Building Settlers, Losing Nary a Population?

[La Fayette]

quote: Originally posted by debeest on 05-16-2001 03:07 PM Ah, now I believe I see what you mean.

Thank you debeest.
I checked last night and reread the whole thread just now.
IMO neither you nor Bird wrote anything wrong, but what Bird wrote first might be misleading for people who don't know exactly how the foodbox, the building of settlers and the granary work (which is precisely the case of my friend Maelhavok who started the thread).
Here is what Bird wrote: 'granary is irrelevant to what happens after building a settler'.
This is true IMMEDIATELY after building (what happens then has been described several times in the thread: the city looses 1 in size and the foodbox looses 1 column and keeps the number of sheaves it would have if no settler had been built on that turn).
But what happens next?
1) Without granary the city grows again along with its food surplus and 1 foodbox is needed before the city comes back to its previous situation (the one just before building the settler).
2) With granary, only 1/2 food box is needed (provided that the number of sheaves remaining is at least 1/2 of the box).

Summary: Building settlers
The settler is the only unit with a double cost (in shields and in sheaves)
The cost in shields is always 40 (or the equivalent in gold in case of rushbuilding)
The cost in sheaves is 1 foodbox (reduced to 1/2 foodbox with a granary and somewhat careful managing).
It is advisable:
1) Not to build a settler in a city size 1 (since it kills the city).
2) To follow Dave's advice (see above) in a city size 2.
3) To build a granary previously in a city size 3 or more.


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aux bords mystérieux du monde occidental

[La Fayette]

Forgot to mention that it can be highly advisable to build a settler in a city size 1, if you do that away from any nearby city of yours, in order to get a NONE settler.

BTW Maelhavok, what does 'nary' mean? (My dictionary is quite thick though).

[Ribannah]

Nary is a contraction of "never a", as in "nary a cent".

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If you have no feet, don't walk on fire

[La Fayette]

Thanks, Rib.
I should acquire an elf dictionary to understand all veterans in the world.
Is there any bookshop close to Enroth?

[Bird]

More on rah's point: building settlers with your first (and only) city can work well if you build it on iron (particulary at 2x production). You can crank out several settlers very quickly, which might help if counterbalance the negative effects of low trade terrain. I'd rather have the trade, but you can't always get what you want (you can try sometimes, but you just might find.....).

[rah]

If you crank out more than two, you can have food support problems. And what do you do with the settlers while you wait, if they tip huts, you might get a city. They can road their way out, or move as far as you dare to claim territory. But you're right, sometimes you do have to do something a little different when the trade specials are rare.

RAH

[Bird]

Two settlers might be the max (maybe 3 depending on the terrain and how much food you can store before building the first one), but you'll get four cities down quickly that way. Barbs have a tendency to pick on you if you get too many cities early, so you also need to build quick defenses. It helps to pick up bronze from a hut, but what are the odds of that (plus your tech tree will be screwed up). If you tip a hut and get a village, too bad, time to change course!

[rah]

And don't forget about building a settler from your capital when it is still size one (IF IT"S YOUR ONLY CITY) does not disband your capital and DOESN"T subtract ANYTHING from your food box. This is a great cheat for getting a capital that started on gold to a larger size faster. Build a settler right before it goes to size two, let it grow to size two the next turn and then merge the settler back in. (i prefer to use the settler for expansion, but some people like to grow the city)

RAH

[East Street Trader]

Getting an advanced tribe from a hut while building a settler in my only city is one of the situations I have sometimes got into when I';ve had to change production and either finish up with some expensive unit that I didn't want or face the 50% penalty incurred by changing from a unit to a building.

An additional option occured to me the other day which certainly works quite well a bit later on (when I occasionally tell a new city to build a settler straight away and then realise later that it's going to arrive too soon). What you do is switch to a more expensive unit but with the intention, as soon as the food box is full and growth to size 2 is imminent, to switch back to the settler. Obviously you still lose a few shields but, unless the miscalculation has been gross, it is only a few.

Now this may not work very early (because you may have no more expensive unit available). But if you were lucky enough to have acquired Trade then you could switch up to a caravan and then down again.