[pb40 spoiler] Götterdämmerung: Destruction Is The Masses' Entertainment

[Coeurva]

Obviously the strategy is to bank on popping gems at the capital. You're right, there's too much labour there. One of those mines is defensible, since it finishes as Rome grows to size4 while Antium still wants the wheat iirc, but the #4 worker should already be improving Cumae instead. There's also an argument not to place the second plains mine and farm sugar instead. The best road network would be 211 from cap and (21)77 from cap, although roading to Cumae via sheep might prove more useful pre-Construction.

About your plan, I like that Cumae is set up with granary + barracks earlier, that we save two forests at the cap, and that we have city #4 out already. I'll try to combine my first run and yours such that we can achieve this while also having 10 pop total (or more if there's a way of course), 4 workers, and a plains mine at Antium by this date.

Imo the granary at the capital is worth it as long as we settle and improve gold for #4, and if we can spare worker labour to place at least four cottages during growth to size7. I expect that the later our attack will occur, the more important it is to cottage the capital early. That said, the granary should be timed to finish when the most important settlers/workers have been finished and the other cities can at least assist in that field.

I think roading 2 extra tiles is a low demand for connecting another city.

e: T14 report, scout moved onto a jungle tile next to the re-discovered panther (went 33-41 from the plains hill from the last screenshot), discovering a jungled banana 221 of the eastern plains deer. Rival Best Crop Yield is 8, but no size2 city shows up in top5, so this looks like someone has a 6f tile...

[Coeurva]

New proposal:


My preference is still to delay the #4 settler, which has just been double-whipped (in the real game, we should rather start building him at size4, single-whip and/or 1-chop) but now with a twist: Cumae (has a barracks, but no granary yet) will produce the #5 settler shortly thereafter, using at least one chop, while we make the transition to cottages at the capital. Maths will come in around T70, by which point we need one more settler; then we can start chopping out a bunch of settlers/workers simultaneously from a six-city base (probably at the southern gold, eastern plains cow/fp, and western deer sites). The capital will have to fuel that commercially.

e: or how about this, if you'd rather have four cities earlier:


Where a nice perk is having 5 workers total and a rather balanced core, too, also allowing us to delay the ivory camp a bit (which isn't useful as a tile before IW, although the happiness is). One or two inaccuracies in worker movement can be fixed in this one, and obviously that road through the ice is a lot of worker turns we'd spend differently -- this is just to illustrate. Cumae would already have built that barracks via chop (one of the three wks staying behind), for instance. Rome would finish the granary via plains mine while waiting for more cottages to finish, then grow to size7 (or 6 if not settling gold). Roading the sheep might be better than roading the sugar (almost surely so if #4 is to go east), but I'm not decided yet. This plan could also end up slightly short on military, though we can also always whip a metal unit at any city. Provided we do have copper. Let's see on T22...

ee: Oh yeah, turn report. The panther attacked, only got one hit in and died, leaving the scout at 80hp. I moved him south-west into another forest; nothing interesting. RFS-81 gained 6 score points for Mining (Rival Best Soldiers increased by 2000, and since we're #1 in MFG and all cities are still size1, that can't have been anyone's warrior).

[Coeurva]

Improvement on plan A:


Can chop the Antium grass flat forest instead of building cottage #2 and likewise chop/whip 1-2 workers at Cumae instead of mining the grass hill. Or can swap production in Cumae to settler this turn, in which case the mine is better. What I like here is that the ivory camp comes online just when needed and Antium is growing into quite a useful city.

What, our military? That's something that others will worry about. (Serious talk: we'll have at least one 3xp AGG metal unit out of Antium, since the granary remains a placeholder. There's room to whip more; we'll have more hpt than in the sandbox if copper/horses are available, anyway)

e: T16 report: Scout move onto south-western forest revealed nothing except for an adjacent uninjured bear -- that's likely the end for him (how is a 3str unit on T16 balanced btw, even if it's just AI-controlled?). Magic Science gained a second pop and another tech (which means he'll get BW slightly later than us). Rival Best tile yield demos are now 20 GNP, 3 MFG, 11 CY. My interpretation is that Magic Science (who hasn't played yet) has a 6f tile and now grew onto a 3f1c tile (riverside sugar like ours?), whereas someone else has swapped to an xf1h tile (like our irrigated plains wheat).

ee: T17: the scout died (he only had a 1/4 chance to survive, factoring in the 10% animal AI combat avoidance chance on Monarch), no surprise.

[OT4E]

Damn, never have luck with scouts. Why didnt you heal at least?
Development looks better, I will try to find a way to save some forests, I think it is possible. And then we will review it once the cooper is revealed.

[Coeurva]

I didn't heal because I'm dumb and was assuming the chance of meeting another animal in the area would be small with the panther spawnbusting (and in fact the bear was facing south when we found it), so we should exploit the busting zone and only heal afterwards, while on a forest hill.



At least one team without a Wheel start but with Hunting has gone Mining->BW (and has one warrior -- edit, I'm bad at memorizing soldiers values), I'm assuming that's superdeath and/or s_t, and we're first to size3, but probably only by a turn. Next turn will reveal copper and finish the warrior for some exploration in the west; prepare the sandboxes for another round...

[Coeurva]

Copper update: it's located on the grassland directly east of the plains mine. That's relevant, including to our tech order -- if we want axes at their earliest (shame we don't know whether we neighbour Zulu), we would need The Wheel before Hunting before Pottery, and the copper tile is stronger than the sheep while we're producing fh units at size3; question is how we balance that with growth. I haven't moved the worker or ended turn yet, will start sandboxing now.

Average CY has gone to 12, Rival Best 15 -- someone started by hooking up a 5f, 4f, and 4f (which must be seafood), I suppose. Three cities are size3, the rest size2.

[OT4E]

I think we must grow to 4 for sure now and try out what growing to 5 can lead to.

[Coeurva]

More extensive micro, this is close to serious now:


The baseline, I don't think anything before this point can be improved. I tried growing to size4 improving copper before chopping but it only loses a turn for Antium, which cascades. The main difference that the copper makes is that we only chop one forest.



Voodoo then sees us 1t a worker at Antium. The gist of it is that we can put 1t into a sugar farm that will pay off 20t from now, move into the spice forest, and finish a chop 1t after 1-whipping the barracks. This also allows Rome to take the wheat for 1t longer (in fact, you can see that in the screenshot of T33 already), exactly hitting size4 at 26/26f -> 0/28. Then it builds a settler with exactly 100 foodhammers. It's music.


About to settle Cumae. The warrior covers all our units, but will spawnbust the area from barbs at least. There's the opportunity to 1t a spear here, the actual choice would be a worker, unless we really need this spear immediately. Otherwise, it'll finish efficiently in a few turns anyway. It could be worthwhile to move both our warriors into this area during settlement, since the cap will be defended in a pinch and they'll sentry-net the west some 6t ahead of time.



T54. I do love how the numbers are lining up here -- Antium will make 66h and gain a chop to finish the settler (western deer or gold mine? that'll decide our worker plan at Cumae, what's pictured isn't optimal, as well as minor decisions, mainly whether to road the Antium sheep tile). The sugar farm has just finished, too, right as Neapolis demands the 6-yield tile from Rome and we need exactly 11f to grow. Size5 adds the mine next turn and now has a serious incentive to build a granary, barracks, immediate units, whatever we need, while our other cities can take some of the worker/settler burden now.

Need to think about what to do with the "Cuman" workers especially -- improving the ivory is also important at this stage. Do we want to road the desert south-east, probably our best route towards the gold, earlier or later? I've gone with later here, but it's possible to get a lot of workers onto the tile in the T44-54 period, and might not be possible later when we're spread out more.


Think these are pretty good demos, especially since we're about to grow 2 pop eot and build another settler shortly afterwards. My main complaint is with Neapolis' lack of food, but it still outperforms the deer sites and doesn't cost half a leg in maintenance / roading / worker movement opportunity.

What do you think?

e: I'll delay making the decision of what to do with the worker now (T22, just finished improving the plains mine last turn, can mine copper or move into one of three forests) in case you find a better pre-T33 micro, as shallow_thought said he won't be able to play until tomorrow evening. Currently the plan is to move 69 and chop, then move 1 and mine copper, then move 7 and pasture sheep. Hunting remains the tech.

[OT4E]

I cant run tests today unfortunately and I also like when numbers are exactly same you need, but in fact it brings wrong feeling of perfection. Saved forest is not a big treasure but so is 1 turn of delayed in settling on the other hand. I am trying to say that the impact of possible improvements will be minor so go ahead and chop without doubts.

[Coeurva]

Yeah I have to be careful not to get tunnel-visioned, and numbers lining up needn't point at the most efficient path -- overflow ensures that, ROI ensures that (granary timing isn't just about the food box), neighbours can tamper with what we need. Even that all aside, that sandbox very likely can still be improved. For one, Rome actually grows unhappy eot. Nothing that can't be fixed by connecting ivory earlier or maybe getting a unit out of Cumae post-Barracks first instead of the granary, allowing the warrior to garrison Rome. Workers at Cumae can do whatever in this plan after the pasture and cottage finish. Getting a barracks up early in that place is probably stronger than anything else including granary first due to the floodplains unlocking, but who knows? I don't.

Might want to preserve all the cap forests we can in case we want to build the Gardens, and hey, it's 10h more at Maths in any case. Which I still think will be the best Classical first tech for us to take, although we'll also want forges earlyish (a non-IND forge at Rome would repay in ~10t in its T54 state if not whipped, Antium isn't much worse), but possibly after Maths so we can chop them everywhere (aim to preserve two forests per mine-ready city?) But if the chop can repay these 10h through some micro detail, then it's plain better to chop first, and I think that's the case here...

Settling Antium 1t later throws off everything far beyond what I'd suspect; it "just feels wrong". Not a good argument, I know, but I can't adequately explain why everything starts going off the rails. Culture isn't fast enough, wheat-sharing becomes muddled, worker #3 gets out 1t later which has repercussions because it will chop another fh unit, which... you know. It's very important to have the city down on T32 imo.

That said, will log in, move to chop, finish turn, in case s_t has time unexpectedly or whatever, or to lead by example after I've already said that the turn pace should be 12hrs/t until T35 or so... (which -- compliment to all other players -- has been achieved very well so far)