UNGY5 Let's keep it simple!

[Diamondeye]

Rusten's right, any generated start has 3 hills, at least... I believe one of the other reqs are 2 ressources and something about food aswell... Uh...

Anyway, will be lurking this.

Is Academy (GS) Allowed?

 

[mystyfly]

Is Academy (GS) Allowed?

I guess this question is about to be answered for the 3rd time or so...
No it isn't. It's a science multiplier and thus banned as every other.

ungy, ready to play the first few turns?

 

[Rusten]

The first tech we need is definitely agriculture. After that AH seems obvious, but we could also go mining->BW or we could go pottery and take advantage of our flood plains early. I haven't calculated it, but my hunch is that early cottages will bring us to oracle faster (faster to BW and priesthood).

I did some thinking and then some tests too and afterwards I'm not sure AH after agriculture is obvious after all. The main problem with agri -> ah is that it involves a lot of wasted worker turns/movement which made me look for an alternative. There's a really long path from the rice to the cows with forests/hills blocking whereas the worker can start on a cottage immediately. While a pasture is better than the cottage it's up later and after finishing it we would have to move all the way back to the floods again (and won't have pottery ready!).

I made a map in WB with the necessary tiles and did 2 simulations up until turn 30.

Agriculture -> pottery:



The worker has moved this turn so it won't start on the cows until 3 turns from now. It grew to size 4 later, but only by 1 turn IIRC and it's going to pull ahead pretty clearly in terms of commerce. It is lacking some hammers on warriors, but they aren't that important anyway. Commerce is often the main problem when trying to get the Oracle in time, so if we want CoL early cottages on those flood plains might be the way to go.

The start grew to size 4 perfectly at the same time as it finished a warrior and can now start on a worker to chop forests soon-ish.


Agriculture -> AH:



My worker ended up having some idle turns waiting for pottery after AH and it's behind on cottages/commerce and the difference will increase as we play on.


General:

Whipping settlers is good with IMP and usually that would mean farming, but there is so much food here already that we'll grow back in no time with cottages as well. However, if that open grassland turns out to be horses agri -> AH is going to blow away the early cottages overall.

What do you think?

 

[pigswill]

Ya weren't joking about being 'more hands on' this game, were ya.

Even if we have horses (which ain't guaranteed) then AH first wouldn't necessarily be stronger if we're going for Oracle>CoL rather than a chariot rush. Horses would be nice (as would copper!) coz we could probably try some fancy whip-overflow-into-Oracle stuff.

 

[silverbullet]

I am inclined to go for the cottage solution. It's not optimal for IMP, but with our variant oracle seems more important. Horses are kind of a gamble. It could be iron or bronze.

If during researching agriculture we scout a "must settle" city spot and a nearby AI and decide that an early settler is important, that would be a good reason to change our mind and go AH.

 

[Rusten]

Ya weren't joking about being 'more hands on' this game, were ya.

It doesn't take that long to reproduce the starting turns so I just went ahead. Easier to make a team decision with pictures, but don't expect more simulations -- it gets too "complicated" later on, and we want to keep it simple.

I agree with silverbullet, there's a lot of situations that could turn things around. Feel free to pause the set after agriculture if something big happens.

 

[ungy]

Time to get underway:

Rusten: great job checking out the pottery option. I think it's clearly better given our variant and likely w/o it.
A good lesson to think before playing, as these early decisions are very important and I would have instinctively just gone AH.

We move NE and settle in place:



We pop a map from the hut..there's another hut 8 turns away but that'll hardly reveal any terrain.



I head to the hill and we run into Izzie coming across the desert:



Shortly after we meet another AI from the SE:



We get lucky and take out a lion w/o damage and get some $ from the hut.

We meet a neighbor to the SW:



We see ivory and some good lands to the SW but unfortunately Charlie claims them:



A little while later Asoka shows up:



AH in, no horses. Newly built warrior hasn't moved, I'm thinking scout around the stone looking for food.

Iz has buddhism, Asoka has hindu.

The known world:

 

[Rusten]

Great job scouting and keeping the warrior alive, we'll have plenty of intel before having to decide where to settle. Talk about a spiritual/zealous crowd!

I agree with scouting (a little) to the north, but doing it with one of our workers might be even better.

Seeing as we have cottages and are working riverside resources there should be time for BW without barbarians becoming too much of a concern. With all these forests we can chop out emergency warriors or archers if needed. That chain of mountains and the shape of the coast reduces barbarian danger as well.

It is very tempting to block off Charlemagne with a city 1 NW of the stone, but we'll have to see how close the others are first or if there are some must-have city spots. We do have another source of stone nearby so expanding to that spot near Charlemagne isn't as important as otherwise. The stone isn't going to be useful just for the Pyramids -- with all these religious people we will get a lot of religions spread to us so the UoS (cheap temples!) is going to be sweet. Settling all the way down there is going to slow down the Oracle as well -- the river would bring in much more commerce.

Our capital is incredible, we'll want to grow that city a lot, too bad this isn't the 3CC!

With representation (looking good for the Pyramids with stone and no industrious AIs), religion+temples and all these luxury resources we will be looking at some major cities. Calendar is being such a tease. If sailing wasn't required I'd be tempted to take mathematics from the Oracle as there will be religions here anyway.

 

[vra379971]

Happy to join in.

Will consider when I'm awake....Sleep is for the CIVer!

 

[SnowlyWhite]

you have ramses, but with 2 stones already revealed, hopefully he doesn't have the 3rd

 

[mystyfly]

Tempting to try to seal off charly with stone/fish city indeed.

Thing is it'll cost maintenance and we need to tech fishing as well to make it productive. BTW barbs can be a pain when there are many jungles/forests and few hills...
To connect that stone we'll either lose lots of worker turns or beakers; I doubt it'll be ready for the mids before ramsses builds them (regardless of whether he has stone or not).

We need to scout further east.

We'll likely not border asoka. Charly may found his own religion. Do we plan to adopt buddhism? We could expand eastwards without caring much about annoying ppl...

Calendar indeed is very tasty. But I doubt we can delay the oracle to take it directly but I'm not that confident that oracling maths is a good idea - I'd rather just have MC. Also if we don't have a big instant boost from it, we still have a great trading chip (should we overexpand ).

 

[ungy]

Hard to say where to settle w/o seeing more map but I'm not a big fan of blocking Charlie on a map like this. He's the only backstabber of the AI we've met and we seem fairly central in a large landmass, so not much benefit from blocking one.

We met Iz in 3840 so she's pretty close.

I am a bit worried about barbs--our commerce is good but archery is a two tech detour from oracle path. We have a decent chance of bronze in the BFC so that might solve it.

Another issue: as usual there's a lot to build early. The AI are pretty close and we're at risk for getting boxed in. We're also lookiing at oracle and with our variant the 'mids are really tempting. Decisions, decisions....

roster:

Ungy--just played
Rusten--UP
Silverbullet--on deck
Pigswill
Mystyfly
VRA

 

[silverbullet]

Stop the defamation of Charlemagne!!
He is not a backstabber. He cannot attack at pleased! (unless I misunderstood the definition of a backstabber)

 

[Rusten]

Ah, Ramesses -- for some reason I thought it was Hatty. I can't remember seeing him getting the Pyramids a lot so I still feel we have good odds for that one. The Oracle on the other hand can be very tough with these neighbours.

The next 5-6 turns seem pretty obvious as it's mostly scouting and getting a 2nd worker, so I might play them and pause for more discussion. It will be easier to decide where to settle when we have some more E/SE knowledge of the map.

Iz came from the desert, so she is probably not going to settle towards us right away. I'm guessing she'll have better city locations.

(got it.)

 

[Rusten]

Decided to go for a quick part-turnset for more intel and I'm very pleased with what we're seeing so far.

We meet Wk on turn 34. His scout came from the east but that doesn't mean all that much at this point. We're on a pangea-based map this time which is a nice change I suppose.



We found Ramesses and there is some "barren" land between us making settling less urgent. There is a riverside gold mine there, but I don't think it's worth going for. For the city to be productive (claiming banana) it would have no good tiles in its first ring and it would take the banana away from a city to the north which seems to be a much better spot.



I will send the warrior back and scout eastwards next.

There is even better news to the north. We have desert to the east making it very unlikely to have AI settlers coming our way, a barbarian village blocking from the north and coast blocking from the west -- really good!



As you can see there is also seafood and horses (!) which is a major relief as they're really important to our civ.

By the looks of things settling east or to the Charlemagne spot seems natural as the northern spot isn't urgent. However, we can do both with IMP forest chopping, at least if we find copper.

Our Capital just finished the worker and a pasture, so what do you want to get next?



The 3 main alternatives are:
a) Settler (7t)
b) Warrior (3t timed with growth)
c) Worker (5t)

Given our traits and capital I like a 3rd worker to do a lot of chopping for a production burst. We're on a pangea map, so grabbing land is very important. With all this commerce we're OK without the Oracle too IMO, so I wouldn't sacrifice too much going after it -- we can research CoL with commerce if needed.

I'm going to hold off with the rest of my set until people have had a chance to form an opinion.

 

[pigswill]

We've still not explored due east of the capital (an observation, not a criticism) so we don't yet know if we've got an AI farily close by. Another seven turns before we know the location of copper (if any).

I'm not sure we're yet at a point of making definite decisions. Maybe build warrior and worker while finishing off BW and hopefully get some exploring done to the east. Imperial settlers are a turn and 2 pop whip?

I'm not convinced we're likely to get Oracle as we didn't go for much of a beeline. At this stage of the game the cash refund really doesn't compensate for the lost hammers.

There's a decent stone city to the south west so its worth considering that, again depending on copper, we could get two settlers out fairly quickly though city maintenance would slow research down a bit.

If we can get stone hooked up in time then pyramids may be achieveable, rep and caste would help out and the extra happy is a major bonus. If we're going for that then it would make sense to save the forests and rely on whipping out settlers.

But I'd reckon that for now play until BW is in, explore to east and build warrior and worker.

 

[Rusten]

We've still not explored due east of the capital (an observation, not a criticism) so we don't yet know if we've got an AI farily close by. Another seven turns before we know the location of copper (if any).

To elaborate on my thinking process:

We "know" that Izzy is nearby in that direction, but now we know that there are nobody nearby in the <other> directions, which means we're likely to settle our first city in the fog. Knowing the surrounding lands is sometimes even more valuable than knowing the terrain you're wanting to settle. It's going to be a good city anyway (temperate zone so plenty of grass -- can spot banana/dye at worst), so the reason it has yet to be explored is that knowing the surrounding area was more valuable (at least that's how I felt about it). Now we know we're not missing out on anything else by aiming to settle there.

edit: I'm into warrior while growing to size 5 -> worker now. If we find bronze in our BFC we can use it right away and if there isn't we can whip 5 -> 3 at least once.

 

[ungy]

I like the plan of warrior-worker.
Seems like when you're not sure which site to go the 3rd worker tends to work out pretty well.
BW may give us some decisions so it may make sense to pause again there.

I agree that most likely our second city will go in the fog there but it's sure nice to see a good stone city on the north coast.

We may very well have to skip the oracle as expansion seems a premium, we may need archery, and we also have the 'mids option and good commerce.

 

[mystyfly]

I agree with warrior > worker. We should get anoter 2-3 units before we should go on a settler spree tough. We can whip a settler and use the overflow for axes/warriors (to not exceed the happy cap). Play on until BW in I say...

 

[silverbullet]

Hi,
I won't have time to play or read this thread until after Tuesday. Please skip me if needed.