm willing to bet that combined wisdom of vranasm, bcool and slaze, plus couple of others I can't remember right now, is better than mine.

 

[YossarianLives]

Thanks Aivoturso!

Off topic, but why is SH mandatory for a Specialist Economy (or alternatively, if SSE does not stand for Specialist Economy, then what is it)?

On topic, I do agree that SH will probably take up too many early hammers to make it worthwhile. If we were Ind or Cha then maybe, but otherwise it's just not worth the investment. Let's stick with workers and settlers with a couple scouting/garrison units to begin with.

 

[Sommerswerd]

CE = Commerce Economy / Cottage Economy
SE = Specialist Economy
EE = Espionage Economy
WE = Wonder Economy - Trying to get every Wonder to reap the benefits and deny your opponents, causing them to waste resources and time chasing the Wonders you always get. You use the extre points to pop Great People much faster than you normally would. You then use them as normal for Academies, Bulbs, Rush Wonders etc.
SSE = Super Specialist Economy / Settled Specialist Economy - This strategy focuses on running High rates and popping alot of Great People. The difference is, that you always settle them, creating powerhouse cities.

You will also see people say it as WE/SSE as in the two are combined into one single strategy. Obsolete (Team Mavericks in BTS MTDG II) favors this strategy and wrote a nice article about it (if I can find it again I may post it). Anyway Mavs ran the strategy last game. WE/SSE basically boils down to focusing getting as many Wonders as possible for the free points and settling all the specialists to get a few Super-powered cities.

I don't think SH is mandatory for SSE, but Mids is pretty vital to it. You can still run a SSE without Mids, (just as you can run EE w/out GW) its just not as powerful because you cant run early Representation.

 

[vranasm]

settled great prophet has biggest yield for 2H 5 gold and 3 beakers under representation, thus you want to maximize the number of them

saw some obsolete saves where he had like 16 great prophets settled.

he builds for that purpose SH, Toa and Oracle to maximize GP GPP + Mids for rep. TGL is another mandatory wonder... it's basicaly "build a ton of wonders" strategy.

The nice trick here is that the more settled prophets you get the bigger production of other wonders you get and the whole thing just start to quickly snowball.

You can view every settled spec as super citizen silently increasing your population cap without using happy/health cap. So if you get up to 1 AD let's say 4 settled person and have capital size cca 10, you are basically equivalent of normal city size ~16

For the purpose I created the missing Ind/Phi leader to see the best pairing for such setup in this thread

with marble+stone start you can get this empire
built basically all wonders except for Sistine Chapel, with 5 settled great person.

But we can't run it...
1) we don't have Ind
2) there doesn't seem to be evidence of stone/marble
basically nullifying the strategy
3) it's multiplayer... someone who will build those 9 (10 with Colossus) wonders has certainly nice target mark above his head unlike SP where you can manipulate AI's

 

[Arkipeller]

Note to self: Settlers does not loose both of their moves when crossing a river. This means we do have 8 possibilities if a turn0-capitol is wanted : NW,N,NE, SIP, W, Bananas, S & SE. (SW is a hill)
By now I am pretty much convinced that using PH as some would like and loosing a turn (9-10 commerce + production+ chain reaction of that) is a rather bad choice. We also get none flood plains at this point, which will make a difference from T36 and this is going to escalate.

I would like to some of PH-voters to explain their choice

By now ( approx 20 simultaions done) I am quite sure that building on bananas gives us a slight advantage over SIP at turn 50. This advantage is not based on commerce/research, but on food. We should question the motives of both places, since it is possible to have great outcomes from both. My main concern is that it is not THAT far to plantations and by using bananas we destroy chances for a plantation and the commerce that comes with that.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Banana plantation does not produce commerce IIRC. Silk plantation, Spice plantation, Dye plantation and incense plantation all produce nice commerce, but banana plantation only makes food

 

[Arkipeller]

Banana plantation does not produce commerce IIRC. Silk plantation, Spice plantation, Dye plantation and incense plantation all produce nice commerce, but banana plantation only makes food

That statement pretty much kills one of my strongest reasons for SIP. If bananas gives better production, commerce and food at turn 50, I guess that if there are some hidden resources among the tiles that only can be reached if settling at SIP, we can aquire them later with 2nd, 3rd or 4th town.
The only fair reason to prefer SIP over Bananas is if we want to com-spec our capitol.
I won't riot if we build on SIP, since it is not a bad spot, but I think our development as nation is better with bananas

 

[DaveShack]

The reload was granted.

Was the password used on the initial claim good, or does it need to be changed? I saw at least one comment asking for no capital letters, for example. This may be important to get right now, as I have a vague memory of it being difficult to change later due to a pitboss bug.

Did we agree on 1st turn build and tech? I think it was worker and agri, but want to have that confirmed. I also assume the location choice does not affect this.

 

[Arkipeller]

The reload was granted.

Was the password used on the initial claim good, or does it need to be changed? I saw at least one comment asking for no capital letters, for example. This may be important to get right now, as I have a vague memory of it being difficult to change later due to a pitboss bug.

Did we agree on 1st turn build and tech? I think it was worker and agri, but want to have that confirmed. I also assume the location choice does not affect this.

As far as I've played Agri and worker was always the best option no matter where we started. Our issue is where to have our capitol

 

[YossarianLives]

By now I am pretty much convinced that using PH as some would like and loosing a turn (9-10 commerce + production+ chain reaction of that) is a rather bad choice. We also get none flood plains at this point, which will make a difference from T36 and this is going to escalate.

I would like to some of PH-voters to explain their choice

Honestly, I think any of the three starting locations we are currently debating would grow into pretty decent capitals. I like the PH start the most because of the food and production it gives us. It would be a commerce-poor capital compared to SIP or Bananas, I admit that. But for food, we would have corn, bananas, deer and cow in the BFC. For production, we would have three grass hills, two PH, and six forests to chop (we would want to leave the deer forest in place). This would get us quicker workers, settlers, units, buildings, etc. We could use our Fin trait to catch up economically after out-expanding everyone else. The capital itself would include five or six grasslands we can cottage.

That said, I think I will go re-arrange my votes for starting location, as Bananas is stronger than SIP, and PH doesn't seem to have a lot of traction at the moment.

The reload was granted.

Was the password used on the initial claim good, or does it need to be changed? I saw at least one comment asking for no capital letters, for example. This may be important to get right now, as I have a vague memory of it being difficult to change later due to a pitboss bug.

Did we agree on 1st turn build and tech? I think it was worker and agri, but want to have that confirmed. I also assume the location choice does not affect this.

Yes, I think we will want worker + Agri to start, regardless of where we put our capital. We need to improve that corn ASAP.