[Spoilers!] Dave Versus Financial

[oledavy]

Well hot damn! The specialist economy got that much better thanks to the crap terrain and the food specials!

Here's to hoping someone else grows onto plains cottages and we just go and take them from him!

You can say that again. I couldn't have wished for a better map to run a specialist economy on: crappy land and nice food bonuses.

I mocked up a break-down of each city in paint earlier.

[SIZE="4"]Pindicator IV[/SIZE]



When I opened the t125 save, I stared at it for a long time, trying to decide whether to make the capital Gryphon or Pindicator IV. The Gryphon location had a higher possible food bonus (by stealing the wheat and lake tile) and four more riverside tiles for better cottaging. However, I decided to go with the default because Pindicator IV had the flood plains (for cottage + growth), and more hills, so we can get more mileage out of the bureaucracy hammer bonus.

As much as plains cottages suck, the synergy with bureaucracy cannot be ignored, so we'll be focusing on growing some around Pindicator IV. Long-term, want to grow it to size 18, working: Wheat, Clams, Copper, 2 Lakes, 2 FPCs, 2 PHMs, 3 Coast Tiles, 6 Plains Cottages. I'll probably end up skipping an academy here. With the poor cottage terrain, it just won't give the same pay-back as bulbing.

Working all the hammer tiles, I can get 22 base hpt out of the city, which isn't half bad. Most of the time though, it will probably we around 16 (Wheat, Copper, 2 PHM, City Center). Gryphon could use the production, so the third plain hill mine will probably be permanently shifted over there. Additionally, I probably will work the three coastal tiles before the dry plains cottages, as they have an immediate pay off with bureaucracy (+1 commerce) and sustain growth. With a plains cottages it take 6 turns to reach the payoff.

Short-Term Plan: Grow onto the food, mines, and a pair of FP cottages
Long-Term Plan: Work plains cottages and turn into a bureaucracy monster capital.

Random Notes: For the flood plains, I thought about farming vs. cottages for awhile, deciding on cottages since I need something to sustain my commerce and I'll have bureaucracy. That tile marked farm 1N2E of the city center is going to be farmed to spread irrigation to a grassland tile south of Gryphon.

[SIZE="4"]Gryphon[/SIZE]

Gryphon gave me a lot more trouble, figuring out what to do with it long-term. I briefly considering making it my globe drafting camp. And it could still be that later on if we want - the mine going back to Pindicator IV and the horses to a newly founded city. Here's what I came up with:

http://i1211.photobucket.com/albums/cc43...ryphon.png

(linked because photobucket is not behaving for me today)

The city can pretty much go any way we want it. It has a nice food bonus from the bananas and clams, a half decent 8 base hpt working the horses and the PHM, and three farmable grasslands, such that I can get it up to a +10 bonus as size 7 working all the aforementioned tiles (or +10 at size 5, losing a farm and the horses, for Globe drafting happiness). Additionally, we can steal the wheat and a lake tile to grow the city faster.

So, after the city is working all those tiles at size 7, we have 8 additional riverside and dry plains tiles to play with, in addition to some coast. We can cottage all of it and run an additional specialist, immediately grow to run five specialists, farm everything and then run specialists, or some hybrid of the approaches.

Short-Term Plan:???
Long-Term Plan:???

Me, I'm leaning towards running 5 specialists immediately, and capping the city at size 12. Why? because I just had an epiphany that I will explain in the next post.

Suggestions/Criticism welcome as always.

[oledavy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrqGjFNY7s0#t=00m44s

[SIZE="7"]STEP ONE: PRODUCE AN ARTIST[/SIZE]

Nicolae already posted on this awhile back:

Chopping WB, growing Gryphon to Size 3: Gets our artist on T14

Chopping WB, growing to Size 4: Gets our artist on T13, and let's us immediately 2-pop whip a worker from Gryphon

Your chopping WB, growing to Size 3: Artist on T14

Your chopping WB, growing to Size 4: Artist on T14, but let's us immediately 2-pop whip a worker from Gryphon

Playing with it myself, I liked growing Gryphon to Size 3 while chopping a workboat to completion, then improving the clams and running a pair of artists to produce the Great Artist on t139 (t14). We could produce it a turn earlier, but I doubt any one else will try to beat us to it. The non-philosophical civs are unable to do so, and considering Shoot and Nakor waited a turn to found their second city, I doubt they will be able to beat us to it either (though it occurs to me that they don't lose much by waiting an extra turn to settle since they have to spend a turn in anarchy). That would also mean giving up slavery for awhile if any of them did revolt into caste system to compete with me.

What I originally had in mind for Gryphon, while basically stagnated from running artists, was to chop out a pair of workers and whip a final one to completion on t139 when I revolt into slavery.

However, with my epiphany, I now have another idea in mind, and it's tied to:

[SIZE="7"]STEP TWO: BUILD THE GREAT LIBRARY[/SIZE]

The GL has a couple natural synergies to consider when placing it, in addition to just being a great build for a philosophical civ.

1. Build in an academy city for beaker boost
2. Build in National Epic city

The first one is a relative non-factor since the capital location is so miserable for cottages, however, I could still capitalize on the Great Library by building it in the same city as my eventual National Epic. Gryphon, with the capability to run five specialists at Size 12, is looking like a really good candidate already.

Additionally, the library is a pre-requisite for both the Great Library and the National Epic. So the city that builds the Great Library will have a head-start on getting the National Epic online for super-charged Great Person Production.

Note: FInding Marble would be awesome.

For a long time, I was weighing the pros and cons of building the Great Library in either Pindicator IV or Gryphon. Pindicator IV has great production, but Gryphon has an additional forest (4 vs. 3 after one is chopped at both for a worker and settler). Additionally, Gryphon will be my holy city and be able to build with the Organized Religion right off the bat. So, those four forest chops turn into 100 hammers, out of the 294 needed for a library (60) and the Great Library (234). The city will make 8 base hammers per turn, raised to 10 by the OR bonus, so that means I can finish the Great Library around t150 (t25) minus whip overflow from the library and whipping the GL itself to completion.

All these factors combined make building the Great LIbrary in Gryphon a no-brainer in my book: I can get it done faster and more efficiently, and putting it in the same city as my future National Epic will pay handsome dividends down the line.

Since they're philosophical, Shoot and Nakor are probably my biggest competitors for the Library. I have yet to sim out this build plan yet, but I hope its enough to beat them. The long-term side-affect of this decision is that Gryphon will be doing nothing to contribute to expansion for quite awhile, and I'll be relying on Pindicator IV, where I'll be building workers and settlers, and regrowing on MPs.

Nicolae and Mardoc, if either of you have a case for changing this, or conversely would care to work on a plan for getting the GL done at the earliest date, I would love to hear it.

[oledavy]

Another turn of exploring, and I found three more food resources and our first happiness resource: dye. The land to the east is looking a little greener.



I marked another potential city site that picks up three food resources at the river delta to our east. I’m hoping we run into marble out there in the fog. I’m planning on producing a couple MPs in Pindicator IV so I can continue exploring with the pair of archers.

I want to prioritize a city next to the rice for ICTRs. It can basically serve as a less powerful GLH, turning an immediate profit and giving all my new cities +1 commerce. I'm thinking about putting my 4th or 5th city there. Hopefully I can find another good island site to get a full complement of 2 commerce trade routes.

Shoot the Nakor settled their second city.

End Turn.

[oledavy]

Okay, time for that trait post I’ve been promising. This one has been incubating in the back of my mind for awhile. Hopefully this will explain some of the logic behind my selections.

How I value traits for a usual civ game:

1. Expansive
2. Financial
3. Creative
4. Spiritual
5. Industrious
6. Philosophical
7. Organized
8. Imperialistic
9. Charismatic
10. Aggressive
11. Protective

I think everyone can generally agree on this ordering, with a bit of deviation. Obviously some are more map dependent (i.e. - ORG gets dramatically better on a high difficulty map). However, if I knew nothing about the map, this would probably be how I would rank them. Now, how I order the traits for a medieval start:

1. Spiritual (+3)
2. Imperialistic (+6)
3. Philosophical (+3)
4. Financial (-2)
5. Industrious (0)
6. Organized (+1)
7. Charismatic (+2)
8. Aggressive (+2)
9. Creative (-6)
10. Expansive (-9)
11. Protective (0)

The numbers indicate how far up or down the traits moved in my estimation. Spiritual, Imperialistic and Philosophical all get dramatically better, while Expansive and Creative get much worse.

Spiritual – Readers of my threads before will know I am a huge fan of using spiritual. It is hands-down my favorite trait in Civilization IV. And for a medieval start, it gets significantly stronger. You have civic options right off the bat and being able to make anarchy free switches is a huge edge. It can basically serve as a faux-creative by revolting into caste system to run an artist to pop borders on a new city.

Imperialistic – This trait gets dramatically stronger with a medieval start thanks to the increased cost of settlers: basically equivalent to EXP for an ancient start. I already elaborated briefly on why city-spamming is better for a medieval start, and with IMP you can spam even faster.

Philosophical – Stronger on a medieval start since you can run specialists right off the bat. Great person bulbing is a lot stronger due to your poor initial tech rate, and this allows you to do more of it. Faster universities and Oxford are always sexy too.

Financial – This trait doesn’t need much explanation. With a medieval start it gets worse, why? Because you have 82 less turns to grow cottages. Still a very powerful trait - just not quite as OMFG amazing. I’ve never particularly liked financial though, it’s boring.

Industrious – Trait remains about the same strength, gets a little stronger if anything with your ability to build forges right off the bat (which will generally be your first infrastructure build in new cities). Additionally, Mackoti pointed out how you could leverage it into a faux-philosophical. If anything, I’m undervaluing it a little I feel.

Organized – Nerfed since you start with lighthouses, but on the plus side, it’s stronger since you can build courthouses right off the bat and you will be running more expensive civics.

Charismatic – Get’s weaker if anything, since you’re unable to build Stonehenge, but moves up because other traits get even weaker. Still, since you can get decent mounted unitsand civics to reach 8xp online pretty quickly, the -25% XP needed for promotions isn’t half bad.

Aggressive – Again, not really dramatically stronger or weaker. Still just kinda a meh trait. It gets stronger because expansive and creative get weaker.

Creative – You start with a religion, and spiritual can fill much the same need. Only really good for double speed libraries, which are cheap to begin with.

Expansive – Four Words: Cities Start With Granaries. The bonus to worker production isn’t nearly as valuable when you can chop additional ones right off the bat, and the harbor and health bonuses are negligible.

Protective - Although….one of these days I would like to play Tokugawa of France, just for the lols.

So, sorry for the delay. Those are my brief thoughts on how traits are re-valued.

Feel free to discuss, debate, I don’t claim to be any sort of expert on this.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Financial – This trait doesn’t need much explanation. With a medieval start it gets worse, why? Because you have 82 less turns to grow cottages. Still a very powerful trait - just not quite as OMFG amazing. I’ve never particularly liked financial though, it’s boring.

I agree with this, but via a different logic of sorts. If anything, FIN gives a stronger boost to early cottages (cottages and hamlets) than late cottages (villages and towns). The +1c on 2c tiles is a 33% boost, while +1c on 7c tiles is a 14% boost. The thing is, FIN incentivises working cottages *over* other tiles, which slows down growth of newly settled cities. Not to mention, there is a going to be a shorter gap between "settle your core cities", "fill in borders up to your opponent's fronts" and "decisive military action" on medieval starts, points towards short-term boosts in lieu of the long game.

It's tricky, and I'm not totally sure if my argument is completely valid, but nevertheless I'm sticking with bulb-heavy short-term boosts into a strong timing attack, let everyone else run the long game and hope we can match two players with double the land of anyone else. Then again, I advocated this plan in PBEM23, and look where we are now

By the way, I pretty much agree with your plan. We'll need to think about how to get lots of settlers out quickly. There are quite a few juicy city sites up for grabs. Maybe we could move that southeastern city 1W so as not to waste a nice grass hill tile and to preserve a valuable grassland tile. Some other city can take the clams. On the other hand, to get GPs out of a city, you want it to have as high a food surplus as possible, so you'll want to concentrate food specials wherever possible. So we'll have to think about it.

[oledavy]

I agree with this, but via a different logic of sorts. If anything, FIN gives a stronger boost to early cottages (cottages and hamlets) than late cottages (villages and towns). The +1c on 2c tiles is a 33% boost, while +1c on 7c tiles is a 14% boost. The thing is, FIN incentivises working cottages *over* other tiles, which slows down growth of newly settled cities. Not to mention, there is a going to be a shorter gap between "settle your core cities", "fill in borders up to your opponent's fronts" and "decisive military action" on medieval starts, points towards short-term boosts in lieu of the long game.

That's a really good point, and I agree with you wholeheartedly. In a typical game, early offensives are foolhardy because it is easy at the early stages to whip out cheap defenders, and you generally need to bring twice as many attackers as there are defending units to carry the day. Thus, if you choose to rush someone, there is a low chance of success, and you are more likely to just put yourself behind the economic growth curve and not achieve significant gains. Offensives in civ are generally not viable until the advent of catapults and horse archers; with the attacker gradually gaining the advantage until we reach the late game, when bombers and Sirian Doctrine Fleets ensure that there is only safety in the offense.

As a result, in a typical ancient start game you have awhile to grow cottages without having to worry about being destroyed, and financial is more useful.

For a medieval start, the equation is dramatically changed. You cannot 1-pop whip state of the art defenders anymore, and you start out with the ability to builds HA's and catapults, with only a little way before you can get knights online. The defenders still has the advantage, but it is much less pronounced. In this setting, you are going to be fighting sooner, and as such, production is much more valuable than commerce - especially when it comes to long-term investments like cottages.

Then again, I advocated this plan in PBEM23, and look where we are now

Potential PBEM 23 Spoiler - Nicolae Can Read

I wouldn't say it was a bad idea by any stretch; it just was not implemented extremely well, and you guys were up against players who did the same thing a lot better.

[oledavy]

[SIZE="4"]Turn 127 (Turn 3)[/SIZE]

Another turn of scouting, another four resources uncovered



Two sugars, an incense and a pig. The red arrows are the scouting moves for the next couple of turns. I went ahead and outlined the BFCs of the island city and the the potential 3rd city, hereby known as Mason.

Maybe we could move that southeastern city 1W so as not to waste a nice grass hill tile and to preserve a valuable grassland tile. Some other city can take the clams. On the other hand, to get GPs out of a city, you want it to have as high a food surplus as possible, so you'll want to concentrate food specials wherever possible. So we'll have to think about it.

Looking at is again, I think I agree with Nicolae. If we move Mason 1W, no tiles are wasted, and we plant on an icky plains instead of wasting a grassland.

Staying in the same place preserves the higher food surplus, however, considering that we're going to be flipping in and out of CS and Slavery, we won't always ave enough slots open for all those specialists. 1W additionally has better hammer potential with a plains hill, four grassland hills and the cow. With a nine food surplus from the bananas and cow, we could grow this city to size seven to pick up all these tiles with +3 food left and making 19 base hpt.

Comments/Questions/Concerns?

End Turn.

[Commodore]

Comments/Questions/Concerns?

Why decide on anything until you scout for the next two turns? How quickly is that settler popping out?

No plans for a fort 1S of Gryphon?

[oledavy]

Why decide on anything until you scout for the next two turns? How quickly is that settler popping out?

My first settler won't be coming out for quite some time. Nothing is written in stone yet, I just know I want to put a city there eventually to pick up those tiles. Whether it's my 3rd city or my 12th city will depend on what my scouts find. Right now, however, it is looking like the best site to settle in terms of proximity and long-term productivity; versus settling northwest, for example, which has a nice food bonus for running specialists, but little potential as a high production site, which I need at this point to sustain expansion.

No plans for a fort 1S of Gryphon?

I hadn't give canals much thought yet, but that is a very good point. I have no concrete plans to improve that tile with Gryphon potentially serving as my National Epic city, so I'll eventually be putting a fort there.

[oledavy]

[SIZE="4"]Turn 128 (Turn 4)[/SIZE]

More bananas!



The chop came in for the worker in Pindicator IV.

Meanwhile, Mackoti grew one of his cities to size 2. I'm guessing he settled one of his cities on a plains hill and farmed the wheat right off the bat to pull it off.

End Turn.