[PB37 SPOILER] Coeurva, Bacchus -- Cyrus of Carthage

[Bacchus]

Yeah, 1 turn improvement is not worth it for less science and warriors. Boat first then, and the decision on the number of workers can come later, I would say the capital doesn't have a wealth of tiles screaming for improvement, and it's mostly clear flatland which helps.

[Coeurva]

We do have to whip the settler (3->2, that is) with boat first, 1 worker to have him ready on T29; T30 otherwise. We'd be whipping off the oasis. Second warrior completes from overflow 1t after settler whip.

It could be possible to work a second warrior into worker first. I'll look into that tomorrow. Same for which civ we might want to pick, since worker first also allows those with Fishing/Hunting or Hunting/Mining, whereas boat first requires Fishing/Mining, no choice about it.

[Coeurva]

Experimented further with worker first, but the timing of techs is awkward especially if we don't start Fishing/Hunting (that is, Greece/Vikings) or Hunting/Mining; by this point that's only something to consider if we don't like any of the Fishing/Mining civs available.

In other news, I managed a T28 settler with boat first:




We have Fishing, Hunting, Mining, BW, and Wheel. The path is a bit counterintuitive (to me), emphasizing growth and commerce from unimproved tiles over pasturing and working the cow sooner. One warrior, but the second one completes from overflow on T29 and we build another (3t) as we grow to size3 (also 3t) and finish the mine (also 3t). When we hit size 3, the capital can churn out 2t warriors, 5t settlers, 5t workers. The worker would then stand ready to chop another forest (on the gforh) or road towards the east/south/west.

I changed the leader from Justinian to Cyrus, to avoid false impressions from SPI.

(Incidentally, I'll have to remap my external capturing program from <Ctrl>+<PrtScr>, which gets the debug tools in the way when sandboxing. Civ4 itself refuses to take screenshots reliably for me.)

[Bacchus]

Yeah, checking out growth options, even over working powerful tiles, is an important thing to do. Food to hammers conversion via the whip is really that powerful. This is also the reason you see much complaining about plains cows as starting tiles in these forums.

On techs, we will see whether surroundings force us to research agriculture after all, but capital can definitely do without it for now.

I'm still thinking about CHM, capital has all these juicy river grasslands that I just want to cottage and work as soon as we have a couple of settlers and a barebones military out, and it takes exactly 8 pop to work all these plus clams/cows.

Has Cyrus been played in RtR? I can't recall.

[Coeurva]

Yeah, checking out growth options, even over working powerful tiles, is an important thing to do. Food to hammers conversion via the whip is really that powerful. This is also the reason you see much complaining about plains cows as starting tiles in these forums.

Not only these forums.

The plains cow is very useful nonetheless for natural production with (minor) surplus food during regrowth. With IMP, that tile is better for settler production than non-IMP grassland copper. In fact, the efficiency of the whip is why we have to pick IMP: apart from boosting the cow, this makes the grass mine into a 1/4/0 tile rather than 1/3/0 while we're producing settlers. The latter tile is less efficient than the whip at low sizes, but as you've said, we don't want to whip this capital too much, we want a tall cottage heaven. So we need to ensure that our tiles actually outperform the whip.

On techs, we will see whether surroundings force us to research agriculture after all, but capital can definitely do without it for now.

Agreed. E.g. capital at size4 (let's say working clams/cow/mine/oasis): 6 food per turn. Granary (8 hpt without PRO, may want to chop for 5t granary, depending on food bin at the time) effectively doubles that growth as we only add food-neutral cottages (and swap oasis out for floodplain cottage when we can). That's on par with a wet corn farm, and better than the wet rice farm we get -- we could get the farm up ~10t earlier than the earliest (Wheel->Pottery) granary by taking Agri before Wheel, granted, but that also means a later granary and Wheel and occupies our worker just as the settler is finished. I think we do want the farm eventually, not delay it for too long (better to grow onto cottages than with them), but probably not before the granary. If we really get nothing better for our second city than rice/furs we could always sub in Agri rather than Wheel for the tech completing on T28.

T28 settler (boat first) still has the problem of the sole worker either improving the mine or going towards the second city, though. Early rice farm allows sharing clams, alleviating the problem. I still have an idea for Hunting/Mining worker first that could pay off (only worker first allows us to have both mine and settler by T28, as far as I can see). Edit: Hunting/Mining is inferior to boat first.

I'm still thinking about CHM, capital has all these juicy river grasslands that I just want to cottage and work as soon as we have a couple of settlers and a barebones military out, and it takes exactly 8 pop to work all these plus clams/cows.

Even better! That draws me towards CHM now.

Has Cyrus been played in RtR? I can't recall.

Neither do I. On the whole, CHM seems to have been rather unpopular in RtR; I think the players in PB13 re-rolled all of the CHM leaders given. But if the land is green enough, the early size 8 cottage capital and 6->4 or 6->3 worker/settler whips in the other cities could really get us rolling.

[Coeurva]

Re leader selection, SPI, FIN (!) and (presumably) EXP will reach the first settler 1t sooner than CHM with no immediate disadvantages. CRE has no effect.

In fact, we can make a T25 settler with FIN:




Might be worth shooting for if the second city can be planted nearby and next to a Hunting resource (can't finish Agri on time), although we'd have a single warrior covering two cities for a few turns. Grow to size 3 building 2 warriors, worker goes to improve city #2, start another worker in capital @size3 (clams/oasis/cow). However, the plan is flexible and we could to switch a T27/28 settler with at least 2 warriors instead, should the need arise. Standard Monarch finishes the animal era on T25. Large size might differ.

It's even possible to make a T22 settler (!) but it requires building no warriors at all. I don't think we want to do that.

Edit: Snake pick started. Looks like we're going to pick our civ tomorrow.

[Bacchus]

Funny to see FIN as an early game power trait.

So, Rome?

[Coeurva]

Krill is concerned about the mirrored starts, which may lead to a full reworking of the map:

If you want something that artificial, I would use the Donut script and make a few minimal changes to what the script produces. Might need to start over with new starting screenshots in that case, because it's probably impossible to have both 11+ tiles of separation and a non-coastal start without making it much bigger than 150 tiles/person.

I have nothing else to say about this, except that I knew he wouldn't settle for a single fish at the start. I'll be quietly disgruntled about my useless sandboxing; that's all. Edit: Krill is being a good sport about this, I must add; and he's on board if the mirroring stays confined to what's currently visible.

If the starts don't get redone, we're picking Rome or Carthage, yes.

[Coeurva]

Praetorians don't quite convince me at 7 str; they don't do badly against anything, and they are very strong when attacking cities, but they fare worse than spears vs. 2-movers and worse than axes vs. axes... You have experience with Carthage; would you recommend them over Rome?

[Bacchus]

HAs do get more use than swords, so C1 on them may be better that 1 base strength on the latter. What I like about swords is their raiding capabilities and the ability to recapture cities. As far as I can see, if you park praetorians on a hill just outside your city, it will be exceedingly difficult for the opponent to capture and hold on to it.

Overall, praets have a far more defensive/deterrence flavour than HAs, so up to you what kind of game you would like to play.

And don't underestimate base strength, even at 7, praets in general are better defenders against HAs than spears. Spears will have better odds only in the first battle and only without other bonuses. On a hill with c1, it's already 9.4 vs 9.45 in favour of praets, and with much better staying power.