Smith's College - General Discussions

[Arrian]

This will be the general discussion thread for the Stormian economy.

Since the game will likely start soon, we might want to get some general ideas out there, so Dominae is fully ready to play the opening turns quickly.

Obviously, it's difficult to come up with a plan w/o seeing the start, but I think we can come up with "if this, then that" ideas.

For instance:

If we start and see a plains hill with fresh water access... shall we move? I'd say heck yeah. Production advantage *and* added defense.

If we start on the coast with seafood resources, shall we research fishing straightaway?

We clearly will be concerned with early defense, so worker first is most likely out... but what if we start on a penninsula (and it's obvious right away), so we only need to worry about 1 direction?

All things being equal, do we research bronze working first?

-Arrian

p.s. It is likely that we are the Mali, who start with Mining and the Wheel. BW would be available right off the bat, whereas AH would require research of hunting (or Agr) first. If we got our #2 choice, Qin, we'd start with Mining and Agriculture...

[Aginor]

Plains Hill - almost certainly unless it really screws us over on resources in the capital. It is probable that some civ is going to have to deal with an early elimination attempt, which makes it quite possible that the civ in question will be us.

I would think that Fishing and Work Boats will be a no brainer if we draw that sort of start. It's a much cheaper way of powering our economy (techwise and turnwise) than rushing to Pottery if we're Financial.

Bronze Working tends to make the most sense if we go Worker first or Warrior/Worker (the latter being a standard Flood Plains opening). If we are going to be cranking out units for a while initially, picking up something else before Bronze Working (Fishing, Agriculture, etc.) will make more sense.

[Arrian]

How about focusing on two things (the two things we really need to decide on turn one, beyond where to settle... which really requires seeing the land):

1) First build
2) Tech choice

1) I suspect the team will choose warrior first, with good reason. In many cases even in SP, it's a good call. But I'd like to see if anyone strongly disagrees (probably under a certain set of circumstances).

2) This is a little more difficult, since we don't know for sure that we're the Mali (likely, but no official announcement yet). The choices would be...

Fishing - highly situational. Only if on coast w/seafood.

Agriculture - maybe if we have corn/wheat/rice, but researching it first seems silly if we're not going worker first. If we don't have such resources close, it's a rather expensive way to get to AH.

Hunting - allows scouts, camps, leads to archery and animal husbandry (quicker than agriculture). I'd rate this one as fairly attractive.

Mysticism - we'll need it at some point, but if we're the Mali it's highly unlikely we will get an early religion (if none of the other civs start w/Myst... maybe we could). I don't see us making a play for Stonehenge...

Bronze Working - see where the copper is (or isn't!). That alone is really important. Allows slavery & chopping - also big. Can't do much with it until we have at least a worker, though, so again it might not be the first choice.

Is pottery available off the bat if you have the wheel? Or do you need a 2nd tech (fishing?)?

-Arrian

[Krill]

Pottery requires Fishing or Agri, which is why it has a higher rating, IMV, than hunting, unless we want to rush someone...

[Solomwi]

1) No qualms here with warrior first, unless of course we see a start that just screams for a different approach

2) My first instinct is BW as default, simply because the earlier we can locate copper, the earlier we can secure it. Fishing becomes a good play with a nice seafood start. If we're Mali, hunting may offer a bit of a strange benefit... allowing us to hold off archery and bluff being close to it.

Think about it from a potential attacker's perspective. You're deciding who to take out, or whether or not to hit GS. You see a GS scout or camp, telling you they have hunting. You now know that GS is one fairly cheap tech away from Skirmishers. Unless GS' start is just horrible commercially, you also know they have a pretty good tech pace. You're now faced with having to deliver a crippling blow immediately or throw your significant early investment up against the best city defender of the era. Being too easy to overplay, this isn't a huge benefit, but it is worth considering IMO.

[Aginor]

1) I can imagine a Worker first situation. If we find ourselves sitting next to something farmable and a mineable cash cow luxury (Gold, Silver), this screams for Ag and a Worker, since the delay in growth will be more than made up for by the farmed Corn/Wheat/etc. coming online quickly, and the research bonus from the Gold/Silver would power our early game.

That said, we're almost certainly going Warrior as our first build. In most games it's the right thing to do.

2) Have to agree that I would rate a move towards Hunting as a fundamentally aggressive move on our part towards Archery and our UU. It definitely would also have a deterrent effect, to be sure, but I would think that this is a tech we'd want to pick up post-Pottery. Knowing that we need Ag or Fishing to acquire Pottery, I'm thinking that our realistic options right off the bat are:

Fishing (if coastal)
BW (if we want Slavery due to heavy floodplains, or we are heavily forested and feel the need)
Ag (pretty much anything else...chances are we're going to scout out some farmable specials pretty darned quick, and we need Pottery ASAP)

Hunting IMO is probably something to go for post-Pottery, once we can research it swiftly. Mysticism just isn't going to be an option with Mansa...if we're getting a religion it will almost certainly be one of the later ones (CoL/Theo/Philo) if we're running as Mansa.

That discussion is turned completely on its head if we get Sally...we'll almost certainly want to make a Buddhism/Hinduism play in that case to deal with our shallower commerce base and also take best advantage of Philo.

[Arrian]

Gentlemen, our opponents:

Vox: Catherine (Cre/Fin. Hunting/Mining)
Mercs: Frederick (Cre/Phi. Hunting/Mining)
Sanatarium: Elizabeth (Fin/Phi. Fishing/Mining)
Horde: Kublai (Agg/Cre. Hunting/Wheel)
Banana: Louis (Cre/Ind. Agriculture/Wheel)
AC: Qin (Fin/Ind. Agriculture/Mining)

and us:

GS: Mansa Musa (SPI/FIN. Wheel/Mining)

Four CRE (!), four FIN, two PHI, two IND, one SPI (us), one AGG. Not one ORG choice, heh.

Note: NOBODY IN THIS GAME STARTS WITH MYSTICISM.

I always assumed that *somebody* would. Nope.
That brings up the question of whether, our start depending, a run at an early religion might be worthwhile.

-Arrian

p.s. It almost makes me wish we'd picked Asoka or something...

[Cort Haus]

If we have a good commerce tile or two, an early religion is very possible. The other FINs all have mining and will surely grab Bronze first.

An early religion may also be important now if we have CRE neighbours nicking all the land.

I think we still may have to see what land & specials we have before comitting to the Myticism path, but it looks a possibility.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
I think we still may have to see what land & specials we have before comitting to the Myticism path, but it looks a possibility.
I agree. A very good possibility too...

Considering our options, I say there is a very good chance we should go for a religion asap. That might be the first choice we've got to make when we see the starting pos: is it possible, or not? If so: go for it.

If we are first in turn order, I'd put us square to Budhism at any rate. Then, BW. Then worker techs (irr or AH). Then writing and so on...

We only have mining as a starting worker tech, which mean we can't do much with workers at first. The only way where going worker first is profitable in such scenario is if we've got a gold, or silver hill. As I suspect nobody is willing to risk a settler-first strat (I'm not), that only leaves a warrior to build...

The only other path I see is towards BW, which might be an option when plenty of forests are near. If so, we can chop e.g. Stonehenge, or a very early settler.

The last alternative is when we've got freak situations: starting near 3 seafood, or in the middle of 4 cows might lead us to go fishing, or AH first.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Arrian
Gentlemen, our opponents:

Vox: Catherine (Cre/Fin. Hunting/Mining)
Mercs: Frederick (Cre/Phi. Hunting/Mining)
Sanatarium: Elizabeth (Fin/Phi. Fishing/Mining)
Horde: Kublai (Agg/Cre. Hunting/Wheel)
Banana: Louis (Cre/Ind. Agriculture/Wheel)
AC: Qin (Fin/Ind. Agriculture/Mining)

and us:

GS: Mansa Musa (SPI/FIN. Wheel/Mining)

Four CRE (!), four FIN, two PHI, two IND, one SPI (us), one AGG. Not one ORG choice, heh.

Note: NOBODY IN THIS GAME STARTS WITH MYSTICISM.

I'll have a field day analyzing this, but not right now. Something for this weekend, this week is about the most stressing at work of the past year or so. I'll set up a thread if others want to comment, so please don't continue here too much... Smith's should be about how we plan to use the situation to the max, not on what the situation really is ;)

DeepO

[Cort Haus]

When considering tile improvements, defensibility from pillaging should be a factor - particularly for cottages. So, if the most likely threat is from the north, southern tiles would be better for cottages, especially at the border. If we are attacked early the opponent would be most likely intending to pillage our economy, rather than face Skirms in cities.

[Aginor]

Economic warfare doesn't strike me as likely to earn sufficient returns in the earliest parts of the game in order to justify the hammer expense. I think that we can safely assume that if someone comes after us early on, their intent is to maim or kill. If you invested all those hammers in making a 200-300 hammer army, you'd want to get some sort of tangible return on it over and above a couple hundred gold from pillaging. Particularly when mere economic warfare is likely to earn you an enduring rival for the remainder of the game, which could develop into a serious long-term threat if not excised.

I agree that no sane adversary is going to want to face Skirmishers fortified in cities if there's an alternative...but I don't see an aggressor settling for economic warfare if there's an alternative (ie: another target in range without a potent Ancient UU). Should we find ourselves sharing a decent sized continent with the Horde or possibly Sarantium (if FP decides to go aggressive), this would alter the equation quite a bit.

Once we hit the period when Horse Archers (and particularly Keshiks for the Horde) become widely available, engaging in economic warfare would seem to make a bit more sense. HAs are quite a bit more durable than Chariots, yet are not prohibitively expensive. The potency of purely economic warfare is then likely to decline as the game progresses, as borders are settled and permanent defenses are raised. However, I would think that from the early Classical period through the Medieval era, economic warfare will be an extremely potent method of slowing the expansion of the opposition (and consequently reserving more land for oneself to expand into).

Now, as with any strategy game, certainly it makes sense to put our cities between our improvements and potential adversaries. No sense making engaging in economic warfare any easier for the other side than we have to.

The more interesting question to my mind is this: clearcut Forests on the border, prune them, or leave them as-is entirely? Chances are that we'll want our units holding resources rather than Forests, and that turns the Forests into a defensive liability. Particularly so if they are immediately adjacent to the city tile (as softening stacks from the city with Catapults, Horse Archers, Knights, etc. is much more effective without the Forests in place).

[NicodaMax]

I've tried, with mixed results I should say, the tactic of chopping forests around my cities except for 2 or 3 non adjacent tiles on the rim of the city radius (i.e. 2 tiles away) and facing towards the enemy. Stationing some skirmishers on those forests should deterr any attempt to pillage near our cities.

[Solomwi]

Aginor, one thing to keep in mind... the Horde attacked us (Desolation Row) in the C3CDG even though we had Immortals. Granted, that's not a defensive UU, but it's still a powerful one that sould serve as a considerable deterrent. I offer this not to suggest they'll choose us over an easier target, but only as evidence that they'll not be deterred solely by a good ancient era UU, if they think they can reap some benefit from it overall.

[Aginor]

I recognize that if we encounter the Horde, typical aggressor rules go out the window. :eek:

I don't doubt that if we're alone with the Horde, they'll come early and often. I also expect that, regardless of the number of opponents on their continent, they'll start sending Keshiks around to wreak economic havoc on as many neighbors as possible as soon as they have them.

What Skirmishers are good for is holding back Axes and Swords...losses become much higher when you have to attack Skirmishers to take a city. So I see the point of the Skirmishers as buying us some time by making it less worth the Horde's time to come pay us a visit before HAs if there are multiple civs on the continent.

If I recall correctly, Immortals in Civ 3 were a very strong early unit on the attack. Perhaps the Horde saw that as a 'do unto them before they do unto us' situation? Or perhaps not.

Also from memory, we should be able to identify Horses from tiles with mysterious pastures without a visible resource even if we do not have Animal Husbandry. This also speaks to getting some Scouts out there if we run into a probable HA rusher.

[notyoueither]

Did some noodling around.

Hunting(3760)-Mysticism(3520)-Meditation(3240)-AnimalHusb(2920)-Archery(2720)-Agriculture(2520)-Pottery(2240)-BronzeWorking(1920)

Warrior(3640)-Scout(3360)-Worker(3000)-Scout(2800)-Worker(2520)-Skirmisher(2440)-Skirmisher(2240)-Settler(1920)

<img src=http://apolyton.net/upload/thumb.php?file=11049_Storm1920BC.JPG> (http://apolyton.net/upload/view.php?file=11049_Storm1920BC.JPG)

An AI grabbed Buddhism.

The health cap doesn't mean a lot, given that we can turn each unhealthy pop into a cottage to break even on food and rake in the gold up to the happy limit. The hard part of the cap is getting enough food to work hills.

Hopefully there's another animal or grain handy.

[Aginor]

You've opened what is the big can of worms in my mind - AH or Pottery?

The bad news on Pottery is that we've gotta go through Ag (this is NOT a Fishing start) to do it. OTOH it will speed up getting to further techs *very* dramatically out of a flood plains start.

2240 strikes me as way too late for us to be tossing up Cottages; if we want to get our money's worth out of Worker #1, he'd better be throwing up farms and cottages on those flood plains for all he's worth IMO.

Early Pottery could easily be the difference between catching Mono/CoL if we get shut out early and having to lightbulb a late tech. Plus, we could easily use a pair of early farms to power a mine.

[Blake]

I'd like to point out that improving the sheep tile basically gives us +1 food (The health) and +2 hammers over a free floodplain. In fact until we hit the health cap and road it we get no more benefit than mining a river plains hill - mine a hill for +2 hammers, or pasture the sheep for +2 hammers.

Animal Husbandry isn't a cheap tech, I honestly think we should delay researching it unless another animal resource shows up.
We can get Agriculture and farm floodplains, to get to writing we can via Priesthood or Pottery.

I think our starting tech should be along the lines of:
Hunting->Myst->Meditation->Agriculture/Archery->Archery/Agriculture
(hitting the event horizon after that :P)

We can farm the floodplains and just grow bigger, each +1 pop is +1 commerce from the river, on a start like this farms/mines will do fine.

Once we've finished off Ag and Archery we should go to pottery, AH or maybe masonry, depending on what resources have been revealed. (Another benefit of delaying AH is it'll be cheaper when we get around to it. Ag makes it cheaper since it's a pre-req tech.)

If we do go for farms/mines at capital it'll be a freaking settler/skirimisher pumping machine, we'll need to look to our commerce and food (specialists) needs at other cities.

Now, I don't think our capital can be a good commerce powerhouse (or there's opportunity cost anyway) because there are just too many plains hills to be utilized; it doesn't favor being specialized, it favors being generalized (in this case generalization is a form of specialization :D). Altough I'd love to hear others thoughts on this.

[Arrian]

Interesting thoughts, Blake.

Hunting-AH is another idea. I grant you your point above about farming the FPs, but on the other hand AH not only allows us to throw a pasture up on our sheep, but it also reveals horses, which is no small thing.

-Arrian

[Blake]

Indeed. Horses are the main selling point. But, I don't think there will be horses being in our fat cross (it's possible... but rarely see horses near floodplains), so I think it can be delayed for a bit, like at least until we have a settler coming out and can thus actually do something about any horses we see.

[Arrian]

True, as long as we get AH before our first settler is ready, the horses thing is moot (I agree the odds of horses inside our fat cross are very low).

Ideally, I'd like to have both BW and AH prior to that first settler, though.

-Arrian

[Theseus]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by notyoueither

We are surrounded by a sea of plains, with no other resources.

Err... strike that; I had not realized I was playing on a "cleared" map that nye had put together.

DOH!! :eek:

[Hot Mustard]

Originally posted by Theseus
nye... I haven't even read everybody's posts today, but I gotta respond to what you posted, especially the screenshot (six posts up) .

I went ahead and played out from the save too.

First, I was not aware that the teams had agreed on playing forward from the start (nor had I been aware that it possible in Civ4 PBEMs). So, given that nye did it and posted it, I guess it is okay.

Second, I played a LOT further ahead. And we have... a situation. Our initial city site is pretty much all we have to work with in the early game.
We are surrounded by a sea of plains, with no other resources.

:lol:

[DeepO]

When looking at stuff to do in EotS, and on topic of specialization, please consider our capital can make a great GPP factory.

It would be worth looking into that option too. Sure, we won't have loads of production, nor of commerce, and bureaucracy would be less attractive. But every irr fp gives us half a specialists, even after we bump into the health limit. Before that, every irr fp gives 1 specialist if we decide to do so. 1 temple and a lib can get us to our 3 GP in 67 turns, well in time to use them to gain e.g. a tech lead.

DeepO

[DeepO]

And another topic (I try not to mingle these overall discussions into the turn threads, sorry if this copies stuff): slavery, and pop-rushing!

Our capital can make quite a nice pop-rush city (slave trading camp?). Doing so, we might avoid the production problem we're undoubtedly going to run into... the plain hills are okay, but limited. After that there is very limited option to find good production tiles. And plain hills are costing us food... it'd be interesting to see if we can come up with a strategy that lets us use our pop as efficiently as possible, which means very early on and in large numbers (preferably at least size 6 so we can rush 3 pop each time)

DeepO

[Aginor]

Given that we're not playing Philo, I don't think that turning the capital into our GPP farm is realistic. We're just not going to get return on investment fast enough.

That said, it makes a good deal of sense to farm 2-3 fp's to grow quickly and ultimately power mines. However, if we're running Financial, the best way to make use of that trait is to get some cottages on the ground ASAP.

Also note that with a Granary up, once we get BW and Slavery we can do some pretty obscene things to turbocharge our hammer production out of this start if desired.

The chance of Horses on one of those Plains squares to our west probably should not be discounted - I'll grant that. However, there's no rush to hook Horses up at this point given that Archery is cheap and gives us what is (for us) a better unit anyway.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Aginor
Given that we're not playing Philo, I don't think that turning the capital into our GPP farm is realistic. We're just not going to get return on investment fast enough.
I wouldn't discount that so easily... instead I'd like to sim it out to see what exactly will be th gain. For the moment, it doesn't matter though, we need at least a religion to start considering it.

BTW, I'm very much in favour of having at least a few cottages asap. FIN on a river, and not using it would be asking to get beaten. However, these don't need to come from fp per se: a plain hill with cottage combined with a irr fp works quite well too.

DeepO

[Arrian]

I like to farm FPs rather than cottage them. The cottages can go up on grassland and/or plains (we have 3 such tiles on the river - 2 plains and 1 grass). The FPs can be used for fast growth, and when we hit caps, we switch over to the cottaged grass/plains tiles. Hills, IMO, are to be mined.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Theseus


nye... I haven't even read everybody's posts today, but I gotta respond to what you posted, especially the screenshot (six posts up) .

I went ahead and played out from the save too.

First, I was not aware that the teams had agreed on playing forward from the start (nor had I been aware that it possible in Civ4 PBEMs). So, given that nye did it and posted it, I guess it is okay.

Second, I played a LOT further ahead. And we have... a situation. Our initial city site is pretty much all we have to work with in the early game.
We are surrounded by a sea of plains, with no other resources.

:confused:

Umm... :lol: I guess?

-Arrian

[Dominae]

Even if the chances are slim we have Horses within our fat cross, I think Animal Husbandry is our best bet for second tech, neglecting Religions for the moment.

Improving the Sheep tile ASAP fits into whatever strategy we might employ, simply because it's our capital's best tile.

Being able to see Horses as we scout could prove an important advantage. The long we delay seeing Horses, the more potential for making bad decisions bad on insufficient information (the same can be said for Bronze Working by the way, let's not get too caught up in Writing and such).

---

An important consideration regarding our tech choices is when, exactly, our first Worker will be available. Right now we can Mine and lay down Roads. A Mine doubles as a farmed Flood Plain with respect to Settler/Worker construction, so there's little point in researching Agriculture too soon unless we want to grow as fast as possible into our Health cap and use Mines from then on to offset the extra Food.

I think we need to decide right now "Cottages or not" and go with it. Worker-turns are at a premium since we need so much early defense, so it will not do to build tile improvements that see little use.

I personally feel Cottages are our best bet. Going Farms/Mines will help us expand quicker and be better prepared to execute a Skirmisher rush if the opportunity arises. Going Cottages hampers our expansion/military somewhat, but in all likelihood puts us in top tech position. Another advantage of Cottages is that the faster research allows us to be more adaptable in general.

Fishing is a faster way to Pottery: if we have no short-term use for Agriculture we might consider researching Fishing instead, despite it also being useless to us, as far as we know.

[Dominae]

The thing about putting Cottages on Flood Plains instead of farming them and putting the Cottages on Plains is that Flood Plains are the better tile (3 Food > 1 Food 1 Hammer). We should always use our best tiles (mined hills, flood plains) before others (plains, grassland).

That's why I think it makes the most sense to couple farmed Flood Plains with mined Hills, and not cottaged (?) plains or whatever. Looking at it another way, if we put the Cottages anywhere early on, it's best to put them on the Flood Plains.

[Hot Mustard]

Any reason we can't balance these, at least early on? Mine the hills and split the floodplains 50/50 with cottages/farms.

That gives us growth, gold and hammers, which will all help us get to the point where we can churn out some skirmishers if we need to.

I realize early tactics are often about putting more of your eggs in one basket over another, but with this start, I'm wondering if a balanced approach might be more appropriate.

[DeepO]

Damn. Just wrote a lengthy reply, when I mistakenly clicked the wrong close button. I'll summarize ;)

Originally posted by Dominae
Even if the chances are slim we have Horses within our fat cross, I think Animal Husbandry is our best bet for second tech, neglecting Religions for the moment.
I agree we need either AH or BW fast (we've got a better chance of finding bronze in our fat cross than horses). I don't think it's so urgent, provided we go for archery soon. We'd need time to hook up any horse or bronze, time which we can catch up with skirmishers.

I'd like AH or BW before writing, but after we try for a religion. We are the only SPI people, better use that to our advantage ;) That shouldn't hamper us too much, unless we intend to do an insta-rush.

Improving the Sheep tile ASAP fits into whatever strategy we might employ, simply because it's our capital's best tile.
a cottaged fp is possibly better: it swaps 2 hpt for 2+ cpt. The sheep is not critical until we hit the He limit.

Being able to see Horses as we scout could prove an important advantage. The long we delay seeing Horses, the more potential for making bad decisions bad on insufficient information (the same can be said for Bronze Working by the way, let's not get too caught up in Writing and such).
See above. We can't risk delaying getting a resource in sight for long, and I agree it should come before writing. I don't mind too much if it would come after our first settler, though, unless we want to do an early rush.

An important consideration regarding our tech choices is when, exactly, our first Worker will be available. Right now we can Mine and lay down Roads. A Mine doubles as a farmed Flood Plain with respect to Settler/Worker construction, so there's little point in researching Agriculture too soon unless we want to grow as fast as possible into our Health cap and use Mines from then on to offset the extra Food.
don't forget specialists... and pop-rushing. I can see us use a combination of both, given this start.

I think we need to decide right now "Cottages or not" and go with it. Worker-turns are at a premium since we need so much early defense, so it will not do to build tile improvements that see little use.
Very early on, I agree. But after that we should have some reserve, so we can switch tiles to our needs. We'll maximize on fp, though, they are our best tiles... but putting cottage on them might not be the best decision in the long term: if later on we need to grow a town on e.g. a grass or plain, it will cost us commerce for many turns.

I personally feel Cottages are our best bet. Going Farms/Mines will help us expand quicker and be better prepared to execute a Skirmisher rush if the opportunity arises. Going Cottages hampers our expansion/military somewhat, but in all likelihood puts us in top tech position. Another advantage of Cottages is that the faster research allows us to be more adaptable in general.
I agree on a cottage-heavy approach, but I fear the military burden of that. a GA, for instance, won't net us that much as normal.

Tech pace, BTW, should be excellent from our starting position, making an academy a big priority. Better to build on our strengths... However, I still feel like most tech advance is made through leaps from GP and the Oracle, and I certainly expect at least one team to go that way (instead of flat-out research). We should be fearful of that.

The ability to pop-rush a few skirmishers as ultimate defense against an advanced rush might be all the incentive I need to go BW before AH, even with sheep in sight.

Fishing is a faster way to Pottery: if we have no short-term use for Agriculture we might consider researching Fishing instead, despite it also being useless to us, as far as we know.
We might be better off to wait, and go for agri as late as possible. The more teams that have it, the cheaper it gets... while not many will go for fishing unless they start near a seafood.

DeepO

[Theseus]

Just to clarify:

My earlier post about a 'sea of plains' was incorrect... I had not realized that nye had posted a "cleared" map.

[Theseus]

Ummm, that said:

Cottage spamming and a stream of Skirmishers... KICKS ASSSSSS!!! :D

[Hot Mustard]

Originally posted by Theseus
Just to clarify:

My earlier post about a 'sea of plains' was incorrect... I had not realized that nye had posted a "cleared" map.

Heh heh - I thought you knew it was a Sim and were joking/trolling.

[Arrian]

1) We may find we're actually near the coast and that fishing may have value for us.

2) I still prefer farms/mines with cottages on grass/plains, but I see your point, Dom. I'm not saying we don't put any cottages on floodplains. We could certainly do one or two early and then farm the rest. Good point re: mined hill = farmed FP from the perspective of making settlers/workers.

3) As for AH, I like that tech in general since it does three things: a) allows us to pasture our sheep; b) shows horses [if any]; and c) is a pathway to writing.

4) Given the production boost we get from the plains hill, I think we can punch out our first worker pretty soon (perhaps go warrior-worker??).

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Arrian
4) Given the production boost we get from the plains hill, I think we can punch out our first worker pretty soon (perhaps go warrior-worker??).
Not much to do with an early worker, I'm afraid. Scouts are much more useful... we'll need pickets for a long time to come so they're no waste either.

DeepO

[Blake]

Okay I've read through the thoughts on terrain improvement and such.

We have a +9 food surplus from the +3 food tiles, we have a -5 food in river hill tiles, and another -2 food in river plains tiles. If we work the sheep and the entire river (except the desert hill) we end up with a net of +2 food (and another +2 from the city tile), which is +4 for growth. This is plenty, so farms aren't really needed. But there are two factors:
1) The city needs to grow A LOT to actually get additional food, it's not like having a big food surplus in one easy grassland pigs package.
2) We will be hitting health caps.

I think we should farm 2 floodplains and cottage the rest, this lets us work the 2 plains hills and break even on food with those 4 workers. This leaves all the other food for growth and/or a buffer against ill health. Maybe if we get a lot of health we can replace those 2 farms with cottages, but generally having that extra food for rapidly growing to caps is a good thing.

On turning the capital into a GPP:
While the food surplus is massive, again it requires a massive population to utilize. If we worked all the +3 food tiles (with cottages!), then we have a +11 surplus and could create 5 specialists! But that would put the city size at about size 14, so ill health is going to be munching up most of that food surplus! And this means doing mass farming to make up for the health.

A much more ideal GPP city is one with some concentrated food tiles - take a city with a 6, 5 and 3 food tile. It has an easy 8 food surplus and can create 4 specialists, at the comfortable size of size 7. No real health problems.

I wont say that we shouldn't turn the capital into a (specialist) GPP pump. What I will say is that we should only turn it into a GPP pump as a last resort, as it is far more ideal for pumping out a truly sick amount of commerce and hammers, especially under BigB.

I also think we would have an excellent chance of building the oracle, especially if we quickly mine the 2 plains hills. But it should only be priority if we find the surrounding land to be oddly unappealing for mass horizontal expansion.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by DeepO

a cottaged fp is possibly better: it swaps 2 hpt for 2+ cpt. The sheep is not critical until we hit the He limit.

Which is really right quick if we settle on the hill.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by dejon


Heh heh - I thought you knew it was a Sim and were joking/trolling.

We all make mistakes.

I couldn't find the team email that I had linked to in the Forum Guide.

:lol:

[notyoueither]

I think we should farm 2 floodplains and cottage the rest, this lets us work the 2 plains hills and break even on food with those 4 workers. This leaves all the other food for growth and/or a buffer against ill health. Maybe if we get a lot of health we can replace those 2 farms with cottages, but generally having that extra food for rapidly growing to caps is a good thing.

This gives us 10f/9h/5c at -1 He for a net +1f for growth

Pasture those sheep, work a cottage, and we have 8f/12h/7c++ at 0 food growth.

Do you want 23 or 27++ productivity?

I agree speed to grow is a good thing, but we should be more concerned with equalibrium. When we have time we farm 2 of the fp's so that when we want to grow we can switch to 2 farmed fp's from mined hills and fill food boxes asap.

We can have the religion, agri, animalH, archery, and bronzeworking by the time we shoot out a settler.

What we are arguing is what order to do them in.

[notyoueither]

Has anyone ever Ralphed in C4?

I've been intrigued by the idea of settling close to cap for a first ring, and then close to the first ring for the second.

The first ring compresses the cap into food tiles for GPP/workers/settlers while they build buildings and units. Then the second ring does the same to the first ring.

It's a compressed coil. When the time comes you reassign all the tiles to selective cities to max them as desirable, generally springing outward.

In the mean time you have an easily defendable, and extremely micromanagable approach to PBEM in CIV.

[notyoueither]

fer instance.

You can build a city with 3 food bonii in radious with a long term goal of a GP factory. You do so, but in the short term you need troops. You plant two barracks cities that each use 1 or 2 of the food for rapid growth.

Eventually your GPP factory has its basic buildings complete, the barracks are up to size, so you reassign food tiles to the GP factory and leave the barracks to build units.

Ideally these barracks cities are eventually left with a couple towns to work while the empire that they protected springs up and surrounds them.

It can be an interesting way to maximise real estate with just a few classical 'camps' that always pay for themselves (the towns).

[Arrian]

Originally posted by DeepO

Not much to do with an early worker, I'm afraid. Scouts are much more useful... we'll need pickets for a long time to come so they're no waste either.

DeepO

I had the exact same thought as I was trying to fall asleep last night. Warrior-Scout-Worker. Maybe Warrior-Scout-Scout-Worker... but I want those terrain improvements up soon! As for what we can do with the worker, at the very least we can mine and road... but I think we can squeeze AH in there before a worker too, allowing our pasture.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Has anyone ever Ralphed in C4?



I dunno if it is actually "Ralphing" but I have noticed that, in some of my games, my build pattern is noticeably tighter than some I've seen (in AU100, for instance)... but that is usually when playing an ORG civ.

It depends on the terrain, really. There are several reasons I can think of to utilize a relatively tight build (4-tile), such as defense, maximizing the useage of certain juicy tiles via MM, and possibly even health benefits (cities can "share" forest tiles for the health bonus, AFAIK).

Once we can see more, we can bust out the dot maps :D

-Arrian

[nbarclay]

The problem with a dense city build in the early part of the game is that it's harder to claim a fair share of territory without getting in a financial mess. Maintenance costs related to number of cities quickly become a limiting factor on growth, making it impractical to build additional cities to gain additional territory. A more compact empire is an advantage in the early game, since it reduces distance-related maintenance costs. But unless the early-game advantage can be leveraged into additional territory later on, the long-term impact is problematical.

On the other hand, our huge number of flood plains coupled with our Financial trait may give us some extra options we wouldn't otherwise have. Consider the possibility of using cottage spam in EotS to pay for a couple extra cities or so, which in turn would make up for the lower growth (and lower ability to use excess food to build settlers) in EotS due to building cottages instead of irrigating. That could either support a couple extra camp cities or let us expand farther out earlier than we would otherwise.

A variant strategy would be to deliberately leave some extra space to backfill with additional cities once the Storm's economy can handle it. That would hurt a bit in the early game since distance-related maintenance costs would be higher and it would be harder for cities to support each other militarily if we get in an early war. (Also, we'd have to be very, very careful that we don't box ourselves in a situation where the minimum-distance-between-cities rule keeps us from building a city we planned on.) But it could be a pretty strong strategy for maximizing the number of tiles we can work in the mid game.

All of what I'm writing here is still pretty much at the brainstorming stage. Ideally, it would be nice if someone would be inclined to take the time to experiment with different city-building strategies, but I rather doubt that I'll be in a mood to do so.

[Dominae]

A heuristic I use in my SP games could apply here:

Basically what I do is place my second city very close to my capital - 3 tiles. I might do the same with my third city if I plan on being aggressive early on. Additional cities are placed on a case-by-case basis according to a combination of "best city cite" and "AI land/resource denial" methods.

Two close-knit cities that share all the capital location's best tiles and that benefit from efficient Worker actions are enough to jump-start any strategy.

A blanket dense city build is not ideal unless there's a very high density of quality tiles available. Usually the tile distribution is such that the best city-sites are further out, so claiming territory is key (if the AI allows it).

I'm pretty sure something similar could be applied in this game. Given our capital's relatively low Health cap, I think a close sibling makes a lot of sense.

One thing to remember is that we may run into "territory negotations" with other teams sooner than we think: on average, Civ4 maps are more cramped than Civ3.

[Arrian]

Once we have the lay of the land we can do some experiments if we want. At this point, it's all very theoretical (brainstorming, as Nathan said) because we don't know what's out there.

-Arrian

[Theseus]

Originally posted by Dominae
A heuristic I use in my SP games could apply here:

Basically what I do is place my second city very close to my capital - 3 tiles. I might do the same with my third city if I plan on being aggressive early on. Additional cities are placed on a case-by-case basis according to a combination of "best city cite" and "AI land/resource denial" methods.

Two close-knit cities that share all the capital location's best tiles and that benefit from efficient Worker actions are enough to jump-start any strategy.

A blanket dense city build is not ideal unless there's a very high density of quality tiles available. Usually the tile distribution is such that the best city-sites are further out, so claiming territory is key (if the AI allows it).

I'm pretty sure something similar could be applied in this game. Given our capital's relatively low Health cap, I think a close sibling makes a lot of sense.

One thing to remember is that we may run into "territory negotations" with other teams sooner than we think: on average, Civ4 maps are more cramped than Civ3.

I do pretty much the same thing, for the same reasons.

I was originally turned on to this approach by watching Aeson in some deity games (for safety), and then saw the benefits in shared tiles... especially true as I am a heavy poprusher, and thusly *very* often share both high value tiles and (importantly) cottages, with shared forests where possible as well.

I don;t think of it as Ralphing per se... different underlying reasoning, resulting in not so much a "ring" approach as a "tile benefit" approach, thinking in city pairs. A series of Metro+Suburb pairs?

Other considerations apply, obviously... river/coast access, military, etc.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by notyoueither
We can have the religion, agri, animalH, archery, and bronzeworking by the time we shoot out a settler.

What we are arguing is what order to do them in.

I'm doing some more runs with the Sim... assuming Warrior-Scout-Scout-Worker, I agree with nye that we have tiem for all the initial techs he listed, plus pottery, in ample time before the first Worker, with bronze working in time for rushing the first Settler (if so decided).

So, the question is what order.

I would otherwise prolly be lobbying for foregoing any efforts towards an early religion, btw.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by dejon
Any reason we can't balance these, at least early on? Mine the hills and split the floodplains 50/50 with cottages/farms.

That gives us growth, gold and hammers, which will all help us get to the point where we can churn out some skirmishers if we need to.

I realize early tactics are often about putting more of your eggs in one basket over another, but with this start, I'm wondering if a balanced approach might be more appropriate.

I am admittedly not proficient at GP specialization... so I tend toward a pretty balanced approach, especially for my capitol.

I look at our starting position, and I see:
6 cott FPs
2 irr FPs
1 cott grass
1 irr grass
1 cott plains
1 irr plains
1 sheep hill/plains
2 mined hill/plains
1 mined hill/desert
1 forest/hill/grass
1 forest/grass

... leaving the non-river plains and hill/desert to the north for whatever down the road.

[Arrian]

When you say bronze for "rushing our first settler" T... consider that chopping what little forest we have here will have ugly ramifications for our health, and also that the patch nerfed early chopping (pre-math).

As for the ratio of farms to cottages... we'll see. We've got some time to plan. We will have to decide which we want more: base commerce (cottages) or specialists (farms). We will certainly have some of each, but the exact balance will depend on various factors (such as other nearby health resources - the higher our pop cap, the more attractive farms are).

-Arrian

[Theseus]

Sorry, Arrian, I didn't specify... POPrushing.

/me cracks the whip... er, banana

[notyoueither]

We need someone to head this College to guide discussion and distill the wisdom for the turn player.

Our divisions can be a weakness if they run forever with no conclusion.

I am very uncomfortable having to play T2 this evening.

[Blake]

Okay given that we are going for a post-religion hunting, I think that once we do complete hunting, we should switch from the current build (probably a Worker), and MAX out hammers, working the 2 Forest Hills and the Sheep Hill. This will complete the scout in 2 turns, at the expense of some of the stored food. I don't think there's a downside to turning stored food into scout - well sure, we grow a little slower. But we get both the scout and the worker out much, much faster.
Another option would be to finish the worker then switch to the scout, with or without starving.

I think though getting the scout out ASAP is a good thing, I always feel uncomfortable not knowing what thinking-opponents might be up to. And if nothing else, the scout is an interesting unit to move around.

[nbarclay]

Our initial production is a warrior, which probably makes sense given the need to appear at least halfway defended to anyone who drops by for a visit. Dominae's plan had us waiting until the warrior is finished to build a worker (by which time we'll be size 3, assuming we work flood pains for growth). The down side to that plan is that it has us completing our scouts really late.

The problem is that anything we do to get scouts out earlier ends up sacrificing growth. Which, in turn, raises the question of how much growth (and, over time, production) it's worth sacrificing for how much earlier scouting.

[notyoueither]

I think Blake is saying grow to 3 and the warrior asap, then work hammers to get the scout out a couple turns later. Then do worker.

The 3f from an fp can be turned into 3h for a scout easily, and it doesn't set our exploration back as much as waiting ~30 for a scout.

[nbarclay]

Assuming I recall correctly from what I looked at earlier today, if we beeline to Meditation, we'd be about halfway through building our worker when we discover Hunting. (Polytheism would take a little longer.) That would give us a choice of either interrupting our work on the worker to build scouts or waiting until the worker is finished to build them.

[Theseus]

Where's MZ? So, you wanted to see GS in action... how about analyzing the first two turns to death? :lol:

Good job everyone. Thankfully we'll have more info to work with going forward!!

[Arrian]

Bump.

Ok, EotS is a few turns away from hitting size 2. Is the plan to work another floodplains for max growth?

-Arrian

[Blake]

I don't see why not. Is there really anything gained by having the garrison out earlier?
In any case min-maxing suggests we should put at least one turn of high food into the buffer because we can always take it back out later if we need to :).

[Arrian]

Well, the only thing I can think of is gunning for the western hut asap, or allowing Grog to range farther afield b/c EotS will be defended.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Any thoughts on the "alternative CS slingshot" idea?

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=147732

Requires postponing Masonry for a while and the use of a Great Prophet. It means early CS w/o the Oracle, though.

Cons:

-requires that we generate a prophet, which means the use of a priest or the construction of Stonehenge.

-requires using this prophet to lightbulb (most of) CS, which means *not* using him to found a shrine.

-requires ignoring masonry, which means no pyramids or great lighthouse & the inability to properly use any stone or marble we may find.

Pros:

-early CS without having to build the Oracle. Given the commerce & production potential of EotS (both solid), being able to use Bureacracy is tantalizing.

-Arrian

[Blake]

It'll be a pain to generate the prophet and our research is going to be crazy good. I don't see the need.

[Dominae]

I think we should definitely keep this in mind. It's a nice trick in the right circumstances. The best way to capitalize on our unique (or so we think) start is to get an Academy and Bureaucracy ASAP. This is one way of doing just that.

Foregoing the Shrine could be very annoying though. We know that we have a natural trade route with two other civs. This means very good opportunity for Religion spread to their lands without Open Borders, something that Shrines are really good at.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Blake
It'll be a pain to generate the prophet and our research is going to be crazy good. I don't see the need.

I hear you. But Bureacracy is crazy good. I was just thinkin' that the opportunity cost might be worth it.

Otoh, it might be better to get a scientist for an Academy in EotS and just research CS ourselves when we can.

-Arrian

[Aginor]

Grow to 3, Worker, It's just obscenely efficient out of a flood plains start. One of our neighbors is Vox, we know they went civvy (probably religion) and they started with a Scout, so no early raging adventures there. Just keep our early Warriors close and play it a bit paranoid, and that should work out fine.

Are you prepared to sacrifice a full pop point of food/hammer/cottage commerce production in EotS for 34 turns for the alternate slingshot? You could make a case for it if we bagged Stonehenge/Oracle via the chop or if we were Philo. As is, I don't see it. Bureaucracy would indeed be hot, but it would take way too long to return on the investment IMO given our civ characteristics.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Aginor
Are you prepared to sacrifice a full pop point of food/hammer/cottage commerce production in EotS for 34 turns for the alternate slingshot? You could make a case for it if we bagged Stonehenge/Oracle via the chop or if we were Philo. As is, I don't see it. Bureaucracy would indeed be hot, but it would take way too long to return on the investment IMO given our civ characteristics.

I assume we would get our Prophet from an expansion city, one with a few farmed Flood Plains to work. It's definitely a hit on our economy, then again it pays for itself big eventually. Not researching Masonry does not seem like such a big deal given what we are seeing so far.

The major competition for this strat is the quick jump to Organized Religion (which requires Masonry). They're both interesting paths.

[Arrian]

So we have growth (to size 3) in 6, warrior in 7. Then a worker? We won't have hunting yet, so I guess so.

By the way, I've changed my mind about farms vs. cottages on FPs. Cottaged FPs do indeed rock (esp. for FIN civs). My bad.

-Arrian

[Blake]

Yeah.
Sims suggest that growth in 6, warrior in 6 is possible, by switching from a floodplain to a 1-2-0 tile (altough that does leave us with no food buffer so may not be good idea)
After that, train a worker to completion.

After that we need a settler and granary... we could build the granary then whip the settler, vice-verca, or build both then whip in a 2nd settler for a double-expands, or build a 2nd worker, a granary, then whip in the settler. About then Monotheism completes. In the expand(s), quickly get them to size 2 and at the right hammer level for a 1-pop 60 hammer whip (assuming religions spread to them, if we have both hindu and Juadism we just need to juggle religions). This micromanagement will benefit from expand #2 having access to a FP farm and the mined sheep.

One thing I firmly believe is we simply don't need to pasture those sheep. In terms of food+hammers, all we gain is 1 commerce. I'd rather work a FP cottage + mined sheep, rather than sheep + mined PH.
The health only matters at size 6 (where due to whip-weary we'll be unhappy until monarchy), and generally we only spend one turn there before whipping. If health is a problem we can hook up the deer too, which gives the cap a health limit of 6.

So no animal husbandary will work okay. Especially if we get copper. Maybe if we have no copper then we'll want to see horses more urgently. But for now I'm very happy having those sheep mined until the end of time (or our city is stable at size 7 anyway).

And a tech path which looks really good is:
Monotheism->Priesthood->Monarchy. Monarchy will research in just 10 turns due to having both discount techs, and our beakers being like 35/turn. If we settle on wines with 3 cottages that site quickly brings in 16 commerce.

This kind of assumes that one of the other teams will bag CoL and conf if we screw around getting Juadism. If we go full-tilt for CoL we could probably get it, but that could be ruined by a fast oracle, a fast prophet, or just higher research / more direct research. So given we have wines I think that Monarchy is a pretty good deal.

[Arrian]

I agree we want Monarchy. I wouldn't beeline it like that if we don't have copper, though.

We want archery relatively soon, for security reasons. Thus, I'm now thinking:

Poly-Agr-Pot-Arch. Then we re-evaluate and decide between BW and Monotheism.

-Arrian

[Dominae]

And please let us not forget Alphabet.

[Blake]

Hmmm. Help me out here, what typically is the value of alphabet in multiplayer?

Is it so we can see the techs that other teams have? If that is the case does it also reveal our techs to non-alphabetters?

[Dominae]

Is No Tech Trading on?

[snoopy369]

Although I'm not 100% sure, i believe tech trading is allowed. Check the old threads to be 100% sure.

[Blake]

Well everyone voted for tech trading on :).