Turn Discussion Thread

I've got a question. Do barbs not spawn in fogged tiles immediately adjacent to visible tiles? I always thought that any fog tile could spawn a barbarian, but I remember someone saying that with the warrior where he is now our entire island would be spawnbusted. However with the warrior in position we can see that the entire island is not visible.

Other than that the GNP jump is great news. We should watch the average GNP, and rival best, closely to see if other teams make similar leaps, as those would imply a balanced resource distribution like LP suggested earlier. If other teams have Gold/Silver/Gems they'll join us soon at the higher GNP, if they don't it will be a while before they can catch us.

Barbs cannot spawn on tiles which are within 2 squares of another unit (even a worker, or an animal or barb). In other words, the warrior has a 5x5 square centred on him in which no barbs can spawn. Once the borders expand, every tile will be either revealed or within that 5x5 square. It is still possible for barb cities to spawn on any fogged tile, but it's unlikely.
 
I've got a question. Do barbs not spawn in fogged tiles immediately adjacent to visible tiles? I always thought that any fog tile could spawn a barbarian, but I remember someone saying that with the warrior where he is now our entire island would be spawnbusted. However with the warrior in position we can see that the entire island is not visible.
Like Irgy says, barbarian units cannot spawn within a 5x5 area centred on any civilized unit. I didn't know about this until recently myself; it's certainly somewhat counter-intuitive. But it's true and it works, so what can you do. :)

Other than that the GNP jump is great news. We should watch the average GNP, and rival best, closely to see if other teams make similar leaps, as those would imply a balanced resource distribution like LP suggested earlier. If other teams have Gold/Silver/Gems they'll join us soon at the higher GNP, if they don't it will be a while before they can catch us.
Yep, excellent idea. If we see any jump in the "rival best" GNP in the next few turns, we can be sure that at least one other team started with Gold/Silver/Gems. And I'm betting that's close to a 100% probability, since we ordered a balanced map. ;)

I've been thinking though remember how we had an option back in the Poll for the Map, that there was an option for bonus Islands? What if we started on the Bonus islands? I mean that the Bonus Islands are where the Luxaries are.
That could be true. Perhaps the majority of the strategic resources could be on the mainland as well. In that case, it'd certainly be worthwhile grabbing a large chunk of it for ourselves.

I can't wait for us to get Libraries going. So the next Tech after BW will be Pottery --> Writing?
Yep, exactly.

Barbs cannot spawn on tiles which are within 2 squares of another unit (even a worker, or an animal or barb). In other words, the warrior has a 5x5 square centred on him in which no barbs can spawn. Once the borders expand, every tile will be either revealed or within that 5x5 square. It is still possible for barb cities to spawn on any fogged tile, but it's unlikely.
Actually I'm pretty sure it's impossible for barb cities to spawn this early in the game (pre-3000 BC). As far as I recall, it's coded somewhere that they can't appear until after a certain turn in a normal speed game. I'll have to check up on that. Either way, I doubt we'll see any barb cities popping up on our island before we unfog it entirely. ;)
 
Pottery->Writing was the plan as far as I understood, the only controversy was whether to insert Animal Handling somewhere in between.
As I recall, slotting in Animal Husbandry before Writing delays the Library by a few turns but saves a small amount of beakers on Writing due to the prerequisite bonus. However, we have to keep in mind that Animal Husbandry will be a tech that we should be able to easily trade for in the not-so-distant future. Certainly with the tech rate we have (and other teams are likely to also have), someone will have Alphabet in no time. And since we're getting out exploring Work Boats very early, we'll be likely to have met at least one decent trading partner before too long. In that respect, beakers sunk into Animal Husbandry could turn out to be a waste (especially in the reasonably likely occurrence that we don't find Horses on our island - I'm betting on a 1 in 3 chance).
 
I'm not expecting to find horses on the island either. To me, the main argument against was that the 25% bonus from the library is better than the 20% bonus to Writing from AH. Getting it in trade sounds like an even better plan. Lets hope we can get Monarchy (or some chunk of the techs towards it) in trade too :)

I'm betting on a 1 in 3 chance
It's going to be a bit hard to confirm whether you were exactly right about that isn't it? :) Actually interestingly enough I've just submitted a paper (my first ever paper in fact) on the subject (well, something close to it anyway). If it gets accepted I'll tell you all about it. Although I gather what you're guessing is that you expect we'll each get one of copper, iron or horses?
 
I'm not expecting to find horses on the island either. To me, the main argument against was that the 25% bonus from the library is better than the 20% bonus to Writing from AH. Getting it in trade sounds like an even better plan. Lets hope we can get Monarchy (or some chunk of the techs towards it) in trade too :)
Yep, indeed.

It's going to be a bit hard to confirm whether you were exactly right about that isn't it? :) Actually interestingly enough I've just submitted a paper (my first ever paper in fact) on the subject (well, something close to it anyway). If it gets accepted I'll tell you all about it.
Cool, let me know.

Although I gather what you're guessing is that you expect we'll each get one of copper, iron or horses?
That was indeed my wild stab in the dark. ;)
 
Waiting til Alphabet and meeting another team for AH is insane. Why wouldn't we want to try and get a couple of chariots on the nearby islands to explore?

You guys are crazy wanting to delay a critical tech like AH.
 
Chariots are far from guaranteed. And it's not as if we can't explore with other units.
 
I have to say I agree with azzaman. We need to know if we have horses or not because those chariots will be super handy when exploring the new island. And through testing we have shown that there is almost no long term difference between getting AH and not getting AH. It seems illogical to avoid it.

And the only argument is that we can trade for it later. But what if our first trading partner also skipped AH? Then we are in a position where we might have to research it anyway and then we have lost turns.
 
Whether we trade for it or not, we're still paying for the tech, either in beakers we produce, or by trading away a tech in exchange for it. It's hard to say if chariots will be critical for exploring the new island, we'll get a better sense of that once our exploratory workboats get out.

When we get closer to needing to make this decision, I'd like to see a few test games done. When do we get the library under each tech plan? How many beakers are gained or wasted under the different paths?

Clearly chariots are a gamble, I won't be inclined to take it unless we see evidence that they'd be highly useful, or going after AH has only a tiny cost.
 
or going after AH has only a tiny cost.

AH will cause a 2 turn delay in getting the library built. It will allow for City2 to be built on the same turn as it would without AH and in both scenarios the library is built before we are pop5 to utilise the available specialist.

Here is an example that was posted ages ago. Please note this example builds a worker for the 2 turns before a library is available resulting in a quick worker after library but slightly less pop growth.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9094804&postcount=257

EDIT: Teching AH gives a bonus 38 beakers to teching Writing compared to 14 beakers of bonus in 2 turns with library. Teching AH is a clear winner as it has the added bonus of possibly revealing horses.
 
AH will cause a 2 turn delay in getting the library built. It will allow for City2 to be built on the same turn as it would without AH and in both scenarios the library is built before we are pop5 to utilise the available specialist.

Here is an example that was posted ages ago. Please note this example builds a worker for the 2 turns before a library is available resulting in a quick worker after library but slightly less pop growth.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9094804&postcount=257

EDIT: Teching AH gives a bonus 38 beakers to teching Writing compared to 14 beakers of bonus in 2 turns with library. Teching AH is a clear winner as it has the added bonus of possibly revealing horses.

Very good argument. I think I'm in agreement. When I did my analysis I assumed that we'd be able to start specialists right away, the extra 2-3 turns of having the academy outweighed the boosted research from the pre-req. If reasearching AH won't delay our ability to put down specialists, it's more worthwhile from a beaker standpoint to go AH first.
 
I haven't looked through the micro scenarios yet, but if we won't have grown to a size that can utilize the specialist (without sacrificing one of the gold/fish tiles) by the time we have the library built as champinoman argues, then AH before Writing makes sense. There is no guarantee we'll have copper for Axemen or horses for chariots, but being able to build pastures would expand our settling options on other islands or the mainland.
 
I have a feeling that if we do have copper we may not have Iron or Horse. Also we don't have any land animals to speak of to pasture. If we don't have any Horse or Cow/Pig/Sheep then the only reason is for any beaker bonus we can get.
 
I'd be more inclined to go for Animal Husbandry if we actually had any visible resources that we could improve with the tech. As it is, we don't have any such resources visible, so teching Animal Husbandry boils down to a singular gamble on having Horses (which I personally think is unlikely). Sure there'll probably be pasturizable resources on the mainland, but we can tech or trade for AH when that time comes (which is still a little while down the track).

Also I think people are forgetting that the multipliers are only a small part of the equation. The much bigger part is, if we tech Animal Husbandry, that's ~150 beakers that we can't sink into some other tech. If we don't find Horses, we don't have a "saving" of 38-14=24 beakers. We have ~150 beakers wasted on a tech that we have no use at all for in the forseeable future.

If we had some guaranteed pasturizable resources I'd be all for going for AH. As it is, I think it's too much of a gamble when we could be saving time researching other things (Sailing and Maths, for instance).
 
And I have to say Sailing is more critical then AH at this juncture. We need to settle off this island, otherwise were just sitting pretty.
 
I think I'm going to need to look this over. I was initially for Pottery > Writing > Sailing, but wouldn't be opposed to researching AH if it did not delay running a scientist. However besides letting us run the specialist, the library also gives us a 25% bonus to beakers. At our current tech rate that would be 5 beakers, which is more than running a scientist, and our tech rate is likely to be higher when the library is built, since we'll probably be working the other gold mine. Granted we won't be getting GPP before the specialist, but the research bonus seems significant at this point in the game. Also, the point about putting those beakers into Sailing rather than AH is taken makes sense if we want to get off the island soon, but how soon willing we be building a galley?

Like I said, I think I'll have to look this over some more.
 
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