Early Landing Comparison Game #3

[Bloody Monk]

Solo,

I, again, won't be typing out a turn log, and the end save doesn't give a good picture of my approach, because of post launch white goods/celebration activities. Here is a save from before the ship parts cities were laid in that will be more meaningful.

I sited the capital based on the suggested tile for the SSC, but more central to the cluster and close to the SSC, all in an attempt to marginally reduce early corruption. I had a problem with SSC commodity blocking that white bread would not always releave. I wonder if it would have been better to transform one of the specials to wine. Would this have given a different wildcard??

Monk

[solo]

Monk,

Wonder bread only works to unblock supply commodities NOT listed with a city in one of its 3 trade routes. In your 680 save, gold is the only commodity that might be affected, but only if a new trade is NOT created after it is delivered.

Wildcards only depend on grid coordinates and # of techs, so transforming terrain will not affect them. However, wine in place of silk is very likely to change non-wildcard commodities.

With better luck with SSC commodity supplies and with as much luck as I had in getting techs from the AI, you could have shaved quite a few turns off this fine effort.

[Elephant]

The trick to getting unblocked commodities is to get your trade routes in to a large AI city (preferably on the same continent) as early as possible, especially before WLTCD growth and major terrain transformation. Those two things, along with tech progress, make the majority of the difference in causing changes in commodity supply. If good TRs are in early, once the new commodities are available deliver them to distant, SMALL AI cities so that they will not "lock in" a new TR. My rule of thumb is AT LEAST half the size of the smallest current TR city. Delivering to a large AI city does not matter much, because most of the trade arrows in the calculation will be coming from the SSC/STC. A small, demanding AI city over a large distance that can be repeated in two turns is the best setup. Make the commodity freight, then make a food freight and use it to clear the block once the commodity is delivered.