[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[Tarkeel]

When it comes to settlers isn't it better to 3-whip them as you can't grow while building them? I mean (in a situation like here with 8 food surplus) build something else while growing, and do 6->3 every 6 turns?

In a zero-sum world with infinite good tiles, this is correct. However your cities are likely to run out of improved tiles to work, and working a 2f1h grassland forest while growing isn't exactly ideal. My rule of thumb is to find something to whip once my cities are running out of improved tiles to work, and preferably not whip of improved tiles that can't be given to another city.

But as Xist says, the most important step is to actually whip. Whip unhappiness decays after 10 turns, learn to consider this timer as a resource. I've several times whipped just to restart the timer.

I did the whole trade route yield early on, but Xist is correct: +50% to trade is completely irrelevant in the early stages, and suddenly becomes good in the midgame.

[Tarkeel]

I think the only time I'd whip of riverside cottages would be in an existential war. You won't have too many of those early on though, and this is again why sharing tiles is so important. Personally, I think city spacing is where my play has changed the most from when I played SP.

Scouting is important, but it's also hard to find the hammers for an extra scout or WB, moreso than the unit costs.

[Tarkeel]

Capitals are usually the best city spots on the map, but sometimes the map might surprise you.

That's exactly why you want to share the tiles around; you'll also often hear talk about letting one city grow cottages for another. Since cottages are pretty low yield at first, you can let a filler city work them until they mature, and then let the big commerce city take over.

[aetryn]

So between the three food resources and multiple cottage spots the capital has much better land than we can expect in the rest of the map?

For whipping small cities work better, but for cottages I guess it’s larger cities that don’t whip and where you build multiplier infrastructure. Is this why it’s good to share the food - the capital will use it to grow but become static eventually while the surrounding city/ies will use the food to continue whipping? The deer can remain part of the capital since its hammers would be good and the +1 food can pay for a riverside plains cottage, but the wheat should definitely go to a whipping city and the cow can go either way depending on where it’s more needed.

Ljub, your turn to pick so what are you thinking - Zulu, Celts, or something else?

It's unusual to stop whipping even the capital while you remain in Slavery - whether that's whipping a courthouse, a university, a factory, or whatever, there's generally something you want that can be sped up by whipping. The main reason not to whip is that you find another civic better than Slavery, and that won't happen for a good while.

The only cities I don't whip are fully improved food-poor ones where re-growing would be painful. These are usually production cities where you're basically just stealing future production for current production and not doing so on a favorable ratio (for instance, if you whip off 2 of 12 pop for 60 raw hammers but those 2 pop were both working 3-4 hammer tiles, you'd better regrow fast or you're going to be way behind in total hammers - if it takes 15 turns to grow each pop back you're sacrificing 135 hammers for 60 - only worth doing if you absolutely need those hammers right now). But it can also happen in a commerce city - I had one during PB72 that would have had to forgo a ton of commerce (silver mines) to work 3 food lake tiles to regrow, so instead I built Moai there and just let it build all its buildings through natural production.

You should expect your capital to be one of your very best cities. There are sometimes better spots on the map - if you find one of these, claim it ASAP if it's at all reasonable. This capital isn't the greatest as the food is only moderate and there are lots of plains - but that my be indicative that the rest of the map might be similarly dry and/or not food-rich.

[ljubljana]

Ljub, your turn to pick so what are you thinking - Zulu, Celts, or something else?

I provisionally plan to take Zulu. I still yearn for the Celts a little in my heart but with 2 mysticism civs picked and other competition for early religion too in Sumeria/Egypt they seem hard to justify other than purely for the fun factor. But since Dreylin needs time anyways I think I'll hold on committing for maybe 24 hours for discussion and last-minute second-guessing 

despite what seemed to me like good reasons for picking civ before leader this game i'm still a little surprised that EVERYone did it...

edit: also i'm a little AFK today as i'm helping my friend move so i'll kinda be sneaking glances at the civilopedia all day while carrying objects lol and not have much dedicated focus time. i do reserve the right to further put off committing if, like, it's 24 hours from now and i still don't know what all the UBs do lmao

[aetryn]

Ljub, your turn to pick so what are you thinking - Zulu, Celts, or something else?

I provisionally plan to take Zulu. I still yearn for the Celts a little in my heart but with 2 mysticism civs picked and other competition for early religion too in Sumeria/Egypt they seem hard to justify other than purely for the fun factor. But since Dreylin needs time anyways I think I'll hold on committing for maybe 24 hours for discussion and last-minute second-guessing 

despite what seemed to me like good reasons for picking civ before leader this game i'm still a little surprised that EVERYone did it...

edit: also i'm a little AFK today as i'm helping my friend move so i'll kinda be sneaking glances at the civilopedia all day while carrying objects lol and not have much dedicated focus time. i do reserve the right to further put off committing if, like, it's 24 hours from now and i still don't know what all the UBs do lmao

This is probably because traits are pretty balanced in Close to Home that even if you are really attached to one for your planned combo with a civ there's virtually no chance that all the viable leaders get chosen. I think Zulu is good enough that I'd pick that if you want it as it might not be there on the way back (a little surprised it fell this far, actually - but some people may have coastal starts and actually want fishing). But if you don't want Zulu I'd strongly consider picking leader as I think there's plenty of good options of roughly similar level beyond that.

[aetryn]

I did some preliminary sandboxing with Zulu and Celts. Here's what I've found so far:

I first tested AH starts - picking up AH first or second (both civs can do this - I went Mining->AH with Zulu and Agriculture->AH with Celts). This leads to size 4 at T34 if you build the settler at size 2 or 3, or at T27 if growing to 4 first (but the settler wouldn't be done until T34, so it's mostly a wash). If the worker goes Wheat->Cows->Deer->Ivory, work finishes T33. Here's the problem for Celts - they're 4 turns off BW at this point (Zulu will have finished it T30-31 depending on when the settler is finished. That means the worker's sitting around for 4 turns unless it can do something at the second city, and most prominently, it's not chopping out a second worker at the capital, which will delay overall improvement. Also, you'll probably want to build roads immediately after chopping, and The Wheel's another 8-9 turns out. Now, you could go for The Wheel before BW on Celts and build a road to the second city, which could be useful, but that just delays chopping even more and again delays the second worker a lot.

Punting on AH fixes BW timing for Celts, but at the cost of dropping a very good foodhammer tile for a long while. If you pick up AH after BW,, you're going to be missing roads for a VERY long time - only acceptable if the second city gets founded on the river to the east, which is kind of a painful thing to assume since there might be nothing good there for all we know. Picking up The Wheel first means that cow takes forever to come online and it's not clear what 4th tile you're going to work. You almost certainly aren't going Pottery before both The Wheel and Animal Husbandry, meaning you won't be cottaging either. If you actually try to fit a religious tech in here it's glacially slow.

Temporarily punting on AH is more interesting for Zulu, as if you go straight to BW the timing works out to chop out a settler at size 2 before improving the Ivory, then chopping out a worker after improving the Ivory. You'll have AH finished by the time the worker is chopped so it's not a long delay, the second worker can head for the second city, and The Wheel isn't far away. I find it difficult to evaluate this scenario vs the AH first but in both cases I like the Zulu start significantly better than the Celtic one. If you want Duns, we can make Celts work, both I wouldn't value the UU much (swords are not considered particularly good), so you'd be weighing the value of Duns vs Ikhandas + deterral value of Impi + a faster start. I'd feel considerably better about Celts if we had Stone rather than Marble,  meaning we could expect walls to be ultra-cheap and solve border popping. Celts is also less flexible trait-wise if you intend to pair it with PRO, while Zulu are good with pretty much anything here.

[williams482]

From reading what everyone else has posted, it definitely seems like Zulu are the strongest pick for both early game econ and "rush the n00b" deterrence. I do see why Celts are tempting; they seem powerful for midgame war and the map should favor them overall, but the actual opening terrain doesn't play to their strengths all that well relative to the more conventional Zulu.

[Tarkeel]

Also could you or someone else please answer a couple of questions on chopping so I can try it too. How many turns does it take to chop a forest and how many hammers do you get from it? And when do you receive the yield - is it mid-turn when it's the worker's turn to act, or does it happen between turns? (I.e. can I start a new build on the turn the chop is due, receive the hammers into it, and whip to completion without the dry whip penalty?)

Default worker time for chopping forests is 3 turns, but you'll in most cases spend a 4th turn getting onto the forest. If the forest is in the BFC of a city, you get 20 hammers added to that turn's production on completion, stacking for each chopped forest. It is not added to the build itself, so you would need to wait a turn to avoid the dry-whip penalty.

The yield is modified up to 30 when researching Math, and lowered outside your borders or BFC.

[ljubljana]

Sounds like we're all leaning towards Zulu to varying degrees, cool. When I wake up for real I'll lock it in unless there are last-minute objections

also i spent literally all day moving boxes yesterday so sorry i totally dropped the ball on simming lolll. aetryn, thank you so much for putting so much time and effort into this!!!

oh and i heard it's some kind of holiday?? so happy that, everyone :D