Lord Parkin
aka emperor
Not yet we haven't. Please don't anyone hit "end turn" until we finalise our decision. This turn is important to get right, we don't want to waste any hammers.
Turn Discussion Thread
- Thread starter Lord Parkin
- Start date
AlphaShard
Emperor
Well I wasn't arguing against Slavery or whipping, quite the opposite. I wasn't going to hit enter LP, didn't you see my post in the Tracking thread? 
I was just putting a placeholder for SOMETHING to be there, just in case.
I was just putting a placeholder for SOMETHING to be there, just in case.
Lord Parkin
aka emperor
Nah, it's okay, I know. I was just putting that in as a reminder for anyone else who happened to log in. I know I almost hit enter by accident myself. 
Either way, we haven't invested any hammers into the Work Boat yet, so we can still switch strategies at this point.
Either way, we haven't invested any hammers into the Work Boat yet, so we can still switch strategies at this point.
Lord Parkin: excellent study! But, IMHO, for third test to be perfect, research order should also exchange - Mining, Wheel, BW.
And the chops were they in or out the radii of the 2 cities?
Anyway your analisys, put me towards the worker first, a lot of beakers still increased by the
earlier academy.
And the chops were they in or out the radii of the 2 cities?
Anyway your analisys, put me towards the worker first, a lot of beakers still increased by the
earlier academy.
dima42
Prince
I somewhat challenge your results from Test 1.
I have a city founded on turn 41 (I settled in the nw corner with the two fish).
At the start of turn 42, I have:
49 hammers into placeholder barracks.
256 beakers into Iron Working.
I don't claim this is enough to make a difference. But I'm not sure I've optimized yet, either.
For those of you keeping count:
The difference between whipping and not whipping (both in the workboat next build option) is 1 turn on city2, 5 hammers and 15 beakers, in exchange for already being in slavery.
dima42
Prince
I got 330 beakers, 12 hammers into the workboat (also founding turn 39 - are we picking different second city sites?), same 51 hammers on the granary.
so currently this is 2 extra forests to chop and 4 turns on exploration in exchange for 74 beakers and about 5 hammers on city#2; we are already in slavery (so we will lose a future turn unless we never switch to slavery, but this turn may not be a pivotal early turn).
I stand by my opinion of WB-WB-Worker(whip)
AlphaShard
Emperor
Were the last ones for this turn, could we make a descision in a few hours? I don't want to hear the other teams whining about us taking our turn.
Lord Parkin
aka emperor
Yeah, that occurred to me as well. We don't need Bronze until we're ready to chop.
All in the radii of the capital.
Yeah, I think I'm leaning that way too.
We probably worked slightly different tiles at some point. For reference, in test 1 I think I worked:
Size 1 - Fish
Size 2 - Fish + PHF until second Fish hooked up, then 2 Fish
Size 3 - 2 Fish + Silk; whipped Worker at size 3 as soon as available (1 pop whip)
Size 2 - Worked 2 Fish again
Size 3 - 2 Fish + PHF (or Gold if it was hooked up)
Size 4 - 2 Fish + 1 Gold + 1 PHF or another Gold if it was hooked up (continued throughout build of Settler and to start of turn 42)
Personally I actually wouldn't use Slavery at all during the first 50 turns (maybe more) with a start like this. There's just too many good tiles we need to work, both at the capital and at the second city site.
I'm picking the NW corner of the island for the second city. PH underneath the city = 2 hammers + work a PHF for an additional 3 hammers = 5 hammers per turn, for three turns = 15 hammers. Not sure how you get 12. Difference in beakers may be a choice of overflow tech after Iron Working... be careful to select one with only one prerequisite (I chose Sailing) so it doesn't multiply the beakers and confuse our two comparisons. Really I should have used Metal Casting in the tests, since it takes much longer to research and thus is better for comparisons.
Heh, when you put it like that, I think I prefer the reverse: Worker -> WB. I think the huge amount of extra beakers outweighs the slightly smaller total hammer output (and that only starts to show once we get to the end of our forests in the 3rd ring, which will not be for some time). Personally I much prefer having a big leg-up in beakers to saving forests. Actually, in my opinion forests should be chopped as soon as possible anyway, so I don't see this as a disadvantage really.
They can wait. This is the one turn where we need to be careful. After this, we have a plan and can make turns fairly quickly. You shouldn't feel pressured by a few of the more vocal members on the forum to hurry a decision and possibly risk making a mistake as a result. Just ignore them. It's not as if we're doing this every turn.
Lord Parkin
aka emperor
I just posted to let the other teams know we'll be a little while longer in finishing our turn. Only 16 hours have elapsed on the pitboss timer out of 40, there's no need for an urgent rush just yet. Though we'll need to come to a consensus on the "Worker next" or "WB next" decision within the next 24 hours at the most.
Trystero
Deity
Does Mining > BW > Wheel vs. Mining > Wheel > BW matter if we aren't ready to chop until after the 3rd tech is researched? I think it does for one (possibly) important reason: going BW first opens up the option of chopping/whipping earlier. Even if we don't plan on using the whip, I think it's good to open that option up as early as is reasonable, in case something unforeseen occurs. Since the Worker will likely be mining gold during this research time frame anyways, I don't see the advantage of being able to build roads earlier.
I second this. If we are not pursuing a wonder-based strategy we should use available forests to boost early production, and the extra beakers will play to our research strength (Financial + Gold).
They can wait. This is the one turn where we need to be careful. After this, we have a plan and can make turns fairly quickly. You shouldn't feel pressured by a few of the more vocal members on the forum to hurry a decision and possibly risk making a mistake as a result. Just ignore them. It's not as if we're doing this every turn.
Also agreed. We need to focus on making the correct decisions, not the game clock. Besides, we aren't doing this every move.
Lord Parkin
aka emperor
I'll have to double-check, but researching The Wheel first might have allowed 1 turn of a pre-built road instead of 1 turn of a pre-built farm while we're moving between the Golds. Prebuilt road > prebuilt farm for the capital, because we'll want to cottage those tiles, so prebuilding a farm will be a waste. Still, it's a very minor advantage. And if we happen to have Copper in the fat cross, it'd be worth revealing it early (not that that seems likely, but who knows). Also, I'll have to double check whether Wheel -> BW would mean we'd be any turns behind for starting our forest chops. If it delays our chops at all to go Wheel -> BW, we should definitely go BW first.
AlphaShard
Emperor
If our Mathaletes have been correct in their anaylsis and a worker means more beakers then I'll go for the beakers. Because then we can work a Gold and a Fish tile, we will need Wheel to connect the gold to our city and increase our Happy cap.
Lord Parkin
aka emperor
But we don't need to increase our happy cap until we're at least size 5 (with no Warrior), or size 6 (with a Warrior). So building the roads to the Gold can wait. Those 4 Worker turns it would take to build the road would be better spent on chopping an extra forest earlier (to get the Settler and Library out quicker). Once we get close to size 5 or 6, we can then move to road up the Gold.
AlphaShard
Emperor
Yeah and I am noting the second fish tile would only have one commerce on it, as opposed to the 8 we'd get from the gold mine plus the hammers. Damn now I'm for the worker--> WB lol.
Lord Parkin
aka emperor
Heh... yep, that's why Worker -> WB nets more than 50 extra beakers.
Let me try to keep track of the votes so far. If you want to change your vote, just say so.
WB -> Worker (1 confirmed, 6 unconfirmed): dima42, pindicator?, azzaman333?, champinoman?, grant2004?, BLubmuz?, Irgy?
Worker -> WB (5 confirmed): Lord Parkin, Trystero, AlphaShard, Methos, fed1943
Those with question marks haven't responded in the last day or so, so should confirm (or switch) after reading through the latest posts.
There seems to be some conflicting results here. For the record, my original working was wrong as I was growing to pop 2 on 20 food not 22. This will affect all paths, but will probably affect them differently. However dima42's well documented results however do seem to confirm that the difference is still basically 30-odd food/hammers for 30-odd beakers.
I still think hammers are the bottleneck in our empire, all the more so because we have so much commerce. At the current rate, we're going to be considering whether to research alphabet before we've even met another team, because we have beakers galore while barely being able to spare the hammers to squeeze out a single workboat to explore with.
On the issue of revolting to slavery, there are exactly two reasons for delaying (or early) revolting:
* Unit movement. In other words, choosing a turn that you're waiting on a worker action or a settler to arrive.
* Waiting until hereditary rule (or organised religeon) to switch to two at once. I'm fairly convinced we'll get at least a turn's worth of benefit out of being able to whip before HR arrives, because we have bucketloads of food, but that depends on a lot of things.
A lot of people have been talking about "critical early turns", but this is a misleading way of thinking about it. Sure a few hammers (or beakers etc.) on an early turn is worth more than a few hammers later, but by the same measure empire-wide anarchy loses a lot more hammers later than earlier. It could be quite complicated to work out the difference it makes, except it isn't if you look at it from a different perspective.
That perspective being that an early revolt is almost identical to a later revolt, except for one turn of unit movement.
To me, unit movement means revolting earlier if anything. Faster settler arrival helps more earlier than later. Very early worker turns are likely to be a bottleneck, while soon after we should be building enough workers that we're never working an unimproved tile waiting for a worker to get to it.
That said, the workboat->workboat->whip worker plan specifically needs to revolt at a time when we have no units to move, so it does indeed lose out a little there.
I still think hammers are the bottleneck in our empire, all the more so because we have so much commerce. At the current rate, we're going to be considering whether to research alphabet before we've even met another team, because we have beakers galore while barely being able to spare the hammers to squeeze out a single workboat to explore with.
On the issue of revolting to slavery, there are exactly two reasons for delaying (or early) revolting:
* Unit movement. In other words, choosing a turn that you're waiting on a worker action or a settler to arrive.
* Waiting until hereditary rule (or organised religeon) to switch to two at once. I'm fairly convinced we'll get at least a turn's worth of benefit out of being able to whip before HR arrives, because we have bucketloads of food, but that depends on a lot of things.
A lot of people have been talking about "critical early turns", but this is a misleading way of thinking about it. Sure a few hammers (or beakers etc.) on an early turn is worth more than a few hammers later, but by the same measure empire-wide anarchy loses a lot more hammers later than earlier. It could be quite complicated to work out the difference it makes, except it isn't if you look at it from a different perspective.
That perspective being that an early revolt is almost identical to a later revolt, except for one turn of unit movement.
To me, unit movement means revolting earlier if anything. Faster settler arrival helps more earlier than later. Very early worker turns are likely to be a bottleneck, while soon after we should be building enough workers that we're never working an unimproved tile waiting for a worker to get to it.
That said, the workboat->workboat->whip worker plan specifically needs to revolt at a time when we have no units to move, so it does indeed lose out a little there.
champinoman
Warlord
ok, I've run some more test games and I think I like the worker first build. The difference only seems to be the lost turn in revolt to slavery that makes the difference. But considering we want to be at 6 pop in the cap for a while then we really don't need slavery other than that initial whip.
However my tests so far haven't been able to replicate your numbers as the cap in my test on turn 42 is still 2 turns away from pop5. In addition I have slightly less hammers into the build and less beakers. However, even with these lower numbers the worker build seems better than the WB build.
EDIT: Found the difference. I only chopped 3 forests to get to almost the same point. Can probably save the 4th for a little. If we are not chasing wonders then the forests will be handy for the next worker.
However my tests so far haven't been able to replicate your numbers as the cap in my test on turn 42 is still 2 turns away from pop5. In addition I have slightly less hammers into the build and less beakers. However, even with these lower numbers the worker build seems better than the WB build.
EDIT: Found the difference. I only chopped 3 forests to get to almost the same point. Can probably save the 4th for a little. If we are not chasing wonders then the forests will be handy for the next worker.
AlphaShard
Emperor
I wasn't aware that units stopped taking orders and moving if your in revolt. I think it's more a cost of the city it's self not building and us not teching for a turn.
Oh and Irgy we have lots of hills on our northern coast line that can be our production line. The NE and NW cities should have quite alot of hammers provided they have enough food to feed them.
Oh and Irgy we have lots of hills on our northern coast line that can be our production line. The NE and NW cities should have quite alot of hammers provided they have enough food to feed them.
