RBP4 [SPOILERS] - Shaka of Zulu (sunrise089, regoarrarr, and friends)

[regoarrarr]

So last sim had us at size 5 on T33. In chatting with sunrise, he brought up the option of working 1/0/2 coast tiles after Fishing, in order to tech faster. Working 2 deer and 3 coast makes 16bpt instead of 10, which would bring the time on Sailing from 14.3 to 9.05 turns. So instead of Sailing on T39, let's say we can tweak that down to T36 (since we'll also grow slower working 1/0/2 tiles instead of 2/1/0 tiles). I don't feel like running the sims right now - just hoping for a "level 0" estimate (grr grr too much work today).

Then we're doing a lighthouse in 5 turns, so T41. And now we run into "the Masonry problem". At max hammers we make 11bpt * 1.2 = 13, and Masonry is 138 beakers, so another 11 turns. We start the GLH on T47, and with 3 chops it takes us 13 turns, completing on T60.

So that's a decent first stab at an estimate - hopefully we can bring that down a few turns, but probably not too much.

[regoarrarr]

Chat with sunrise

(4:58:51 PM) me: yes
(4:59:10 PM) me: i guess i have not heard yet a convincing argrument for not swapping to fishing this turn
(4:59:25 PM) me: (which has 2 players left to play, and we've already ended turn)
(4:59:49 PM) me: we still have a bit of time to argue about optimal tile arrangements to balance food / hammers / commerce
(5:00:07 PM) me: but every turn we delay is another turn we don't have any 2c tiles available
(5:00:13 PM) me: i'm willing to be tlaked out of that
(5:00:20 PM) me: but hurry because i'm hungry and want to go home ;-)
(5:01:27 PM) sunrise089: fishing
(5:01:39 PM) sunrise089: I've supported that for an hour now
(5:03:47 PM) me: okay
(5:03:50 PM) me: can you make the swap now?
(5:04:12 PM) me: the other thing is that we aren't really optimizing GLH date
(5:04:23 PM) me: we're optimizing (earliest anyone else can get GLH - 1 turn)
(5:04:31 PM) me: i.e. if the earliest anyone else can get it is T70
(5:04:48 PM) me: it is less optimal to kill ourselves to get it on T60 vs. getting a 2nd city or worker out and getting it on T69
(5:04:53 PM) me: and on that, i'm out
(5:05:06 PM) me: make sure and swap to fishing as soon as you can
(5:05:18 PM) me: i'll post some more on what i just said right now later this evenin

See - I don't only monopolize threads, I also monopolize chats And now you see why sunrise never updates his thread

Basically we're swapping to Fishing this turn leaving BW with 8t to go for now

[Krill]

2 questions: regoarrarr, I thought you were the Ded lurker? And when are you building a settler in all that?

[sunrise089]

2 questions: regoarrarr, I thought you were the Ded lurker? And when are you building a settler in all that?

Note the name of the thread (and no, not the #&%$^ "RBPB" nonsense) - one of my few good decisions was to have a nice open-ended list of players to allow for otherwise non-updating ways.

As for a settler, if we make one pre-GL, it would probably get worked on while fishing and sailing are researched, and then some while masonry is being researched.

[regoarrarr]

2 questions: regoarrarr, I thought you were the Ded lurker? And when are you building a settler in all that?

Pretty much any time you're wondering to yourself "I wonder why regoarrarr is doing [fill in the blank]?", the answer is "to get you to post in here and bump the thread post count

[regoarrarr]

Turn rolled last night and while I have not yet logged in, we had major score increases. No, really.

Literally everyone in the game increased score.

That threw me for a quick second, until I realized that it's turn 20, so everyone (except us who settled on T1), so everyone is getting land points from settling their capital.

So everyone got 7 points from land. We got 2 points for growing to Pop 2.

So besides that, Luddite grew to Pop 3. He was the first to grow to Pop 2, so I would assume that we should have some other folks growing to Pop 3 next turn. If we don't, then we know that we have some workers and settlers being trained.

Also, Lord Parkin and SleepingMoogle got a tech.

Looking at the numbers, I'm pretty convinced that it has to be Animal Husbandry

But wait! I gave Animal Husbandry to Mackoti / Ioan76 last turn. All 3 of them have both Agriculture and Hunting, so either one of those 2 turns isn't AH, or one of them researched faster or slower.

The fastest GNP over the past few turns was 22. So 9 from commerce + 1 free beaker + 2 from palace culture + 2 from creative (if it was Moogle) + 4 EPs is 18. So 4 more would definitely represent a 40% bonus from Moogle doing AH.

He got Hunting (69b) on T7 and would have 1 beaker overflow. In 12 turns at 14 bpt, he'd have 168 + 1 overflow = 169 beakers, and AH costs 172. So I'm fairly sure that LP and SM got AH this turn (acronym city baby ).

So what about Mackoti/Ioan last turn? They definitely got a tech. Some possibilities:

a) They worked a 2/0/1 instead of the 1/3/0 hill deer for 3 turns.
b) They're screwing with me (intentionally or not) by swapping techs mid-turn like that one Zulu team
c) They researched something else.

So what else could they have researched? They start with Fishing and Agriculture, and researched Hunting on T7. So let's assume 10 base commerce (including the free beaker), so they could research a no pre-req tech between 112 and 121 beakers, a one pre-req tech between 134 and 144 beakers, or a 2 pre-req tech between 156 and 169 beakers.

The list of those techs:
* No pre-req techs: none (Wheel is 103 so possible if they swapped after 1 turn)
* 1 pre-req techs: Masonry, [strike]Meditation[/strike], [strike]Pottery[/strike] (no Mysticism or Wheel)
* 2 pre-req techs: None (AH is 172 as discussed)

I dunno. Masonry (although needed for TGLH which we think they're going for since they picked Ind/Org of Netherlands) just seems like a REALLY odd choice to tech there. If they could have gotten Sailing, I'd totally have bought that. I guess I'm still going to go for Animal Husbandry as my guess.

[regoarrarr]

So... (that one's for you @Scooter!) I made brief mention of this a bit last night, but we don't actually want to optimize GLH date. What we want to optimize is (earliest anyone ELSE can get GLH minus 1 turn). What that means is that it doesn't really do us any good to get GLH on Turn 60, if nobody else will get it done until Turn 70. In that case, we'd want to get it on Turn 69, and spend some of that food / hammers on a 2nd worker and/or a settler.

Of course we can't KNOW when someone else will build GLH (though with C&D hopefully we can make a bit of an educated guess), so there is definitely correlation between optimizing GLH date and what we want. But I wanted to take a bit of time to see if I could figure out when some of the other civs would be likely to build GLH. Remember that EVERY OTHER CIV has a landlocked capital, so in addition to (slowwwwwwwwwwly) teching the necessary techs, they have to build a settler and settle a 2nd (coastal) city, AND give it enough worker attention to compete with our size 5 16 hpt capital city.

Another thing to keep in mind is that many civs won't be chasing GLH at all! GLH gives no benefit until you have 3 (coastal) cities, and everyone else already has their most important city landlocked.

Okay... (@Scooter again!)

So (sheesh I can't stop myself) who can be eliminated as contenders. Obviously anyone we can just stop tracking as potential candidates is one less thing to do. If we have to track the potential techs / builds of 2 people, it's a lot easier than having to do that for 9 (duh.)

OUT:
* Adlain - Went for Meditation, and doesn't have Mining or Fishing
* Luddite - Doesn't have Mining or Fishing
* LP - ditto and just teched AH
* SleepingMoogle - ditto.

NOT LIKELY:
* Locke / Cervantes - Has Fishing and Mining and is currently teching something. If it comes in on T22 (possibly Sailing but could be Anim Husb), then we'll keep them - if it comes in on T25 (Bronze Working), then I think they're out.
* WarlordDr - Ditto.
* Gaspar / Nakor - Teched the Wheel which is odd but he already has Fishing. We'll have to see when their next tech comes in.

CONTENDERS:
* Plako - is Imp and researched Fishing right after Hunting
* Ioan / Mackoti - whole leader / civ pick seems geared for it. Still not sure about that last tech choice though

So for our "contenders", they both have grown to Pop 2 (Mackoti on T16 and plako on T19). Neither of them are Exp, so they had a worker out on T10. T10 it moves to the deer, T11-14 it camps the deer, T15 it moves to the other deer, T16-19 it camps the other deer.

So for the max food strategy, you'd have had 3fpt T10-14 (15/22), then 5fpt the next 2 turns, growing on T16. This is what Mackoti did. If he started a settler right then, it would get 10 f-h/t for 3 turns (30/100), then 12f-h/t for 6 turns, completing a settler on T25, founding the 2nd city as early as T26.

So plako - he just grew on T19, and if we went right on to a settler, that would be 6fpt and 6 * 50% hpt, or 15 f-h/t - a 7 turn settler. So his settler would be out on T26, founding on T27.

Next up we need to figure out how long to build GLH once the city is founded.

[regoarrarr]

Before we do that though, when are we "safe" for those 2 guys. i.e. at what point, if they're not building a settler / worker, would we expect them to grow. Hypothesizing that at size 2 they work the 5/1 deer and the 1/3 deer until it's improved at which point they work both the deers,

Mackoti: T16 just grew to size 2, with 3/24 overflow, then 4fpt for 3 turns (15/24), and 6fpt for the next 2 turns, growing on T21. This jives with continuing to be 1 turn behind our only Expansive fast grower Luddite (who grew to Pop 3 this turn / T20).

Plako: He grew on T19, delaying so long that it made me think he was building a settler. He should have had both his camps up by then. He's doing 6fpt, so even with no overflow, he'd grow on T23. So if he doesn't grow T23, then we can start suspecting something's up with him.

[regoarrarr]

Turn 20 and 21 played



We decided it was worth spending an extra turn to scout the coast near those peaks, so we did. We found.... nothing

Well, no seafood, but we did find another continent over there. You can just see the bare outline of it. A city on the peninsula tile 3N1W of the pigs might be able to cross to it. Or it's possible that it's connected. Scout movement indicated - too far to plan past that - depending on what we see.

Warrior moving SE on the coast.

So here's a problem - where do we put our 2nd city.

It has to be on the coast, and it has to not screw up a long-term dotmap too much (if any), and it has to have a resource in the 1st ring (or part of the capital culture).

I'd lean to want to settling west or south, since the north is kind of the "back lines". Maybe 1NW of the pigs?

[regoarrarr]

Demographics, soldier count makes sense to have the 2 techs discovered on T20 be both Animal Husbandry, as hypothesized earlier today.

T21 demos were easy
We gained 5 points for land
Adlain gained 1 pop (capital grew to size 3).

No changes in soldier count and no techs researched.

What was most telling is what we did NOT see. Namely, mackoti, Lord Parkin and WarlordDr, who grew to size 2 back on Turn 16 along with Adlain, did NOT grow to size 3 this turn.

So that would indicate they're likely to be building either a 2nd worker or a settler. If it's a settler, we'd likely see it founded on T26 (or T27, depending on where it goes).

Something to watch for sure!