[SPOILERS] Dhal gets ready to bungle another game (oh yeah some guy is dedlurking)

[Dhalphir]

okay, I'm playing around with your sandbox. From your t22 second city, by going for another warrior to get to size 3 then building another worker to get some cottages up, I can get a third city by turn 34, with two workers, capital almost done with it's granary, cows and corn hooked up at second city, and three cottages up, one of which is capital-only, one of which is sharable between capital and city #2, and one of which is sharable between city #2 and city #3

That was without a whip on the settler - just a chop from one of the riverside forests.

The only thing I wasn't sure about was the tech path after Pottery. The choices as I see it are Archery, Mysticism, Writing, or Iron Working.

Archery is overly conservative I think. If copper is nearby, we can settle the horses and use our unique unit to keep us safe.
Same goes for iron working. There's no rush to clear jungle until we need the gems for happy, and I don't see much other jungle around. This will depend on copper location but it can wait I think.

That leaves us a choice between Mysticism and Writing. Writing is the better tech option, because our second city isn't in a rush to pop borders and hopefully neither will our third. And popping borders at our third city (if it's the horse spot) doesn't achieve anything until we also have fishing and/or iron working.

So my tentative tech plan after Pottery is Writing -> Mysticism -> Fishing -> Iron Working

thooughts on that tech plan and the third city timing?

[Dhalphir]

If I grow the city while building a granary instead of getting a second worker before the second settler, I can get the city on turn 33, but that sacrifices the three built cottages by turn 34. Looks like going for the second worker before the third city is the best approach, as one might suspect anyway.

[Dhalphir]

I like stonehenge too because I hate having to make monuments, feels like such a waste.

On my second micro plan that skipped the cottages we can chop Stonehenge out in 7 turns if we delay cottages more.

[Dhalphir]

so I just tried out a stonehenge possible plan

if we 2pop whip a worker at size 4, that completes the Granary with the overflow. We have to go Mysticism before Writing to make this work, however if the second worker completes a chop into Stonehenge then the two workers together smash out another chop, we can complete Stonehenge on turn 37 if we don't whip it. Turn 36 if we do 2pop whip it, but whipping wonders is super inefficient or so I'm told.

How does that compare to an industrious civ going for Stonehenge at a normal pace? Can we do it?

[Dhalphir]

I think that if azza puts hammers into Stonehenge to grow his capital early on, rather than warriors, we can't possibly beat him to Stonehenge with a turn 36-37 completion time, because he can start putting hammers in from the moment his first worker finishes.

if he does it with warriors and doesn't chop or whip, assuming he has it in the bag - well, then we might be in with a shot.

[Sareln]

so I just tried out a stonehenge possible plan

if we 2pop whip a worker at size 4, that completes the Granary with the overflow. We have to go Mysticism before Writing to make this work, however if the second worker completes a chop into Stonehenge then the two workers together smash out another chop, we can complete Stonehenge on turn 37 if we don't whip it. Turn 36 if we do 2pop whip it, but whipping wonders is super inefficient or so I'm told.

How does that compare to an industrious civ going for Stonehenge at a normal pace? Can we do it?

It really depends upon what kind of priority Azza puts on it. If he thinks he's in a race, and has thought so since T0, then we're not beating him to it, as it'll land for him somewhere between T30 and T35 if he goes to 2 cities first and we have mirrored starts. If he doesn't feel like he's in a race situation, then we could yoink it from him by sacrificing the timing on our 3rd city.

Whipping wonders is inefficient (half as effective), but if you've gotta whip to secure the wonder you've got to whip right? Stonehenge isn't really a whipping-class wonder though - so I wouldn't plan on that.

It looks like with FIN though that we can land a very quick writing, so we may just end up skipping monuments entirely in cities that don't hit the happy-cap.

[Dhalphir]

our first opportunity to start Mysticism comes after Pottery, at exactly the same time at which we would otherwise start Writing. Writing would take 5-6 turns depending on city micro, Mysticism would take 2-3.

Its a shame that we aren't playing this in RBMod, because I will need to make monuments anyway to get my full +2 happiness from being CHA, but that might not be an issue if happy stuff is abundant.

Hell, if there aren't too many calendar resources (and I haven't seen any yet), we can probably delay Calendar if necessary to blitz out monuments in any cities that are missing it before we finish up Calendar.

[Dhalphir]

we can figure out if azza is growing with stonehenge or warriors by looking at his power graph, can't we?

[Dhalphir]

its strange that azza hasn't passed the save onto me yet, he's normally played within the time window from about 4 hours ago through to now.

[Dhalphir]

to continue the post spam

I'm running sims a few more times and I really don't like what Stonehenge does to our city timings. On a donut map it is absolutely critical to expand as quickly as possible, else you end up squeezed in and defending along a huge front. Ideally I'd like to have a single city poking into the territory of the players on either side to give me a central spot to defend, rather than having to defend three or four cities along the entire front. I don't see why we couldn't be at 6 cities by 1AD while keeping maintenance costs reasonable.