Starting placement -- hill advantage.

[Forrester]

How many turns are you willing to give up to move your first settler to a non-food, 2+ hammer hill? That seems to be (not 100% sure) the requirement in order to have your city's home square produce two food and two hammers, as opposed to the standard two food and one hammer.

Used to be just one for me, but the more I thought about it the more turns I was willing to sac. It's about at '3' right now, and I'm thinking that '4' might be the breakeven point, especially if the new site has some other potential advantage as well. Double early production for non-settler/workers, and +33% production for settler/workers just seems too good to pass up.

[Yuufo]

I usually don't move to such a tile. The capital emplacements are really good ones, so, except a few cases, I take them. There is no point to getting one extra hammer if you don't have specials nearby! (remember that the Capital sometimes has hidden specials too - copper, iron, horses).

[Forrester]

Originally posted by Yuufo
I usually don't move to such a tile. The capital emplacements are really good ones, so, except a few cases, I take them. There is no point to getting one extra hammer if you don't have specials nearby! (remember that the Capital sometimes has hidden specials too - copper, iron, horses).

Obviously, I'm not suggesting moving away from specials/fresh water. But there seem to be plenty of times where you could maintain access to specials/fresh water, and still move 2-3 spaces to get yourself on a hill.

[Velociryx]

Starting city: I'm willing to give up one turn for a plains hill (not just any hill, in my experience). Other cities...I'm ALWAYS on the lookout for good city sites with a center on a plains hill, and will easily give up the fresh water bonus for such a site. The reason for not more than one turn? Chop. I'll make up the difference via chop. More than one turn tho, and I feel that I lose too much time researching that crucial first tech.

-=Vel=-

[Forrester]

Originally posted by Velociryx
The reason for not more than one turn? Chop. I'll make up the difference via chop. More than one turn tho, and I feel that I lose too much time researching that crucial first tech.

-=Vel=-

I have to wonder whether or not you are going to make up all the difference via chop. Timing issues aside (I'll get to that in a second), in a Worker-First mode you're pumping that worker out in 3 turns less, and in Settler-First mode you're pumping that settler out in 5 turns less. If you're trying to grow to size 2 before doing workers/settlers, well, you can get one warrior out just as you hit size 2 if you are on a hill, not going to happen if you're not.

Timing-wise, though, I can see a potential problem; if you're going Worker/BronzeWorking right off the bat, I believe that they take about the same amount of time to research/build. Depends on the game speed, I suppose, but you don't want to build your worker 3 turns faster and then have him sitting around picking his nose while you develop the tech you need to get him going.

Still . . . assuming no timing issues, I can't imagine that it wouldn't be worth sacrificing 2 turns of super-early tech development for a faster first worker or more warriors (hell, you get one more warrior out and find and average of half of a gold-producing hut, the extra time you get to keep your research at 100% pays for those two turns right there).

On that note, one faster early warrior also means one less warrior you have to build later on, which means that one of your cities will spend X fewer turns without a library. The tech from those 2-3 turns will be made up; the question is whether you 100% absolutely need that first tech to hit to grow, e.g., the worker/bronzeworking issue. But if your worker can, say, plant a farm while you spend those 2-3 turns finishing bronzeworking, I say go for it.

[Forrester]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Starting city: I'm willing to give up one turn for a plains hill (not just any hill, in my experience).
-=Vel=-

In my experience it has to be a 2+hammer hill, so I guess that'd be a plains hill. I think that it also has to lack food -- though that doesn't really make sense, so I could well be wrong.

[Velociryx]

See, but this is where pure math fails. From a pure math standpoint, it's comparing 8-9 research lost for X turns (however long you delay the build of your first city) (plus at least 1 food per turn for X turns) vs. 1 hammer for (game duration - X) turns.

So if you delay for 4 turns, you miss out on ~36 resources, meaning that in 37 turns, your 1 hammer per turn is pure profit (if we value all resources at 1:1). As long as the +1 hammer eventually makes a profit, you're theoretically coming out ahead....twenty turns delay could eventually pay for itself, but in reality, if you delayed building the city for that long, I would imagine that there'd be almost no way to truly make up the deficit, no matter what the math says.

Might be an interesting experiment to try, but my guess is that it would be a lesson in pain.

-=Vel=-

[Forrester]

Originally posted by Velociryx
See, but this is where pure math fails. From a pure math standpoint, it's comparing 8-9 research lost for X turns (however long you delay the build of your first city) (plus at least 1 food per turn for X turns) vs. 1 hammer for (game duration - X) turns.

So if you delay for 4 turns, you miss out on ~36 resources, meaning that in 37 turns, your 1 hammer per turn is pure profit (if we value all resources at 1:1). As long as the +1 hammer eventually makes a profit, you're theoretically coming out ahead....twenty turns delay could eventually pay for itself, but in reality, if you delayed building the city for that long, I would imagine that there'd be almost no way to truly make up the deficit, no matter what the math says.

Might be an interesting experiment to try, but my guess is that it would be a lesson in pain.

-=Vel=-

Well, a 4-turn delay is admittedly quite a leap, and may only show a profit if you're going worker/settler as your first two moves. Not sure where that twenty turns delay idea comes in, though . . . ? Even on a map where there's no competition, seems unlikely you could make up for it .

36 resources sounds like a lot, especially early, but . . .

Well, tell you what. Give me a scenario and I'll do a little experiment. I just want to make sure I get the right first moves correct or else you all will take me to task for not doing the right test!

Maybe Gandhi, where it's a Worker/Bronzeworking, then Settler/Settler (both chopped) start? Would that make sense?

[Velociryx]

Well, I guess the simplest cutoff point would be this: if you save 4 turns by building a worker (founding on a plains hill vs. not), then 3 turns is the cutoff....anything beyond that, and you lose the speed you otherwise would have gained. Of course, this does not factor risk into the equation. I do not know when the critters first start showing up, but founding on turn 1 is risk = 0. After that...I dunno.

My one turn max delay is based on the following:

Limited number of visible tiles, and the risk that a suitable hillsite will not be able to be found within a reasonable timeframe....if not, then the delay actually works against you, and I"m not willing to risk that. Given that, if I see one in my starting tileset (which you can generally reach in one turn), I'll bite. Otherwise, too many unknowns.

-=Vel=-

[Forrester]

[SIZE=1]

Limited number of visible tiles, and the risk that a suitable hillsite will not be able to be found within a reasonable timeframe....if not, then the delay actually works against you, and I"m not willing to risk that. Given that, if I see one in my starting tileset (which you can generally reach in one turn), I'll bite. Otherwise, too many unknowns.

-=Vel=-

I was working under the assumption that I could see said spot from where I start + where my warrior moves. I agree that it'd be silly to risk a hill-hunt if there's no strong candidate right out of the chute. Most candidates will be within two spaces, because of this limitation, but a 3-4 move trek is theoretically possible.

[Sauron07]

FYI - Here's a thread on this exact subject I started several weeks ago http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=143727

I agree with your general contention but think that 4 turns is pushing it, particularly if you want to catch up in time to guarantee getting some of the key early wonders (pyramids, oracle) on monarch or higher. On easier difficulty levels it's definately worth several turns of waiting although, as Vel mentioned, I too will often wait until my 2nd or 3rd city to really start searching for hill/plains founding sites once I've cleared some of the fog away by exploring.

Using this in MP, especially small duel maps with no other opponents makes for an interesting start to an early rush (as odd as that sounds). This is particularly true if you are rushing with units that dont require bw to research as you can get those early archers or quechas ((sp?) out much quicker to deny your opponent copper and/or iron which seems to be the key to those small map 1v1 battles.

[Forrester]

Figured I couldn't be the only one to ponder this before . Yeah, I think 4 turns is probably silly unless you're building worker/settler or settler/worker, and what's more, it's almost never ever an issue. But a 2-3 turn delay is something that should be considered, and I'd go so far as to say that a 2 turn delay with no downside re resources/fresh water is almost always going to be worth it.