AU501: The Power of Seafaring - Info and Discussion

[nbarclay]

Here's my latest experiment:

T1: Found city. Work bonus grassland. Settler moves 1. Start building a worker.
T2: 2F, 2S, Worker irrigates, city switches to working fish.
T3: 5F, 3S
T4: 8F, 4S
T5: 11F, 5S
T6: 14F, 6S, Worker finishes irrigating and moves 1.
T7: 17F, 7S, Worker starts irrigating the cattle.
T8: City grows in population but completes worker. New worker moves 7 onto bonus grassland. City starts a warrior and switches to working a bonus grassland.
T9: 2F, 2S, Second worker starts mining. City switches back to working the fish.
T10: 5F, 3S
T11: 8F, 4S, Border expands and city starts working the cow where irrigation just finished. Worker starts a road.
T12: 12F, 6S
T13: 16F, 8S
T14: Pop 2, warrior complete, start barracks as granary prebuild. Warrior starts exploring, and luxury slider goes to 20%. First worker finishes road and moves to second grassland with shield. City works cattle and fish.
T15: 5F, 2S. First worker starts mine. Second completes mine and starts road.
T16: 10F, 4S
T17: 15F, 6S
T18: Grow to size 3, 10S, Second worker finishes road and moves onto forest by tobacco. Increase luxury slider to 30% and reduce science slider to 50% in preparation for finishing Pottery.
T19: 5F, 14S. Pottery discovered (3100 BC). City switches to granary. Second worker starts chop. Probably research writing at 10%.
T20: 10F, 18S
T21: 15F, 22S. First worker finishes mine and starts road.
T22: Grow to size 4, 28S. Increase luxury slider to 40%.
T23: 5F, 44S (due to chop finishing). Move laborer from fish to forest and increase luxury slider to 50%. (We have to slow down growth or we'll end up growing the same turn our granary finishes - not good. The tile change both slows down growth and speeds up the granary.) The worker starts a mine if the tile is not a bonus grassland; if it is one, it may make more sense to road but not mine the tile and focus on having the worker help get things ready to build another city.
T24: 8F, 52S. Worker finiishes road and moves to a grassland (probably preparing toward founding another city).
T25: 11F, Granary Complete (2800 BC). Switch back to maximum growth mode.

At this point, what happens next depends on whether or not the grassland uncovered by the chop was a bonus one. If it was, we can build 4-turn settlers at our current size (in a 6/8/7/9 shield pattern, taking advantage of auto-allocation to forest tiles on turns the population expands). If not, we can build a third worker before our settler. (We have a mine that will be ready in time for 4-turn settlers if we build a worker first.)

[Theseus]

Re: AU501: The Power of Seafaring - Info and Discussion

Originally posted by Dominae
This means that you can expect a pretty standard game of Civ3, but if you're very familiar with the map generator some things may strike you as fishy.

Fishy, eh?

Hmmm... ;:

[Theseus]

Arrian, wouldn't your basic plan also work if you disbanded a returning Warrior?

[Catt]

Holy cr*p! This is almost more analysis than some AU AARs delve into and it's based solely on a screenshot of the start position and the known game variables.

I'm guessing there is some serious pent-up demand for an AU game!

Catt

[nbarclay]

Blame the fact that there's so much time between the posting of the screenshot and the posting of the game. Thus, all we can do is conduct thought experiments or test-scenario experiments based on the information available in the screenshot. I'm betting that this is a lot more analysis than normally goes into the opening sequence of a game.

[Paddy]

well said

[ducki]

You gotta admit, though, it's good to see this much enthusiasm. I know I don't (or rather, didn't used to) think even as far ahead as the skimpy little plan that _I_ posted, much less these in-depth, turn-by-turn analyses with per-turn shield and food totals.
That's just too much like work for me, but I'm sure glad someone does it.

[vulture]

What's the price of pottery on a large map with no contacts for the various difficulty levels? I'd check myself, but I'm at work at the moment, and have a nice little chart of how many shields and science I can get for each turn. By my reckoning I can get to 109 beakers before I run out of barracks pre-build for the granary (assuming no luxuries or 25 gold goody huts turn up), which should surely be enough for pottery on emperor level. Surely?

[nbarclay]

It looks like it's probably 80, or at least something very close to that. (Masonry, which is twice the cost, has a research time of 32 turns at five gold per turn, so 80 for Pottery has to be very close if it's not exact.)

Is your calculation of 109 beakers taking into account the need to spend some gold on the luxury slider? Also, gold from goody huts is completely irrelevant to research times unless a civ either has buildings to pay for or goes past its free unit support threshold (which, by the way, Arrian's three warriors and two workers do). You can't go over 100% total science and luxury spending, and with no expenses, there is no need to stay under either even with no gold in the bank.

[alexman]

Yes, it's exactly 80.
Cost of Pottery = 2
Tech rate at large map = 320
Cost factor at Emperor = 8

2 * 320 / 8 = 80

[vulture]

I'm taking into account units support and luxury slider (and maintenance, not that there is any until the granary is completed). My little chart has a total of 5 gold spent on luxuries before I get to 80 science, and none on unit upkeep to that point (I build 1 more worker and 2 warriors, so upkeep doesn't come into it until the first settler is built, so Nathan is entirely right: huts won't make a difference unless they pop out an extra warrior to annoy me. I'd not seperated my luxury costs out from my support / maintenance costs - wouldn't it be nice sometimes to be able to run at 100% science and absorb 1 gpt from your treasury for happiness reasons).

My scheme gets the granary on turn 29 (2630 BC) with settlers every 4 turns after that (although the first one is a little odd in terms of food usage). Not the quickest possible I suspect, but since it's the best plan I came up with (without chopping trees) its the one I'll probably use.

[ducki]

which should surely be enough for pottery on emperor level. Surely?

I don't know about costs, but at Emperor on a Large map, even on non-coastal starts and non-river starts I was able to do max Pottery research and do a Warrior-Worker-Barracks-prebuild-for-Granary pattern even WITH a forest Chop and still have 3 or more turns to go on my Granary. I didn't have any starts quite as nice as this one, but I did have BGs to mine.
At least I think that's how it worked out. Sorry I don't have analysis-worthy numbers/turn-counts/beakers but I don't think you'll run out of prebuild unless you do some serious deforestation.
Edit: If you are going to finish too early you could always prioritize commerce squares and slow down the shields a little.

have a nice little chart of how many shields and science I can get for each turn.

Wow. This has to be the most analyzed 4000BC jpg of all time - well, short of cracker's stuff at CFC, maybe.
Is that a generic chart usefull always or just for this game?

Edit: I'm going to laugh my butt off if we all do this insane amount of analysis on a maximum expansion settler-pump start and Dominae has put us on an island alone and the pump will lose its uber-advantage/usefullness rather early.
I'm thinking the first thing out of Town 2 had better be a boat.

[vulture]

My chart is just for this scenario.

And there's no way I'd put this much thought into my opening sequence for a normal game. I'd just have started with 3 warriors, then gone to a granary, maybe chopping down a tree in the process, and ended up with a 4 turn settler pump probably some 5 or 6 turns later.

Even if we are alone ona fairly small island, there's still a lot to be said for a good pump to get cities down ASAP and then boost them all up to maximum size in record time with a good horde of workers around the place to improve terrain - it mitigates against not getting the pyramids, and gives you a good shot at 2 or more ancient era wonders even without a leader (on Emperor level).

Agree on the early boat though.

[Master Zen]

Finally a C3C AU!

I had pretty much giving up on Civ other than the demogames and PBEMs, this should light me up more interest

[Theseus]

Awesome analysis, guys. I thankfully cleared the decks of a of work stuff this week, so....

In the words of the immortal Regis Philbin:

"LET'S PLAY!!"