One thing I was noticing was that we have nowhere I can see where we can get the EXP bonus on worker before borders pop, unless I'm missing something....
I also was thinking that we could potentially skip AGRI for quite awhile, if we use the cheaper Hunting for AH and Fishing for Pottery. We wouldn't need Ag until we see a grain resource
I consider in place ("SIP"), 1NW ("NW") and either S or SE ("S") to be the three notable options here.
If we go S I think a fishing/mining start teching BW right away and then whipping a worker after WB is the only way I can envision it not being a complete disaster.
SIP needs either agriculture or hunting to start and works pretty sweetly. The worker takes 11t and AH takes 12, so it lines up perfectly. After that a settler at size 1 might be best since there are no more resources to grow onto.
NW looks like the best capital long term, but it lacks a plains hill plant for a quick start. Worker takes 13 turns so again if we tech AH first we should be good with that. Hunting might be better than agriculture for this position.
Like Rego just posted while I was typing this up, we don't necessarily need agriculture if we have hunting and fishing.
regoarrarr Wrote:One thing I was noticing was that we have nowhere I can see where we can get the EXP bonus on worker before borders pop, unless I'm missing something....
We could go onto the floodplains (bad idea) or onto the plains 2NW of our starting location. However, this would actually not speed up our worker (it would take 12 turns, plus the turn moving, and gives us no overflow) compared to if we plant on the plains hill. From the Civ/Leader Picking Thread:
Merovech Wrote:I also find it interesting that if we plant on the plains hill, we won't get another two hammer tile to get the expansive bonus until we get our first border pop, and there is only one visible three hammer tile for the bonus if we move off the plains hill. Assuming we are on Normal speed and my math is correct, that means a non-expansive leader settling in place takes 12 turns to build a worker, an expansive leader except sury takes 11 turns (with 1h of overflow), and sury takes 11 turns (with 3h of overflow). This not-getting-a-free-expansive-hammer until the border pop, and therefore only saving one turn instead of two on the worker production, should hold true if we move off the plains hill, unless we settle next to a forested (or marbled/stoned) plains hill or plant on a different plains hill and have a two hammer tile in the first ring.
This (very) slightly weakens expansive, in my opinion
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
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.
Merovech Wrote:We could go onto the floodplains (bad idea) or onto the plains 2NW of our starting location. However, this would actually not speed up our worker (it would take 12 turns, plus the turn moving, and gives us no overflow) compared to if we plant on the plains hill. From the Civ/Leader Picking Thread:
Right. I guess what I meant was that there is nowhere that we can get the EXP bonus before border-popping and still settle on T0. And I missed that you already said that in the other thread
Another (small) bonus of settling in place is that when borders pop we can work the 1/2/1 plains spice tile, which gives us 1cpt while building our worker.
I finally patched up to 3.19, but it's getting late here. I'll definately take a look tomorrow; I think the pre-game leader/civ picking and the early game is my consitently favorite part.
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
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.
Here's my initial stab at a SIP sim with Hunting/Mining. For those used to Quick, do remember this is normal. It's messing with my head too . I picked T32 as my end date. I'm sure there's a tighter way to do this, but it's kinda late here so I went with whatever sounded best in my head.
Quote:Verson 1 - hunting/mining SIP tech AH
t11: worker onto pigs. start warrior on floodplains
t12: start bw
t16-t24: worker has nothing to do!!
t17: start settler @ sz2
T25: start chop on forest, start wheel
t27: chop completes settler
t28: start worker. due to overflow, worker due in 4T.
t30: start camp at second city
T32 summary: 2 cities, 2 workers, improved pigs, 1 forest chopped, deer and wheel 1T away from being done
Comments:
1) No Pottery yet, wheel is just finishing at the end of this.
2) If we want to SIP, we want Hunting and not Agriculture. Agri is useless, but Hunting is important as it lets us go settle and immediately improve the deer.
3) The major problem here is the worker literally has nothing to do between pasture and BW finishing. No real way to rememdy this honestly.
4) I tried teching BW first and chopping instead of pasturing first, but it was slightly slower and cost extra forests, so AH first is necessary
Quote:Version 2 - hunting/wheel SIP tech AH. (pottery before BW version)
t11: worker onto pigs. ah in EOT. start settler in cap.
start teching fishing next for pottery
t15-32: pasture finished. road up to second city while we wait for pottery. settler completes and can move onto forest hill in 1T. settle city, camp deer, begin FP cottage. after settler grow cap to sz2 then worker.
T32 summary: 2 cities, 1 worker (2nd due in 4T), pigs/deer improved, road connection, pottery in, first cottage on shareable FP almost done.
Comments:
1) This keeps all our forests, so being "behind" is a slight illusion here as we're about to have 2 workers and all our forests yet to chop.
2) This gets a cottage online probably 20T earlier. Tech is SLOW on Prince/Toroidal, so this is nice. Also nice to be able to build a granary way earlier for EXP.
3) Sorry for the "T15-T32" thing that didn't keep great detail. I got a bit lazy, but the screenshot should show what I did.
Conclusions
I'm thinking that the Hunting/Wheel start is actually slightly preferable here for a SIP start. Hunting/Mining is definitely preferable to Agriculture/Mining. But the Hunting/Wheel start is very nice as it prevents worker downtime and gets Pottery WAY faster. Some variation of Version 2 where we tech BW before Pottery should probably be considered, but we'd wait SO long for Mining/BW that I don't think it's going to be worth it.
scooter Wrote:2) If we want to SIP, we want Hunting and not Agriculture. Agri is useless, but Hunting is important as it lets us go settle and immediately improve the deer.
Caveat: the one benefit of Agri/Mining is that you can use the "nothing to do with worker" time to farm the floodplains. You'll want to cottage over it eventually, but the +1F is still useful. So this isn't a completely true statement. Still think Hunting/Mining > Agri/Mining if we SIP.
Obviously when we start the real game, what we see with the warrior and scout before settling will be important. We may find that we have a grain resource for SIP, or for 1S. But we will have to make our civ decision without that knowledge.
Unless there is more food in the fog to the west, SIP will be a bit low on food. Not terribly low, but not great. We could farm the FP, but as FIN would certainly prefer to put a cottage there.
Moving to get one of the deer or fish in addition to the pig would certainly improve the food situation. And moving could also help the hammer situation -- SIP does not have great hammer potential, especially once the forests are cut down. 1NW would have more food, more hammers, more riverside tiles, and more possible resources in the fog to the west; it would not have the city center extra hammer or the silk.
I will try to find some time to experiment with the sandbox.
![[Image: Civ4ScreenShot0492.JPG]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/28594063/Maps/Demo/Civ4ScreenShot0492.JPG)
. I picked T32 as my end date. I'm sure there's a tighter way to do this, but it's kinda late here so I went with whatever sounded best in my head. 
![[Image: hunting_mining_sip.JPG]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5826112/RB_Demogame/start%20simming/hunting_mining_sip.JPG)
![[Image: hunting_wheel_sip.JPG]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5826112/RB_Demogame/start%20simming/hunting_wheel_sip.JPG)