[SPOILERS] joey and scooter's thread: FUN THINGS ONLY

[GermanJoey]

Looks like I'm going to take over here. Situation looks great, and popping Pottery AND AH is amazing. Short term game plan seems like it should be to grab another worker ASAP, chop out a pair of granaries ASAPAT, explore a bit more closer to our capital (perhaps with another scout or warrior, so that we can use the other scout to make contact with other civs faster) to find either copper or horses or both, and then start expanding into good city spots wherever we can.

Will try to log in later tonight!

[scooter]

Welcome GermanJojo! I'll do one last report here to update you on what's been going on since the last report.



Got a weirdly placed forest growth. I used the new worker to chop that forest into a new worker at Zoo. We're expansive so this is pretty great.



Over the span of 2-3 turns I met two new neighbors. The cultural borders belong to Hashoosh. He's a capable but not (so far) outstanding player. The scout belongs to The Black Sword, a very good player. He's probably the toughest of the immediate neighbors. The most recently played turn is the current one - T37:



Feel free to make your own plans, but my plan here is to start a settler next turn at Carnival, then double whip it to completion. The settler I was planning to use on that nice looking double fish location. We are expansive which now gets a nice bonus on work boats, so chopping that forest there in the first ring should allow that city to get started very quickly. Would be better if it had additional forests, but if it can get a WB-WB-granary opening, that abundance of food can make it a nice location for a whip cycle of some sort. Settling here also lets us skirt by with basically no military for awhile longer, and it also helps us get an early start on growing some cottages for Zoo (explanation in next paragraph). Although you're gonna want to pull that warrior back like next turn because barbarian warriors will be showing up soon rather than just animals. Also, I think this double fish location is an excellent place for an early Moai if you can get your hands on stone. I'm sure you can find a city with more coastal tiles, but getting it really early makes it totally worth it. And again, it's got the food to quickly grow onto all those coastal tiles. You'll want to be working coast here anyway once you hand off the 1-2 cottages you can add here to Zoo.

Longterm, I really think Zoo ought to be the capital. I think it's an ideal location for a super-cap. I think the plan should be to settle a ring of cities around Zoo and grow those riverside cottages. Then around the time you tech Civil Service, move the palace here, revolt into Bureau, and work tons of cottages that have already been in the process of maturing. You can get 8 riverside cottages along with a few other non-riverside, and it has a ridiculous amount of food that is more than enough to support it. If you can get into HR, you can grow this thing to an absurd size by the midgame, and I bet you can make it the best science city on the entire map with a little doing. Then try to turn that tech advantage into a dead neighbor was the general plan. The thing that really makes this city pop is that grassland floodplains tile 1W of Zoo that is already cottaged. That will be an obscene tile someday.

If you don't like the double fish location and would prefer to lock down a strategic resource, here's an area that I just uncovered:



The main problem here is the inability to easily pop borders. The corn is just too far away to justify settling in such a way as to ensure the corn is first ring. However, the abundance of forests here means you can chop out an excellent start here. It's probably worth looping the warrior back up northwest of Carnival to see if there's another food up there. To wrap, quick look at both cities.



The capital is about to hit sz4. I'm working on a cottage on the tile SE-E of the cap. A settler here next seems best, and there will be 2 whippable pop. After that you really want the granary in here before whipping further, but the worker that's cottaging can chop next and speed the granary.

NOTE: I'm not 100% sure if double whipping that settler is actually the best decision. It may be best to just build it powered by a chop, then double whip the granary. I haven't done any math so I don't know the right decision there, so if you want to second-guess something, that's a good place to start.



FOOD. Building the worker with straight food as it appears that I'm doing isn't so hot since our EXP bonus is only applied to hammers, but most of these hammers came via chop so that's actually pretty great. Anyway, the granary here will also be a nice boost since it'll super-charge the whips. With the abundance of food, I think most of these cities early on will want a whip every 10T with workers/settlers in between. Or something like that.

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So there ya go. You don't need to do anything I suggested, I just figured I would catch you up on my thought process and plans, and you can decide if you want to go with it or pursue what you want. I'll plan on sticking around to ded-lurk .

Password is funfun

You asked me about rules - Plako has a good summary in the very first post in the tech thread here: http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthrea...#pid460433

So I would check that out first. Ok, I think I covered everything. Anything I missed??

[GermanJoey]

Oh wow, no, that was quite comprehensive!! Thank you.

I was able to log in just fine, and here's some initial thoughts:

• Ordinarily, I wouldn't like that fish spot so much. Better to grab new land and resources, I think, than stuff you can easily backfill. However, I have a feeling that spot will be way more contested than otherwise would be the case - from across the water because of this 34 civ map!!
  
  
• Definitely agree to move the capital. That means that it might be worth putting 1 chop into a Granary, but we should save most of the rest of those trees for the Palace move. The forest 1N of the sheep probably should go into a workboat for the fish city.
  
  
• In addition to the fish city, there's one other immediate spot to consider: 3E of the corn. This spot grabs, in first-ring, plains sheep, which is a weak food tile, and a plains-hill-copper, which is a 6h tile (!), and 3 additional forests. It doesn't grab much else in its second ring. This guy would be a worker pump; growing to size 2 and then pumping out a worker every 6 turns, sometimes more-often w/ chops. I'm still not sure which is the better second spot; I want both of them! The fish city uses less worker-turns in the short term so I suppose I'm leaning towards that.
  
  
• I think its a mistake for the next thing that Carnival to be a Settler, with the Granary so close to completion. What I think is better is to wait 2 turns at the current build selection, which will put Carnival at Size 4 with 7 Food in the bank and 31/60 hammers into the Granary, at which point it should be whipped. After the whip, switch production to a 1f2h tile, hit endturn, and voila, now Carnival has 13/26 food, which is a perfect Granary whip, as well as a tiny bit of overflow production. (6h total, I believe - maybe put this directly into the settler, or another worker) Switch back to the Spices, build something else for 3 turns (enough to finish a warrior), and now switch into a Settler. Carnival will have 1T of unhappiness until the Warrior makes its way back. You'll put 12 hpt (assuming that you're working the cottage by this point, otherwise 13hpt) into the Settler, but you also have a few hammers left over from the warrior overflow. Basically, if we put 4 turns into the Settler we can 2-pop whip the settler ASAP (we need 50h for RB mod, right?), or whip it after 5 turns to get some overflow into another warrior or worker. (probably the latter) This play frees up the existing workers for chopping the granary and cottaging and farming and such around Zoo. By the time it grows back to size 4, the Granary whip unhappiness will be gone, and then we can 2pop whip another settler for the copper.
  
  
• Stone for Moai seems like it will be pretty tough to get... the stone in the far east looks like it is cordoned off by a Peak, and that leads me to believe that wonder resources will not be easy to come by on this map. We'd have to settle right on the stone, which will require a Galley first and be a nightmare to defend. It wouldn't be a bad city, though, even if it is culturally pressured from the other side, because it has that fish in its first ring and a 3h city tile. We could probably grab it but probably not for awhile...
  

Whew, that's all the thoughts I have. TLDR: my plan is to bring warrior back, go granary->warrior->settler->worker in Carnival, settle fish city (tenative name: Aquarium? Sea World?), and grow Zoo onto cottages and whipchop a Granary.

[GermanJoey]

I did a search on barb behavior and found this:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.p...ostcount=6

So, barbs will first enter borders when #Cities (total) > 2*Players, which I knew, but what I didn't know is that they'll only enter borders then if they can pillage an improvement the next turn. Thus, as long as we don't improve any tiles in the Western or Northern 2nd ring of Carnival, we won't have any barb troubles until #Cities > 3*Players because you're spawn-busting in the southeast. This will be a great while longer I think, especially if we figure that we'll be expanding faster compared to most other players (or at least, at an above-average speed) due to the high-food start and Shaka's expansive trait. We should be able to plunk down our 4th city before this condition occurs. So, I think the way to go is to settle Fish first for sure, and then settle copper second. By the time we settle copper, Carnival's 3rd ring borders will have popped, and we can pre-road to the spot fully within our cultural borders (to ensure our settler isnt harassed en-route by the barbs), and possibly even start pre-chopping a spear for immediate safety concerns.

I guess the one issue with this gambit is: how close do we suppose our nearest neighbor is? Is there any chance they could chariot-rush us? This map is ridiculous and I have no idea what to expect!

[scooter]

[*] Ordinarily, I wouldn't like that fish spot so much. Better to grab new land and resources, I think, than stuff you can easily backfill. However, I have a feeling that spot will be way more contested than otherwise would be the case - from across the water because of this 34 civ map!!

After thinking it over, that fish spot could (maybe should) probably wait. I'm skeptical that Bacchus (the neighbor over the river on that side) would plant across the water so soon. If he did, it would be super vulnerable. Or at least - I wouldn't put too much weight on the land-claiming fears in making the decision.

[*] In addition to the fish city, there's one other immediate spot to consider: 3E of the corn. This spot grabs, in first-ring, plains sheep, which is a weak food tile, and a plains-hill-copper, which is a 6h tile (!), and 3 additional forests. It doesn't grab much else in its second ring. This guy would be a worker pump; growing to size 2 and then pumping out a worker every 6 turns, sometimes more-often w/ chops. I'm still not sure which is the better second spot; I want both of them! The fish city uses less worker-turns in the short term so I suppose I'm leaning towards that.

Yep, this is the spot that's been growing on me (so you know, I only just found the copper like 2T ago). The availability of forests may make this one the better one.

[*] I think its a mistake for the next thing that Carnival to be a Settler, with the Granary so close to completion. What I think is better is to wait 2 turns at the current build selection, which will put Carnival at Size 4 with 7 Food in the bank and 31/60 hammers into the Granary, at which point it should be whipped. After the whip, switch production to a 1f2h tile, hit endturn, and voila, now Carnival has 13/26 food, which is a perfect Granary whip, as well as a tiny bit of overflow production. (6h total, I believe - maybe put this directly into the settler, or another worker) Switch back to the Spices, build something else for 3 turns (enough to finish a warrior), and now switch into a Settler. Carnival will have 1T of unhappiness until the Warrior makes its way back. You'll put 12 hpt (assuming that you're working the cottage by this point, otherwise 13hpt) into the Settler, but you also have a few hammers left over from the warrior overflow. Basically, if we put 4 turns into the Settler we can 2-pop whip the settler ASAP (we need 50h for RB mod, right?), or whip it after 5 turns to get some overflow into another warrior or worker. (probably the latter) This play frees up the existing workers for chopping the granary and cottaging and farming and such around Zoo. By the time it grows back to size 4, the Granary whip unhappiness will be gone, and then we can 2pop whip another settler for the copper.

This sounds like a very good plan. Early micro has never been my thing, and I definitely did no testing on which was better, so absolutely go with your feel here.

[*] Stone for Moai seems like it will be pretty tough to get... the stone in the far east looks like it is cordoned off by a Peak, and that leads me to believe that wonder resources will not be easy to come by on this map. We'd have to settle right on the stone, which will require a Galley first and be a nightmare to defend. It wouldn't be a bad city, though, even if it is culturally pressured from the other side, because it has that fish in its first ring and a 3h city tile. We could probably grab it but probably not for awhile...

FWIW, I think you'll find another stone to the west. The one out on the water needs a galley, yeah, but I see a stone over by Hashoosh that isn't too far from him, so I'm guessing we'll have another one within reach. However, that IS just a guess.

So, barbs will first enter borders when #Cities (total) > 2*Players, which I knew, but what I didn't know is that they'll only enter borders then if they can pillage an improvement the next turn.

Wow, I did not know that second condition. That's... kinda strange but interesting for sure.

I guess the one issue with this gambit is: how close do we suppose our nearest neighbor is? Is there any chance they could chariot-rush us? This map is ridiculous and I have no idea what to expect!

So, I don't expect an early rush. It seems the way the map is setup is that your closest neighbors (Oxy to the south, Bacchus to the east) are separated by a body of water, so they'd have to get galleys and all that stuff to even consider it. That seems to rule them out as serious chariot rush concerns. The non-separated neighbors seem to be quite far away. Hashoosh is miles away as you can see on the mini-map. We don't know where The Black Sword is located just yet, so that's a caveat, but the scout is headed to try to find him. But the gist of it is that a gambit that delays copper a bit isn't completely insane. It's still enough that the word "gambit" applies, but I don't think getting called on it is particularly likely.

[GermanJoey]

Let's go with the Copper site first. I think its the safer play to get the copper up and running quickly just in case barbs or a neighbor becomes a surprise problem. Even if we settle the copper first, we won't have a spear for another, what, like dozen turns at the earliest? We might not get rushed, but wandering chariots around turn 50 looking for worker snipes are a strong possibility.

Thinking about it some more, I think we have another option for this city: 2E of the corn (road on the wheat, road on the copper, and a road 1SE of the sheep). It settles on the same turn, assuming we put a road on the western wheat first, which we need to do anyways, but requires an extra road (1SE of the sheep) to get trade-route connectivity. We could get a 6 turn barracks to pop borders (because Shaka is Aggressive we get +100% barracks production) by working the bare plains hill copper for 4 turns and then working the improved copper for 2 turns. We could then chop a spear immediately afterwards.

What do you think? It also occurs to me now that if we get an extra Warrior via the Granary-first plan, we actually don't need to pull back the one in the west as much. We could have him explore a little bit more around the food resources to see if there's anything else worthwhile around there.

[Ceiliazul]

this is great stuff, both of you. i hope scooter stays on as a dedlurk here!

[GermanJoey]

thanks, and me too!

turn 38:

Found The Black Sword's capital. Pretty close, and feelin' better about securing that bronze before we get choked from it. I'll try to crawl around his borders to see if he has any strategic resources hooked up.



Granary ready to whip next turn:



I moved the SE warrior 1W because that tile 2W1S from him wasn't getting spawn-busted; now our eastern frontier is guaranteed barb-free. I switched tech from Fishing to Writing because we don't need Fishing yet if we aren't settling Aquarium first; it'll complete in 1 turn when we need it. With Writing we can probably triple-whip a library in Zoo a dozen turns from now or something. Cottaging worker moves to the wheat to road (although I realize now it woulda been better to move onto the hill 1N of it, ah well), while the newly produced worker from Zoo goes to complete the cottage. The worker from the sheep moves 2S2E to chop a forest for the granary whip in Zoo.

[GermanJoey]

A little more to see of TBS. Back home, the Granary in Carnival was whipped on-schedule, Zoo's should be ready in like 2 turns (once the chop is in).

[scooter]

Looking good!

I like 2E of copper, sounds super doable. I don't know if I would be in favor if we weren't aggressive, but given the cheap barracks, let's go for it. It's a stronger city overall for sure.