[SPOILERS] Fire and Blood: Nyles Standish and Zalson watch the world burn

[Zalson]

Questions/thoughts

Valyria:
I think we try for the corn ASAP, over the road to Volantis. With that, we'll have a 8fpt surplus at size 2 and +9 FPT at size 3. It's also closer to growing to size 3, so I'd prefer the extra tile be workable there ASAP. Thoughts?

Volantis:
Do we want to whip Volantis into the worker? Off the forest and overflow into the barracks and spearman? Have we whipped there yet? It would appear not...

Tyrosh:
I'd really like to get the road completed before that warrior completes and I think we've got the time to do it. We can always switch to a monument if we get close to getting another warrior. I think getting that cows and copper improved is priority over the road. Maybe we chop out the granary there in 5+ turns?

If we can road 1 NW of Volantis, do we get the trade route connection to Valyria? Can anyone confirm? Or would we need sailing for that?

[NylesStandish]

Pretty sure that we need sailing for the trade route connection.

I logged back in and finished the corn since it only had a turn to go. I also think we should whip Volantis but I didn't do that yet; just paused the game. The corn farm gets us to size 3 by next turn and only delays the roading by a turn.

I want the roads not just for the copper, but for the trade route income. We get an extra 2 commerce/turn once we get the first city hooked up since the two cities will both have a trade route with the other, and another 1 commerce/turn when the third city gets hooked up to the network and gets its own trade route.

We want to finish the road to Tyrosh with the worker we send that way, otherwise we waste a worker turn by either half roading the plains, moving 2 tiles to the cow and waiting until the next turn to start pasturing, or moving 2 tiles to Tyrosh and pasturing the next turn.

Pasturing the plains cow is really only worth 1 more food and hammer until we get to size 2 since we're gonna be switching off the deer tile which is 2f 2h. So, we lose 1f1h for each turn we delay pasturing the cow and 2c for each turn we delay hooking the first city up and 1c for hooking another city up. I think the 2 food and the extra turn of being size 3 make up for the turn of delay and 2 commerce loss this causes.

There's several micro paths we can take and none of them differ by more than a few f/h/c, and I'm trying to add this up in my head, so here goes:

Option #1


T46: Volantian worker roads sheep
T47: Valyrian worker to Tyrosh, Volantian worker 1NW and road, new worker finish sheep road
T48: Valyrian worker pasture cows, Volantian worker 1NW and road, new worker follows and finishes previous road
T49: Valyrian worker pasture cows, Volantian worker 1N and road, new worker follows etc.
T50: Pasture cows, new worker finish road from volantis to Valyria, Volantian worker 1 turn into road to Tyrosh
T51: Pasture cows, cow bonus kicks in, 2 commerce/turn bonus kicks in, workers do something else
T52: Further 1 commerce/turn from trades comes in

Total: up 2f/2h/5c by start of T53, 5 worker turns for other shit

Option #2:

T46: Volantian worker roads sheep
T47: Valyrian worker 1t into road to Tyrosh, Volantian worker 1NW and road, new worker finish sheep road
T48: Valyrian worker 1t into road to Tyrosh, Volantian worker 1NW and road, new worker follows and finishes previous road
T49: 2 commerce/turn kicks in, Valyrian worker pasture cows, Volantian worker 1N and road, new worker follows etc,
T50: Pasture cows, new worker finish road from volantis to Valyria, Volantian worker 1 turn into road to Tyrosh
T51: Pasture cows, 1 commerce/turn kicks in, workers do something else
T52: Pasture cows, cow bonus kicks in

Total: up 1f/1h/10c by start of T53, 5 worker turns for other shit

Option #3

T46: Volantian worker roads sheep
T47: Valyrian worker 1t into road to Tyrosh, Volantian worker 1NW and road, new worker finish sheep road
T48: Valyrian worker 1t into road to Tyrosh, Volantian worker 1NW and road, new worker follows and finishes previous road
T49: 2 commerce/turn kicks in, Volantian worker 1N and road, Valyrian worker finishes road with Volantis, new worker to Tyrosh,
T50: 1 commerce/turn kicks in, new worker Pasture cows, Volantian and Valyrian workers move to cows
T51: All workers Pasture cows, cow bonus kicks in
T52: workers do something else

Total: up 2f/2h/11c by start of T53, 3 worker turns for other shit

We could also add chops, but it should be kept in mind that extra resources we get from improvements worked continuously will yield more over the course of the game when we start working them earlier, but the chops are the same whenever they're used (well, until mathematics and production bonuses) The same jump in hammers is worth more early game, though, so it's good to get the snowball rolling.

Option #4

T46: Volantian worker moves to silk forest
T47: Valyrian worker roads to tyrosh, Volantian worker chop, new worker to silk forest
T48: Valyrian worker finishes road, other workers finish chop for Volantis
T49: 2 commerce/turn kicks in, Valyrian worker pasture cow, other workers road silk,
T50: pasture cow, other workers 1NW and finish road to volantis
T51: pasture cow, 1 commerce/turn kicks in other workers do something else
T52: pasture cow, cow bonus kicks in

Total: up 1f/21h/10c by T53, 4 worker turns for other shit

There's probably shittons more things we can do but I've spent way too much time thinking through this already.

It looks like #3 is best of the non-chopping plans, but I might have screwed up my math somewhere.

[Zalson]

Can we grow in 1 if we switch to the corn? I think so, right?

I concur with option 3. Don't think your math is wrong.

[NylesStandish]

Yeah, Valyria grows in one turn using corn and sheep.

[Zalson]

Yay! Collaboration!

[NylesStandish]

After the reload I played the tarn as per option #3 (Volantis whipped after this particular screenshot), and realized that on T49 the new worker still has to finish a road so he can't immediately move to Tyrosh, which delays the cows a turn. That still makes it 1f/1h/11c; 1f/1h for 6c is still a pretty good advantage over option #1

Also, I'm starting to think we should start naming the units. I was thinking we could name the military units after Targaryens starting with Aegon I, and we could name the mounted units after dragons. If we run out of names, we can just up the roman numerals as necessary. I would have done it already, I just don't know what to call the workers and scouts. We could name the scout after someone known for their great scouting, perhaps Ramsay Bolton . The workers, I don't know. Name them after members of vassal houses?

Also, I put together a new stitch with the newly explored outer ring:

[Zalson]

Do we want to get another scout out to explore to the NE of the isthmus up there? obviously, it's when we can fit it in there but maybe that's more useful than another warrior?

If we grow in 1, we should be able to get the settler out for city 4 in less than 10 turns. We'll need AH and fishing for that to be successful...

I might be able to labor through booting up my emulated program this weekend and will try to simulate some approaches toward colonizing the north.

[NylesStandish]

Not sure about another scout for the northeast. I dug up an old screenshot of the Victory Conditions screen, which has the title of the map on it:




"many_reflections". What we've seen of our neighbor's capitals seems to confirm that starts are mirrored, but the outer ring doesn't seem like it could have such symmetry. The scout is going around that big sea to our NW; if dcodea's penisula is almost identical to ours then we might be able to just assume that the ring sort of repeats itself as it goes around and not worry about scouting the northeast so soon.

We do have too many warriors, though, and almost anything would be better than more of them. We've already got 1 more than we'd need to cover our fourth city and they're garbage in terms of combat once somebody gets axes. Yeah, they can be upgraded but that costs a ridiculous amount of gold. I checked in WB and it was 80 gold to upgrade to an axeman, and we're not going to turn off science for several turns to upgrade a single warrior. In a few turns they'll be either sentries, slow scouts or MPs. We might be able to forego a second scout and just use one of our extra warriors to scout the NE and put the 15 hammers into something else. Right now, I don't see much reason to rush exploration of the NE; if it does become particularly interesting for some reason we can make another scout.

[NylesStandish]

Nice double move. Motherfucker. For reference, this was the situation at the beginning of T46:




I knew he had some fucking bullshit up his sleeve when he took the second half of the turn timer; you can't really double move if you take the first half.

He double moved his warriors to defend his settler. I don't know why you would do the double move and not just settle, unless you did something retarded like move your settler in such a way that it needed two moves to get there (that settler was on the tile south of the cows when I played T45, so he could have moved to the plains tile west of the cows and been able to settle when he did the double move; since he didn't do that I guess he moved to another square in the fog).

I'm gonna ask for a reload, inform the offending party of his transgression via PM (in more polite language than used here), and regardless of how any of that goes, destroy dcodea.

[NylesStandish]

Went ahead and sent the PM.

Any thoughts, lurkers?