Cool! Fish-Agri-Mining-BW sounds right to me, although it's imaginable scouting could suggest an alternative. I agree that size 5 is likely to be too slow, and suspect size 3 is best, but it depends in part on how many warriors we can get out under the different plans and what our options for a road network would look like.
The results of my sim, this time with pictures. Please ignore the extra jungle and river tiles. Don`t think they matter here. Pictures 1 and 2 show the first sim and 3 and 4 the second. As you can see we have one warrior built at size 3. I think that is quite enough to escort the settler. In the second sim we are very close to completing a second warrior.
I think we really should go for a size 3 settler. Two build queues are just so much better than one.
Looks good. I would imagine the first several turns would look the same no matter what path we take, but I agree that the size 3 path is probably better. The extra food in the bin in both plans suggests it might be possible to improve them (this is something I learned from Seven's micro-potluck: Anything you produce beyond what you strictly need hints at room for improvement in your plan) -- if you'd like me to try to suggest an alternative, I'll have a look at it tonight!
1) Your size 3 plan is already good! (I don't like the size 4 one because it delays the Settler without actually getting another Warrior out.)
2) I'm sure it can be improved upon (most microplans can) but there's a serious question of just how much time you want to spend optimizing little details like that. Certainly the return on time invested diminishes with each successive attempt to improve a plan. (And to the extent I have time, which is uncertain anyway, I don't know if it's really any fun to follow someone else's microplan, even if it's meant to accomplish strategic objectives you set. That depends on the player, and I don't know your style yet.) Of course, we have plenty of time before a non-obvious part of this start needs to be implemented, so we can always obsess over the super-early micro but then go easy on it after that. (Everyone has to let up on the simming sooner or later; it's only a question of when.)
3) I should probably ask actually: Was there something you were especially hoping I would contribute if able? (And/or stuff that you especially want to handle yourself?) I guess that's a really open-ended question, but it's open-ended in time as well. Point is, I'm dedlurking to (enjoy the thread, which I certainly have so far - and I haven't even posted any silly stories in it yet! - and) help make sure your first RB playing experience is a good one to the extent I can help. So any time there's something you'd like me to help out with, want me to back off of, or are just confused about, just let me know! That applies now, and it'll still apply when it's 2018 and you're slogging through multi-hour turns in a three-front modern war! (If our civ lasts that long, so let's hope, right?)
It seems we are in agreement about a settler at size 3.
Early micro is probably not my strongest trait as I have never done much optimizing in SP. Any feedback is most welcome. I really like having someone to test my ideas on. As for the extra food - we could work the oasis for extra commerce. Or maybe we could try to get out two warriors before the settler. If you have some extra time, feel free to improve on the sim. I certainly don`t mind following a different micro plan if it is better than mine!
I think my strengths should gradually come into play later on. I like making long term plans.
One option that I like right now completes the Settler T30 (so one turn later than yours) but with two warriors complete, one hammer of overflow, and nine food in the bin. This can presumably be optimized futher, although the 9 food is likely to actually get used for growth soon after T30. (Just tested this in a sim and found my math was correct, so I can post pictures and a detailed plan if you'd like.)
Also note that trading excess food for other stuff is never the goal; if it's "spent" just to get some commerce, that's unlikely to be helpful unless those extra beakers are needed to complete a critical tech at a critical time. The point is just that having a little extra of anything beyond what you need suggests there might be a way to get even more of what you do need a little faster.
One other thing to look out for: It looks like the river/lake interaction that causes the grassland SE of the city to get a "riverside" coin also requires a bridge for road movement purposes. In other words, a Settler heading southeast from the capital can't plant a city on the turn it's produced even if there are roads all the way and it's planting at minimum distance.
(April 8th, 2017, 05:04)RefSteel Wrote: One other thing to look out for: It looks like the river/lake interaction that causes the grassland SE of the city to get a "riverside" coin also requires a bridge for road movement purposes. In other words, a Settler heading southeast from the capital can't plant a city on the turn it's produced even if there are roads all the way and it's planting at minimum distance.
Good catch. I was looking to settle on turn 29. Maybe the worker can build three roads to another tile where we don`t have to cross a river.
Your plan sounds interesting. 9 food and an extra warrior should be worth the extra turn I think. Screenshots and details would be nice.
I'll try to get some screenies up tonight (U.S. Pacific Daylight Time) - but the plan looks like this:
T0: Tech Fishing. Capital builds Worker and works the Cow.
T7: Fishing is complete; tech Agriculture.
T10: Worker is complete, moves SW to the Cow, and begins a Pasture. Capital builds a Warrior and works [EDIT: the clams.
T12: Capital works the grassland hill forest.]
T13: Worker completes the Pasture. Capital switches to building a Work Boat and works the Cows.
T14: Worker begins a Road.
T15: Worker completes the Road.
T16: Agriculture is complete; tech Mining. Worker moves NE-SE through the city to the "river" grassland tile beside the rice and begins a Road.
T17: Worker completes the Road.
T18: Capital is now size 2; Work Boat is complete, moves NW to the Clams, and Nets them. Worker moves E to the Rice and begins a Farm. Capital resumes building Warrior and works Cows + Clams.
T20: Warrior is complete; Capital starts another Warrior.
T22: Capital is now size 3. Worker completes the Farm. Capital works Cows + Clams + Rice.
T23: Warrior is complete; Start a Settler. (Due in 7, with one overflow.)
Of course some of this is still subject to change and/or improvement.
Some explanations of why it works and why I did it this way in particular and what can easily change:
T0-T9 is pretty obvious, although if enough time passes before the game starts, I might examine a crazy start with Fishing->Mining or something just for a lark.
T10-12 require some thinking though:
Our capital is generally low on production; I think 3f/3h in this circumstance is better than 5f/2c since the latter doesn't actually allow us to grow any sooner (not even to size 3 or - depending on how we share tiles at least - to size 4). That means there's no urgency to the workboat as long as it's out by T18 (the soonest we can grow to size 2 no matter what). We also want to finish the work boat to the exact hammer if possible so we don't lose anything to de-multiplication, and we want to get an Exp bonus hammer (there's no way to get two here at size 1) every turn we build it if we can. We also need to get at least 7f before the pasture is finished so we can grow by T18 on the pasture. The only way to accomplish all of this is to build the work boat on the pasture alone, and therefore we should start the next thing we need, and work on it until the pasture is ready. So start the Warrior.
Since more than 7 food still doesn't really speed up growth even to size 3 (and likely not to 4 either, depending on tile-sharing with the second city again) we should aim for that exactly - especially looking ahead and knowing we're eventually going to want at least 2 hammers of overflow from the Warrior to save a turn on the Settler. Since we need a bunch of food, we'll want to work the clams (or oasis) for a couple of those turns, putting 4h in the Warrior and getting some extra commerce, and then we can work our best pre-pasture hammer tile to get the seventh food while bringing the Warrior up to 8h. There are other ways to do this once we've planned our second city though, so early scouting will be important!
Finally, I originally suggested working the grassland forest hill first because the commerce won't help immediately but if we suddenly need a Warrior ASAP, it would be good to have as many hammers in it as possible, as early as we could. On thinking about it further though, I don't think there's any scenario where those two hammers are going to make a difference before T12, so I think it's better to work the clams on T10 and T11, and the forested hill on T12, just to get a couple extra turns of scouting information before we decide for sure that we want to work it instead of e.g. the cows (or making an even deeper change in the plan, potentially...).
T13: Back to the obvious, building the work boat and working our best tile.
T14-17: What we do with the worker and when before we need to improve the rice will depend on where we expect our second city. We'll be roading someplace, but ... have I mentioned our early scouting will be important here?
T18-23: I think this part is pretty straightforward once we get this far, although note that the worker's actions on T23 (not listed) are especially depend on information we don't yet have.
Yes, we`ll have to reveal possible city sites with the scout asap. Also I think we want to share some tiles between our two first cities. The second city can steal the clams (or rice) for some turns in order to get it up to size 2 quickly.
It`s getting a bit late here. I`ll look into the micro tomorrow.
