[SPOILERS]PB34:Burnin' Daylight - DMOC/gsorel/Ichabod

[gsorel]

OK - when I worked through this yesterday, I tried to think of the least boring way to share my thoughts. I'm not sure this satisfies, but I did have fun mucking about, so I guess that's good enough

1. General Thoughts

I'm now inclined to agree with Ichabod that selecting fishing next turn is best. The city sites due east and west are so lush - I believe we can settle both - that I think it costs too much to take an early swipe at Borsche. A single shock-impi ambushing a single warrior in Borsche's capital would of course be ideal, but Borsche ought not to let that happen. In the spirit of casual, I guess I prefer to play against "ought" instead of "not".

I put Gawdzak on a T30 settler at size 4, so I think we can settle west. The city is slower to start, but I think west then east is most likely to be successful. We may have to research archery in case Gawdzak settles on copper and rushes military.

I took screenshots of a peaceful playthough where we settle west. I chose to illustrate this option because it's easy to see how it can be tweaked to speed aggression: ikhanda first instead of work boat, whipping instead of growing on to a resource. The east-west symmetry means we need only mirror worker movements to settle east.

Here is an overview map - my best attempt to show the situation at a glance:

Here is a turn by turn summary:

T25
*Grain is farmed, so work it

*Warrior heads west to scout city site

*Worker A heads west to chop one forest in to a settler then a second forest in to the second city

T26
*Worker A starts chopping

*Worker B will chop a forest in to the first settler, a forest in to the second settler, than a final forest in to the third city

T27
*Grow to size 3 - start the settler

*Worker B starts chopping

T28
*First chop is in

T29
*Warrior needs to do his best to prevent Gawdzak from camping copper

*Worker A moves to chop in to the west city

*Second chop is in

T30
*Settler is out, settled T32

*If copper is safe, warrior should set up a scoutpost

*Worker A starts chopping

*Worker B moves to chop in to second settler

T31
*Fishing is in

*Overflow finishes second warrior

*Second warrior sets out east

*Worker A cancels his chop, it will be assigned to the second city next turn.
*Worker B starts chopping

*REVOLT to slavery

T32
*Settle second city and queue a workboat, working the copper forest.

*Worker A chops in to the workboat

T33
*Worker A moves to the cow (the only wasted worker turn in this plan)

*Worker B finishes chop in to the second settler

T34
*Worker A pastures the cow

*Worker B moves to chop in the east city

T35
*Workboat is out. West city works fish

*Worker B starts chop

T36
*Settler is out. ETA on west city is T38. Queue up warrior an grow to size 4.

*Worker B cancels chop

T37
*Note that we might be able to optimize and finish the wheel this turn (exactly 6b short here), so worker B should be able to road while he waits for the east city. It should be clear that his job is just to chop in to the east city and then drop a turn in to a road to pasture the sheep.

T38
*Finish third warrior and grow to size 4. Start on worker.

*Settle east city, proceed exactly as we did to the west.

*Worker A moves to copper. If all goes well, worker A will chop/mine in to the ikhanda and overflow in to an axe finished ~T47.

Again, the idea is to use this as a template and vary depending on strategy.

[DMOC]

I had a long day and I ended up having to do some unexpected duties today, so sorry about my silence so far. Thank you so much for posting that plan in the previous post. It really helps me to see what the options are. I am leaning towards supporting your general 3-city plan above.

Just for fun, I timed out a rush on Borsche where we settle our second city on top of the copper towards him and rush an Impi. We can get an Impi attacking his capital on turn 38, which is just cruel. However, his warrior will have +25% for city defense, +25% for fortify bonus, and +20% for culture, meaning that we'd only get roughly 80% odds. I'm pretty sure on turn 38 we can get a single Impi vs single warrior, but do we want to risk it?

Either way, regardless of the super-fast start on Borsche, or the 3-city plan you've outlined, I think we better rush Borsche. Here's the main reason why: Borsche appears so disengaged in this game that I doubt he'll be expecting a rush until it's too late. We know he's missed three turns. He's already had to have the game paused twice by others. Looking at his CivStats logs, he's played almost all of his turns in one minute and he doesn't update his thread here. We've also been tracking his research. He finished a technology on turn 18 and we know with very high confidence that he has the set of {Fishing, Mining, Hunting, and Agriculture}. I think it's a safe bet that he's researching Bronze Working right now. It took us 15 turns to research that technology. Suppose he gets extra research from some commerce tiles or the known-civ bonus and completes Bronze Working on turn 30. We'll already be on our way towards settling the copper spots and have more time to get Impis out.

Other notes:

Today, I read Thoth's Pitboss 19 Impi rush that Ichabod posted earlier. It's not that informative for this game, though, because we're operating on a far earlier timescale, and Thoth's rush relied on pindicator (the victim) completely unprepared, with only chariots. Though I doubt Borsche is all that prepared. Tomorrow, I'll read Ichabod's second Impi rush game he posted, the one with Commodore/Krill in Pitboss 16.

Last thing (important), can you provide your turn 25 save as a Civ4 WorldBuilder save file? I'm trying to load that file but for some reason I can't find the folder where to save those files. I can find a PublicMap file and I've loaded WorldBuilder save files successfully with RtR before (but not "normal" save files ... weird, I know). Then I can try and test that out tomorrow morning.

EDIT: Sorry, I've been updating this post a lot since I made several changes to it after I did some internal testing. I should be done ... hopefully!

[gsorel]

A T25 worldbuilder file doesn't help you since interim production/growth are not stored - I checked.
Here is the T0 worldbuilder with our full neighbourhood that I used to generate the save. Hopefully, that helps.

I sense more support for war than peace - maybe we are the Russians? In that case I propose a rush with two impis. I think it's very likely to succeed:

T25
*Warrior heads east
*Worker A moves SW to chop
*Work sheep and corn

T26
*Worker A starts chop
*Worker B moves N to chop

T27
*Worker B starts chop
*Grow to size 3 and queue settler

T28
*Worker A completes chop in to settler

T29
*Worker A moves NE->NE to chop
*Worker B competes chop in to settler

T30
*Worker A puts one turn in to a chop
*Worker B puts one turn in to a mine
*Settler heads east
*Overflow in to warrior

T31
*The Wheel is finished, select Fishing
*Worker A starts road
*Worker B starts road
*Warrior is finished and heads west
*Queue warrior
*REVOLT to slavery

T32
*Settle east city and queue impi, work silk, make sure chop forest is selected
*Roads finish
*50% Science

T33
*Worker A moves E to road
*Worker B moves E-E to finish road
*Warrior in capital will evolve to impi at EOT
*100% Science

T34
*Workers A,B moves W to finish chop in to east city
*Whip impi in cap, overflow in to settler

T35
*Workers A,B move E->NE to pasture sheep
*Capital impi is out

T36
*East impi is out, queue Ikhanda, work pastured sheep

2 impis hit T38

[DMOC]

Oh, wow. If we can get two impis to attack Borsche on turn 38, I think we can take his capital. I can't imagine him having more than two warriors at that time. And remember, he won't know where copper is until around turn 30-ish, and then he'd have to work to connect the copper he finds (remember, he doesn't have The Wheel) and then whip (he loses 1 turn due to anarchy if he switches). If we play carefully, and play after Borsche, then on turn 37 we can have our impis out 2NW of his capital, and then on turn 38 he'll see that for the first time and won't be able to whip.

[gsorel]

haha..
Gawdzak is showing a warrior on the west grass hill (a peaceful warrior - for now - since he moved first)
Which means we have to build a second warrior (just continue working the cow for 3 turns)
Except this doesn't delay anything at all
So it seems Gawdzak is like a stern teacher, teaching me about Civ4 mechanics

One weakness of IMP/EXP is that overflow food is reduced. Building the warrior now means we overflow exactly zero (instead of many) foodhammers out of the settler. Combined with a couple extra hammers from the cow, the savings cancel out the one turn slower growth

[gsorel]

PS. Gawdzak grew to size 4, confirming the two-warrior start that seems to be so popular on this mirrorish map.

[DMOC]

Yes, and it also seems like Gawdzak got Bronze Working.

PS: Are you following your plan in post #101 or #103?

[gsorel]

Here are T24, T25, and T26

Following the Impi rush plan. Curious to see if Gawdzak is settling east or just probing.

[DMOC]

Here are T24, T25, and T26

Following the Impi rush plan. Curious to see if Gawdzak is settling east or just probing.

OK, let's try the Impi rush, then! And hope that Gawdzak is just there to scout us in advance. Honestly, if I were in his position, I'd be very concerned about an Impi rush and just parking the warrior to have advance notice. That's why I recommended rushing Borsche.

Not much else to say, though. Let's hope the rush works. Two impis on turn 38 should be really hard for Borsche to counter and I suspect he'll still have one warrior in his capital.

Minor note: it probably doesn't matter much on this map but we might want to send the scout on an east/west line in case we can get circumnavigation by land.

PS: I figured out how to load save games into my emulated Civ4, so the turn 25 save you provided is fine. Looking at that, are you moving our current warrior towards Gawdzak? I can't tell clearly from the turn 26 log.
EDIT: never mind, I figured it out from the plan on post 103.

[DMOC]

gsorel,

I went through your plan on post 103, except that I changed to work the cows for 3 turns like you specified. Fortunately, we still settle our second city on turn 32. And yes, revolt on turn 31 (NOT turn 30) so that we can get the wheel and road during anarchy.

Note that there's one minor typo:

T30
*Worker A puts one turn in to a chop
*Worker B puts one turn in to a mine
*Settler heads east
*Overflow in to warrior

T31
*The Wheel is finished, select Fishing
*Worker A starts road
*Worker B starts road
*Warrior is finished and heads west
*Queue warrior
*REVOLT to slavery

No warrior gets completed on turn 31; that warrior in production is going to turn into an impi.

PS: We should also decide on the plan for turn 39 and beyond. We will get our settler done on turn 40 (assuming our capital stays size 3 to build a settler), for a city on turn 42. That's late for a third city, but if that's our fourth ... well I hope we'll be on the right track!

Edit: well, turn 42 is probably late for an imperialistic leader. The winning Commodore/dtay Pitboss 25 team got their third city on turn 42 so I guess it's not a big deal. But it's worth noting that this plan likely means we concede the western copper to Gawdzak. I think if we can get rid of a neighbor that's worth the tradeoff, and our "turn 42" city can go to the south somewhere.