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Post by Sullla on Feb 16, 2011 13:37:07 GMT -5
Awesome. ;D Pretty sure that means we get a 2t worker out of the capital then. Let's see, that would be:
20 overflow -> 25 overflow (Expansive) + 19 production + 19 production = 63 total. Worker in 2t, due T34. Holy cow, that's awesome. Two cities, three workers, and capital at size 4, all before T35!
One other note: the FDR/Netherlands team I just mentioned did indeed plant their second city today. So they do not have a second worker, and they built a settler at size 2. In other words... yes, they are indeed well behind our pace!
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Post by Sullla on Feb 17, 2011 13:11:04 GMT -5
Hey Speaker. Busy turn, so this is going to take a little bit to type up. First of all, we apparently met Adlain's team (Wang Kon/Arabia) last night: They had a standard greeting message in our email inbox from yesterday, which I didn't think to check. Here's what we know about their team: Found on starting tile Begin with Mysticism/Wheel T7 Hunting T16 Mecca size 2 [early growth] T19 Meditation / Buddhism T21 Mecca size 3 T28 another tech, probably Agriculture (?) And nothing since then. They will probably found their second city any turn now, as they have to have been building a settler in their capital. Nevertheless, this team has awful starting techs, and compounded that by going for an early religion. They are off to one of the worst starts in the game. Still no AH for their cows (probably researching it now), no Mining, nowhere close to BW. I think this is probably a good neighbor for us to have. Adlain has contact with one other civ (2 EP spent against us last turn) but no contact with Nakor or plako. I'm pretty confident that their contact should be Warlord, which would more or less confirm the map setup I posted last week. I'll try to figure that out in diplomacy. Will pump them for a little information and also let plako/Nakor know that we found another civ (since we promised we would). Not all that much to discuss yet, with the map so wide open and no early competition for land. Overflow into worker turned out beautifully, with us getting exactly 32 shields -> 40 shields with Expansive bonus. Getting this third worker almost for free is going to help a lot. And then we can go right onto another settler after that. We did finish our settler, who is moving to found our second city on T34, two more turns. I went ahead and planned out worker micro until about Turn 45; the file is in our Dropbox, check it out when you have a chance. Here's my thinking behind these moves: - First of all, you were totally right about going Wheel before AH. Dumb mistake on my part earlier. We definitely want to go Wheel, then Pottery before AH, as we have to get our cottages and Expansive granaries into play quickly. The biggest weakness of our start is slow research, because so many of the tiles we're working don't get the river bonus (neither camp, nor the grassland hill mines). - The micro of our new city Anasazi is pretty straightforward, farm the rice and then mine the copper. I'm sending two workers there for speed, and sadly we have to waste some turns moving as we're not India. Very sad face on that. - The other worker I have staying at the capital and mining two riverside grassland hills. I know that seems like a dumb play (don't we have more than enough mines already?!) but hear me out. The other alternatives are chop down the last forest - for 20 shields, which seems a bit wasteful when we're getting 16 production/turn already - or build a farm at the capital. I just don't think we'd have any real desire to work the farm though; when building settlers/workers the mines are better, and when we want to grow the capital, we'll have +7 food with deer + cows, and we'll want to be working grassland river cottages. Going from +7 food to +8 food does little for us, when we could be working a cottage on that tile instead. But still, why the mines? Again, our key bottleneck at the moment is research. We want to get to Pottery tech faster, which will open up all sorts of good stuff. Right now, our research rate is 10 beakers/turn. If we mine the two grassland river hills, and swap the capital over to them, our research rate goes to 12 beakers/turn. 20% total increase, not at all trivial. And again, if there was something else for the worker to do, I wouldn't go for it... but there really isn't. I think getting those mines on the riverside hills is the best use of our worker labor at the moment. We'll be using those tiles a lot in the next ~15 turns, and the extra commerce will help speed us along to the next techs. - After that, we can time a chop perfectly into a work boat at the third city, followed by farming the corn resource. Finish the work boat naturally, then whip a granary at size 2. That third city will be off and running really fast! - Finally, I keep the capital at size 4 and make no effort to grow it larger. It feels to me like this is the wrong time to try to grow Cherokee; we want to work the best tiles, and those are all high production right now. Growing to size 5 at +4 food/turn will take 7t, which is silly. Better to get more workers/settlers now, and then grow the capital quickly with +6 or +7 food after we have grassland cottages down. So emphasize production now, get our growth curve off to a strong start with lots of mining, and then swap over to cottages/growth when we have Pottery tech. I think that's the best way to make use of our current resources. Uh yeah, that's all for the moment. I really like our start so far, and I think we're going to be one of the stronger teams. I kind of expected more teams to be planting cities ahead of us, but only 3 have done so thus far. Every time a turn passes without another settler going up in the fog, I feel better about our position.
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Post by Sullla on Feb 18, 2011 11:19:13 GMT -5
Another day, another turn. Settler moved onto city location and will found next turn; it's protected by a warrior just in case, although with no barbs and only scouts nearby we should be fine regardless. Worker moving to the rice at new city (slowly), third worker out next turn in the capital. Adlain told us that there was a scout from Moogle very close by, and gave us directions to go meet him. I'm heading in that direction, and we'll probably make contact next turn. More contacts = good thing, as always. There was a fair amount of email chatter yesterday, but nothing any of real consequence. You can read our inbox if it interests you. Metallian also logged into Warlord's account today. Just thought I would mention that little detail. Finally, I enjoyed this message from Nakor: Whoops! Guess someone's team messed up the start! That Wheel-first research wasn't such a good idea after all, heh.
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Post by Sullla on Feb 19, 2011 14:35:10 GMT -5
This post is going to be exactly the same as the one I just added at Realms Beyond, only with a little more detail and explanation. First of all, we found Adlain's borders: They are 20 tiles west of us and slightly to the north. I'm going to try to move the scout to get visibility on their center tile, which will open up production spying later on if needed. We are also supposed to meet up with a scout from Moogle's team real close to here; I sent Adlain another email asking him to convey our scout's location over to Moogle. Hopefully we'll make the connection this turn or next turn. Also, this land in the screenshot will be the disputed zone between our civs. It would be really good if we could land some of the territory along that grassland river, as it's especially fertile. Perhaps something to keep in mind for the future; there's a corn + copper (on river) spot in the north that looks very strong indeed. We have our second city and our third worker. We are the fourth team to a second city; that sounds bad and all, but look at the situation of the other teams that did so: Luddite: second city T29, capital still size 3, probably has 2 workers plako: second city T28 [built settler at size 2], capital size 3, has only one worker, also got Imperialistic bonus Mackoti/Ioan: second city T31 [built settler at size 2], capital size 3, has only one worker So plako and Mackoti crushed their growth curve to get out the early settler and now have 1 worker for 2 cities. Pretty dubious play. Luddite actually did do a good job, and is probably about even to us in overall growth curve. Everyone else was slower than us to get a second city, which is hard to believe since we opened with double workers (and have been ignoring our cattle resource completely). We are also the only team in the game with 5 total population, 4 capital + 1 new city. Anasazi has an extremely strong location, and will also be able to help pump settlers/workers/military units in the early game as needed, then swap over to grassland river cottages for research power. Furthermore, we are ranked #1 in military power and all of our neighbors appear to be friendly thus far. As of the first 35 turns, we're pretty much kicking ass and taking names. Here's the Demographics. I believe that Luddite is the one ranked #1 in both Food and Production; if he farmed a corn tile at his second city and pastured his cattle tile, that would explain the extra edge in those categories. Something like that, anyway... The GNP number looks terrible because we're researching Agriculture (no pre-req bonus) and still have the minimum amount of commerce coming in. The grassland river hill mine that completes at the capital will actually make a significant difference, as it will put us over a truncating point and should bump our science from 9/turn up to 11/turn. (Right now, we get 9/turn at 90% science, and 11/turn at 100% science.) At least, I think that's what will happen... Meeting Moogle's team would also help us, because then we would know three teams with Wheel tech (Moogle, Nakor, Adlain) and would get a 9% beaker bonus, which is enough to add up to one extra beaker. With the numbers so small at the moment, the one extra beaker shaves a turn off our Wheel ETA. So hopefully we'll meet up with them this turn or the next. Ideally, we would then be getting 11 base -> 12 beakers [always get +1 every turn] -> 12 x 1.09 = 13 beakers/turn. That makes for 8 turn Wheel research, one turn faster than my sim. And that means one turn faster to Pottery tech. Let me know if you have any thoughts, good luck with your games as the season starts.
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Post by Sullla on Feb 20, 2011 13:10:38 GMT -5
We met Sleeping Moogle's team this turn (same turn as before). That's good news, as it will speed up our Wheel research as I mentioned yesterday. Here's what we know about them:
Founded capital (Insomnia) on starting tile Start with Agriculture/Wheel techs T7 Hunting tech T18 capital size 2 Probably built second worker at size 2 T20 Animal Husbandry tech T27 capital size 3 T28 tech, either Mysticism or Mining
Nothing since then. Their starting build order was very likely worker, warriors to size 2, worker , more warriors to size 3, then settler. I expect them to be founding their second city any moment now. Overall, not doing badly by any means, but definitely behind our opening pace.
I'm going to try and figure out if they started next to Adlain, or if their warrior wandered down to the north (which would fit with the map sketch I did a little earlier). Also, Nakor founded his second city this turn to put him even with us. That means Nakor probably finished his settler T30/T31; Nakor is probably building his second worker now. He's quite a ways behind our opening pace.
Hopefully Parkin will play his turn sometime soon, so I can see if we get the bonus research on Wheel tech.
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Post by Sullla on Feb 20, 2011 21:52:54 GMT -5
So Speaker and I have been kind of joking throughout the game that Parkin would go for a Stonehenge before settler build. We couldn't understand why else someone would pick De Gaulle of Egypt; presumably, the logic would be trying to get synergy between Charismatic, Industrious, and free obelisks. However, I didn't really think that Parkin would do it. Well, um, he did this turn: Stonehenge completed (T35), unquestionably Stonehenge before settler. And with no offense intended, this is a total noob build. Sorry, but it is. No one should ever try this in a serious game. Let me explain why: - First of all, obelisks are a pretty terrible unique building. Extra Priest specialists? Why would you ever be running those early in the game anyway? You want a Great Scientist for an early academy as your first Great Person in most situations. - Secondly, Charismatic isn't very good as a civ trait. Hey, now you have +2 happiness in every city, very nice. Or you could just get Hereditary Rule and use some military police. Obviously I'm overstating the case here, but Charismatic doesn't have as much relative value as other civ traits. For instance, Parkin could have just picked Louis as his leader instead of De Gaulle, and Creative is vastly better as a trait. (And then there would be no need for Stonehenge anyway!) - But most importantly, you don't want to go Stonehenge before settler because it crushes your growth curve. Every turn in the early game is precious. When you spend them building anything other than workers and settlers, you set your growth curve back significantly. Let me go over Parkin's opening builds; I'm like 90% correct this is accurate: Found capital on starting tile Start with Agriculture/Wheel techs [good starting techs] T7 Hunting tech T16 capital size 2 Build second worker at size 2 T20 Animal Husbandry tech T26 capital size 3 T28 Mysticism tech, start Stonehenge T30 capital size 4 T35 Stonehenge done Thus in the first 35 turns, Parkin's team has grown the capital to size 4, produced 2 workers, and completed Stonehenge as a wonder. That's great and all, but Stonehenge doesn't do all that much for you. Free culture in the capital, minor free culture in your other cities, +1 extra happiness for being Charismatic, and Great Prophet points that are of dubious value anyway unless Parkin manages to land one of the early religions. (He has free reign to land Polytheism/Hindu if desired now, having Mysticism, but that only puts him further away from Mining/BW techs.) Now the downside: Parkin has been growing his capital steadily, and has made no progress into a settler. (Unless he partially built it at size 2 instead of a second worker, which makes no sense.) It will take another ~7 turns to complete a settler. This puts his second city as completing sometime around T43-45, after allowing for movement to the location. In the meantime, he'll have had double workers for a good 25 turns, able to do nothing other than farm, connect deer/cows, and build roads. It sure doesn't take all that time to improve 4 tiles at the capital, so that's a ton of wasted worker labor. I guess he can build roads... although roads don't increase tile yields, so they're not optimal for early on. Basically, by taking Stonehenge so early, you guarantee that you will have the slowest early growth curve in the game. That almost never works out, because you just put yourself too far behind at the start. We'll see what happens here, but I don't see this ending well for Parkin... * * * * * * * * * Anyway, we discovered Agriculture tech this turn, and started on Wheel. We have some weirdness in the research numbers, so let me explain. Here's the relative beakers per turn at different spending levels: 100% = 12/turn base [ 14/turn TRUE], -1gpt 90% = 10/turn base [ 11/turn TRUE], 0gpt 0% = 0/turn base [ 1/turn TRUE], +11gpt These are true beaker numbers, not what gets displayed on the screen. Why is 100% so much more efficient than 90% here? The answer is due to truncating number values, which don't matter at higher beaker counts but become very important here in the early game. Basically, each tick of spending equals 1.2 beakers right now. We get the max value of that at 100% research, 12 base beakers/turn. At 90%, that goes to 10.8 beakers, which gets truncated down to just 10 beakers/turn. So we're losing about a full beaker there! Furthermore, we get 9% bonus research on Wheel for knowing 3 other teams with the tech (Nakor, Adlain, Moogle). This is meaningless at 11 beakers/turn [11 x 1.09 = 11.99!] but it gets us an extra beaker at 12/turn [12 x 1.09 = 13.08]. Therefore, we essentially get TWO extra free beakers at 100% science compared to 90% science. I'll run one turn at 0% science on this turn, then go 100% until we discover Wheel tech. This will take 8 total turns, and is significantly better compared to straight 90% research: 0% / 100% = 1 + (7x14) = 99 total beakers [also +4 gold] 90% = 11 x 8 = 88 total beakers [+0 gold] Normally min science doesn't make much of a difference, but in this case it's MUCH better. This is why knowing the beaker math matters, so you can see what's going on under the hood and pick the best options. Or, put another way... don't change our science rate off 0% this turn.
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Post by Sullla on Feb 22, 2011 11:27:09 GMT -5
Not too much going on for this turn, T36. Nearly done farming the rice tile at the second city, and our scout found the borders of Adlain's second city. Can't see too much of it yet, but the spot is 5 tiles away from his capital, and further than that in reality because there are some peaks in the way. Also looks to be on the coast. Our scout will keep snooping around and try to get some more details. Unfortunately we can't see very much of the capital itself, because Adlain is the Buddhism founder and his capital has already expanded to 100 culture for third-ring borders. But we'll see what we can see there.
The main news is that most teams have been founding their second city in the last few turns, pretty much as expected. (I actually thought teams would be getting their second city out in the T31-33 period, so they are slightly slower than my expected sim.) Here's when they've gone up:
plako: Noms T28 Luddite: city #2 T29 [just hit pop 2 this turn] Mackoti: city #2 T31 Locke/Cervantes: Anasazi T34 Nakor: Blue T34 Adlain: Medina T35 Warlord: city #2 T35 Moogle: REM State T36
The Warlord/Metallian team founded literally at the last instant of T35, and nearly disguised their second city on CivStates, but population tracking doesn't lie. Still missing at this point are sunrise's team (absolutely no idea what they are doing, their play has been totally erratic thus far) and Parkin, who of course delayed his settler to build Stonehenge.
All things considered, the fact that we went double workers to start and still managed to be in the middle of the pack for our second city is a pretty good sign. The real advantage from our opening actually comes in speed to the third city and beyond; we'll have ours planted on T44 (and it would be faster still if it didn't take a wasted 3t to walk to the destination, argh).
I've been exchanging diplo messages, nothing of real significance yet though. As always, they're in our Gmail account if you want to read them.
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Post by Sullla on Feb 23, 2011 12:46:39 GMT -5
Our civ is in pretty quiet times at the moment. Rice farmed at second city, workers moving to mine the copper, next settler due in 3 more turns, Wheel research almost halfway complete. More interesting is scouting out Adlain's second city here. Medina does not appear to have any food resources in its initial 9-tile radius, and will grow very slowly as a result. City is working a grassland forest, worker building a farm on a grassland river tile. It appears as though Adlain went for this spot because it had a gold resource; unfortunately, at the moment he doesn't have the food to work that tile! Unless there's something in the fog we haven't revealed yet, this appears to be a subpar spot for a second city, just because it lacks the food to get off to a fast start. Even if there's food off to the west, how is he going to work it if it's not in his borders? Build a monument first, and then wait 10 turns for borders to expand after that (?) Maybe Adlain will get a free Buddhism spread here from his capital, but you can't count on that sort of luck to speed you along. Medina is going to be a long time developing, so good news for us. (Scout will have visibility on the center tile next turn.) We finally have Demographics charts visibility on Nakor; I got us to the "perfect" 43 EP number and swapped over to Adlain next. Have to get visibility on your neighbors before anyone else... Here's the Power chart with Nakor: The other charts don't matter that much at this stage of the game. Nakor's team is roughly even with us in food and behind in production, as you would expect since we're working all those mines at the capital. Working from the Power chart, we can figure out what this team has been doing so far: T1 2k [Hunting tech] T11 6k [Wheel tech] T15 8k [warrior] T17 9k [capital size 2] T20 11k [warrior] T25 13k [Animal Husbandry tech] T31 15k [warrior] T32 17k [Mining tech] T35 18k [four total pop] T36 20k [warrior] Build Order Worker [10t] Warrior [5t] Warrior [5t] Partial Warrior, then Settler, then finish Warrior [11t] Warrior [5t] Probably built another scout somewhere in here, because it doesn't take that long to train all those warriors. So it's very likely that Nakor has 4 warriors, 2 scouts, and 1 worker. I don't think he could have built a second worker, because otherwise he couldn't have trained all those warriors. Could be wrong on that, but he does have a lot of warriors... Finally, Moogle replied to us after 3 days, and had some useful information: So we know that the southern teams from west to east are Adlain -> us -> Nakor -> plako -> Warlord. Moogle is located to the north of Adlain, and he has Mackoti to the east of him. There's also a water barrier separating the eastern worldwrap from the western worldwrap. That means the map likely looks like this: The world has no Toroidal wrap, but probably does wrap east/west, where there's a water barrier in place (or in at least some areas, maybe not all). I suppose it could be a completely flat map, with no wrapping at all, however that seems like it would be too unbalanced for the teams in the "corners". Mackoti is probably the team due north of us, across the equator central region where I don't think any teams started. We can see some jungle tiles up to the north, and I suspect that's where all of the Calendar resources will be located. (This map is really lacking in happiness at the moment, and there have to be more resources somewhere.) The missing teams would all be in the far northwest, which makes sense because they're the furthest away from our start. Of course, this could be completely wrong too. But I think it makes the most sense based on what we've seen thus far, and from the perspective of creating a (semi?) balanced map. Overall, if I'm right, I like our starting location. The most dangerous teams are probably Luddite, plako, and maybe sunrise/regoarrarr (although they seem to have botched their start completely) and none of them are close to us. As always, our email account and Dropbox have all the info on what we're doing if you want to check them out.
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Post by Sullla on Feb 25, 2011 15:13:34 GMT -5
Update on what we're doing: Workers finished two mines this turn, one at the capital and one on our copper resource. Unfortunately we still need a road for our copper to be connected, which will have to wait for Wheel research to be completed. Anasazi also grew to size 2 this turn, grabbing the awesome 1/5 copper tile. We are at 20 Food/18 Production in the Demographics, and "Rival Best" in each category stands at 23 Food/16 production. Currently #1 in Production, #2 in Food, and the "Rival Average" in those categories are 17/11. We are definitely getting out in the front of the pack, and I can't wait for us to get our Expansive granaries up and running. Mmmm, 1 pop whip granaries when half our opponents won't even have Bronze Working tech yet! ;D The one downside of Anasazi ticking up to size 2 was an increase in our city maintenence, from 1gpt up to 2gpt. With a third city on the way, our income will be suffering in the short term. I think we definitely want to go for Pottery tech next, because working some early riverside cottages will help us keep our expansion boom going while researching at a good rate (to say nothing of those Expansive granaries again). We'll also get some help in the form of trade routes; 2 extra commerce from connecting our two cities means a great deal when you're making 13 overall. So while research is an area of minor concern, I think we made the right call by emphasizing food and production first. Cherokee produces a settler next turn, and I think the obvious call is worker after that. We actually overflow 14 shields into the worker (becomes 17 with Expansive bonus!) and can get a 3t worker, completing on T44. And we definitely need that fourth worker for building roads, cottages, chopping, connecting resources, etc. The tough call is what to build after that. In all honesty, I think the best option is yet another settler out of the capital, for the following reasons: - We won't have Pottery tech yet, and there's no point in growing the capital unless we can work grassland river cottages. - We can't build an axeman because the road connection to the capital won't finish until T50. - There are no barbs on this map, and no close neighbors. An early attack seems extremely unlikely. I don't really see anything else worth building as we wait for our Pottery research to finish (should be done a little after T50). We certainly don't want more warriors or scouts, and barracks is a huge waste at this stage of the game. What else is there to build other than workers and settlers? If you have a chance to give me your thoughts on this Speaker, I'm curious as to what you think we should do. Still have several turns before we have to make the decision. Not too much else going on out there. Adlain still has nothing defending his new city (which is totally nuts since Moogle has a warrior in the area) and is working a grassland river farm there. I'm pretty confident that plako finished Wheel tech and Adlain finished Animal Husbandry. Luddite is teching quickly in the fog, now up to 7 techs, and might have settled at a gold resource for his second city. Our team and Luddite both have 6 total pop, and no one else has yet reached that mark. sunrise and Parkin still have not planted second cities yet.
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Post by Sullla on Feb 28, 2011 11:19:57 GMT -5
Yo Speaker, are you reading this private forum at all? Please give me some kind of feedback here when you get a chance.
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Post by Speaker on Feb 28, 2011 20:37:19 GMT -5
Sorry dude. I'm reading it. I'm also working 12 hours almost every day. I would just keep building settlers and workers until there is something worthwhile to build.
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Post by Sullla on Mar 1, 2011 11:20:08 GMT -5
Yeah I know this is the busiest time of the year for your work. Just trying to make sure I'm not posting into the void here. We're finally off to a new turn after a lengthy delay replacing Warlord with WarriorKnight. For our civ, we finished our settler in the capital and are moving to the spot indicated. (Speaker, if you think we should move one tile east, let me know. One tile east blocks the narrow isthmus completely, but it also puts the city one tile further away from the capital - harder to defend. I can go either way.) In either case the city gets founded in 3 more turn, T44. We also finish a warrior next turn in Anasazi. My suggested build there next is a scout: we have good exploration of the map to the north and west, but our knowledge to the east is bad. One scout to head off that way and explore towards Nakor and plako seems like the best option to me. Thoughts? Internationally, plako founded his third city this turn, named Asl. Since he is Imperialistic and we are not, I'm very happy with our pace compared to his. More troubling was a double population growth from Luddite, as his capital hit size 5 and his second city hit size 3. He now has 8 total pop, the most in the game by a wide margin: Total PopLuddite 8 [5+3] Our Team 6 [4+2] plako 6 [3+2+1] Nakor 5 [4+1] Moogle 5 [4+1] WarriorKnight 5 [4+1] Adlain 4 [3+1] Mackoti 4 [3+1] Parkin 4 sunrise 4 He's got a major edge in the Demographics now, with "Rival Best" metrics of 27 Food / 21 Production. We are still at 20/18 and rank 3rd in Food, 2nd in Production. Now this isn't quite as bad as it seems; Luddite grew that extra population by growing instead of training workers and settlers. I'm pretty sure he has 2 workers, and now he'll have to pause to build a settler, while we'll have our third city in another 3 turns and Anasazi continues to grow. Still, Luddite is growing very quickly and working a lot of improved tiles. His team and plako's team look to be the main competition at this point: exactly what we predicted during the snake pick of leaders and civs. Funny how that works. The last four teams are *REALLY* falling behind already. Parkin at least has the excuse of building Stonehenge. sunrise's team is just playing awful at the moment. I have no idea what's going on there, no second city yet when other teams are founding their third...
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Post by Speaker on Mar 1, 2011 20:06:32 GMT -5
Put it 1 tile east. With the river to cross, it will be the same number of turns of movement.
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Post by Sullla on Mar 2, 2011 16:06:10 GMT -5
Alright, we'll go with the spot one tile east. Beyond everything else, that spot also gets us 4 forests to chop instead of 1. Definitely an upgrade. Here's where we stand now. Settler to be planted next turn. Worker finishing in capital, settler for city #4 to follow. Our workers are going to be doing a lot of "move one tile and road" to avoid wastage in the upcoming turns. For instance, we can't speed up the corn farm at the new city any faster than T47, so our new worker will road to the new city one tile at a time and get the thing halfway done. I'll be doing similar stuff at Anasazi with the copper (move only one worker onto the copper hill to road so that we avoid a wasted worker turn). We'll connect Anasazi to the capital T49 and new city to the capital T50. Those trade routes will be key, as they'll add 3 more commerce/turn to our civ. This is pretty significant as we are making 13 commerce/turn currently. Our science rate is rather poor at the moment, as we're paying unit support costs in addition to the maintenance for Anasazi. (The GNP rate also looks bad in comparison because other teams get "GNP" from culture for being Creative or building Stonehenge/founding religions, etc.) We don't have any tiles with a bonus commerce yield, and we're hurting because three of our six worked tiles at present don't pull in any commerce. Of course, these are our two deer + copper, so we definitely do want to work those tiles! But we need Pottery tech and some cottages ASAP. Right now we have 0 gold and -3gpt at 100% science, so this turn we pretty much have to go 0% on the slider. I have to wait until we found the new city next turn to figure out the best rate we should run. Fortunately we get 40% bonus beakers into Pottery from having both Agriculture and Fishing, and that will help a lot. It should take about 8-9 turns to get the tech, which will coincide very nicely with our settler build in the capital... then onto cottages and growth. Minor question for you, Speaker: will a warrior build in Anasazi get auto-upgraded into an axeman when our copper is connected there? I'm not sure of the exact mechanics. If possible, we'd like to time it so we produce a real defensive unit rather than another warrior there next. (Before going onto granary after that.) Adlain and Moogle now have warriors walking around the general area of our borders. No word back yet from Adlain on my offer of an NAP during the scouting phase of the game. He probably hasn't seen it yet... One thing the map makers might not have considered is that when we found this new city and when our capital expands borders in a couple of turns, we're going to completely block off the southern part of the map. No one can pass that narrow choke without our permission or without defeating us. If there's a land connection, it's far, far to the north. We're getting close to the Equator up there; the middle part of the map should be about 5-6 tiles north of our warrior's current position. I'll bet all the Calendar resources are up there in the jungle middle of the map, and then we'll find Mackoti's civ on the other side of that. One last detail: Parkin and sunrise founded their second city together last turn. So everyone does have 2 cities by now... but we'll have 3 next turn.
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Post by Speaker on Mar 2, 2011 21:48:19 GMT -5
A warrior does get auto-promoted, but not to an axe. It gets promoted to a spearman. Note the Viking borders.
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Post by Sullla on Mar 3, 2011 10:27:23 GMT -5
Nice job catching the Nakor borders, which I totally missed for the last 10 turns. The scout we just finished in Anasazi will go check it out in more detail. We planted our third city in the expected spot, taking the next name on the barb city list: Teoihuacan. (Ouch, I'm gonna hate typing that...) This actually decreased our expenses slightly, since we were getting significantly over the unit supply cap. Capital finished our fourth worker, and started a 6t settler. Anasazi finished a scout and started on another warrior for lack of anything else to build at present. Workers are busy building roads to connect cities and farming the corn at our new city. Here were the numbers on our Pottery research: Need 130 beakers 10g in bank 100% = 14 [21] @ -5gpt = 7t* 90% = 12 [18] @ -4gpt = 8t 80% = 11 [16] @ -3gpt = 9t 70% = 9 [14] @ -1gpt = 10t* 60% = 8 [12] @ 0gpt = 11t 50% = 7 [11] @ +2gpt = 12t 0% = 0 @ +9gpt = 130t I looked at all these different levels, and it seems like plain old 100% is the best option again. At full max research, we get 14 + 1 [free beaker] = 15 beakers * 1.4 bonus research = 21 beakers/turn. That's an exact figure, with nothing lost to truncating or rounding. We actually miss 6t Pottery research by just a few beakers at this rate (21 * 6 = 126, need 130). So even oscillating between 100% and 0% gets us a nice rate, 2t of one and then 1t of the other, averages out to 14 true beakers/turn, which is definitely better than 12 true beakers/turn at flat rate. We will probably get Pottery in 9 more turns, possibly 8t if we get some extra commerce. Note that this means we will finish settler before Pottery in capital, but that's fine because we can always throw out another worker. 4 workers for 4 cities won't be enough! The next thing we need to decide is where to place our fourth city, since we already have the settler in production. Here are my thoughts for the three areas around us: the west, the east, and the north: WestThis is the Adlain front. You can see the capital (with third ring 100 culture borders) and his second city of Medina in the picture. There's an awesome pigs/corn location north of Medina, and hopefully Adlain will settle there next. That river forms a natural barrier between our teams, as it's almost exactly 11 tiles between our capitals. We planned on settling that Pink location a while ago, and the other spot I like is the Yellow one. It's extremely defendable with river and peak natural barriers, and has corn + copper (corn will even be irrigated for free with Civil Service). White dot is a possible future spot for far down the road, has great land but sadly no food bonuses. Controlling the area around this river would be key, as it would deny early Financial river cottages to Adlain. EastNakor's city is just off screen to the east; when it expands borders, it will take the lake/hill/forest trio of tiles. I like the red spot here for filling up that eastern peninisula of land; it has sheep in first ring, whales in second ring, a lot of grassland, forests, and hill tiles, and then can borrow a crab from Teoihuacan as needed. Green is a fishing village intended to work that fish resource and unused grassland tiles. Some tight spacing here, but we want to make use of all these awesome food bonus tiles. Let me know if you see a better way to do this, I think this planning could be suboptimal. Obviously we need more info up in the north around that copper before we can plan cities up there. NorthYellow comes over from the previous dotmap. Blue has to go on that very tile so it can grab fish + cows, and would otherwise be a very weak location. That one damned peak tile really screws with us in that spot... Orange is also determined by the fish tile off in the ocean, because no other location can grab it. We also need more map info before we can dotmap the wines/gold location. Hopefully there's a seafood resource off the coast there. If not, that's going to be an extremely marginal location (although there's one spot that could get pigs + gold + wines). We can likely get two good cities out of the pigs and fish resource in the far northeast. So where do we settle next? We have to keep two major issues in mind: - We don't have Animal Husbandry for sheep/cows/pigs. - We don't have Mysticism or any way to expand borders. That means we pretty much have to go for a site with a food bonus in the first ring, and we have to take a spot with seafood or grain resources. Out of all these spots, therefore, I like the Yellow one best. It locks down a very defensible border in the west, it has corn in first ring, it will later grab copper, it's on the coast and on a river, and it can get off to a very fast start. I really like the Pink spot too because it has the gold resource, but that location needs both AH and cultural expansion to become useful. We could try moving the spot, but... where do we move it? We waste a LOT of strong grassland tiles if we move it a tile west. We can't go south because there are zero food bonuses down there. I suppose we could found the city and steal the rice from Anasazi, or work a grassland river farm.... those all seem like weak choices though. I would say to get Yellow next, the Pink with city #5, and then look to settle east after that, just because there are no rivers in the east, and grassland river cottages will be extremely important to us early on. Please tell me what you think about all this when you get a chance. Also, Adlain sent us this message: Argh, why is it always "border agreements" with these teams?! Every single freakin Pitboss game, I swear... Isn't it enough just to settle and let the borders form up naturally? Sigh. Yet another team that messes up the early game, has slow early growth, and then wants to negotiate territory by diplomacy, rather than going out and settling it themselves. Umm, thoughts? I'm just going to get frustrated if I respond now. I said it would talk it over with Cervantes and get back to him.
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Post by Sullla on Mar 4, 2011 12:24:04 GMT -5
Well this was a pretty crazy last turn, even if nothing happened whatsoever in our territory. After we played our turn, CivStats produced the following score changes:
plako 83->88 WarriorKnight 75->70 WarriorKnight 70->73
All on the same turn, within a short span of time. Now it was pretty obvious that plako took a city off of WarriorKnight (they were at war, apparently!) but the population numbers weren't matching up right. I literally sat on the Demographics screens with my calculator trying to figure it out, until finally I hit on what happened. In short, plako and WarriorKnight signed a peace treaty, and the city exchange took place there. That's why there was no loss of population when the city changed hands. Then, after signing peace, WarriorKnight founded a new city elsewhere. So plako gained 2 pop, WarriorKnight lost 2 pop, and then he gained 1 pop, all in the same turn. Yeesh!
plako now has four cities: Lol 3 [capital] Noms 3 Asl 1 Tyvm 2 [taken in peace deal]
He has 9 total population, most in the game now. plako's Food/Production metrics are now 35/21 (ours are 25/19) and he is in a very strong position. Of course his economy should be pretty garbage from taking 4 cities this early - he's built two settlers and two axes, so he can't have very many workers - but it doesn't change the fact that plako is going to be a dangerous opponent. (His GNP will look good because he gets 8 free culture from being Creative, so it's tough to tell exactly how much his economy is hurting.) At the same time, all that Creative culture will mean a really strong landgrab, so again, a team that we really have to watch out for.
Total World Pop plako 9 [3+3+2+1] Luddite 8 [5+3] Our team 7 [4+2+1]
Nakor 6 [4+2] Adlain 6 [4+2] Parkin 6 [5+1] sunrise 6 [5+1] Mackoti 5 [3+1+1] Moogle 5 [4+1] WarriorKnight [4+1]
We will grow another pop point next turn in Anasazi. I put the dividing point in there because I believe our three teams, ourselves and plako and Luddite, have already begun to establish some separation from the pack. Nakor is actually playing pretty well; his Demographics show a ton of Food being worked, and I expect him to plant another city shortly. Adlain is off to a much slower start, even if the pop figures don't show it quite yet. We'll have Demographics on Adlain next turn though, which will be nice. Teams like sunrise and Moogle are waaaaay behind already.
All things considered, things could have been a lot worse from that plako/WarriorKnight conflict apparently taking place. plako is #1 in Power by a good margin (38k, we are #3 at 29k) and this game would be really unbalanced if he took WarriorKnight's capital. plako got a city, but in all honesty, if he had just gone for Imperialistic settler spam, he'd be in about the same position as he is right now. WarriorKnight is still in the game, and will likely be a pain in the rear for plako for a long time yet to come. Would love to get contact with him, but he's got to be extremely far away...
Any thoughts on what to say to Adlain about his "borders agreement" thing? The best thing I can think of is something vague about using that river between us as a rough border. I'm also sending off short emails to plako to ask for details on that war, and one to Moogle to warn him off making aggressive moves with his exploring warrior near our cities. We've gotten extremely few emails this game so far, everyone is pretty silent. Fine with me, don't like the diplomacy very much in these games, ha.
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Post by Speaker on Mar 4, 2011 20:31:27 GMT -5
Send something vague, but ultimately I'd say let's just settle how we please.
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Post by Sullla on Mar 5, 2011 12:29:54 GMT -5
T47 was incredibly busy in terms of score increases. There were six total pop increases, a new city founded, and two more technologies discovered. Eight different teams had score increases of some kind. That took a little while to sort out, but I'm pretty sure I have it all correct in my spreadsheet. Moogle also carried out the first Slavery whip of the game, hitting his capital for 1 pop. plako revolted to Slavery this turn, so he's also in the civic now. Nakor and Adlain still do not have Bronze Working tech. With all the pop increases the table from the last post is now shot to hell. Just to update quickly: Luddite 9 plako 9 Our team 8 Nakor 8 Parkin 7 Adlain 7 mackoti 6 sunrise 6 Moogle 5 WarriorKnight 5 So that doesn't look all that great on face value. In the Food/Production metrics, we stand at: 28 Food/22 Production 35/22 "Rival Best" 25/15 "Rival Average" #4 in Food, #1 in Production Now that looks a bit better. Anyway, I think we're in better shape than the Total Pop figures let on. For example, compare our situation to that of Adlain. We have 8 pop, he has 7. He just added a third city, which we also have visibility on: Look at these cities. The locations are amazing, but Adlain has no infrastructure at all. We've already talked about how Medina needs a border expansion to do much of anything (city has 19/30 shields towards a monument at present) and is working a 3/0 river farm and a 2/1 grassland forest. Not great. Damascus has no worker labor and won't be getting it any time soon. It's totally undefended and undefendable. Adlain has exactly 2 workers at present for these 3 cities. He needs roads, he needs farms, he needs mines, and he needs cottages. None of these things are going to be done any time even remotely soon. And he still lacks Bronze Working too... So although it might be 8 to 7 in total population, we are really, really, really far ahead of Adlain. If the distance were a little bit smaller, we could whip some axes and go take these cities. But on a map this big, that would be really counterproductive. Instead, Adlain has offered us an NAP for the next ~40 turns, and I'm inclined to accept it. Trying to fight across these distances would just cripple us with maintenance costs. We can always go attack this guy later, when we'll have snowballed further ahead in tech. I also had the time to go over the Power chart with Adlain's Demographics: Which works out to this: Start with Wheel/Mysticism + warrior 6k T7 Hunting tech 8k T16 two pop 9k T19 warrior 11k T22 warrior 13k T36 four pop 14k T40 Animal Husbandry 16k T45 six pop 17k T46 warrior 19k Capital Build OrderStart with worker (10t) Warrior (9t) Warrior (3t) Settler (9t) Worker Settler Warrior Adlain Units4 warriors 2 workers Nakor Units5 warriors 1 or 2 scouts 2 workers Our Team5 warriors 2 scouts 4 workers Anyway, I could keep going on, but you get my point. These teams are close in total pop, and Nakor is very close in the overall Demographics... but we have double their workers, and much, MUCH better tile improvement infrastructure. This should become more and more apparent as the game progresses. Everyone played this turn really fast, so we should actually get in two turns in one day. Awesome. ;D
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Post by Sullla on Mar 7, 2011 10:05:35 GMT -5
I put a Turn 50 update in our RB spoiler thread, since it was requested by the lurkers for all teams to do. I won't repost it here, since it's the same thing I would normally say, only written in Locke-speak.
I think we should start figuring out what we want to do about Nakor. His city is pretty close to us, and it's a great pigs/corn spot. (Our land is pretty awesome, but we don't have any spots quite that good...) We haven't had any email contact in weeks, and I feel like we should say something now that we both have cities nearby. Oh, and Nakor also has a warrior exploring close to Teoihuacan.
Any thoughts here Speaker? Like, do we see ourselves as Nakor's friend in this game? Adlain's friend? I know it's early but we should probably at least start thinking about this stuff. We've had very good contact with Adlain so far, extremely little contact with Nakor. (Then again, hardly any of these teams tend to send out emails. I've initiated diplomacy in pretty much every case.)
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