[SPOILERS] William discovers a source of horse. FDR of Mongolia

[MindyMcCready]

It's a good hypothetical exercise. I don't think 1E does any good.

Of course, since I'm OCD while being inattentive to detail I meant 1W. Oracle culture for my instant start + your prized whales.

You might be interested to know that, in the absence of a crazy Oracle run, I have come around to your #3 city site. It still really hurts in start up time but realistically we wouldn't plant a city for the whales until city #6 or maybe later. Gems would come around city #8. That's just way too long to sit at size 5 or whatever.

I still think that you need to consider a Monarchy/COL route. There's just so much food here that happiness and over-expansion are our main problems. The +2 happy from dyes and silk will help but with this ample food we should blow past that really quickly. I see the possibility of huge stacked whip unhappy.

[WilliamLP]

Of course, since I'm OCD while being inattentive to detail I meant 1W. Oracle culture for my instant start + your prized whales.

Ah, ok. That site still has 3 full culture forests and 1 partial one to chop but it does grow to size 2 in 5 turns instead of 6 (sheep vs cow) so it might be easier to micro out The Oracle there, and get the whales with the 100 culture third ring pop in 13 turns.

And yeah, if this game didn't have 33 players, I could see it being a good play. But someone who has been thinking of committing to it from turn 0 beats us no matter what.

The play I've been experimenting with is getting city 3 down with an immediate granary chop, and then double-whipping a library at size 4. This gets the whales at about T69 or so. Slower than barracks first by 4-5 turns, but the result is a much stronger city, and a potential NE site. It can't go library first unless we delay AH and that sounds absurd. It's too strategically vital to know where horse is and build some chariots soon.

I still think that you need to consider a Monarchy/COL route. There's just so much food here that happiness and over-expansion are our main problems. The +2 happy from dyes and silk will help but with this ample food we should blow past that really quickly. I see the possibility of huge stacked whip unhappy.

The reason I like Calendar so much in this spot is because I see it as +4: dyes + silk + incense + silk: I'm sure we could find someone along the channel to swap a duplicate happiness for our silk using a sailing path to a coastal city. If we end up with +6 for adding gems and whales, that's a pretty nice setup. If by a coup we secure the second stone we could probably juggle it around to the needy or greedy for another 1-2 happy at a time.

Monarchy is certainly good too, with wines in view.

Myst + Med + Priesthood + Monarchy is 85 + 115 + 86 + 431 = 717 beakers. It's the cheap unlock of CoL.

Writing + Math + Calendar is 148 + 358 + 503 = 1009 beakers. I assume we're getting sailing in either case so I'm not including its cost. The side benefits (30 hammer chops, library + academy) are nice. It doesn't unlock CoL but does unlock Currency or Alpha + Currency.

To anyone who can't tell I think about this game quite a bit.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 41:




Pulling the horseshoes out of our collective butts, somehow the results of the carnage are that MYKI's warrior is dead and we still have a scout at 22% odds! What an absolutely horrible turn of RNG for the poor guy. First, losing his scout and now a warrior. Warriors on turn 41 are very precious things. It's not as if leaving the hut for our scout was a reasonable option for him either.




The scout will try to promote and rest now. Ichabod scouted out Silver's city tile with his wounded warrior. We have 3 warriors right now and as of last turn Ichabod only has 2, and I'm sure there aren't (overtly) hostile intentions here.

Ichabod's tech last turn wasn't a power tech, so there's a good chance he's paralleling us and got Pottery.

[WilliamLP]

So it has to be asked, what the heck happened to Ichabod and Darrell's team? Darrell was turn player for the first 33 turns, and now Ichabod has taken over. Their thread was one of the most active ones, and was number 2 in thread views, behind only Krill. Now they haven't posed since the end of April. Either Darrell is on vacation, or maybe he has checked out of the game!

If Darrell is indeed gone for good, I'm not sure if this is good news or bad news. I think Darrell + Ichabod would be a _much_ stronger combination than Ichabod alone since his experience is exactly what is needed to complement Ichabod's weaknesses, imo. But it also increases the chance Ichabod would do something strategically rash.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 42:

I've discovered that trying to penetrate a mass of Scandinavian firewalls and trying to log in right after the turn roll only leads to frustration.




Pottery is done. AH is next, it's not that we absolutely need it now but it's strategically crucial to know where horses are.

Ichabod's northern warrior turned around. He finished his third warrior the same time we did.

Our scout promoted and is going to heal again by the coast as long as it can. We're really lucky to even still have it alive. A second scout comes out for next turn, which will probably go check on where Ichabod's next cities are going. Scouts are pretty nice for getting info while not signaling a threat.

Our copper is now improved, a mixed blessing since the era of warriors is over. Silver switched to a granary, and will get a chop and whip. I'm actually putting 5 worker turns into the chop, using both workers, because getting the granary one turn sooner means it fully fills up from size 1 to 2. And the cow worker road-stepping his way back isn't worth much very soon anyway.

I'm not that sure about going granary first in a second city. It speeds the growth curve but then again 60 hammers is a lot which could be going to another worker or part of a settler, which also speed the growth curve. I do gather that building a fast granary in a capital is probably a mistake (except maybe in BtS with a start where you want to double and triple-whip like crazy).

The result won't look like a start you see a lot of good players do, where 3-4 cities get spammed down very quickly. But I think the curve we get taking a faster vertical for a little slower horizontal seems fine.

[WilliamLP]

A nerdy experiment using my sim tool. (Move along, nothing to see here if you just care about the game...) I'm interested in whether an immediate granary (or nearly so) at a second city is worthwhile. Obviously it's a tradeoff as such things often are.

A problem is you can't predict micro plans 30 (or perhaps even 10) turns into the future because it's, like, a multiplayer game with random elements, and humans are unpredictable. Needs change. But some patterns should be apparent even above micro, I would guess.

Showing a fast granary build (starting like the plan I'm currently going with):

I arbitrarily am going to turn 69. This 2-pop whips a barracks to get a border pop, since it grabs a corn that could help city number 4 grow sooner.

As of T69, this build is size 4 at 13/28, and has put 328 hammers into stuff. 73 commerce has been produced. Hammer distribution is 96 foodhammers, 120 infrastructure, 112 other (chariots, axes, whatever). These could be tweaked around; it's a rough idea.

A build with no granary:

The constraints on this one are: always work cow (it's the only city that can work it), grow as much as possible when not at the happy cap. (Note: neither of these builds care about which unit is produced when, e.g. ending turn 68 at 29/30 on a chariot is dumb but I only cared about total hammers here which can be assigned according to particular needs).

I tried to keep things apples to apples, and chose the ending time and build to get the city to 13/26 at size 4 with no whip anger on both sides. I also made sure both builds worked the 5/1/1 wheat the same number of turns since there's a cost to doing so, taking it away from the capital. I also had both cities whip the barracks at the same time for the same border pop.

This build has put in 285 hammers (43 less) and 86 commerce (13 more). This is 41 as foodhammers (could be tweaked), 60 as infrastructure, 184 as other stuff.

Build 2 is ahead on usuable hammers, but also still needs a granary. At this point the whales and gems would be coming up for growths to size 5 and 6, and eventually more for the calendar stuff. Build 2 is also less flexible if foodhammers are mainly what we want, since to make up for no granary it has to spend more turns raising its food.

So is an amount of usable hammers that amounts to 17 more by turn 60 (but is more front-weighted - it's 34 more by turn 56), together with another 13 commerce, worth having to build a granary later anyway? Maybe, if an extra axe or chariot makes a difference in something. But if military needs are served otherwise, I think the faster granary build wins for most things.

(And, as usual, everything may be wrong based on particulars or bad assumptions I made, bugs in my code, etc.)

[MindyMcCready]

The reason I like Calendar so much in this spot is because I see it as +4: dyes + silk + incense + silk:

Ok. I missed the incense and counted the silk as 1 happy. But we'd probably be able to turn that into +4 happy as you say so definately better than Monarchy.

[WilliamLP]

Ok. I missed the incense and counted the silk as 1 happy. But we'd probably be able to turn that into +4 happy as you say so definately better than Monarchy.

The resource icon probably got cut off making one of those stitched images. But yeah, I see the incense as a key resource, and it's not a given that Ichabod doesn't try take it with one of his next couple of cities. Speaking of which, Darrell played a turn again so there probably isn't dissension in the ranks after all. And it's a little surprising to me that they don't have a third city yet on turn 42 - that's what Joao is supposed to do, isn't it?

[Ceiliazul]

wow scput survived that pickle? lucky duck! i suppose that means at least one barb warrior survived as well?

keep up the good work!

[WilliamLP]

Turn 43:




The barb warrior approached our scout to the east who miraculously seems to be making it out alive. I think only one barb warrior could have survived the hut affair, and it was a wounded one so that's why I surmised it killed MYKI's warrior.

Darrell's scout is going around the south of our capital. Honestly if he declares just to walk through the cow and speed up his path by a turn I probably wouldn't freak out. He can't stand on the cow or he'll just get killed by a warrior. It would be a strong signal if he takes the extra turn and just moves 1E onto the forest.

Our second scout is going to go around and look at the NW, similar to what his scout is doing to us.

I think their next move will be to settle for the ivory, since they need happiness as badly as we do.

With the growth to size 5 in the capital and improving the cow, we're working 6 resource tiles for a high inflection point in demos:




3 off the world lead in food, 2 off in hammers. Nothing but skilled settler wandering, baby.




They built a monument in their second city a few turns ago. Still better for us than an axe!




Our power graphs are quite parallel. We have the same techs except they have Myst. We both have 3 warriors. Their empire grew to 6 pop a few turns before we did. We have a lot of hut gold that will eventually manifest by speeding tech up.