( Spoilers ) The Holy Grail of Threads

[superdeath]

More dotmapping and potential city specializing while i wait.

I THINK we want to go double worker before settler to improve the capital/road/chop for the 2nd city all at the same time. One worker feels too little. Also really want to be non-stop pushing out settlers out of the capital so there's that.

[superdeath]

That scout ( i havent seen if the overflow from the workboat changes this ) also neatly completes the same turn that the capital grows to size 3, so thats nice.

[Charriu]

I love that screenshot, purely because it show so many BUG features.

[superdeath]

I love that screenshot, purely because it show so many BUG features.

For when i finally meet rome:

[Old Harry]

I did some simming, to figure out which way we should settle first. You won't believe the results!

East
Our base case assumption is that the grass hill between the corn and ivory is the best second city. In this version we have terraces up in all three cities and a settler out eot43. A tool Fintourist built a few years back rates it at 7 foodhammers over an arbitrary baseline (assuming I've used it properly). City 2 needs a road to hook it to the trade network (I'm surprised by this - I wonder if it's an artefact of the sandbox).



Near East
The drawback of settling on the hill is that we don't share resources with the capital, so the second city is a very slow starter. So I tried out settling closer - the city does launch much faster and with a terrace it only delays hooking the corn by about 15 turns, it also techs faster because maintenance at two cities is only 1gpt. It scores a surprising 132 foodhammers on the FT scale. This huge difference is likely to be because sharing food with the capital lets Near East speed development over the initial 10 turns, while settling Far East speeds development from 10-20 turns.



South
If we settle south first we have similar opportunities to share food and launch quickly. Unfortunately I skimped badly on workers in favour of settlers here and only built two terraces (it was late, okay?) so I don't think we'd end up exactly like this, but it's a decent comparison. On the FT scale it scores 133 foodhammers. I wonder if it'd do better settling the Near East as city 3?



North
I wasn't so happy with this version - it needs a workboat for city 2 that delays the second settler, but does let us do some food sharing to get the city off to a fast start. It scores 77 foodhammers above baseline.



So the surprising conclusion is that we can choose to settle south or near east first, depending on our greater strategic aims. And that south is probably best if we put city 3 on the Near East site.

I'm not sure yet what chopping pattern is going to be best for supporting the southern city, so let me know before you move the worker to chop.

[superdeath]

I think north could have been sped up by getting the northern clams hooked up first instead of the near-clams? Or im just really drowsy and out of my mind

[superdeath]

Scout took on a panther! and kicked its ass.. next turn it gets a promo


IF Rome doesn't settle for that double corn/wine area by the time we have 5-7 cities ill be really tempted.

That being said, i feel confident that we can get that jungle infested double banana and marble HILL city by the river as our border city with Rome.

[Old Harry]

Do you really want to plant aggressive cities against Rome just when it becomes the scariest civ in the game? Around t60 when he gets iron working I'd like GKC to think "superdeath is my favourite, I'd never attack him" or "superdeath is scary, I won't attack him". Pink dotting with a paper-thin military isn't going to achieve either of those.

Also it's a diplo game, which means figuring out how to get him to wreck someone else's game should be our first order of business!  

So actually I'm going to suggest that you make contact and explain you're heading to Alphabet and you presume he's going to Iron Working, so would he like to do some tech trading in return for a NAP to t90? You'll give him Alphabet (or something else like Writing, Sailing or some combination) in return for Iron Working (favourable beaker trade for him, does you no harm at all) and you don't mention borders. If he comes back wanting a border agreement then we'll have to think about that, but even then I wouldn't push too hard, getting him past his point of scariness, then hitting him with knights is our best shot in this game.

Looking at the land between Inca and Rome I'd expect GKC to settle for the corn on the plains hill as his second city, then NE of the second corn will follow soonish after. If you can nail a city in the river bend 1N of stone that's great - it's only 5 rows south of the capital when we're 13 rows apart so a totally reasonable border and a great city.

If you grab the banana/marble city before he gets there that'd be amazing, but actually I don't think it's worth much as a city until Calendar and Iron Working are in. And even then it only has one food (he'll settle first ring for the other banana and take it) and there's an awful lot of worker turns to turn that jungle into something useful, so I'd be trying to push your cities against whoever your northern neighbour is, onto islands and into the middle of the map before trying for that one.

[Old Harry]

Here's a micro plan for settling south.

The tech path is BW-wheel-pottery-AH-Writing. There's an event that gives you beakers for the tech you're currently researching, so I think we want to always have something selected (unless I've misunderstood how that works).

t21 worker to forest N of King Arthur
t22 BW finished, choose Wheel, scout ready, move E-NE, start worker, chop
t23 scout NE-?
t24 scout NEish?, Chop finishes
t25 scout NEish?, move workers to forests NE and 2E of KA, start settler
t26 Wheel finished choose Pottery, scout heads back to city 2, both workers chop
t27 scout SW-SW
t28 scout SW-SW, chops come in
t29 REVOLT TO SLAVERY, scout to forest SE of south city, settler to forest hill, start settler, mine river hill and move other worker to forest SE of KA
t30 chop, settler to city2
t31 settle city 2

[superdeath]

I like it.