Turn 1-50

[YossarianLives]

I personally hate making a worker a first build in a new city. This is because population growth is, in many cases, relative. The difference between population 1 and population 2 is much greater than the difference between population 4 and 5. Thus, I always like to allow my new cities to grow to at least size 2 before a worker or a settler.

If we can get two resources improved in time to have both Pop working them, then I agree that it's better to let the city grow to size 2. If we settle next to Wheat and can work the Cap's Corn, then this might very well be the case. If that's what we do, then I'd rather build a warrior (or maybe Granary) while we grow.

However, on that note, I'm pretty sure bcool and I placed our second cities in different locations. Where I settled Delhi (3SE), the wheat was not in the first ring, thus it was necessary to get a border pop ASAP. However despite the sacrifice of the initial border pop, settling 3SE may be worth it. There are at least 8 chops in the BFC, and much less tundra then by settling north of the wheat. I guess the decision for city placement comes later.

Whoops, I thought you meant 3S, 1E. I think bcool's point of settling near the Wheat in the south was to share the Cap's Corn, and 3SE misses the Corn. I myself argued against settling near the tundra, but 3S or 3S, 1E would be very quick to get started, and I trust bcool if he says that will make up for making this City 2 (since it will let us build more workers/settlers faster). I also see that bcool suggested starting a Settler with City 2, not a worker. At any rate, we should send the first warrior we build south to get a better idea of what's in the fog down there.

 

[Bowsling]

Yes, I see the value in sharing the corn. Another location I had considered was 2S3E, but this would depend heavily on what kind of terrain we find down south.

Of course, we haven't even seen all of our options yet - this discussion may be slightly premature.

 

[Bowsling]

Made a new, much more professional sandbox. The game is now set up to the right parameters (huge, toroidal, Emperor, Normal speed). There are no AIs and no victory conditions.

 

[YossarianLives]

Hmmm, I played until Turn 14 and the game awarded me a Culture Victory!

Also, the save starts on Turn 3, but no progress has been made on the Worker or Agri tech, so everything would have been a few turns off.

 

[Bowsling]

That's just weird...

Loaded it up, and you were right. For some reason it had reset the progress on agri and the worker. I intentionally played until turn 3 to make it as accurate as possible.

And it gave me a conquest victory on turn 14!

 

[cav scout]

Recommend you redo the sandbox one more time. Add in some AI teams locked in by mountains and save it at turn 0.

 

[bcool]

So if we do settle by the wheat, it looks like you can get the wheat, cows in the initial city radius and still get access to to corn. (2S of the corn)

You give up the fresh water from the river for the city, but it looks like you also give up some tundra tiles.

Probably makes sense to place the city there unless we find something else amazing.

 

[YossarianLives]

We can go on the river and still have the wheat in the first ring (but not the cow, which we won't be able to improve for awhile anyway). I think the bigger problem is the extra tundra, but maybe there's something in the fog that will make our mind up.

 

[cav scout]

So if we do settle by the wheat, it looks like you can get the wheat, cows in the initial city radius and still get access to to corn. (2S of the corn)

You give up the fresh water from the river for the city, but it looks like you also give up some tundra tiles.

Probably makes sense to place the city there unless we find something else amazing.

I wouldn't want to give up river placement just to put the cows in the initial radius. When our scouting warrior completes his loop we will be able to get a good dot map going for our city placement strategy.

 

[bcool]

I wouldn't want to give up river placement just to put the cows in the initial radius. When our scouting warrior completes his loop we will be able to get a good dot map going for our city placement strategy.

With corn, wheat, and deer likely connected the lost health bonus wouldn't hurt us for a long time.

Of course once we explore more perhaps we will not want to research animal handling for quite some time so the cows wouldn't need to be in the initial city radius.
However, if we do plan to research animal handling soon, then having those cows in the initial city radius would be quite nice.

 

[Bowsling]

I think settling westwards - on the hill NW of the second corn source - would be a much better move in the long run. The food benefits presented by the wheat and the cow are offsetted by simply farming the corn and then working one of the floodplains. We avoid having so much tundra in the BFC of our second city, and the overlap with Indira. By settling the spot with our first settler, we can also get the floodplain cottages going earlier, giving us a substantial tech lead. Settling NW of the corn also allows for a production city 3SE of Indira, making use of the hills in between and of the wheat and cow.

 

[YossarianLives]

New turn just started. Any ideas for the warrior besides NE?

 

[bcool]

I think settling westwards - on the hill NW of the second corn source - would be a much better move in the long run. The food benefits presented by the wheat and the cow are offsetted by simply farming the corn and then working one of the floodplains. We avoid having so much tundra in the BFC of our second city, and the overlap with Indira. By settling the spot with our first settler, we can also get the floodplain cottages going earlier, giving us a substantial tech lead. Settling NW of the corn also allows for a production city 3SE of Indira, making use of the hills in between and of the wheat and cow.

Overlap with the 2nd city is often a positive thing.

1) less maintenance
2) easier to defend
3) can share initial resources to get off to a faster start (improved tiles can still be worked after a whip for example)
4) workers can easily switch between the cities
5) Initial trade route doesn't require any roads (initial trade routes is worth 2 commerce so that is like a free cottage)

3rd city can easily be on the plains hill NW of the 2nd corn (if we don't find something better)
we really will not have the worker support to build any cottages for that city anyways if it is the 2nd city. It takes until about T48 to get the capital all cottaged.
As a 3rd city the 2nd corn city it could have 2 workers to help improve those tiles as it grows. And the wheat-cows city could continue to pump out settlers and workers.

Re: tundra tiles
Really I'm not worried about having 3-4 tundra tiles in the wheat-cow city. They really won't affect the cities output until late late in the game.

 

[Bowsling]

Okay, you're right.

 

[Caledorn]

New turn just started. Any ideas for the warrior besides NE?

8-8 perhaps since it looks to me like the river starts up there?

 

[cav scout]

Here is an updated sandbox to run tests.

 

[bcool]

I'll rather move the warrior 9-9 to get to that hill, there are probably animals out there would be nice to try to stick to hills and forests.

 

[Bowsling]

Thanks, cav_scout. Saved me from trying it a fourth time.

 

[vranasm]

settling south from capital city 2 (wheat, cows area) is wrong direction imo.

we need helper city either north or west from capital, thus I wanted to move the warrior clockwise to the west.

we circular east area which is not attractive for helper city.

deer spot with some overlap on bananas/corn is another good direction with the hills around if we don't use city 2 as cottage grower.

we still have cca 33 turns of scouting, so don't waste it! we need better vision north and west from capital, since that direction will be our first cottages

 

[cav scout]

So for worker builds I think it might be best to go:

1. Farm corn (5 turns).
2. Move to plains hill S,SW from capitol (1 turn).
3. Mine grass plains hill (4 turns).
4. Mine grass hill SW from capitol (4 turns).
5. Farm bananas(5 turns).

It takes our worker the same amount of time to move to and then mine the plains hill (41) as it does to farm the bananas (4). Either way this 2nd improvement will be done right when we reach pop 3 and want to start a settler. So it makes sense to take the extra while we produce the settler. The bananas will be farmed by the time the settler is finished so the food will be available just when we need it to start growing to pop 5 quickly.