The Way of the Civ Player - Ichabod and Wetbandit's PB13 Spoiler Thread

[wetbandit]

Don't get me wrong, I'm nowhere close to being able to challenge anyone here about Civ micro. I wanted to get your thought process because I looked at this differently.

Granaries should be prioritized. The issue I had was the lack of immediate growth in the turns following the granary, seemed like a potential exception. The only real competitor, with the emphasis on growth, would be whether building another worker would be better. Part of the micro plan involves working a 1/2 in RatT and HP doesn't have a good third tile to work (although, the 2/0/2 lake is tied for our best commerce tile which is our bottleneck ). Moreover, trading the corn leaves BoM without a good 5th tile. Working the unimproved tiles also drew my attention.

It's a 4 turn detour, trades 4 turns of food growth and 4 turns towards the granary during a low-food period. Gold is going to come online sooner than I had thought, so growth will be good. You'd probably want to be growing on a lighthouse rather than a barracks; hence the plan for sailing soon.

[Ichabod]

Don't get me wrong, I'm nowhere close to being able to challenge anyone here about Civ micro. I wanted to get your thought process because I looked at this differently.

Granaries should be prioritized. The issue I had was the lack of immediate growth in the turns following the granary, seemed like a potential exception. The only real competitor, with the emphasis on growth, would be whether building another worker would be better. Part of the micro plan involves working a 1/2 in RatT and HP doesn't have a good third tile to work (although, the 2/0/2 lake is tied for our best commerce tile which is our bottleneck ). Moreover, trading the corn leaves BoM without a good 5th tile. Working the unimproved tiles also drew my attention.

It's a 4 turn detour, trades 4 turns of food growth and 4 turns towards the granary during a low-food period. Gold is going to come online sooner than I had thought, so growth will be good. You'd probably want to be growing on a lighthouse rather than a barracks; hence the plan for sailing soon.

We can grow BoM with a library, so we don't need Sailing that fast, at least for this reason (not that we could get Sailing fast, let me be clear here ).

I'll take a look at the micro plan and see how another worker in BoM ends up working. I think it might be a good option, because I was lacking worker turns on the west in my previous run (especially to chop that forest near HP and give a boost on the improvement of the 6th City, while giving the option of using HP next worker to actually improve HP). I'll try to combine this with RatT growing to size 3 and whipping the granary to completion (and chopping a worker perhaps), maybe even whipping BoM granary too.

I think my current micro plan may have been losing itself in doing things that look cute, rather than ruthlessly whipping, chopping and improving. I think getting a faster worker from BoM and RatT will speed up everything else.

Good thing we are on the turn that I need to change things, if they are going to change.

BTW, regarding commerce, we are going to be lacking on it for quite some time, due to other priorities. But the golds are on the horizon (turn 74 is my planned one to have the eastern gold improved) and we are getting some cottages soon. That will certainly help us.

Regarding the 6th city: do we go for that plains hill near the gold or a more conservative plant south of the sheep? The phalanx will reach the plains hill 1t after the city is settled, so I think it's fast enough. But it'll obvious be a slow city to improve, what if only having one worker near it after the settling. I think it's worth it for the late game value, though. It's a great defensive position, being on a hill and having a mountain to provide vision and the quality of land is top. Not to mention that it kind of blocks quite a bit of land.

[wetbandit]

It's a great city spot, there's no question. I almost wrote about settling the desert hill. It's more aggressive, but has the benefit of the important tiles in the first ring. You do lose the 2 hammer plant and its one tile closer to WLP, but you get to improve the corn right away and ensure better cultural control of those 2 tiles against Inca (even with Terrace nerf to +1). But that's pretty crazy.

There's a really good argument for playing this conservatively. Settle sheep to work more flood plains and cottages. We really need more commerce. There's so much good land as it is that we'll probably be able to grow big enough to eventually outproduce even an eventual winner who manages to consolidate all of that land up there. We have another 4 or 5 decent city spots even after the 6th city, wherever it is settled (Wheat-Ivory-Clam, Fish-Copper-Gold, Sheep-Horse-Wine for starters). We already have one potential pink dot, why make another?

I think it's a big reach. Regardless, you're going to be settling in that direction anyway to claim land. We can adjust if you see his units or another city, so you can stew on this decision for another few turns. You've had it set for some time that this was your intended plant.

Mild PB11 Spoiler

But then again, I'm the guy who archer rushed someone. What do I know about conservative play?

[Ichabod]

Thanks, wetbandit. I think I improved quite a bit of my micro with your help. I'm still undecided about the best way to go with RatT and I'm too tired right now to think through it, so I'll hold the turn for quite a bit (likely the same time as suttree needs).

But going for a worker at size 4 in the capital allows me to chop + whip a worker in HP very soon and, with that, we get 2 workers in 1 turn! One of them goes to help the new city, the other will improve HP (exactly on time for the border pop). We were in dire need of those workers.

The eastern micro will also be improved. I want MoK to be more productive than it currently is, I need it to get a quick phalanx for DP after its granary, so I need to find a way to make it work.

What does all this mean? Well, we'll not going to be settling new cities anytime soon. But that's to be expected. Our first goal was to get those two gold spots, which I'm hoping we'll manage. After that, we need to make sure those spots are defended and productive. Only after that we need to get new cities. Those will probably be one to connect the 6th city to the empire and one on the islands to get better TRs.

I like your proposed desert hill city. I'll have to think about it... It'll be a though one...

[wetbandit]

I'm glad you think my idea has merit and that it was borne out by the micro plan. More granaries vs more workers, good to be on either side of that argument.

Well I'm here to continue to make your life difficult. As long as we're discussing growth and the snowball, I think it's clear there's a more snowball-y city plant much closer to home:




Settle the desert hill. Opens up 3/0/1 tiles for cottaging, which can be shared by the new city and HP. Enables the 0/1/7 gold tile right away. Probably saves about a gold in distance maintenance. Doesn't announce our intentions to WLP and we don't need to worry about fighting another player, which means more focus on growth and econ.

This city will aid in HP's growth and will generate the commerce we lack to fund math and further expansion right away. That city can be settled in 4 turns (3 if you road with that settler towards it). It opens up better tiles for HP right away. Pinkdot will take longer to settle, get running, let alone with the WLP issue.

So we miss the chance to block off more land, but there's evidence that WLP is distracted and may not settle that way soon anyway. Thoughts?

[Ichabod]

I changed quite a bit of my initial micro plan for RatT and the Capital. Stagnating RatT while BoM is building a settler and workers is very bad, since it'd be like wasting the powerful food tiles. So, I'll grow RatT now and whip the granary, while chopping for a faster worker afterwards. RatT will grow to the desired size 4 when BoM is building the next settler.

Regarding the 6th city, I went with the micro for planting it NW, the risky ones (though we can debate either the plains or the desert hill). The reasons are that I want to secure that land and play big right now; and I have a micro appropriate to that scenario (if we settled near HP, I could have gotten a fast granary instead of the barracks + phalanx).

We'll see what happens. But we still need to discuss which of the hills is better. I really liked the desert hill, it's quicker and makes room for 2 other cities N of HP. But, oh, dear, it is a bold spot. Especially since it takes that marble from WLP... At least the city grows faster than the plains hill one, so emergency whipping would be possible...

[wetbandit]

The argument for settling far away is to block off land. Even though it's unfortunate, the micro plan to the current turn and the hammers invested into HP's barracks are a sunk cost and shouldn't bear on the decision.

Emergency whipping is a huge point in favor since there is a lot of uncertainty as we won't know what WLP will do.

It's probably worth taking a peek with the warrior up there as the vulture can tag along with the settler.

[wetbandit]

Interesting continent! I'm surprised with how close WLP settled to the Pink Dot area and how constrained slowcheetah is. Fortunately, he doesn't have horses, but I imagine he'd head towards that southern horse quickly.

Are you still going to settle the plains or desert hill in light of WLP's proximity?

[Ichabod]

Interesting continent! I'm surprised with how close WLP settled to the Pink Dot area and how constrained slowcheetah is. Fortunately, he doesn't have horses, but I imagine he'd head towards that southern horse quickly.

Are you still going to settle the plains or desert hill in light of WLP's proximity?

Plains hill.

[wetbandit]

Well, it will be nice if Buddhism is the only thing that makes it across that river.