Overanalyzing Rome's earth start.

[InThane]

I just got the game, fwiw. Looks nice so far.

Fired up the earth map included with the game, picked Rome, and noticed they have an EXCELLENT start point. Within the default city radius (without moving) are clams, fish, wine, wheat, and marble. Stone is one square out, easily within cultural borders as soon as it is needed. So of course, I started thinking about how to utilize this to crank out settlers as quickly as possible to take advantage of Rome's expansionist traits.

There were three different ways of expanding that I considered:

1. Two fishing boats, followed by settlers
2. One fishing boat on the fish, followed by settlers
3. Settler first

I made an Excel file (inside the .zip I've included) that had the three different scenarios. Fishing boats don't burn food, so growth can be maintained while building the boats.

The first scenario ends up at turn 18 with both the fish and the clams developed, a size 3 city, and 10 turns to build a settler at optimal settings. A fair bit of commerce has come in as well over that period due to the working of sea squares.

The second scenario ends up at turn 11 with the fish developed, and the city at size 2. Settlers can be produced every 13 turns at that point.

The third scenario ends up at Turn 17 with a size 1 city and the production of the first settler.

So, let's say that we build 2 settlers immediately following the completion of the initial build.

Scenario 1 completes the first settler on turn 28 and the second settler on turn 38.
Scenario 2 completes the first settler on turn 24 and the second settler on turn 36 due to some leftover hammers from the first settler.
Scenario 3 completes the first settler on turn 17 and the second settler on turn 34.

Interesting - 2 settlers cranked out in roughly the same timeframe, but with massive differences in infrastructure. Now, there is the small detail of differences in when those settlers get out there, and where they can settle, but to me, if I'm gambling (or playing on a lower difficulty level), I'd go with scenario #1 every time, as I end up with a size 3 city and two developed squares, as well as a possible technology depending on how much commerce I gained.

Went back and worked it out - Scenario 1 gets 138 commerce, Scenario 2 gets 92 commerce, and Scenario 3 gets 34 commerce. If you go for a 3rd settler (which would probably be pushing it quite a bit) then it gets even more lopsided for Scenario #1.

Just some rambling thoughts, the nice thing about this is that anybody can open up the map and make the same observations as me, as opposed to the random maps.

Any thoughts?

[Tulthix]

Good job!

I started working out a spreadsheet for something similar like this but I got too antsy to play the game so I gave it up. My start was similar to yours. I had a clam resource, a corn resource and stone. I ended up building the work boat first.

Here are some other (of the many) possibilities:

- What if you built a worker first and used him to chop forests to build your first settler (did you have forests?)
- What if you built a worker first and quarried the stone?
- What about a strategy based around using the two food resources (which churn a ton of food, something like 5 each a turn), then converting the food to shields with (ick!) slavery.

I've actually been wondering how effective slavery might be to jump start a food intensive city. Each pop point gives up to 30 hammers, which for a small city is only 22-28 (excess) food. And would it really only be 11 to 14 food if you had granaries?

[TomVeil]

InThane:I think you just worked out why ICS is dead. On MP, the ICSer will look really good through about, oh I'd guess, December. By then, though, someone will have taken your Special Theory of Productivity and turned it into a General Theory. Then, with careful attention to tiles, it should be easy to stomp those people who think they're "rushing" their settlers.

Tulthix: In my very very limited experience, serfdom is useful in more situations than slavery (just like in real life, if you think about it). A serf will chop that forest and quarry that stone 50% faster. That's a pure 50% benefit, whereas the slave system has to spend food to win shields -- which is on the order of, although not exactly, a zero-sum game.

[Cort Haus]

Good analysis, Inthane. The Vel thread has a detailed discussion on worker first vs settler first, and this looks at fishing boats first.

Developing bonus tiles first is worth it for the research + infrastructure advantage over a slight time disadvantage to founding the first coupla cities.

[InThane]

Something I left out is the return value of the additional cities. Assuming that they all move the same distance, scenario #3's second city will be founded a full 11 turns before scenario #1's second city. Not sure how much of a difference this makes, but I'm sure it makes some difference. My gut instinct is that scenario #2 is DOA - you either build two settlers off the top, or you go workboat->settler off the top.

[InThane]

Originally posted by Tulthix
- What if you built a worker first and used him to chop forests to build your first settler (did you have forests?)
- What if you built a worker first and quarried the stone?

Workers cost 60, Work boats cost 30, and get used once. The main advantage of this strat is you get two developed resources about the same time that first worker would be popping out, AND you have a stronger local economy to boot. Possibly a useful change might be to pause and crank out a warrior in between the first and second workboat, for defensive purposes. It does slow the build down by 9 turns, though. Depends if you think anybody might come knocking in that timeframe...

[khumak]

This is why I absolutely love having my first city on a coast near fish/clams/crabs. In my most recent game my initial city started out on a coast with 1 fish, 2 crabs, 1 clam, 1 wheat. Talk about a settler/worker pump...