Turn Discussion: Turns 1-19

[Sommerswerd]

@damnrunner - You are right about the delay on mining the 1st hill if we tech fishing next.

Although, I don't think fogbusting is a big issue for a long time. The reason is because of the barb attack formula... IIRC, barbs don't enter your cultural borders until the # of player-built cities = (2 x # of players) + 1. So in this case there are 6 players meaning 2x6=12, ad 12+1=13.

That means that barbs will not enter our cultural borders until there are 13 cities in the game. So we can get something else, like a wb, a second worker or a settler before we need to send out fogbusting warriors. On the other hand I guess there is something to be said for making sure that barbs (esp bears) never appear in the first place by fogbusting.

 

[Norton I]

Could someone, maybe the turn player, give me a list of all available techs and their expected number of turns to finish? Then I'll prepare the new tech polls.

 

[remake20]

Can someone else get that for Norton. I am a little busy ATM.

 

[remake20]

Actually I do have time:
Wheel 9 (89)
fish 6 (59)
Myst 8 (74)
Mining 8 (74)

() = Beakers

 

[Norton I]

Thanks, how about pottery, writing, archery & horseback riding? I guess the most popular options are already in your list, but it's probably good to have all options in the poll.

 

[wideyedwanderer]

Pottery, writing, and horseback riding won't be available till after we finish AH. I'm not sure why he didn't include archery though.

 

[Norton I]

Pottery, writing, and horseback riding won't be available till after we finish AH. I'm not sure why he didn't include archery though.

but doesn't the tech tree menu give you the expected number of turns anyway? and pottery was already unlocked because of agri i think.

well, it doesn't matter too much, I'll put the polls up in a few hours anyway

 

[wideyedwanderer]

Yeah. He probably wasn't looking at the menu. He was probably just looking at the choose-your-tech screen.

 

[remake20]

Sorry I forgot about those. If people really want to tech those they can just state so.

 

[wideyedwanderer]

I say we name our worker Bob. Bob the builder.

 

[remake20]

Well sure, I take it our unit names are children TV show characters.

 

[Norton I]

Does anyone knows the exact rules for barb spawning? From the latest screen shot it looks like the north part of the island is very small. If I remember it correctly, barbs cannot spawn within 2 tiles of a unit or a cultural border. If that is the case, we can completely spawnbust the island with just Dora! She should be positioned somewhere in the SE for full coverage.

The coastline would however not be completely covered, so barb boats could still come.

 

[Sommerswerd]

The rules for barb boats is the same as the rule for Archers, Axes, etc., ie 51% of players have the enabling tech.

That means that for a barb boat to appear, 51% of the players must have teched Sailing. In our game, 51% means 4 teams, because 3 teams would only be 50%. So we are safe from Barb boats until 4 teams have Sailing... In other words, we are safe from barb boats for a while. Plus we have nothing to fear from barb boats anyway, since they don't land ground troops, like in Civ I, and we are not working any water tiles anytime soon.

For city raiding barb rules, see my post above... Animals of course never move into cultural borders, and human barbs only enter when there are 13 (human-built) cities on the map. So if we can fogbust the whole island with just Dora, then we really don't even need a warrior, maybe we should start another worker next or start a settler, switch to wb when fishing is done, then come back to it when the wb is done.

If Dora can fogbust ahead of the settler, we don't even need an escort.

SilCon, can you tell by demogs when somebody else is teching Sailing?

 

[Zack]

I say we name our worker Bob. Bob the builder.

Can he fix it?

Yes, yes he can.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Does anyone knows the exact rules for barb spawning? From the latest screen shot it looks like the north part of the island is very small. If I remember it correctly, barbs cannot spawn within 2 tiles of a unit or a cultural border. If that is the case, we can completely spawnbust the island with just Dora! She should be positioned somewhere in the SE for full coverage.

The coastline would however not be completely covered, so barb boats could still come.

Barbs can't spawn within 2 tiles of any UNIT or in visible tiles. They can spawn in fog that is 2 tiles from culture.

We need at least 2 units to bust barbs away, dora and probably one other (diego?).

Question: what is the opportunity cost of going fishing ahead of mining? How many turns of a worked silver mine do we lose? I can't picture us researching anything but mining or fishing next. If we don't miss any or only a couple mine turns, IMO fishing. If it's more than a couple, we want the silver mine because that gets us to sailing and future techs more rapidly.

We don't need our UU yet, if at all. We can connect cities via culture coast route (or sailing, once that's in), meaning we do not want or need the wheel until it is pertinent to hooking up resources. That is soonish, but definitely not the next 2-3 techs. Ironically the presence of horse is just about irrelevant to our next tech choice, though of course we want it because we can wtfown barb cities later ASAP if we get our hands on it.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Question: what is the opportunity cost of going fishing ahead of mining? How many turns of a worked silver mine do we lose? I can't picture us researching anything but mining or fishing next. If we don't miss any or only a couple mine turns, IMO fishing. If it's more than a couple, we want the silver mine because that gets us to sailing and future techs more rapidly.

I laid this out earlier, but I cant find it to link to it so I'll just repeat it:

I'll start with the bottom line... Teching fishing before miining means that our 1st silver mine will finish 1 Turn later than if we tech mining first (assuming that we keep working sheep instead of silver).

Explanation for anyone interested:

Spoiler :

We have 4 more turns to finish our worker and 3 more turns to finish AH. So when AH finishes, there will be 1 turn when we can't do anything with AH b/c we dont have a worker. During that turn we start Fishing, which will take 6 turns to tech, or Mining, which would take 8 turns. One turn teching Fishing leaves 5 turns to get it.

So thats 1 turn teching Fishing/Mining, before worker finishes. When the worker is finished, he will immediately go to the sheep S of Themiscyra to build a pasture. The pasture will take 4 turns so thats 5 turns minus the 4 turns that the pasture will take, leaving 1 turn left for Fishing.

When the worker finishes the 1st pasture, he will immediately move SE to the 2nd sheep spot to build another pasture. Moving there and building another pature will take another 4 turns. During the 1st turn, we will finish Fishing and start Mining. If we had been teching Mining, we would have 2 turns left to finish it. But the worker will still have 3 turns left to finish the pasture, so he would not be able to build a mine even if we had Mining. Another thing, is that since the pasture will give 1, Mining now takes 7 turns instead of 8. Also, if we were building a warrior during this time, then Themis would be 1 turn away from growth because of the pasture.

When Themis grows, after 1 turn of pasture building, we will have another population point. We can apply this to the other (unimproved) sheep for growth in four turns, we could apply the poin tto the silver to reduce the tech time from 6 turns .

Assuming we go with growth, Three turns to finish the pasture leaves 3 turns to finish Mining. When the worker finishes the pasture, it will take 1 turn to move back to the city (2 tiles), leaving 2 turns to Mining. It will take another turn to move from the city onto the hill, leaving 1 turns to Mining. Then the worker will have to wait on the hill for 1 turn in order to start the mine.

 

[SilentConfusion]

but doesn't the tech tree menu give you the expected number of turns anyway? and pottery was already unlocked because of agri i think.

well, it doesn't matter too much, I'll put the polls up in a few hours anyway

Pottery is not unlocked without the Wheel, I'm pretty sure.

Does anyone knows the exact rules for barb spawning? From the latest screen shot it looks like the north part of the island is very small. If I remember it correctly, barbs cannot spawn within 2 tiles of a unit or a cultural border. If that is the case, we can completely spawnbust the island with just Dora! She should be positioned somewhere in the SE for full coverage.

The coastline would however not be completely covered, so barb boats could still come.

For lots of very good information about barbs (some of which TMIT has already pointed out) can be found in this thread. Scroll through this thread and you will learn a lot. Pay special attention to what DanF5771 says as he knows what he's talking about.

barbs may spawn within 2 tiles of cultural borders, but may not spawn within 2 tiles of a unit, even another barbarian unit. They also cannot spawn in visible tiles so the tiles next to cultural borders will not spawn barbarians. In some cases, such as a cultural border being on a hill or overlooking a lake 2 tiles from the borders is visible. Only in this case can cultural borders stop barbs from spawning 2 tiles away. Also note that while barb units cannot spawn within 2 tiles of another units, barb cities can spawn in any non-visible tile.

The rules for barb boats is the same as the rule for Archers, Axes, etc., ie 51% of players have the enabling tech.

That means that for a barb boat to appear, 51% of the players must have teched Sailing. In our game, 51% means 4 teams, because 3 teams would only be 50%. So we are safe from Barb boats until 4 teams have Sailing... In other words, we are safe from barb boats for a while. Plus we have nothing to fear from barb boats anyway, since they don't land ground troops, like in Civ I, and we are not working any water tiles anytime soon.

For city raiding barb rules, see my post above... Animals of course never move into cultural borders, and human barbs only enter when there are 13 (human-built) cities on the map. So if we can fogbust the whole island with just Dora, then we really don't even need a warrior, maybe we should start another worker next or start a settler, switch to wb when fishing is done, then come back to it when the wb is done.

If Dora can fogbust ahead of the settler, we don't even need an escort.

SilCon, can you tell by demogs when somebody else is teching Sailing?

I have also found this post, which seems to suggest the manner of barb research.

While teching sailing their GNP would be elevated for researching a tech that they had the prerequisite for (Fishing). When sailing is complete it does bring a 2k increase in soldier points so it may be that we can tell that the tech researched was sailing. Telling while people are still teching it is more tricky although it can be done depending on how much we know about which GNP belongs to whom. However I would say that we would know most likely when it is finished. I think using what we know about our opponents' techs and that link we can get a guesstimate as to when barb galleys might appear.

 

[nabaxo]

I vote we go 1SW with Dora next turn.

 

[remake20]

So what is our next scout move? W and SW would both be along the coast. I say W, because we don't seem to be in much of a rush.

 

[Calis]

So what is our next scout move? W and SW would both be along the coast. I say W, because we don't seem to be in much of a rush.

Time is not critical for us...