Turn 17, 3360BC

[Hot Mustard]

Turn 17, 3360BC
(Current Plan)

Units
Grog: Healing
New Warrior: Fortify in EotS? Name?

Science
Current: Polytheism in 2 turns


Cities

Eye of the Storm (Size 3)
Growth: 4 turns
Production: Warrior completed, start on ?

[Hot Mustard]

Originally posted by dejon
New Warrior: Fortify in EotS? Name?

Production: Warrior completed, start on ?

There's some orders to be determined before the next turn - input please. :)

[Blake]

Fortify methinks.

And next build = worker. Gotta get improving that nice land!

[vulture]

Definitely need a worker and a scout in the near future. I think a worker is a more immediate need (and with a 5 food surplus, fairly easy to build). The only truly urgent need for a scout is to grab a hut or two - and considering the low odds of getting something worthwhile (a tech), we're not giving up much by delaying hm for 8 turns or so.

[Arrian]

Worker, yeah.

Warrior... fort him, sure. Name: Spinebreaker.

-Arrian

[DeepO]

worker only when we will have some worker techs queued! We really can use another warrior, one of these days Grog is going to fall to some rogue archer or bear. By the time we finish a worker, another team can have assembled 2 archers to rush us with if they focus on it.

DeepO

[DeepO]

And as to where to go with our second warrior (Name?), I favour to slightly explore our borders, and return at the first sign of trouble. We can wander 1 tile from our border without any risk of leacing an empty capital behind (although the warrior would defend only unfortified). Wandering 2 tiles from the border is unsafe, but still low risk.

DeepO

[vmxa1]

As long as the merc team is not close to us it is probably safe. Few are going to run the risk of a war so soon.

If Vox is the only one close it is safe, they are not going to send out their lone warrior. I doubt if many will send the first warrior out too far from home.

It is not too hard for a civ to get a defender out in a pinch. I would favor getting some more knowledge, without undo risk.

[nbarclay]

If our new warrior goes out to explore, he risks being killed by an animal if he gets unlucky, in which case we'll be undefended until Grog can get back or a new one can be built.

[Blake]

Originally posted by DeepO
worker only when we will have some worker techs queued! We really can use another warrior, one of these days Grog is going to fall to some rogue archer or bear. By the time we finish a worker, another team can have assembled 2 archers to rush us with if they focus on it.

DeepO
We already have mining and the wheel!


And as to where to go with our second warrior (Name?), I favour to slightly explore our borders, and return at the first sign of trouble. We can wander 1 tile from our border without any risk of leacing an empty capital behind (although the warrior would defend only unfortified). Wandering 2 tiles from the border is unsafe, but still low risk.

There is no such thing as "safe" exploring, at ANY time outside of borders a unit is vulnerable to being sniped by a panther or even lion. I've had the cheeky devils kill my units the moment they step outside of borders. If we can see there are no panthers in range we're already doing max "cultural scouting" and a unit wont be able to do anything.
Until sentry chariots, there is no such thing as safe exploring.


I think we should continue as planned, get a worker.
We have exactly enough food stockpile to crank out 2 warriors, 2 turns each. That would give us 3 warriors in the city (albiet unfortified).
I suppose I'd support putting a single turn (at max food still) into a warrior, just to give us a big food buffer and allow cranking out 3 warriors.

I'm not sure if a super-archer rush is a credible threat, to get 2 archers out they'd have to research archery first, gimp thier food production in favor of hammers (do we see this? nahh....) and then either send them out blind or have already scouted us, while hoping to not run into Grog. And then The Gods Have to Like The Archers in order for them to actually win the unfavorable battles.

I believe the Demographics should give ample warning if an archer rush is actually happening.

[notyoueither]

I agree with Nathan and Blake. Fort the warrior in EotS.

[notyoueither]

Bad news. Hinduism is founded in a distant land.

[notyoueither]

Vox has jumped to 64 score from 51.

The Voice grew to size 3, and I would assume they discovered a religious tech.

[nbarclay]

From what I remember of our initial experiments, I'm almost positive that the plan was to build a worker at this point so we can mine the sheep hill and maybe another hill or so. If we stick to the original plan, or something close to it, we should have the tech for the worker to do more by the time we finish building the worker and the worker finishes the high-priority mining. (And if something goes wrong with that plan, we can always prebuild roads for tiles we're planning to improve later.)

As an alternative, it might be worth considering starting a warrior while waiting to grow to size 4 and then interrupting it to build a worker the moment we hit size 4. But I'm not sufficiently used to the settings we're playing on in this game, nor do I remember the early experiments well enough, to know how much sense that would make. (Also, that strategy would eat our cushion for running a food deficit in order to build emergency warriors quickly, although the extra laborer would give us higher production without running a food deficit.)

By the way, what's the current status of the test scenario relative to where we are in the game?

[notyoueither]

The sim is up to date prior to receiving this turn.

[Hot Mustard]

Turn 17, 3360BC

Units
Grog: Healing
New Warrior: Fortified in EotS, Renamed to Spinebreaker

Science
Current: Polytheism in 2 turns


Cities

Eye of the Storm (Size 3)
Growth: 7/26, paused for Worker build
Production: Warrior completed, started Worker - 10 turns

<img src=http://apolyton.net/upload/thumb/22578_3360BC-Demographics.JPG> (http://apolyton.net/upload/view/22578_3360BC-Demographics.JPG)

<img src=http://apolyton.net/upload/thumb/22578_3360BC-Spinebreaker.JPG> (http://apolyton.net/upload/view/22578_3360BC-Spinebreaker.JPG)

As nye already mentioned, somebody else founded Hinduism, so our gambit has failed. Don't think I've ever failed to get a religion with a flood plains start before - this does not bode well. :(

We got contact with Vox this turn and can now see them in the graphs - analysts, go nuts! :)

[Hot Mustard]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Vox has jumped to 64 score from 51.

The Voice grew to size 3, and I would assume they discovered a religious tech.

But since we now have contact with them, we at least know they weren't the ones to get Polytheism. Assuming it would have shown the Hinduism symbol by their name right away.

Can we maybe tell who got it by the influence factor in the Religion screen (21% vs only 16% for the founder of Buddism)?

[nbarclay]

Assuming my memory isn't totally screwed up, the religion symbols only show up when a civ switches to a religion as its official state religion. So if Vox founded Hinduism but hasn't adopted it as their state religion yet, the symbol wouldn't show by their name.

(When playing a non-Spiritual civ, I often wait until I've built my first settler to switch, and then do the switch while the settler is traveling. That way changing religions doesn't delay my first settler, and since the settler can travel during anarchy, it doesn't delay anything about the second city's establishment or progress either.)

[Hot Mustard]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Assuming my memory isn't totally screwed up, the religion symbols only show up when a civ switches to a religion as its official state religion. So if Vox founded Hinduism but hasn't adopted it as their state religion yet, the symbol wouldn't show by their name.

(When playing a non-Spiritual civ, I often wait until I've built my first settler to switch, and then do the switch while the settler is traveling. That way changing religions doesn't delay my first settler, and since the settler can travel during anarchy, it doesn't delay anything about the second city's establishment or progress either.)

However, since we have contact with them - wouldn't the religion screen show us who founded the religion if it was Vox - or must we have seen the founding city too?

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by dejon

However, since we have contact with them - wouldn't the religion screen show us who founded the religion if it was Vox - or must we have seen the founding city too?

I've had times when I've met the civ that founded a religion but the religion screen still showed the founder as unknown. I'm almost positive that there have even been times when I knew from the icon by a civ's name who founded a religion, but the religion screen still came up unknown.

[Blake]

There's no sense in finishing Polytheism switch to Hunting.

i can think of at least 3 good reasons to not finish poly:
1) save a turn or 2 on hunting.
2) finishing it discounts it for others.
3) makes it harder to track what we're researching.

[notyoueither]

How rapid is decay?

[nbarclay]

In regard to learning about other civs' religions, in Hotseat, you know about the state religions of other human civs even if you haven't met them yet. So if PBEM works the same way, we should find out for sure who founded what religion when they switch to their new religions as their state religion.

In regard to decay, I've never noticed any decay doing something along the lines of switching from where we are to research Hunting and then switching back to finish Polytheism after we get Hunting. My impression is that we'd be pressing our luck to try to do much more than that, but it's only an impression, not anything backed by rigorous experimentation or even much experience.

[Mudhut]

I too think it's a good idea to switch to Hunting straight away.