[Spoilers] PBEM 63 - Ichabod's Thread, feat. a big crew

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

hey want some help simming? If you mail me the sim I will cast a fresh pair of eyes over it see if there is anything else. Sorry been a bit tied up recently

Also are you 100% sure that you will only settle in place? That plains hill to NNE could be hiding some beautiful tiles... But a SIP does look really powerful

[Gaspar]

Sumeria is great, one of the best civs, but I don't think you can take Agriculture with this setup. Serdoa's simming will surely give you more than my half-cocked, ad hoc analysis but I think Mining/Wheel is a pretty good tech set here.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Ok Ichabod, done a quick run through with mali. (I enjoy a good sim) Tech order fishing - agri - BW - (whatever, probably pottery)

SIP, build workboat with plains forest, builds eot6. then overflow into worker, builds eot14 using the nets. Build warrior builds eot20, reaching size 4 then settler out eot24. Worker farms the corn, then moves to the forest and chops it, then mines the silver. Silver finishes mining eot 24.

Does that seem strong to you? I think that is pretty good. Options would be to go slavery and whip instead but I think staying larger until the settler is out is more powerful, then the cap can be whipped down once the new city is perhaps sharing a resource tile.

Going worker first I agree that your option is best of chopping the eastern forest after farming. It means a size 3 cap settler eot 22 that I can get, although the silver is up 2turns sooner, but no warrior. Depends whether you want a larger cap to whip something out of quickly or not, and how much risk you wanna play with with the first set. (I didn't bother elaborating on that one as you seem to have got that yourself) If you are gonna 1 pop whip a granary next then this is better, or if you want to go worker 2 pop whip overflow into granary then the above is probably better.

I can't get anything interesting to write home about with sumeria as yet

EDIT actually going with a warrior after with the settler first plan with a second chop the settler can come out eot24. Those 2 turn chops are powerful!

[Serdoa]

Well, it is kinda akward to re-do my Excel-tables, trying to input what has changed while I myself don't work with Excel but Open Office now and some of the formulas not working *sigh* Anyhow, what Ichabod expected already is the same that I found: Going for a religion early (and especially leveraging that into Oracle) is not really making much sense. We have so many competing priorities here (silver mine, workboat, cottages) and they all do have one thing in common: They give us commerce. Getting those down and than leveraging the commerce into religion makes much more sense than the other way round. Especially as the movement of the worker is the most annoying I think I've seen like ever. You want to mine the grass hill after the corn for the hammers to get the workboat faster, but doing so takes you even further away from the silver, that you also want to improve. Improving the silver instead means being extremely slow to actually get the workboat done, as you move for 2 turns just around before you start the mine. Most obvious is of course Corn into chopped forest into silver. But that means BW early.

So yeah, Mali is better from a start perspective (who'd guess). Of course, Sumeria is better imo from a long-term perspective. Might be worth it to take them and ignore Meditation anyhow. And start workboat -> worker, while researching Fishing, Mining, BW. My first sims both yielded a settler by T25 (edit: T24 actually, I started counting by 1 instead of 0...) while having a worker, workboat and warrior done as well. That does not seem very fast in any case, but that's because the workboat is simply delaying everything. If fish wasn't such a good tile, I would ignore it at the start. Well, maybe I should actually try that.

edit: Ahhh, fuck. Only realized now that my table does not anymore automatically update depending on game-speed how much food you need. Seems another formula that broke. So disregard the above in terms of timing, that should be doable quicker actually as I was counting normal speed growth times...

[Serdoa]

Tried it with worker -> start warrior -> worker when you hit two -> finish warrior -> settler (still at 2) -> Granary. Finished it at T24 with the Granary being done. Settler T23. 2 Workers, 1 Warrior. 4 Chops. Corn, Silver improved. Tech was Agri -> BW -> Pottery -> Myst -> Medi (finished T25). Though the last 3 are interchangeable.

Also you can theoretically not do the 4th chop but instead start a road to the soon to be founded city. I don't think that would be good though. Obviously all that is with Mali. I don't think the difference to Sumeria should be big though. You can go Mining -> BW instead and that should easily finish in time for the first chop as well.

(And from a civ-strength perspective I would go with Sumeria, as the Ziggurat is certainly better than the Mint imo).

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Wow that sounds pretty nice there - perhaps skipping the workboat is the right play. It does need to be built at some point though - perhaps the speed here is compensated by not having the 5/0/2 tile in the next 5-10 turns?

[Serdoa]

Not only that, we are also smaller in comparison (size 2 instead of 4 I believe). The real positive imo is having two workers though, but it is feasible to whip the second one in from size 4 and as he is mostly chopping in my sim it is not really an advantage, or maybe only 2-3 worker turns I'd guess. Depends what we can do with the Granary that would be completed in my sim the turn after the settler (with Mali). That should allow us to grow pretty quickly to 4 while building the workboat and than getting the next settler whipped, overflowing into another worker.

Oh well, maybe I play around with it a little more later.

[Serdoa]

Ok, tried one with the assumption of Inca being the starting civ. Means Agri/Myst but also Terraces at Agriculture already, just for fun. I achieved 1 workboat, 2 workers, 1 settler, terrace at capital and 1 Warrior at EOT25. Revolted to Slavery, Corn, Fish improved. Meditation at EOT21. I think if you want to get an early religion, that is the way to go to ensure it, while still having a strong start.

It also seem the strongest I could achieve, simply by virtue of the Terrace. You probably can whip in another worker, overflowing into yet another worker and chop the 2nd settler somewhere around EOT33 or 34. Depends on chop availability, I didn't check for that.

Btw: I hope others do have the same dilemma we have. If someone can go straight worker and improve his resources while growing, he will easily outdo us. Having to sink 20 hammers into a workboat is just slowing us down, much more than having for example corn and a AH-resource would.

[Ichabod]

So, you suggest Inca, then, Serdoa? My weekend has been incredibly busy and I didn't have time to look at the game with more care. I defer to you in this pick, because I don't want to delay things any further. Last night I was thinking of suggesting Inca, since forgoing pottery for faster religion sounded like a thing that could work and I feel reassured to see you arrived at the same conclusion.

So, what do you think is best? Inca, Sumeria or Mali? If you don't want to make the decision, I'll think a bit more and pick whatever, but I think you are more prepared to make this decision.

[Serdoa]

That's a though call. Inca is strong (stronger than I thought tbh, as I believed Sevens change was pretty pointless) and it does play well with your interest in religion. It certainly is the pick that does combine all the competing priorities best. But having FIN means we want to go sooner than later for Pottery in any case. So while it does let us combine a few things together, we do trade a better UB for it.

Still, I would value it higher than Mali, simply because I think actually combining all those priorities is worth more than getting the Mint or the Skirmisher as no one will attack a city with Archers on a hill without catapults anyhow, and at that point it does not make much difference, you'll need more units.

Leaves the question of Sumeria or Inca. The UB of Sumeria is worth a bit more than the Mint imo. So it is a real trade-off, early game power for late-game goodness. I personally am of the belief that having a strong early game is the best setup for a strong late-game, but there is a case to be made that here we would trade a little bit of better early for much of a better late. That said, I don't see our opponents being late-game powerhouses either. And also the UB from Sumeria will just save us hammers most of the time while the commerce is an after-thought as we'd build Courthouses in any case, just a tad slower.

Having said all that, I'd like to make clear that I can't guarantee that my opening with Inca is that much better. I believe it does achieve more than the others, by virtue of whipping earlier and with less loss (due to Granary).

Conclusion: Yes, I would go with Inca. And if just for the fact to see how good or bad Sevens change really is.