[SPOILERS - PBEM16] scooter's thread

[scooter]

It's looking like there's a good chance that we'll get in two turns today instead of just one (fingers crossed!) so I'll just drop in a quick screenshot of my scouting, as I'm basically just seeing more jungle:

[scooter]

.

[scooter]

Back to the game. Borders popped at EoT:




My scout is still stuck in the jungle, but at least I can 2-move next turn. My goal with him is to quickly make contact with other civs, so he's not necessarily in a hurry to defog directly around my capital, since I already know the area where I'll found next. Here's the demos:

[scooter]

Well the save is moving again, so I moved my scout... and:



Green borders! Those would belong to Dazedroyalty. Now, I should note that we technically haven't met in-game yet even though I can see his borders (see red circle in lower-right corner). Does this mean I have to wait until I move tomorrow to contact him since we technically have not yet met in-game? I'm just going to assume yes and wait on contacting him, since it's not particularly important that I contact him tonight instead of tomorrow night.

Someone else apparently did not go worker first:



It's one of the T0 settling people, so my rough guess is mostly-harmless as he starts with a scout if I'm remember correctly... Even if I'm not though, I just don't care enough to check that, so not a big deal at the moment. Not like I'm going to be choking someone with my scout anytime soon.


All in all, I'm fairly happy to see Dazed's border first. Honestly, if it was Krill's border, I might purposely move away to prevent contact for awhile... Or loop around the capital to mislead him as to where I came from. Now I'll have to make sure Dazed doesn't have any fancy plans of a Bowman choke or anything like that.

[scooter]

I marched my scout up towards Dazed's borders to make contact:



I then sent him off a quick message to say hello:

Dazed,

Well, we have officially met in game, so I figured I'd send you off a message to say hello. My scout actually spied your border last turn, but I wasn't close enough for it to actually trigger the meeting, so I waited until today when we have technically met in-game.

You are the first person I've met thus far. Have you been able to meet anyone yet?

scooter

Hopefully we'll get off to a good start there. We are very close together actually, here's a quick look at that:



It might be difficult to see what's in the red circles, but that is in fact coastline... Or perhaps it could theoretically be lakes, but it sure looks like coast... Also, Fishing came in at the end of last turn, so I swapped from warrior to WB. The warrior was 1T from completing, so he can finish anytime I feel like it. I have been working the 3/0/1 corn for +3 growth naturally, but the food box was at 12/14... So I decided to adjust the tiles to get an extra hammer towards the work boat:



This got me to size 2 anyways, but I figured the 1 food loss would easily be made up for if it meant I end up getting to a work boat slightly faster. I'm curious for those who are more experienced than I - do you think this move was worth it? I'd say no if the corn was improved, but it's not. It shouldn't be spoiler info now since it's done and the turn is passed on, but I'm curious for future reference if that was worth it or not. Seemed to me like trading 1F for 1H is worth it when it's a work boat and doesn't cost a pop growth.

[SevenSpirits]

This got me to size 2 anyways, but I figured the 1 food loss would easily be made up for if it meant I end up getting to a work boat slightly faster. I'm curious for those who are more experienced than I - do you think this move was worth it? I'd say no if the corn was improved, but it's not. It shouldn't be spoiler info now since it's done and the turn is passed on, but I'm curious for future reference if that was worth it or not. Seemed to me like trading 1F for 1H is worth it when it's a work boat and doesn't cost a pop growth.

The question is always: does it speed the work boat up? In this case, as far as I can tell the answer is no. WB is 20h. After you grow you can make at most 5h per turn. (OK fine, you could make 6 one turn, and starve down to size 1, whatever.) So in fact whether you put 2h or 3h into the workboat this turn is fairly irrelevant. It's going to take at least 4 more turns anyway. But it doesn't hurt, because you are going to work a forest at least once anyway to get the WB that quickly. It's not important whether it's now or later.

Here's the next question: was it valuable to delay the warrior? We already know you can get 20h in four turns after growing, no matter what you do before you grow. So you could have worked the corn and finished the warrior, if you wanted. Four turns later you would have a work boat and be at 5/16 food. (1 extra food when you grow, and 1 food per turn after.) And now you are in the unfortunate situation of needing 3 turns to reach 11 food because you can only net 5 food per turn!

Your choice to delay the warrior allows you to work the forest a few times less, and instead work the corn that many times. (However many still gets you to 20h on the workboat in time.) This extra food will allow you to grow to size 3 one turn sooner, which is probably worth 1h. And you just made a trade of -2h, +2f, +2c, I believe, so net:
-1h
-5 warrior turns
+2f
+2c

Uh... that's probably good, right?

One other possible factor, which does not affect the quality of your choice in this particular case, is what tiles you have available. In general, if you have the option of working a 3/0/1 tiles half the time, and a 1/2/0 tile half the time, that is strictly better than working a 2/1/0 forest. But in this case you have a shortage of 1/2/0 tiles; you are already using them as much as possible, so it's not possible to replace the 2/1/0 tile in that manner.

[scooter]

Your choice to delay the warrior allows you to work the forest a few times less, and instead work the corn that many times. (However many still gets you to 20h on the workboat in time.)

Thanks SevenSpirits. I admit I'm not totally understanding the warrior vs workboat thing - in particular the underlined portion. My thinking on delaying the warrior was that it nets out to getting the WB out one turn sooner, which means I grow to a new size sooner, which means my worker will come out sooner, which means my corn will be farmed sooner, etc etc. Am I mistaken? I admit I didn't sim it out (I rarely do sims), but it was just an approximation in my head.

[SevenSpirits]

Thanks SevenSpirits. I admit I'm not totally understanding the warrior vs workboat thing - in particular the underlined portion. My thinking on delaying the warrior was that it nets out to getting the WB out one turn sooner, which means I grow to a new size sooner, which means my worker will come out sooner, which means my corn will be farmed sooner, etc etc. Am I mistaken? I admit I didn't sim it out (I rarely do sims), but it was just an approximation in my head.

So the main point is that it doesn't actually get the workboat out sooner - since the fastest you can make the workboat is 5h/turn, you would need to save a full 5h to speed it up a turn. And you have no other way to squeeze out hammers, other than 2h by not finishing the warrior, and 1h by trading a food for it.

However, you CAN still grow a turn sooner: by not finishing the warrior, the number of hammers you need to produce before you finish the workboat go down by 2. That means that compared to finishing the warrior, you can work the corn twice over a forest, and that two extra food turns out to be enough to grow a turn faster.

[scooter]

Dazed replied:

Scooter,

Greetings from the Rockin' 80s where we've got music playing all the time! If only you had sent a message yesterday I would have invited you to the Police concert last night, but sadly you've missed it. Maybe next time they are in town you can catch a show.

I have not met anyone else yet, you're the first. Give me call anytime you want to hang out at the record store! I'll let you know when I meet anyone else.

Do you have any thoughts on the map? You must be pretty close to have found me already. I assume you just followed the sound of great music to get here. My warrior started in a awkward position between my capital and a the coast and went south finding more coast so he's essentially still right next to my capital, Every Breath You Take, so I have basically no information yet. Are you W, NW, N, or NE of me?

Here's to a long and mutually beneficial relationship!

Dazedroyalty

I sent him a quick reply:

Dazed,

Too bad I missed it... Does this mean you've already landed the free Great Artist that comes with music?? That would explain why I found your borders so quickly - your culture must be overwhelming!

As shocking as it may sound, no I don't have many thoughts about the map yet... Considering how much time I dumped into it trying to figure out the PBEM14 map, I haven't gotten around to figuring this one out quite yet. You know me well enough though - I'll figure it out soon enough :P.

I came from the north... We are actually quite close together it seems. I'm slightly confused as to why we are so close together, only because this map is quite large in terms of land tiles... Odd.

scooter

Now here's where things get somewhat humorous... At least if I'm understanding what just happened properly. Dazed sent me that message at 9:16PM. I saw it at about 9:19PM, and started replying immediately. I was pretty much done with the last paragraph ('I came from the north') when at 9:22PM, Dazed sends me a chat messsage asaking what direction I'm coming from. Kind of odd since 6 whole minutes have passed since his email to me - I mean it's not like I was holding out on him for a day - it was 6 minutes . So this chat ensued:

9:22 PM
dazedroyalty: so what direction are you coming from in pbem?
scooter: actually i was almost done responding
9:23 PM
so hang on about 30 more seconds

<email sent>

9:24 PM
dazedroyalty: what did we decide about screen shot trades in this game?
i can't remember
scooter: actually i cant either... i'll play the duel turn and then i'll check the tech issues thread
or rather the mod pbem thread, as discussion was there
i dont even remember if we talked about it
9:25 PM
dazedroyalty: yeah
i don't either
anyways, baby duty calls so I won't respond to email or play any more turns tonight

should get better soon!
scooter: gotcha, no problem... enjoy!
dazedroyalty: i do my best

Typical chat - we chat frequently (we play a PBEM on the side) so it actually is not that unusual... Then this sequence happened and I'm starting to wonder if he was freaking out:

dazedroyalty:hey, as a freebie before I leave
you'll want to send your warrior W or E
because south is just my capital
and then coast
aight now I'm out
scooter: er
i start with a scout :P
dazedroyalty: oh
scooter: but yeah, i'll probably head in a different direction
dazedroyalty: haha
never mind

Either I'm reading too much into things or Dazed has a sliiiight panic moment there . I'll have to ask him about it later.

[scooter]

So the main point is that it doesn't actually get the workboat out sooner - since the fastest you can make the workboat is 5h/turn, you would need to save a full 5h to speed it up a turn. And you have no other way to squeeze out hammers, other than 2h by not finishing the warrior, and 1h by trading a food for it.

However, you CAN still grow a turn sooner: by not finishing the warrior, the number of hammers you need to produce before you finish the workboat go down by 2. That means that compared to finishing the warrior, you can work the corn twice over a forest, and that two extra food turns out to be enough to grow a turn faster.

Okay that makes perfect sense. If I've finally understood you - the tile micro was more or less irrelevant, however the warrior-WB swap was relevant... And I basically traded 1H and some warrior use in exchange for hitting size 3 1T quicker. So from a sheer growth perspective, it was a slight win, however the gains are small and are not realized until after the WB is completed, rather than before. Correct?