True, but just to answer Zed's question a little more fully:
(December 17th, 2021, 18:36)Zed-F Wrote: Could you put a turn into the warrior then swap to scout so that your vision gives you enough advance notice to get the warrior out?
You can indeed do this if you have a spare turn before the scout starts to decay. That is: If you're ready to start your Scout, but the hammer decay counter hasn't run out yet, you can put a turn into a warrior (so the hammer decay on the Scout counts down one more) then resume the Scout and complete it, then resume the Warrior. In this case, while you're building the Scout, the Warrior will start its own hammer decay counter, but a Scout is a quick build, and the counter won't run out before the Scout is finished (this assumes you're planning to build the Warrior next anyway....) This would delay the Scout by a turn though, and therefore also delay the information about the map that the Scout would provide.
Then the question would be how many hammers you have to put into a Warrior to be able to complete it in time to defend the city if you don't resume it until you actually see a Warrior on the border. If one turn of hammers isn't enough, you're delaying the Scout (and map knowledge) by two turns even if you have two or more turns of Scout hammer decay to spare. So the question would become: Is the chance that superdeath is attempting a warrior rush worth delaying all the second scout's knowledge by two turns?
This game is like seeing a train coming at you from a mile away and there's nothing you can do to stop it. But if you get off the tracks then everyone is mad at you for ruining the train conductor's day.
Power shows AH and warrior finished for Cornflakes at end of 16, timed with his growth to 2 (remember, he was working oasis over banana a bit). Settler next for him, due in 9 turns (4 turns with wheat+banana, then 5 turns with wheat+hill pig). Assuming his horse is similarly placed as ours...
One turn for moving the settler. I don't think he has enough worker turns to lay down roads for same-turn settling, so he'll have to just lay down the roads towards the city for hooking up his horse. Expect horse to be pastured t30. I think there's enough time for him to get the 3 needed roads by then, but he could lose a turn or two depending on terrain.
t40 looks pretty accurate for a war chariot showing up at a door. Btw, for us to get Wheel + Mining + BW the timing is somewhere around t43. And that doesn't count actually connecting the copper or making the counter-unit. So it's Wheel next because we're going to have to defend with our own chariots. Do we go archery next even?
There isn't much for me to say about the overarching situation: I think your response is easily understandable and it is extremely poor that games that we want to last us a couple of months and provide interesting decisions essentially boil down to: "Rush BW or you die, doesn't matter if it helps economically".
Personally, I think the horse location reinforces the situation that there are no good choices (at least now, I'd argue ever but I imagine Tarkeel would not agree).
Archers in hill cities defend at 6 without fort or culture, so realistically we could plant 1N of the horse, overlap the unpillageable clam and have a decent chance of surviving for a few turns. But both cities can be forked and archers v. WC just die on offence. That would mean being pillaged into (or rather, kept in) the stone age and having to keep on logging in, so I would suggest that this is a bad choice (To all readers: I do not care if you think this is bad sportsmanship, but that is a discussion surrounding the social contract of these games).
Settling on the horse means archer defends at 4.5 without fort or culture, or 5.1 with culture. Again, why even bother: if Cornflakes could be baited into the initial attack and lost, it is a bad second city and it does not change the situation as archers still need to be pumped out (also, capital can't whip archers at this point and is not that hammer rich.
Attacking WC means needing a 2v1 advantage to have a chance, promotions are irrelevant, again, the problem is hammers to defend.
You know what is the better play? Try and chariot rush Cornflakes. It is the only way to force him to keep the WC away from us. It won't work, but it's in interesting perspective.
The other possibility is to just rush BW now, skip Wheel until after is needed (probably is, but theoretically Sailing might be enough, or maybe nothing is needed), settle on copper and just try to upgrade a warrior.
Trying to be optimistic (or perhaps more accurately, roleplaying being optimistic): Cornflakes has only just put EP onto us? That means he may not realise we went AH second and that gives him a window. Even when he does invest the EP against us, he may not realise what we did until it is too late (I suggest rounding EP to 43 on him and then just leave it). He is likely to have met other players and may consider the terrain near them more valuable or them a greater threat (he'd just be wrong on that one). He might view his horse as in an awful location for a second city (ours is compared to a pig/fp location). His horse could be pointed away from us. He might not even have found his horse as he sent his scout straight toward us and has only just finished a warrior, leaving him with 2 units and no workerboat, right?
I would therefore suggest that playing the paper tiger is the correct strategy both for the best outcome in game, and also for limiting time wastage on a lost game with the quickest possible death if he does come knocking. In that instance, it would be interesting to see Boudicca played from an economic advantage (although I can see the distatseful looks on some lurkers faces that this is little different than either throwing the game, or intentionally helping an opponent to your own detriment). But if he does not come knocking by T50 with WC, it's a solid base to work from.
Something else to consider: I've said it before, but it may be worth considering growth to size 6 and delaying the settler to BW is in around T34? Can then whip everything you need ie more workers to road faster. Simply working the 5 expected tiles at size 5 gives growth in 3 and a 3 turn warrior, for an eot34 settler.
I'm not so clear on Mining-BW next. It seems like a large gamble that we find copper on the coast or along a river. But perhaps that's all we can hope for. I don't know, i've got to drive to the coast in about 20 minutes and so I really don't know when I'll be able to get in and switch. I guess I'll switch it now because it's less commital to go Mining this turn than it is to go Wheel.
Miguelito, I'm not convinced this map follows the players votes. The map that was asked for was so that people would not be rushed and promoted conflict around the classical era. I think someone else put out a 12-tile minimum between capitals because of how close 62 was and how that made that game difficult to play. That we get a map with exactly 12 tiles between capitals (guessing Cornflakes is the same situation to our west) feels a bit like the lawyers went to town on our votes and the spirit of what was asked for was ignored. It wasn't explicitly said, but I'm pretty sure nobody wanted a map where someone could have their game over because they decided to tech AH on turn 8 to hook up food instead of Mining because their neighbor could rush them.
Krill's already made good points on the root issue being one of game balance. I think if the mod continues to be as is then mapmakers really need to be careful about putting pasture-food in the capital as that makes AH suddenly mandatory. AH as a mandatory tech is problematic because it is tied to a military unit that effectively halves the distance between capitals. But then it also pushes civs away from the tech needed to counter the chariot. And tying this all together is the low commerce/high tech costs.
I don't know what Tarkeel expected us to do with this start. Seems pretty clear that Egypt was a winner when making it, but players didn't know that going into the picking process. IMO the capitals should have been about 50% farther apart and then lower the overall quality of land to make up for there being more tiles. If you want to give players a slow start then don't make the map so lush as you just make the starting tech differences stand out more.
Also, desert gold is not the same as grassland silver.
Game mechanics question for the lurkers (I don't know the answer to this).
If a player has BW and Hunting, settles their second city on copper, has no trade route from the second city to the capital, and has enough gold, can they upgrade the warrior to a spear?
(December 18th, 2021, 12:40)pindicator Wrote: Paper tiger is the best idea I think there is.
I'm not so clear on Mining-BW next. It seems like a large gamble that we find copper on the coast or along a river. But perhaps that's all we can hope for. I don't know, i've got to drive to the coast in about 20 minutes and so I really don't know when I'll be able to get in and switch. I guess I'll switch it now because it's less commital to go Mining this turn than it is to go Wheel.
Miguelito, I'm not convinced this map follows the players votes. The map that was asked for was so that people would not be rushed and promoted conflict around the classical era. I think someone else put out a 12-tile minimum between capitals because of how close 62 was and how that made that game difficult to play. That we get a map with exactly 12 tiles between capitals (guessing Cornflakes is the same situation to our west) feels a bit like the lawyers went to town on our votes and the spirit of what was asked for was ignored. It wasn't explicitly said, but I'm pretty sure nobody wanted a map where someone could have their game over because they decided to tech AH on turn 8 to hook up food instead of Mining because their neighbor could rush them.
Krill's already made good points on the root issue being one of game balance. I think if the mod continues to be as is then mapmakers really need to be careful about putting pasture-food in the capital as that makes AH suddenly mandatory. AH as a mandatory tech is problematic because it is tied to a military unit that effectively halves the distance between capitals. But then it also pushes civs away from the tech needed to counter the chariot. And tying this all together is the low commerce/high tech costs.
I don't know what Tarkeel expected us to do with this start. Seems pretty clear that Egypt was a winner when making it, but players didn't know that going into the picking process. IMO the capitals should have been about 50% farther apart and then lower the overall quality of land to make up for there being more tiles. If you want to give players a slow start then don't make the map so lush as you just make the starting tech differences stand out more.
Also, desert gold is not the same as grassland silver.
The tl;dr answer is: Play Classical era starts.
The long answer for the map maker is: No triple food tech starts, no AH food starts, higher commerce starts compared to foodhammer productivity (note: giving a 4 yield tile to work lowers the comparative rate of commerce accumulation, so this is actually a pretty bad situation but I never thought of it this way before as 4 yield starts are rare).
Long answer for game balance ie to a modder: Increase tech cost to hook horses, nerf WC, reduce tech cost to hook starting food resources, make archers cheaper in beaker cost (literally make Archery cheaper).
Long answer for players: Don't play poorly balanced games?
Problem with putting players further away is making the game bigger, and then everyone moans about late game number of cities. There is not a solution with Civ 4's economic model. This game is essentially playing base BtS, at least in this scenario.
