Turn Discussion

[Earthling]

Ah, yeah, that explains a little confusion on my part probably. I very well could agree with that then, especially since the general sentiment was against whipping the capital (so no hurry for a granary, let the monastery just slide for a while, and we'd get a library a little later on it's own, maybe through chopping). Still would be a bit of a call between worker #2 or a galley then, but 2 warriors to explore a few turns fasters can't be dismissed outright.

On the same line of thought - we can save a turn of anarchy if we take a long and hard look and decide we don't need slavery right away for instance. I do think converting to the religion while the settler is in transit makes sense, but if aren't slaving the capital, and likewise cities #2 and #3 will be working resource tiles right away (wheat and silver) maybe we don't need slavery yet? Save it for converting to Slavery + Organized Religion at the same time at some point maybe, or something like that?

I do think the capital is good without any military police up through size six though, right? And other cities will be good to five or six too, so really anything we have free can go to the other island. Also, our capital culture is about to expand (3 turns) due to religion and such so I think that covers us entirely from barb spawns anyway too, or close enough to it.

 

[galdarian]

Don't we need a warrior garrisoned after the second city is founded because of "We fear for our safety" modifier?

Based on the above we can afford to delay the 3rd warrior if you prefer and instead throw 1 turn of production into a granary / library (we should have writing by then) and then use a chop / whip over run to head start it or just produce it in our second city after a barracks perhaps?

 

[Earthling]

That modifier appears anyway even without a second city iirc, but no, we should have adequate happiness even with that, is what I was saying. Six for population plus that one puts us at seven, which we have covered with charismatic + monument + capital + silver at 8 No events or anything, and even if it's 2 for "fear for safety" we're still in the clear.

We certainly could just build one warrior though and throw production into a granary at any point we have to spare or something, you're right. Buildings don't decay for like forever so that's not a worry either. Though three warriors is all right - two for overseas and one MP right now.

I'm actually posting one more time here though for something else though, what I really remembered ought to mention:

Potential Diplomacy Contact

Recent turns and our solid exploration so far seems to be hinting at a lot about this map. I'm guessing it's possible we are only 5-6 turns away from contact with another team; possibly, TWO other teams. If they are on islands around a central "hub" like landmass then I'd expect our workboats, having gone around much coast so far, to perhaps find other nations soon. Look at the map, and anyone who wants to go in game can do so too of course, but we seem to just be getting around "spokes" that might get us towards another teams coastal areas. Just a reminder to all of us and especially anyone else in the diplomatic corps. For the record as I've said before I'm willing to try handling diplo with some teams, sending email through the team account and so on for now; obviously we'll draft and approve messages here.

Now that I think about it, this could perhaps even be a reason for other teams lengthening their turn times/not ending turns - 2 teams could feasibly have found each other if they sent workboats right towards each other/easier routes with no detour. Anyway, exciting times ahead.

 

[cav scout]

I think we need to leave our spawn-busting warrior in place until we are certain that barbs can't appear on our island. Why risk it?

 

[galdarian]

Now that I think about it, this could perhaps even be a reason for other teams lengthening their turn times/not ending turns - 2 teams could feasibly have found each other if they sent workboats right towards each other/easier routes with no detour. Anyway, exciting times ahead.

That might also explain the ease of getting Buddhism. I.e. if a few civs have now beelined it to Alphabet in order to start tech trades and possibly already have a gentlemens agreement on expansion / conquest.

Just thoughts at this stage though. We'll know soon enough.

 

[TyBoy]

@Earthling

I think that decision whether to convert slavery right away or not will be a product of what we decide for a tech path. If we're heading for math/calendar soon then we're pretty locked down for a while before we'll have a chance to get monotheism and we'll almost certainly want to whip before then, in which case we should take advantage of that settler transit time and just convert now. If we're going to poke around at some different techs and might get monotheism much sooner, then we might as well wait.

For my part, I like going straight for calendar. It will be a huge boost to the chops we really can't put off too long and is essential to even make that 4th on island city worth founding. Also, the decisiveness and goal-focusedness of it appeal to me. Either way though, I think the decision to research calendar and the decision to go slavery now are the same.

It would have been hard to explore much more aggressively than we have. A little luck could have come into play, but I think at best two civs could have met only in the last 5 turns or so.

 

[Earthling]

Yeah, I agree it's unlikely anyone has done much diplomacy yet - basically if they both got an early workboat and headed towards each other it's possible. But it would probably only be a single event of contact/two teams involved if that's the case. Hope we find some things to work out for us soon.

As for tech - well I really do favor the calendar path myself. If that means it's convenient to convert to slavery I'm fine with it. Though again I'm not quite so sure we'll do that much whipping - assuming we don't want to whip the capital most importantly. If we want a faster library in the capital or something like that then slavery is a real no-brainer, I just don't know how to gauge the team consensus yet. Other cities get free monuments, and are probably better off building a granary outright (best, with chops). Whipping a city that is working a wheat or spices or silver mines doesn't gain as much as one that would work just a regular tile, and we have a lot of tiles to work. In the end we could still make use of it though and it is just one turn of anarchy so we'll see either way.

 

[cav scout]

I could see us getting some very profitable whips in the capital if we decided to go that route. We could start with a 2 pop whip on the settler with overflow going into a galley for instance.

But we'd be delaying on cottages though, and it looks like our capital will be the only place generating commerce for quite sometime. So my gut tells me to spare the whip and grow to the happy cap working cottages. When we get math we can chop infrastructure.

Grrrr... I wish i could play civ right now to test game it all out. Without being able to really crunch the numbers in simulations i'm just going on instinct.

 

[TyBoy]

Don't you pay an additional penalty for whipping settlers and workers? Like you would with wonders. Or am I just off base on both counts?

 

[cav scout]

There are 50% penalties are for a.) wonders or b.) whipping something without putting any hammers into it first. I'm pretty sure settlers and workers give normal hammers as long as you put a little something into them first.

Here is a good reference: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/whip.php

 

[cav scout]

Well the turn just finished and based on our score increase i'd say we can break out the champagne

 

[Provolution]

Indeed, dear friend Cavscout, we struck gold. Thanks for the Stonehenge guys for not giving up for Rexing, as we may need this fixed added happiness for future cities. Right now, we dont need Calendar for a quite long time, driving other players to research that first.

I think we should aim for Hunting, AH and IW for the next batch after writing, to resolve this x-factors asap.

 

[Earthling]

I posted some similar thoughts on the other thread, but to clarify a couple of things:

The Great Lighthouse being in a barb city will NOT show up in any possible way we have of indicating it. I started a regular random BtS game, worldbuilded in a barb city with wonders. The wonders do not show up on the "F9" screen nor do notifications appear. The only time you notice is when you get the tech, at which point you cannot build the wonder. This goes for any wonder as far as I can tell. So, for full clarification, unless Dave himself said otherwise (?) I think the answer is:

Dave was being fully truthful and the mapmakers DID remove the Great Lighthouse from the game. So no use trying to tech/change our build for that, but it was worth checking, I know.

As for our strategy, I'm open to entertaining different paths too and really we do have a lot of options. I would say that the reason for Mathematics/Calendar isn't really much to do with Calendar centering the map/doesn't have to do with Stonehenge specifically. It's because we have a ton of resources, and a ton of forests to chop, so we wind up with the equivalent of a bunch of cottaged floodplains tiles in all those spices, and Math increases our chopping yields by a lot. But I do agree that if we want to be sure we can settle horse/iron that's a decent path to go on for now. Or even if somebody was eager to go for the Great Library or something else - the path ahead has a lot of possibilities.

This is also likely to be up in the air a lot though soon, because I really anticipate those workboats will make contact with somebody sometime shortly. If we can get other teams to agree to research and trade down certain paths that would be great, and maybe filling in everything basic like AH is good anyway, but we'll have to flexible regardless.

I'm still good to follow our current path for a settler at size 6 now, in the short term we know what we're teching/building and can celebrate Stonehenge. So I agree we can be happy about that and if we have ideas for some propaganda/a public announcement that might also be cool, it was good work guys. I'll also move the workboats on this turn if that's ok, or similar unit moves if they haven't been done.

 

[Earthling]

This double post is needed because on news on the recent turnset. First and foremost, it appears we will have contact with another civilization in at most 1-2 turns. Our intrepid explorers on the Rio Grande spy borders across the sea.

Actually, I did have to ask you all your thoughts, because I really can't make out the color to determine if we have discovered India, the Mavericks or Vikings, team CDZ. I *think* it's India and here's a closer up screen:



Regardless, I think our opening messages might be similar to either of these teams, and we want to have something prepared for our next turn, so that will be interesting.

In other news, just for those who haven't seen enough screens/been logging in, I wanted to point out some thoughts on settling that continent and competition therein. Obviously, to the north there is a lot of grassland and we have some good sites with clams. But that peninsula on the south can be blocked off with just about a single city, and I think we would do well to get there first. Here's an example of a city (on our side, rather than India's) that does that; other settling plans obviously possible, just pointing out the two-tile rule really comes into play. (can't settle within two tiles of another city)



Lastly, since I don't want to deviate without team approval, I had some thoughts on our capital. Basically, I'm not sure I like building warriors right now, and we also ought to really do some thinking/deciding on whether we want slavery.

First, the easy part. Currently we are growing to size six, building a settler, and the worker gets a couple cottages. The default plan was:

warrior => part of warrior (size 6) => settler (7 turns) 10 turns total

I'm really not sure we want these warriors right now is what I'm thinking, the problem is we can't build much else right now. What I was thinking might really be better, especially if we want to grow to our cap, (will be at 9 happy, health is at 7 right now but we'll have more resources in trade perhaps, and granary is +1, and so is clams) is that we put that production into a granary. The warriors just can't go anywhere, are not needed for military police yet, and by the time we build a galley to go explore we can get more warriors then, like in city #2 or something. Here's what I'm proposing:

settler (2 turns) tech Pottery => part of a granary (3 turns) to size 6 => settler (5 turns) finish - still 10 turns total, we just put the production into a granary after we get pottery, because we don't have pottery yet.

About slavery and technology and other decisions - well, it's all crunch time and diplomacy will probably take up some of our time too. It seems to me that we are not very enthusiastic to whip the capital, and we intend to get cottages/commerce, so I personally would NOT convert to slavery right now. (we convert to Buddhism while the settler is moving, 1 turn of anarchy). After the settler we keep growing the cap, it'll be at 7 or 8 soon enough and our second and third cities already have free monuments and should have resource tiles to work, so I think we're ok without slavery; we can wait till we have other civic changes to do if we want or something.

On the other hand, if we did want to convert to slavery right away, there are even more interesting possibilities - if we wanted to even change things up and settle the southern city (2x wheat) before the silver city we could slave a lot out of it. But I'd rather not and I think the commerce heavier path is fine. Just want to make sure all options are given a fair shake, going heavy on slavery could change our tech path too or something. I think we still should decide on our previous mathematics plan because Provo has brought up a very good concern that getting horse or iron discovered could be a solid detour as well.

 

[Provolution]

No to slavery.

Aye to going straight for settler, then warrior, galley and settler.

Aye to Pottery, Sailing, Writing, Hunting/Animal Husbandy and Iron Working (we need to map these resources in order to figure out the real military balance and our capabilities.)

Aye to settling Western part of island first, without garrison, we need that food and silver now.

 

[cav scout]

Now that we have Stonehenge and have met another team I really have off-island REXing on the brain. To do that successfully we need to get warriors over to the mainland sooner rather than later to start mapping.

I think we should continue with the plan to build a warrior and a half while we grow to pop 6, then start a settler. Our settler should be followed by a galley and then the remainder of the 2nd warrior. The galley can drop off the pre-made warrior to the east as soon as it is built and then come back and pick up the 2nd one to go the the NW.

After we get the explorers out we can pump out some workers and settlers in Continuum. Down the road we will get AH and IW to reveal those strategic resources. But we need warriors out now to reveal tiles in advance of that.

In summary:

warrior-> .5 warrior-> settler-> galley-> .5 warrior-> worker-> settler

------------------------

On slavery- we can wait until we are ready to whip, but i know that is going to be long before we switch to other civics. Slavery is just way too powerful of a civic to put off. So that goes back to my original rationale for revolting sooner than later, to reduce opportunity cost: If we revolt while the settler is moving we loose a turn of production/growth in our capital. If we do it later when we have other cities we loose a turn of production in all of them (think of silver mine in city 2 for instance).

 

[cav scout]

Lastly, since I don't want to deviate without team approval, I had some thoughts on our capital. Basically, I'm not sure I like building warriors right now... The default plan was:

warrior => part of warrior (size 6) => settler (7 turns) 10 turns total

Ummmm...based on the the turn log you did deviate without team approval and just played the turn. And there is tons of time left on the timer so we could have discussed it for a day...

Now I fully support the notion that there are times when the turn player needs to make a snap decision because there isn't time for a full discussion. But this is not one of those situations.

We need to decide stuff as a team. The best technique for this is for the turn player to propose what his exact moves are going to be in the turn discussion thread and let the team hash it out. The turn player should hold the turn as long as possible while substantive discussion is still going on.

 

[RegentMan]

warrior-> .5 warrior-> settler-> galley-> .5 warrior-> worker-> settler

That makes sense to me.

I like switching to slavery to take advantage of the whip in other cities.

I vote for the math, calendar line in tech research. Hopefully we can make a tech deal with the upcoming team (I agree it does look like the Indians).

 

[cav scout]

When you press end-turn is your micro locked in for that turn?

Or is it possible to log back into the game after pressing end-turn but before the turn rolls and change stuff for that turn?

 

[RegentMan]

You can change stuff for the turn until it rolls over. Whatever is set up when the turn rolls is what we do.