[Spoilers] Victoria of Korea - Mardoc and SevenSpirits

[Mardoc]

Alright, here's a first draft at a dotmap. I'm not really happy with it, it feels like I'm optimizing each city, but not the overall land; I end up with an annoying combination of overlap and wasted tiles. The north is clearly more lush, especially the blue, yellow, and red sites, so that's where I think we ought to go next. Probably in that order - blue, yellow, red. I'm happier with what I've done in the north, as well, although I'm pretty sure it can be improved.

It might be worth moving blue dot north or northeast; N-NE could also grab the fish, at the expense of none of the resources being first ring. On the other hand, we ought to have our settler for blue dot next turn, and we certainly don't have a missionary to go with him, so I'm back to agreeing with Seven that the stone makes sense as the city tile. (should we consider Stonehenge for the great prophet points?)

Purple is a dyes-claiming site; dyes are just to the west of the screenshot within the BFC, along with a wheat.

In the south, none of the cities makes any sense to me. They're each individually good, but I throw away a lot of grass tiles and a lot of coastline. We ought to be able to get in at least one more city to the east, as well, even without it claiming any resources.

Finally, I didn't incorporate this into the dotmap because I couldn't stitch it well, but we ought to be able to fit at least one more good site in the northeast from the info GES gave us. My first thought is where his scout is standing, or 1 N of that spot. Our final decision on the stone site ought to affect what makes sense there.

Anyway, that's a first thought. Hopefully seeing everything in one place makes it easier for you two to tell me what I'm doing wrong here

[Hesmyrr]

Quickly look it over and couldn't figure out how you can grab all the tiles without sacrificing any of the resources, so it looks good. Also I am guessing two of your filler cities will be placed on 5E to the Alert and 1E 5S to the green dot, in which case juggling around the city placement unnecessarily would restrict the amount of hills available for those hypothetical filler cities.

[novice]

It might be worth moving blue dot north or northeast; N-NE could also grab the fish, at the expense of none of the resources being first ring. On the other hand, we ought to have our settler for blue dot next turn, and we certainly don't have a missionary to go with him, so I'm back to agreeing with Seven that the stone makes sense as the city tile. (should we consider Stonehenge for the great prophet points?)

I would consider SH for the border pops.

Is there seafood at the river mouth east of Alert?

[SevenSpirits]

Played the turn, whipped a granary (from 20/40) in Blackwood and the Settler in Alert. We'd better get our second city site chosen by next turn!

Here is my inclination - first the immediate cities (northwest one first):



Adding in the other good cities...



which gets us all the good resources except a plains cow and a crab. Then the fillers...



with the 5 lost tiles X'd out. What do you think, did I aim for too many cities?

I think the trickiest area (and the one we disagreed with most significantly... the other stuff is relatively arbitrary) is the floodplains area. In particular, the next city. The advantages of my placement are:
- Plains hill plant.
- Can immediately borrow the wheat to bootstrap up.
- Fits in with the rest of my FP area dotmap efficiently.
The disadvantages:
- Claims fewer flood plains immediately (3 instead of 5). The other two have to wait for a later city.
- Doesn't grab the gold.

I think the super-fast start my suggestion gets may make up for the disadvantages. Keep in mind, every 6 city-turns we can save nets us, for example, a settler! (grow x4, settler, whip) Thoughts on that?

If 1N is better, it looks like my dotmap still works, though that's not to say it would be as good as something else. For exampe, the way I placed the FP cities was meant to minimize unhealth problems (putting the main one both coastal and by a lake), but maybe that's dumb.

To be honest, I usually just play city placement by ear, trying to maximize short-term gain. So please take my suggestions with a grain of salt.

[Mardoc]

I hate to give up the plains hill city tile. But I also hate to leave a gold tile unworked for so long! I think it's worth moving 1N for that. Keep in mind, one of the big advantages to a plains hill start is that your first worker is started earlier - that doesn't really apply for city 3 or 4; we ought to be able to get a mine on that hill pretty quickly anyway, or for that matter, build with chops and whips.

The biggest problem I see, however, with a city stealing Blackwood's wheat, is that Blackwood has no other food source to replace it with, at least until we turn the deer back into a camp. So we'd just be shifting our growth around, not increasing it. I'd rather keep the wheat with Blackwood, where it'll be going into a granary.

Moving that city 1 N, I think I would leave the rest of the floodplains area the same as what you have, but what I would change is the priority in the NE - I'd bump the cow-cow-sheep site up and the gold-corn-sheep to filler status, since all three of its resources would primarily belong to other cities.

I like your layout in the south much better than what I had to start with. Although of course these cities will probably be last, at least after Iron Working.

I think my priority would be the FP-gold, then Stone, then Clams, Crabs, Fish-Cow. After that, it depends on our tech position. Stonehenge still hasn't been taken by anyone, though, I believe; it might be worth doing the Stone city first and trying for the Henge. Maybe we should ask around on that too? I would be happy to have an early Great Prophet and not to have to worry about spreading Hinduism for culture.

Finally, some of the filler cities should probably wait until we've claimed some railroad cities, too - especially the ones that claim no resources. I don't think you've put in too many cities, actually, although we'll have to reevaluate as we see maintenance costs. But, for instance, the plains filler to the west of Blackwood is clearly inferior to a wheat/happy/coast site out on the rails.

In general, my problem is the opposite of yours - I tend to site my cities for performing excellently once they're size 20, but not necessarily to get off the ground quickly. Hopefully we'll compromise at the sweet spot.

[SevenSpirits]

First, a bit of micro: it pains me to say it but I think we should camp the deer right now, though we have just finished the mine on that tile. The camp is not insignificantly better, and a +2f/-2h improvement has about the same value as a farm (+1f) while being quicker, and taking advantage of the worker's current position. So I think our worker should do that, then put one turn into a cottage while walking to the horse, then build the pasture.

Now, about that northern city: I still think the plains hill is the right place. I'll try to convince you.

1) Sharing the wheat tile is not just stealing it from another city. Blackwood will soon be in the following cycle: 4 turns of growth, 1 turn of building a worker or settler, 1 turn of whip followed by finishing the the worker/settler. During those last 2 turns, the wheat farm has little value. It's adding hammers to the thing we are building while growing (which for a while will be the library) which is really pretty unimportant. And since growth is stopped, the value of the food surplus (i.e. 4 food from the wheat tile) is not even being doubled by the granary!

As it happens, Blackwood will hit size 4 right when we found city #3 (if we found it on the plains hill). So our new city would immediately save two turns of development, by growing at +6 instead of +3. And the ability to never be wasting that food in the future, by always assigning it to a growing city, is quite valuable.

2) The benefits we gain by settling on the plains hill are not insignificant. First, it speeds up the granary by a turn, which effectively speeds up everything the city does by a turn. (If we settle on the hill, after growing in 3, we work some forests at size 2 for 3 turns, and can then whip the granary just in time to borrow the wheat again.) Without the extra hammer, this would take at least one more turn, plus we wouldn't get full use out of the wheat.

The other benefit we get is having a river grassland instead of a river plains hill. Plus a forest, plus you can basically count that tile as having a free hammer (since we'll still have the one from the plains hill). That is not quite as good as a gold, but it's pretty good! (Whereas a plains hill is not very good, even mined.)

3) We can still settle the gold really soon! The site that gets it and the sheep, and borrows the corn, is also quite good. And we're popping out settlers pretty fast. In fact, we may not even delay getting the gold by much, since it needs a border pop, and we probably can't afford to prioritize that over getting the next few cities. So we'd be relying on the random religion spread chance, which would be 1.1% per turn.

4) As I noted earlier, we are saving a turn of settler movement too, and possibly some maintenance. All in all, that city will be up and pumping workers/settlers at least 4 turns faster. That is 2/3 of a settler which can take the sheep + gold.

In reply to novice: I doubt we can get Stonehenge. We haven't been playing to get it; anyone else wanting it would be able to land it easily over us. I do think we should get Organized Religion to help with border popping though, perhaps after Math. In terms of wonders, I think we should try for the Hanging Gardens.

[Mardoc]

Camp it is. That'll help alleviate your health worries with our floodplains cities, too.

Ok, you've convinced me - mostly with pointing out that the wheat doesn't do Blackwood a lot of good in the turns of the cycle where the whip comes out. The fact that we can't spare production for monasteries or monuments is a strong point, as well.

I would still prioritize the pigs, clams and crabs sites above the gold-cow, though, in our order - if we're sacrificing commerce for REX, we should push the slider all the way over! And if we put the dye site up there in our priority list, we can use that as our excuse to finally build a road to the rails (and open borders with someone or ones). With three cities whipping out settlers, we ought to manage a really good rate, that's true. In fact, the biggest slowdown is going to be in remembering to not neglect workers.

Now, what do you think of this as a tech path? (finish AH) -> Math -> Alphabet -> Currency -> Monotheism -> Calender -> Iron Working -> Construction. My thinking here is that we need to pay for REXing, and then we want to unlock the rest of our resources and jungle sites, capped off by making Hwacha available to defend it all. I'm not sure what makes sense as our next 'while regrowing' build as the libraries complete - I think I'd lean toward Missionaries > Temples > Markets, depending on how our expenses are looking and if we get lucky with some natural spread. Which might be an argument for pushing Monotheism earlier in the list.

It gives up entirely on wonders, though. I don't usually go for Hanging Gardens - what's the required tech for that, and what's a good spot in terms of # of cities? Does whipping away the free population pay for itself?

Finally, a small request - any time you put 1 turn into an improvement, please mark the site with a sign, so I don't waste the progress accidentally.

[SevenSpirits]

The main thing I disagree with there is Alphabet. It's still quite expensive this early on, and with no tech trading and no spies, it doesn't actually do anything. We should just skip it for now. Some other points:
- Calendar requires Fishing + Sailing. Also, we will need Fishing anyway.
- Monotheism requires Masonry.
- Metal Casting would be nice too (for Forges that also give +3 happiness). That might be better than Iron Working + Calendar, actually.
- A bit longer-term, CoL -> Civil Service would also be nice (Bureaucracy, mostly.)

So for now I would say: AH - Math - Masonry - Mono - ???

Hanging Gardens needs Math (and Masonry + Stone to be more efficient). And we have to make an aqueduct first. I'm not sure when we want to get it, I don't usually take it either, but yes, we would most likely be making a net hammer profit. The aqueduct is 67h, the gardens are twice that again but half-off from stone, so total of 134. We only need 7 cities before whipping away all those people produces more than that. (Plus, it gives health and culture and great engineer points.)

Good point about improvements, let's definitely do that. I think the only one so far is wasted - a cottage turn on the horse.

[SevenSpirits]

OK, played turn 35, started the camp (), and moved the settler towards our third city site.

Suggestions for the third city name, Mardoc or anyone else? (Probably looking for a bridge term starting with "C".)

[Mardoc]

Hmm - we could go with Convention, Contract, or Crossruff - I think I'd lean toward Contract for this one. Convention is a tad similar to Blackwood, afterall, and we did negotiate on the position for this one...

I like the idea of Hanging Gardens - that doesn't cost as much as I thought it would. Seems like the top two choices for where to build it would be either up in the floodplains since we'd want an aqueduct there eventually anyway, or else in the stone city. We've got 4 techs to get first, though, so no rush to decide.

And it's sadly clear to me that I don't know the civ tech tree as well as I thought, if I left off that many prerequisites. I had been thinking of Alphabet as the 20% bonus to Currency, but you're right, when it's barely worth having in itself (would let us track techs, but...), it's not worth getting just for the discount elsewhere.