[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[Sullla]

OK, it looks like we have some time to discuss some bigger picture strategy things right now, with the turn pace moving slowly and our opening micro already planned out. Let's discuss how we want to use our starting three cities. As usual in Civ4, specialization is the name of the game.



The biggest issue is going to be expansion. You may have heard this, but settlers are very expensive in Industrial starts. They are very, VERY expensive under these settings: to the tune of costing 332 shields apiece. That's 28 turns at our best rate right now, in our capital with Bureaucracy civic and a free Engineer specialist. Umm, don't ask how long it would take in our other cities, heh. In fact, they're so expensive that whipping and chopping aren't particularly helpful either. A forest chop is worth 37.5 shields in a non-Bureaucracy city, and 52.5 shields in a Bureaucracy capital. Even if we chopped all 5 forests at our upcoming iron city, that would still only get us 187.5 shields - about half of ONE settler! (Note: we actually might want to do some variation of this, as that city will have enough production to build a half cost settler down the road.)

Trying to use Slavery civic doesn't really work either. Outside of a Bureaucracy capital, each population point is worth the same 37.5 shields towards a settler, so you would need to whip NINE pop for a settler (!!!) Not too likely. A Bureaucracy capital gets the same 52.5 shields per pop, so that drops them down to a mere 7 pop whip apiece. That's equally silly, as whipping from size 14 down to size 7 would clearly be counterproductive. It would take way too long to regrow that lost population back again for the ledger to come out in the black. Imperialistic does significantly better here, essentially turning any normal city into a Bureaucracy capital (but settlers still too expensive to be worth much whipping at that 7 pop mark) and a Bureaucracy capital into whips/chops worth 67.5 shields apiece. Still, even in this case, settlers still cost 5 forest chops or a 5 pop whip. You might be able to chop out one settler before all the forests are gone, and whipping might be doable, if just barely. I dunno. It still feels barely viable though.

What we really need is the ability to BUILD settlers, not whip them to completion or chop them out. Both the whip and the chop are phenomenal tools, but they are both geared toward the early game in Civ4. We are in the lategame here, and the rules can be very different. What we need is production, overwhelming amounts of it, so that we can out-expand our neighbors. That means we need workshops and watermills all over the place, as well as enough population to work them. We also absolutely need the Bureaucracy +50% bonus to production to get settlers finished in anything approaching a normal time span. I was thinking that we might change civics to Nationhood for 5 turns to get some drafted rifles out at some point soon. Now I'm thinking that's a mistake - we absolutely need to be in Bureaucracy civic, as it's the only way to get those settlers out at a decent rate in the early game.

Here's what that might look like:




With gold, incense, and Representation civic we can reach 11 happy faces in the capital. Religion gets us to 12 happiness, and a very cheap Spiritual temple can get us to 13. I drew in what our capital could look like at size 11, producing 47 shields/turn for what is effectively a 7 turn settler (it comes up just short at 329 shields). We would probably chop the tundra forest to knock this down to 6 turns along with some minor overflow from the previous build. We should be able to reach this population level and lay down all these tile improvements by roughly T270, with our workers going overtime in Serfdom civic and the capital on a strict all-food diet. (We can get +11 food/turn with the pigs/crabs/floodplains, although that will unfortunately drop down to +8 food/turn if we work the gold and incense, which we almost certainly want to do.) In other words, the first 10 turns are all about laying the cities down, connecting them, and hooking up resources. Then the next 10 turns will be focused on heavy growth and watermilling/workshopping everything around the capital and second city. (We will be neglecting the third city to do this, but that's by design - it will be on specialist/Great Person duty and won't need a lot of improved tiles.)

When we're about to build a settler, we may also want to flip into Caste System for 5 turns to help the capital build it faster. This would also synergize well with our desire to produce a Great Scientist out of the third city, after the capital produces the initial Great Engineer. The real explosion in production will happen after we tech Steam Power and build a levee, however. The capital has no fewer than seven tiles on a river; here's what it looks like with a levee and in Caste System:



Oh yeah. Now that is a delicious capital city. If we grew this to size 12 and stole away the floodplains tile, the capital could turn out 5 turn settlers. Now that's some distance away, but not crazily far away down the horizon. Doable by T280 or so, perhaps? I have the feeling that we're going to grow the capital to the happy cap, and then keep it there churning out settlers in Bureaucracy civic for quite a while.



Of course, if the capital is on settler duty and we don't want to draft (since it would mean giving up Bureaucracy civic), then the second city will need to handle military stuff. Fortunately, it's going to go in a powerful location that should be able to do exactly that. The wheat and sheep tiles combine for +9 food, and from there we simply grow onto a ton of watermills, workshops, and mines. Build a barracks, don't bother with libraries/banks or any of that econ stuff, and keep cranking out the units to defend our settler push. Hopefully this will be the Holy City for our religion, allowing us to get some easy missionaries as well for the other cities. If not, we can work around that too.

Then there's the poor third city... This spot has pretty good land as well, but in the early game we'll be neglecting this in favor of the other two cities, largely because the capital will be stealing away all of the good tiles that these spots share to fuel our drive for MOAR SETTLERS. That allows the third city to get its library done and then work as many Scientist specialists as we can afford. We'll be running a lot of Pacifism and (eventually) Caste System civics, so that should get us a Great Scientist to lightbulb a good chunk of Scientific Method at a pretty good rate. By the time that's done, we'll probably be ready for this city to take over working the actual tiles; I don't think we have a strong demand for a third Great Person (another Scientist would lightbulb Physics, and an Artist would only give us a little over 1000 beakers towards Communism - probably not worth it). I haven't tried to simulate what this city would look like, since it would basically be the deer tile, maybe the floodplains farm some of the time, and then a bunch of Scientist specialists. We want a library here ASAP so that we can work Scientists even when not in Caste System civic.

Anyway, that's my general plan for the early game. I like the division of cities into settlers / military / Great People, it seems to make sense to me. Scooter, what are your thoughts about this kind of setup? What am I missing or overlooking here?

[scooter]

Great stuff. That's pretty much exactly how I envisioned using this capital. I don't think any of the production-rushing methods are really viable because you've got to pay for those hammers either way, and since we are pre-Biology and Town-less, the most readily available raw resource right now is production. So if that's the case, we just need to amass it and then start slow-building stuff.

The only thing you said that I'm not 100% in agreement on is the idea that we shouldn't bother swapping into Nationhood for 5 turns. Now, I don't 100% disagree either . I'm simply still on the fence about that. I definitely wouldn't want to draft the capital at all for the reasons you described, but before it grows big enough to go onto settler duty, there might be a 5-turn window we could sneak in a few drafts from the other two cities, especially because I suspect we may struggle to keep pace on tile improvements for those two cities since the capital will be the priority.

That said, when we get closer to the ideal time for a few drafts (after cities are growing but before capital hits size 11ish), this is a pretty simple math problem. How many capital hammers do we lose from 5 turns without Bureau vs how many hammers do we save by drafting 4-5 rifles from the other two cities rather than slow-building them. Obviously there's a couple other factors (XP, population, build research, etc.), but I think you get my point. Basically, I think we can kick that can down the road a little longer and decide whether the 5T will be worth it based on neighbor proximity, barb cities, and power graphs. Developing Hamburg the way you described may very well avoid any need for non-emergency drafting.


All that said... I like the plan a lot. Totally in agreement with the specialization for the three cities. I'll expand a little bit on the poor third city.

Then there's the poor third city... This spot has pretty good land as well, but in the early game we'll be neglecting this in favor of the other two cities, largely because the capital will be stealing away all of the good tiles that these spots share to fuel our drive for MOAR SETTLERS. That allows the third city to get its library done and then work as many Scientist specialists as we can afford. We'll be running a lot of Pacifism and (eventually) Caste System civics, so that should get us a Great Scientist to lightbulb a good chunk of Scientific Method at a pretty good rate. By the time that's done, we'll probably be ready for this city to take over working the actual tiles; I don't think we have a strong demand for a third Great Person (another Scientist would lightbulb Physics, and an Artist would only give us a little over 1000 beakers towards Communism - probably not worth it). I haven't tried to simulate what this city would look like, since it would basically be the deer tile, maybe the floodplains farm some of the time, and then a bunch of Scientist specialists. We want a library here ASAP so that we can work Scientists even when not in Caste System civic.

The poor third city I think we may want to lay down a few farms off of that lake so that it can feed specialists without stealing much of the capital's food, especially since we want that capital growing huge ASAP so we can flip the settler switch. We can always pave over them later with workshops/watermills. Not at a Civ-capable computer to worldbuilder a sample like yours, so a recycled screenshot will have to do. Something like this:



This would give us a 6F surplus without touching the pigs/floodplains. Of course it's much higher if we borrow one of those tiles. That means if we hit happy or improved tile cap, we could stagnate the city running 4 specialists (3 natural, 1 Merc), or 1 fewer if we also work the plains workshop. Once State Property rolls in and our happy cap is higher, we definitely would want to change a few of these (that riverside farm is a prime possibility for a watermill).

This also drifts a little onto Hamburg's territory that you had ear-marked for workshops in your screenshots, but it doesn't necessarily need them immediately. In the long run, Hamburg would take over those tiles and likely want them workshopped, but in the short run, I think we can get some good value out of a farm or two. I figure that once the capital is in settler production mode, it'll hand over the floodplains (like you did in your sample), at which point PoorCity3 can hand over those farms to be workshopped to Hamburg.

Now, we may be constrained enough by worker turns that this isn't feasible, and PoorCity3 will just have to lag behind a little, and we won't be able to afford the time to farm and then eventually workshop over those tiles. I'm okay with that too - it's clearly the city with the least upside. But I thought I'd throw the idea out there and see what you think.

[Sullla]

I like the suggestion of some farms at the third city. On drafting, we might have a 5t window while the capital is growing for some Nationhood civic time. Probably around roughly Turn 260-Turn 270, somewhere in there. We will definitely test that in the sandbox going forward.

[Sullla]

Now that I'm at home I can expand on those ideas from earlier today a little bit...

* I love scooter's suggestion to build a couple of farms for the Great Person city in the southwest. That's really something that I should have seen myself. The whole idea is to have enough food to support that location's specialists without having to borrow the pigs or floodplains from the capital. So we'll definitely want farms on the two grassland tiles south of the lake, which would get the city to +6 food (with deer) and enough to support three specialists. Perhaps cap the city at size 6 working the deer, two grassland farms, and 3 Scientist specialists?

Later on, it would be nice to have the other two grassland tiles farmed as well, which would get us to +8 food and 4 specialists supported. That would be a size 9 city, with the deer, four farms, and four specialists. I'd love to build a watermill on the river tile 2 south of the sheep, since it would be a 2/2/1 tile that the second and third cities could share. However, we need a farm on that tile to irrigate the other grassland tile to the west, so perhaps not. Will have to sim this out in the sandbox to see what makes the most sense. Overall though, an excellent idea that we'll want to pursue.

* The drafting plan also makes a lot of sense. I think that we can spare 5 turns outside Bureaucracy civic while the capital is doing nothing but working max food tiles each turn. We will suffer a sizable loss in research power while doing this, unfortunately, so we'll want to limit our Nationhood stint to as short a period as possible. I think the correct timing is the same turn that we swap from Organized Religion to Pacifism civic, which should be shortly after Turn 260. Hard to know the exact number until we see where the Holy City lands. We're only remaining in Organized Religion long enough to get out a missionary (or maybe two?) for the capital to spread religion, and then it's straight into Pacifism to push out our Great Engineer from the capital ASAP.

We will definitely want to draft the city #2 and city #3 once apiece. (We do NOT want to draft the capital! Need that one to grow and hit the happiness cap ASAP.) As far as the happiness situation goes, we get 4 happy faces base in each non-capital city, then 2 more from the gold, 1 more from the incense, and 3 more from Representation. That gets us to size 10; religion takes them to size 11, and a cheap Spiritual temple to size 12. Drafting costs -3 happiness for 10 turns, and we can't count on Nationhood barracks for happiness because we'll be swapping out of the civic shortly. This means that we can handle 1 draft penalty without any real issue in both cities, as they won't be pushing up against the happy cap until after the 10 turn penalty wears off.

The real question is whether we want to DOUBLE draft either of these cities. I don't think it would be worthwhile at our second city with the iron. We're going to have that city growing very quickly with its native +9 food surplus, growing onto all those delicious grassland workshops and grassland hill tiles ASAP. I think the unhappiness penalty would simply last too long there from a double draft. The third city, however, that could be a real possibility. Could we ride out 4 or 5 turns capped at size 5 (11 happiness with -6 unhappiness penalty) working the deer tile, two farms, and two Scientist specialists? Yeah, I think we could probably manage that. The first draft penalty would wear off relatively quickly, and then we'd be up to a happiness cap of 8, which should be plenty in our specialist city. At the very least, it will be worth testing.

It's too bad we won't be able to get barracks + Vassalage or barracks + Theocracy in place for our draftees so that they can take a second promotion. Still, they come out with Combat I regardless, and that's quite nice for free units.

* By the way, I agree on the proposed scout moves for next turn. NE-NE or something like that with the northern explorer, NW-W or similar for the other scout. I like the idea of the rifle going to the iron tile in the south and then turning back for home. We'll have an explorer finished pretty quickly to do some real scouting in that direction and see if there's anything worth having down there.

* Down the road, I'm really excited to try out this hammer economy that we're setting up. It reminds me a bit of the economic system in classic Master of Orion, where you have a set income to spend each turn via spending sliders. In classic MOO, there's no difference between industry and science; industry = science. You choose how to spend your income each turn on each planet, and if you're spending on military, you're not spending on science, and vice versa. This is in contrast to the Civ games where the two are largely separate from one another. In this game, I think we'll be attempting to treat production and science as two forms of the same economic unit, via building units/structures or building Research. We can even custom our civics around this, popping into Representation/Free Religion for a 5t spree of Build Research and then back to Police State/Theocracy when there's units to be trained. I also think Vassalage is going to be very strong for us when we get out of the early game and Bureaucracy ceases to be so dominant. Aggressive Gunpowder units that start with 3 promotions? Rifles and infantry that can take C2/Formation immediately?! Yes please.

Looks like the turn pace is starting to pick up a little bit. I'm excited to see what happens next each turn.

[scooter]

Glad to hear you agree about the farms. The big value to me is definitely allowing the capital to get the bulk of the pig time. It's the most important city due to the Bureau bonus, so anything that helps it cover more tiles sooner is beneficial for sure.

As for the drafting - yeah, to be honest I'm pretty open to either route - drafting 2-3 units or skipping an early 5T Nationhood stint. I think we can make either work, so let's keep an open mind and see what happens in the next 7-10T or so. I think we'll know soon enough how badly we want/need a couple extra rifles for almost-free, and that'll inform our decision.

[Sullla]

Any thoughts on what's going on with REM's score? It looks like he whipped 2 pop according to CivStats, but I can't see how that would be possible with a size 3 capital. What exactly did he do?

Regardless though, he's Julius Caesar (Imp/Org) of Japan and currently in Slavery civic. so that means no Serfdom for him.

[scooter]

I had a few minutes this morning before work, so I went ahead and played the new turn according to plan.



I did move the Explorers first just in case something insane was up here, but there was nothing to suggest our dotmap was wrong. Definitely nice to see more green land, though. Unless you've got another idea, I'll probably just move this explorer to the east coast just to verify what's over there before doubling back to head west.



It looks like the land is about to end over here. If you look closely, you can see water on the west side of these tiles. I think again we'll want to see what's along the coast here, so probably something like SW-W (I think 2SW is water).



Water is definitely going to play a huge role in this game. So glad nobody took Brennus of Vikings.



Pindicator and REM are the only other civs at 3 cities, and REM has already whipped away a pop it seems, so it's not surprising that we're at the top of something. One of them has 5 more land tiles than us, so there's definitely a pretty different dotmap going on or something. I don't really see a way we could have settled 3 cities for 25 tiles without doing something very strange, so that's another point in the not-entirely-mirrored column.

One final note - somehow we ended up with 1 less gold in the bank after last turn than expected. I triple checked everything, and we didn't work any wrong tiles. I think what happened is all our units moving and outside city borders (two settlers, two explorers, all 3 military units) must have triggered 1g of unit support or something. That doesn't really hurt us or anything, but it's just worth noting that our spreadsheet tech row is now off by 1g.

Any thoughts on what's going on with REM's score? It looks like he whipped 2 pop according to CivStats, but I can't see how that would be possible with a size 3 capital. What exactly did he do?

I'm guessing 1 pop is worth 8 points? That just seems very wrong though because 3 pop is 12 points, so I'd think 1 would be much less. Do you happen to remember from our sandbox how much score was lost when 1 pop whipping? There's definitely no way he could have two pop whipped anything.

[Mardoc]

Do you happen to remember from our sandbox how much score was lost when 1 pop whipping?

IIRC, population score is based on the actual map. Something like score/pop = 5000/ (pop supportable by working every tile on the map). If you want the exact formula, go find T-Hawk's reports from when he was competing in the CFC hall of fame competition. But in any case, I wouldn't expect it to be something you can find from a sandbox.

[scooter]

Do you happen to remember from our sandbox how much score was lost when 1 pop whipping?

IIRC, population score is based on the actual map. Something like score/pop = 5000/ (pop supportable by working every tile on the map). If you want the exact formula, go find T-Hawk's reports from when he was competing in the CFC hall of fame competition. But in any case, I wouldn't expect it to be something you can find from a sandbox.

Yeah, I knew there was some sort of formula, but that makes sense. Either way, it's basically impossible for 1 pop to be worth 8 points if 3 is worth 12, so something very strange definitely happened. A pair of 2-pop whips for 4 points apiece would be normal (we'll do it next turn), but I've never seen Civstats combine them, so... no explanation seems particularly likely.

[Sullla]

Yeah, for the REM mystery, it really looks like 1 pop = 4 score on this map. Check out how our two new cities were each worth 12 score points; we added 6 total population for 24 points. So I'm really wondering what he did there. Two 1 pop whips somehow? Civstats should have picked up on that though. Hmmm. I'll have to math this some more.

It looks like the starting positions are probably not mirrored based on what we'really seeing so far. Obviously we'll learn more as we go. Love the names for our new cities too. Will post more when I am on a Civ-capable computer.