Cheater Hater's plan is quoted in the first spoiler.
(November 22nd, 2013, 00:38)Cheater Hater Wrote: Great idea, and something quick to actually try
I was bored, and thus I'll get the ball rolling:
These notes are very rough, I just took them as I played the save--I think the only thing I didn't note was which tiles Beijing grew onto--it's working corn/cottage/banana at size 3, but I'm not sure which it grew onto first. I might tidy up the notes later, and I'll answer questions if anything's unclear.
(note: complete=can do next action)
Best spot seems to be SE (plains hill, food, floodplains, river, but it wastes a turn on quick--try that first
T1: Settle Beijing (work corn), worker first, research BW
T9: Worker 1 completes, farms corn, build Worker 2
T10: BW completes, research Wheel
T12: Farm completes, Worker moves NW and chops
T15: Wheel completes, research Pottery
T16: Worker 2 completes, moves NE-N and chops, build Settler
T17: Worker 1 completes chop, moves SE onto farm and roads 1 turn
T18: Worker 1 moves E, farms Banana for 2 turns
T20: Settler 1 completes, build Settler 2 (with chop overflow) for 1 turn, Settler 1 moves S-S, S-SW, Worker 2 chop completes, moves SW and chops
T21: Pottery completes, research AH, Beijing switches to Granary, Worker 1 moves SW and cottages
T22: Settle Shanghai (work floodplain), build Granary
T23: Beijing switches to Settler (to receive chop)
T24: Worker 2 chop completes, cottages in place
T25: Settler 2 completes, moves N-N, NW-N, Worker 1 moves S, cottages for 1 turn
T26: Worker 1 moves S-SE, mines copper
T27: Settle Guangzhou (work oasis), build Granary, Worker 2 moves NE, cottages for 1 turn
T28: AH completes, research Fishing, move slider to 60%, Worker 2 moves N, pastures sheep
T30: Worker 1 mine completes, roads
Overview:
I like wasting the turn to move onto the good plains hill spot for Beijing, but I'm not sure where Shanghai and especially Guangzhou should go. I like the worker moves in general--maybe I should complete the banana farm, but that delays the floodplains cottage and the copper more than I like.
My comments.
I’m doing these in the order they were posted. I think I’m going to digress quite a bit extra on this first one, since I want to explain some of my general thoughts about the situation. Also, as this will be the first time I mention a lot of things, it will probably go into extra depth on just about everything. It's probably a good idea, if you only read comments on your plan and one other, to read this one.
Strategic thoughts
Moving to the plains hill was a good call. There are many options for which tile to settle on, and the plains hill is the best long-term site and second-best short-term site. In my opinion, the only better option was to settle on the banana, and that’s the kind of move that has the potential to be a mistake: it kind of wastes the banana resource; the extra food isn’t strictly better than an extra hammer because we’re IMP; it decreases the number of riverside tiles in our capital; and it moves away from what looks at a glance to be the best expansion site - the oasis/pigs/sheep plainshill spot. In a real game, I would definitely want to try out both locations (that plains hill, and the banana) and compare them. I don’t fault anyone for settling on the plains hill though.
Worker first to improve the corn is clearly good.
About the tech choice: Aside from the necessary first-row techs, the three key ancient techs are bronze working, animal husbandry, and pottery. BW reveals copper, enables whips, and enables chops. Pottery enables granaries and cottages. AH reveals horses and unlocks quite a few standard food tiles. Opening tech strategy is to a great extent a question of what order to get these three techs in. This scenario ended up being a great example of that. You chose to go for BW first, then (wheel and) pottery, and then lastly AH. BW was for chops, and later, copper. I think this is a dubious choice on quick speed. Chops are only worth 3.25h per worker turn spent on them, and generally speaking, improving tiles will give better returns. The forests can then be saved for later, when you have less low-hanging fruit in terms of resources that need to be hooked; when you are trying to build a granary ASAP; and/or when you have Math so that you can get better yields from them. It’s true though that IMP boosts the utility of chopping forests compared to slowbuilding settlers working food tiles. Arguably your settling plan doesn’t need AH nor pottery so early, so you might as well get BW. However, I think with pottery you could develop the capital better, or with AH you could settle a better second city.
I don’t like the choice of city locations very much. It’s good that you claim copper in one of your first three cities, but the placement of Shanghai is not ideal IMO. I would rather place it on the plains hill 3 to its east - the extra hammer from the city tile is worth a lot. More importantly, it’s pretty weak in terms of immediate resource claiming. I would rather claim a food resource with the second city, or at least share a good food tile with the capital and claim a strategic or luxury resource. Strategic resources are in pretty bad spots on this map so I’d rather claim one with the third city.
I do like very much that your 2nd and 3rd cities claimed both a very strong spot in terms of resources, and copper.
Micro thoughts
Generally speaking: Micro involves a lot of tradeoffs. Only rarely are there opportunities to improve something without sacrificing something else. However, there are a lot of times where you can see that something isn't living up to its full potential. These are the areas where it's good to look, and see if there's a good trade you can make - a little less food for a few more worker turns, or something like that. Make enough good trades and you can come out far ahead.
I noticed that worker 1 has an idle turn according to your notes. He spends 4t farming, 4t chopping, 1t roading, 2t farming… and then sits around a turn before pottery is in and he puts in the cottage turn. I'm assuming you did something with him and just forgot to write it down.
Your first two chops come in at the tail end of their respective builds, IIRC not accelerating either one and instead providing overflow into the next build. While this isn’t inefficient in and of itself, it does indicate an area for improvement: 1) if one of the chops could be completed sooner, the build would also complete sooner. 2) The chopping worker could perhaps complete another task first and chop afterwards, seeing as the chop is coming in several turns before it’s actually put to use. Then the other task’s completion could perhaps provide some benefits in the meantime.
Your Shanghai settler reaches its flatland city tile exactly. This means that with a single tile of road movement it could settle a turn sooner. It’s unfortunate that the river south of the capital makes it impossible to achieve this with just one road. It might be worth building two roads, though.
Worker 1 starts a couple of things that he doesn’t finish. While this is a big step up from wasting whole turns in transit without performing actions, it does also indicate an area for improvement in the plan. Some resources are not being put to use. Is there a way to make them useful?
Shanghai is founded without a trade connection to Beijing. This omission costs 2c per turn. In addition, trade routes are only recalculated at end of turn or when founding a city, so when you finally do complete that connection, you will have to wait a turn to get it unless you found a city that same turn. The more of these things I notice, the more I think that worker 1 should have built a pair of roads towards Shanghai.
Shanghai starts on a granary and I think this is a suboptimal for a few reasons. 1) It’s not going to finish that granary for quite a while. 2) You need a few warriors and have built none so far. 3) That city has fairly low food (it has a couple FP but no real food resources, and it has two great resources that cost food), so it won’t benefit much from a granary at all. I would rather grow that city up enough that it can work its good tiles and then produce workers/settlers at ~0 food surplus for a while, before investing in a granary. Your instincts are good: granaries are incredibly strong buildings. But I think this isn’t the time or place.
On t21 you only have two important techs left to get: hunting and AH. And you already have a settler by the hunting resource, but you research AH first. Since hunting gives a discount on AH, it would be nicer to research them in the other order. That doesn’t mean that this order of research was the wrong choice, but again it indicates an area that might be improved. You sacrificed some city value by delaying AH this long (which I think is a very viable move with this position), but didn’t get full value out of that sacrifice because you couldn’t fit in hunting before AH.
On t23, Beijing switches back to the settler 1t away from growth. Again, this timing is not ideal. The timing of the chops isn’t working harmoniously with the rest of the plan. So this is a place to look for potential improvements.
I don’t like cottaging the silks. You will want to plantation the silk later on for sure, so all the turns of work you put into that cottage to grow it to a town will have to be thrown out. It would be better to farm that tile, and better still to improve other tiles first.
Guangzhou would be better placed on the plains hill. If you did want to put it on the flatland though, it would be worth spending two worker turns to road the silk, so that you can settle 1t sooner.
Looking at the ending overview, you didn’t complete a single road, and that is a good area to focus on improving. Roads are surprisingly important: if built soon enough, they accelerate settlers to their destinations. They connect cities so you can get commerce from trade routes. They allow workers more freedom in travelling to where they are needed. And - easy to forget - they make it much easier to defend. It’s something of a moot point here because you didn’t have more than the starting warrior done anyway, but it’s really valuable to be able to move your military around from one city to another to respond to threats - it lets you get away with fewer units.
You did get two workers right from the start, but they spent so much time chopping that you still don’t have enough improvements. (As I mentioned earlier, chopping on quick speed isn’t that great.) You spent 12 worker turns chopping, and your second worker has only existed for a bit longer than 12 turns! Meanwhile 3 chops (12 chop turns) about pays for one worker. So from a a number-of-improvements perspective, it’s kind of like you’ve only had 1 worker the whole time, while going from 1 to 3 cities. It’s no big surprise that these cities are under-improved. As a rule of thumb, the more you chop, the more you need more workers, and you only built about enough workers to build appropriate improvements for this many cities if they don’t chop at all.
(November 22nd, 2013, 08:14)Jowy Wrote: I just rushed through it because that's how I roll.
I would make this move in a real game if I somehow knew about this spot.
Went AH first and worker first.
Dat doublewhip/chop overflow <3
Sheep was improved that turn.
Third city goes 2N of cows.
AH -> BW -> TW -> Hunting -> Pottery -> Writing
Comments:
Strategic thoughts
The move to the oasis-pig-sheep hill is very interesting. It has pretty high initial output - 3t to build a 6f pig pasture is very efficient, and it has 2 more good tiles - and it has a very convenient second city spot which claims 2 food resources AND copper! The drawbacks are: it takes 1 more turn of initial movement, it moves away from riverside corn / 3 FP / forested ivory, the nearby tiles are an annoying mass of hills and forests for worker movement, and it requires initial research of AH.
Overall, my impression is that it is inferior short-term to the banana spot, and inferior as a long term capital compared to both banana and the commonly-settled plains hill. But it is competitive in terms of early game. As you say, you just rushed through it, and we only have one attempt so far that I’ve seen at a start which settles there. So maybe this spot could shine even more if more people would put some work into it.
The choice of second city location is excellent. Third city choice starts to be dangerous simply because it’s getting very close to one of the other players. I would strongly consider putting the third city to the southwest, in the area where most players founded their capital.
Micro thoughts
There wasn’t too much to go off, but I think I played through it the same as you, with the possible exception of some different tiles worked in Beijing at size 4.
One of the first things that occurred to me is that the second city site is very strong - it might be worth going for that city faster - either by building the settler at a lower size, or by whipping it a turn sooner. Not sure if this will work out though.
I liked your worker management for most of the run, despite the rough terrain near the capital being incredibly annoying. However, later on you group your two workers together and move onto both the deer forest and the forest south of Shanghai with both workers at once. This is something to avoid if possible, and it could probably be improved upon. Ideally, you’d road with just one worker and then bring the other on, or just use one worker for the entire task if no road is desired or the timing doesn’t work out for two.
As I mentioned in the strategy section, I think it would be better to send the third city southwest rather than even further east. Making such a change would of course change worker moves a lot.
It’s pretty cool that you tried out this different capital spot, and I can’t find too many specifics to improve with your micro. (Going for AH before the Pottery/BW does tend to simplify things.) It looks like this starting position choice is close to contending with the best, though I think it falls short, and I’m not sure if it can be improved much.
(November 22nd, 2013, 16:43)novice Wrote: Okay, here's my plan:
My reasoning, in short, was to expand horizontally for the best resources and for copper, and then grow vertically on granary builds and cottages once pottery is in.
Moving the settler SE to the forested plains hill seems strongest both short and long term.
Worker actions:
A: Farm corn (finished t12), move t13, road to Shanghai (t14-20), pasture pigs (t21-23), move to forest SE of Shanghai (t24-25), chop (t26-28), pasture sheep at Guangzhou (t29-30)
B (born in Shanghai eot28): Part-road tile SE of Shanghai t29. Finish sheep pasture at Guangzhou t30.
Adopt slavery t26.
Tiles: Turn 19 and Turn 25 work silk over forest hill for +1 commerce, the extra hammer would be lost to overflow rounding anyway.
* I could start the settler in Beijing immediately at size 2, but it's good to have the warrior done, and the second city won't be delayed by delaying the settler since that gives me time to road to the city. Instead of the road I could pasture the sheep (it is in the capital's culture from t13), but the road is useful, and this way I'm able to immediately start pasturing the pigs instead.
** The point of this maneuver is to get the final foodhammers needed for the planned worker now, while the pig pasture is being constructed, so that Shanghai can grow to size 2 in 3 turns.
In the continuation I'll be hooking up copper of course, laying down cottages and building granaries, and settling a few more cities. After Pottery I could tech Writing and let Shanghai or Guangzhou build a library and produce a great scientist.
Comments
Note - Novice doesn't need micro help from me. Except... everyone needs micro help. It's hard and it's really unlikely that any single person will get everything right. But the weird-feeling part is that to a large extent I'm writing for a newbie audience - not because any given person wouldn't understand it if I left out some steps but because I'm writing all of this for everyone. For examples of me discussing micro with Novice is real life, check out our pbem 23 and pbem 29 threads.
Strategic thoughts
This looks like the best long-term capital site. It has a plains hill plant, lots of food, and lots of river tiles. Being on a plains hill, with riverside corn adjacent and two FP close by, is great for the early game too. Not a bad choice, even though after seeing quite a few sims it’s become increasingly apparent that the banana plant works out better.
One advantage of this spot compared to banana is that it’s closer to the lovely second city spot you chose. Third city should claim a strategic resource to complement that and there were several options available for that. I like the one you chose there too - it gets the better copper tile on flatland, and claims a pair of food resources.
Tech order is very interesting. I think most people here would go for BW first, but I like the choice of wheel. Like BW, it speeds up the second city, but it lets you get some roads up which have other logistical benefits as well. However, after quite a bit of thinking about it, I do find it to be unsatisfying - I’ll get to that in the micro section. Going AH second is forced by the choice of city, and BW third is natural.
Micro thoughts
Spending your 5th-12th worker turns building roads seems excessive - especially since you work an unimproved tile for so long while the capital stays at size 2. It’s unfortunate that this much roading is what’s necessary to speed up the second city by a turn. (Well, you could road just the city tile and the adjacent sheep instead, but that’s not nearly as useful long-term.) When you add in the fact that you could settle the city just as quickly simply by not putting a final turn into a warrior (and the food you get when you do that just sits there useless for soooo long), something seems amiss. Actually it’s kind of funny how favorably warrior first compares - you get the city at the same time and hardly miss the lost worker turns! Meanwhile, delaying BW until after the second city effectively subtracts one turn from it later when you revolt. So maybe the roading thing isn’t worth it, or maybe that second city is too far away after all.
The layout of the terrain after you settle the capital on that spot kind of pushes you south. Your worker needs to start out by moving onto the corn, and after that, going north will require moving onto a hill at minimum. (At the same time, the river encircling the southern end of the city prevents easy speedups from single adjacent southern roads. Mark this down as another point in favor of settling on the banana.) So it’s too bad that the southern spots are much less impressive than that nice northern one.
I think that, even if the plains hill capital is a given, I’d want to reevaluate this plan, as I believe that too much has been forced towards the idea of settling that city.
All that said, there’s a lot of neat polish in here that I’d like to point out to people.
First, the worker has chosen a plan which accomplishes everything necessary just in time. Just in time is good: it means you pushed back what you were doing as far as possible so that you could fit in other stuff earlier. Take the second city as an example. Novice knows that he wants his worker sitting on a road on the sheep, and not yet moved, on the turn when the city is settled. That way, he can start on pasturing the pig ASAP. And of course, if the settler wants to move directly to the site in one turn, the road has to be completed on the turn it moves there, which lines up. Working back from that, you can calculate when the worker can have completed the road, and therefore get your target date for finishing the settler.
The first road that the worker builds serves a second purpose: it also accelerates the second settler.
The only chop so far happens on the only forest that a worker had to move through anyway and didn't want to road.
Finally, I’ll elaborate on a couple of things that Novice pointed out himself:
Quote:Tiles: Turn 19 and Turn 25 work silk over forest hill for +1 commerce, the extra hammer would be lost to overflow rounding anyway.
Indeed. So here’s how that works. The forest hill has the same base foodhammers as the silk, but it ends up giving you a bonus hammer from IMP because it has one more hammer instead of food. However, this bonus hammer is irrelevant. The way you tell it’s irrelevant is to look at the overflow hammers both with and without the bonus hammer. Because IMP multiplies your settler hammers by 3/2, the overflow will be multiplied by 2/3. That is, the first hammer will be lost, and the fourth, and the seventh, etc. So you check if your overflow is a multiple of 3. If it is, you’re good. If it’s one higher than a multiple of 3, that extra 1 hammer is doing nothing - if you can work a different tile for e.g. -1h +1c, it’s pure benefit. If the overflow is 2 higher, it’s in between: you could reduce your output by 2, and only get 1 reduction in overflow. Maybe that’s worth it for what you could get instead, and maybe not.
Quote:** The point of this maneuver is to get the final foodhammers needed for the planned worker now, while the pig pasture is being constructed, so that Shanghai can grow to size 2 in 3 turns.
The reason this kind of thing works is that on different turns you are producing more or fewer hammers, and more or less food. By picking and choosing which turns go to which task (usually, which turns you are working on a worker/settler vs growing), you can get numbers to line up more precisely which can often save a turn on some or other item. However, I want to warn that there are many situations where this isn’t worth it - especially on quick speed. It’s best to compare it with what you’d get if you just did one thing and then the other thing without messing around.
So by next turn I will have 3 cities, 4 workers and 3 warriors
Strategic thoughts
The capital location has been discussed - it’s solid.
The second city is quite far out. It took three turns for your settler to reach it, and you only founded on the fourth turn. And the worker also had to spend a couple of turns moving there. Ideally you could reduce these wasted turns by roading to the city - but it’s pretty far away, so maybe the best improvement is simply to choose a closer site. For example, maybe the forest that the settler moves onto on the way, which claims both sheep and copper, is good enough.
The third settler, again, has to travel a long way without roads and without worker support. It’s true that this city has an oasis to work, but the main value of a new city is in being able to hook up new resources, and you aren’t taking advantage of that here for a while yet. When this is the case, it’s often worth it to delay settling a bit in favor of increasing worker labor so that roads can be built, and resources can be hooked up as soon as the settler arrives.
Taken individually, the city spots are all excellent. Taken together though, it ends up being clumsy, because they are all so many turns of movement apart - and that makes proper worker management difficult.
Micro thoughts
Building a mine is an option that’s often present and easily overlooked. I think it served you well here.
Getting BW first and revolting into slavery before the farm is done is nice since you’re planning to whip pre-settler anyway, and it gets you a couple food extra because you get to skip a turn of working unimproved corn. It’s too bad that you don’t get to use this food for a very long time - it just sits there in storage until t24.
When worker 1 moves 2E on t21, that’s a wasted worker turn. The worker could instead move 1E and start a road, and still reach the same tile the following turn. Another option to consider is to chop a different forest instead of the silk forest - one that is a single turn’s movement away from the destination instead of one and a half turns away.
A lot of effort goes into producing worker 2 in a single turn - the early teching of BW, the slavery swap, the whip off of the mine, and the four worker turns spent chopping. I’m thinking this had better be a really great worker! However, all he ends up doing for the next 4 turns is building a farm that doesn’t seem very important. I suspect that looking for other things to do than accelerating the second worker would prove fruitful.
Shanghai is founded without a trade connection. It’s actually a fairly significant benefit of your second city that you get a free commerce both in that city and your capital. Unfortunately, because this city is so distant, setting up a connection this early is infeasible.
I’d hazard a guess that growing to size 4 and 2-whipping the second settler is better than 1-whipping it at size 3 like you did. You get it the same turn but should get more hammers.
Shanghai builds a worker at size 1, using a chop to accelerate. As chops are generally much less efficient than improving resources at the beginning of a quick speed game, I would look into growing Shanghai to size 2 before starting the worker, and improving the copper instead of chopping a forest. I believe this only delays the worker 2 turns, but you don’t have to spend four turns chopping, which more than makes up for it. In addition, Shanghai is already size 2 and ready to start its next project sooner than it would be if it built the worker at size 1.
Overall, the fact that your cities are so spread out is a big problem, and ends up costing a lot of worker/settler time as it never seems to be worth solving the problem by building a road network. Similarly, choosing to chop forests over improving resources tends to provide short-term boosts in worker/settler count but doesn’t affect the important metric of number of improved resource tiles you are working, which is a strong indicator of total productivity.
You showed good instincts in claiming lots of resources, including at least one of copper/horse. The follow-through on that is to make sure you can get all those resources improved and worked as soon as possible.
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
THH submitted an updated plan later, but I decided to comment on this one regardless.
(November 22nd, 2013, 19:51)TheHumanHydra Wrote: Okay, time for my terribad plan, then to read what everyone else has done:
Prepare to laugh your face off. So I experimented with several different openings, then picked one that looked ... interesting, and iterated on it. Let's walk through it:
T0 I moved 1SE to the forested plains hill; t1 I settled there and selected - this is where it gets good -
- that's right, a settler.
Fast forward 11 turns; the settler and Bronze Working complete and I select a worker and Hunting (actually I selected different techs in different run-throughs; I couldn't quite get both Animal Husbandry and Pottery, plus Bronze Working, by eot29/30 like I wanted, even skipping Hunting). Settler goes south ...
... and founds the next turn, t12. Another worker, using the ivory:
Finally I let the capital grow; the freshly-farmed corn speeds this a turn:
Meanwhile Shanghai's just-produced worker mines the copper S-SW of the city ...
... and I perform my first tile reassignment, to shave a turn off Shanghai's growth too:
Shanghai gets the corn for just one turn; after that it's these tile configurations to the end of the sim:
Meanwhile both workers moved to chop settlers in their respective cities:
They moved to their appointed places and settled t30, while the capital snuck in a worker with a quick chop on Nanjing's tile right before settling:
And that's where we stand. Four cities, three workers, two improved tiles, three chops by eot30, with another worker and another chop or tile a turn away.
Now you might notice the techs don't line up between screenshots; as I said I fiddled with them between run-throughs so I could both start granaries in the new cities t30 and start pasturing Nanjing's sheep t31, but couldn't quite get it to work. Also what Shanghai's worker does after finishing its chop is indeterminate, 'cause it can't finish anything till after the sim anyway and I haven't thought that far in depth.
If I weren't trying to cram everything into exactly 31 turns I would revolt to Slavery one of the turns the two settlers are in transit and whip the workers in both Beijing and Shanghai t31, then overflow into a pair of three-turn workers at size one (<eek>). I don't have nearly enough workers. (I didn't find revolting to Slavery earlier in the sim helped any.)
So yeah, there's my ... original and problem-ridden sim. Hopefully it was comprehensible, if not agreeable. I can provide clarification/a turn-by-turn breakdown if requested.
Thanks for running the challenge, Seven. It was quite entertaining.
Edit: Okay, I've now read everyone's plans who have posted so far. I just wanted to add for clarification that my plan is obviously totally lopsided (and Shanghai's location is terrible), not at all what you'd want to do for real. You can tell what I fine-tuned it for ...
My comments:
Strategic thoughts
A unique opening.
Let’s talk about going settler first. On turn 12, you already had two cities, each making 5 foodhammers per turn. That’s a total of 10! Incredible. If you grew your capital instead, granted you’d be doing better in commerce, but you’d only be making 7 foodhammers per turn. Going from 5 to 10 is way better than going from 5 to 7.
Of course, there is a drawback. Those 10fh are split exactly evenly between two different cities. So it will still take you 8 turns to build two workers, not 4t to build one worker. The thing about the beginning of the game in Civ IV is that improving resources is by far the most effective way to increase your output. Growing a population, costing 3-5 turns of a city’s output, only increases your output (in food+hammers) by one (in addition to spitting out the occasional warrior byproduct). Compare to improving that wheat: a mere four turns of a lowly worker increases your output by 3! If you’re racing to get this capital to 9fh/t, either via growth or improvement, growing takes 17 turns, while building an entire worker who then spends a few turns improving while the city grows to size 2 only takes 12 turns and comes with an entire free worker. There’s simply no contest.
So when you open up with a settler, it’s better than growing in terms of output… but it’s not even clearly better than growing because that first worker who improves the corn eclipses the effectiveness of anything you’ve done before, and at least growing the capital gets that worker out faster than two size 1 cities.
There are possible situations where building a settler first is called for, but this is not one of them. Some things to look for would include:
* Possible improvements you can build only provide small gains over output at size 1 with unimproved tiles.
* Output of both cities at size 1 with unimproved tiles is very high.
* The cities will automatically be connected by a river route, for the commerce bonus.
* Starting techs are inappropriate to the situation - e.g. fishing/mysticism when the only resources require AH, and the map is such that techs are expensive - and therefore a worker started on t0 wouldn’t have anything to do.
The spot you chose for Shanghai (low food, and even destroys a flood plains) is sad overall, though appropriate for your plan of settler first. Certainly, if you’re going to work unimproved tiles a lot, the ivory are the best this map has to offer. And if you don’t want to grow your cities you don’t need food.
The lack of warriors is quite dangerous. Everyone did start with a warrior and some chose not to build more, but you’ll have two size 1 cities in a precarious position for longer than most, so it’s even worse here.
Micro thoughts
I have to say, the micro is really nice. The food-sharing is lined up well, and once you get both cities to size 2 with an improved tile each they don’t have bad output. Each settler reaches its destination in a mere two turns, which is pretty great given the lack of roads. The chop of the forest you’re going to settle on, right before planting the city, is quite cute resourceful as well.
Of course, that northern city isn’t really doing much yet. It would be nice to have some more worker labor earlier, e.g. improving the sheep for eastern city on the same turn as founding, and having a worker up north to get started on sheep and pigs. Roads would sure be nice too. But it really doesn’t look that bad, given how it started.
What I really want to point out though is that you could reach a very similar state around t20, with 2 size 1 cities and 2 workers, simply by going worker-worker-settler or worker-settler-worker as fast as possible, and this will be significantly more efficient overall because it improves corn faster, so you’ll also have some other stuff.
(November 24th, 2013, 01:41)Merovech Wrote: When are you ending submissions?
I'm thinking I'll wrap it up on Tuesday. If anyone wants more time, I could be convinced to wait. Of course, there's nothing stopping anyone from continuing to try things out after that point. But I wouldn't guarantee that I personally will respond, and it will miss my overall summary and wrap-up.
(November 22nd, 2013, 21:12)retep Wrote: I hate you seven, I hate making this sims inside the game, they take to much time
Techs : Wheel-Hunting-pottery-bronze working- animal husbandry- writing.
I move the setller and found the city on top of the bananas, start a worker.
Finish worker, move to improve the corn.
Finish the corn move to improve the ivory.
The city grow to size 3 in turn 14 start a settler. Working the corn, the ivory and a forest plains hill.
After finish the camp, move to farm the floodplain.
Turn 19 the settler finish, city start a worker working the ivory, the corn and a floodplain.
The settler is moving.
Turn 21 the worker finish the famr and moves to cottage another floodplain. Found second city start warrior.
Turn 22 worker number two finish move to the ivory to make a road. Capital start another settler.
Turn 25.
Revolt to slavery.
Worker1 is moving towards the corn, worker2 is making a cottage in a floodplain.
Turn 27. Capital finish the settler start a granary.
Worker 1 is famring the corn, worker2 is still with the cottage. Settler is moving.
Turn 29.
Found city number 3.
Second city grows to size 3 start a worker.
Capital whip the granary.
Turn 30.
Overview.
My comments
Strategic thoughts
Our first plan which settles on the banana. Well, it’s no secret, I think we have consensus by now that settling on banana is the best place for Beijing. Nice choice there.
Why is banana so good? Well, it has a couple advantages compared to settling on plains hill.
1) +1f instead of +1h. Food is simply better than hammers. With this start for example you can easily turn that extra food into even more hammers with the whip. Plus, it really accelerates growing onto more tiles, and this city has many strong tiles.
2) One extra good tile (FP) and one extra great tile (forest ivory). And not only is the ivory a nice 1/4/1 tile later, and it’s worth +1 happy, but it is better than the previous best available tile without being improved! And therefore, it gives a 1t faster first worker.
3) Way more directions you can build a road in and have it be useful early on. The plains hill is just surrounded by river and forests, and is itself a hill, so it’s kind of a logistical pain.
4) Keeps a plains hill forest available, which is a nice tile to work early on, and can be chopped later for hammers, and still later can be mined for good settler production. It’s not as good as the banana tile but it’s still got its own benefits.
Of course, #1 and 2 are the most important here by far. They are the reason we want to settle on the banana.
For your second city you chose a close one which can share corn and some FP tiles, and also claims another corn. I think it’s a great choice.
For your third city, you settled copper, also a great choice. There weren’t any fantastic options for settling copper, but this one isn’t bad.
Tech path is smart. You first got the needed tech for hooking up your ivory resource, which is worth a lot.
Micro thoughts
After seeing such great strategic choices, I am a little surprised to see there is a lot to improve here.
When you grow to size 3, you not only don’t finish the warrior but you end up with 5 food sitting around doing nothing. That food stays there unused until 13 turns later! Meanwhile the warrior doesn’t get finished ever - the 6h you have invested in it completely decay. It’s a good idea to work ivory on t13 and t14 instead of the FP. That way, you only have 1f stored instead of 5, but you complete the warrior for defense and even have 2 overflow. This 2 overflow makes the settler finish a turn sooner! And then you end up with 4h extra in the worker, because in the old way, building the settler with food (no multiplier applied) and then having the production overflow (multiplier divided out) meant you lose 2 more hammers. This way you don’t have any overflow from the settler at all.
The first settler could reach its site 1t sooner if you just built a single road. I think that’s easily worth it.
After founding Shanghai, you work farmed FP there for four turns, giving 16 food. There’s no good reason for this - the build timings in Beijing don’t depend on it. Probably you should give the 6f corn from Beijing to Shanghai for a turn at least, so it can grow in only three turns.
On t25 you revolt to slavery. This is a bad turn to revolt on - you aren’t waiting for any improvement to be finished by workers, nor do you have any settlers traveling. If you revolted after the second settler is done instead, it will simply give you a whole free turn in Guangzhou with no drawback.
Settler 2, like settler 1, could reach its destination in 1 move if there was just a single road SE of Beijing.
It’s nice that you have all three FP tiles improved since you are easily going to work them every turn. And it’s nice there’s a road connecting Guangzhou to the river for trade. It’s good to prioritize improving tiles as you are doing. Although, Shanghai’s corn should be improved sooner.
The worker moving towards Guangzhou’s copper on t29 could move just one tile and start a road, instead of moving two tiles. This worker could still reach the copper tile the following turn, and you’d have an extra half a road.
Despite all these things which could be marginally better, you got a pretty nice result due to good overarching choices.
It's probably a good idea, if you only read comments on your plan and one other, to read this one.
![[Image: t15.JPG]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15215428/potluck/plana/t15.JPG)
![[Image: t20.JPG]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15215428/potluck/plana/t20.JPG)
![[Image: t25.JPG]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15215428/potluck/plana/t25.JPG)
![[Image: t30.JPG]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15215428/potluck/plana/t30.JPG)
![[Image: eventlog.JPG]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15215428/potluck/plana/eventlog.JPG)
Meanwhile, delaying BW until after the second city effectively subtracts one turn from it later when you revolt. So maybe the roading thing isn’t worth it, or maybe that second city is too far away after all.![[Image: x1ae.jpg]](http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/6659/x1ae.jpg)
![[Image: 55qp.jpg]](http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/5223/55qp.jpg)
![[Image: pxly.JPG]](http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/358/pxly.JPG)
![[Image: uhim.jpg]](http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/3193/uhim.jpg)
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![[Image: u04h.jpg]](http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/201/u04h.jpg/)
