Turnchat 1: Report and Save file.

[MrWhereItsAt]

[/B]The turnchat starts at 1800GMT Thursday as decided in the recently closed poll.[B]

We'll use this thread for talking to each other outside of the chat. If someone can't get in to the chat for some reason (see my thread on how to access mIRC and the turnchat), post here and we will try to help.

I will post any screenshots and halfway saves here, although it should be easy enough that anyone can play along without getting lost.

I will be in the chatroom from now, so unless my computer crashes whilst I sleep, I will be there waiting. I may be idle, but I will be there around 6 am my time, the time the chat is due to start.

See you all there!

A reminder: please do not do anything irreversible, such as moving units etc, until I have officially declared it an order. No playing ahead either.

[UnOrthOdOx]

I'm going to be stuck at work, not going to make it after all.

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

MWIA didn't make it either, it was just me and Gamecube. Now its just me.

[MrWhereItsAt]

I was a bit late, bit people were there an hour early for some reason. I said 1800GMT, and I arrived about 15 minutes ago, at 1830GMT.

We're in there now, so be in quick!

[MrWhereItsAt]

Update at 3550BC.

We have another worker and the floodplains is just irrigated + roaded. We will irrigate a desert nearby before turning back for maybe some mining. And our culture just popped the hut for Ceremonial Burial!

[UnOrthOdOx]

java doesn't want to work either.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Ok, we're done with turnchat one at 3150BC.

We got CB from that hut and have a warrior exploring west, where he found the end of the desert and the start of some forests on the river. Sounds promising.

To the NE we have only seen some plains, but there is sugar up there.

Now we must decide where to send the warrior next, what to build next (settler, or warrior then settler?), and where to send the workers and city 2!

Could some of you guys please start kicking discussions off about these, as I will not be able to do so, likely, until after the server maintenance in about 12 hours? Cheers. I will weigh in after then.

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

After checking the tiles, the tile directly south of the Warrior has +1 gold suggesting its a river tile and making it a likely site for our next city. It would also put us very close to having enough tiles to assign them.

[conmcb25]

Do we want that much spacing?????

Or is it better for the Feudal Demo Game concept GF??

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

I liked that spot because it was
1) on a river
2) had two tiles of cushion from that second volcano

I propose we rename our capital to Vesuvius.

[Tassadar500]

Very luck getting CB from the hut I would also build a warrior, then a settler.

[Aeson]

I want to claim a Volcano as my tile!

I got our starting coords (55,51) from the minimap and designed a scenario file to match up to what we've uncovered so far. Made some guesses as to what's off the screen so as to form Mountains, Volcanos, and Hills correctly... Forests won't form right when replicating a map for some reason.

Here's the coord-map.

[Aeson]

Did we get hit by disease already? I though MWIA's queue called for us being at size 2 at this point in time.

-------

There are a few things I'd like to point out for future consideration.

One is that moving two Workers onto an unroaded tile will waste a turn. When Irrigating (3 turns), using 2 Workers will waste a turn. There are some situations that call for these heavy investments, namely if a really good tile needs to be improved ASAP, or growth or a build must have that improvement to finish early, but most of the time we should try to avoid these situations.

Two is that by maximizing growth, we can catch back up with the production we would get if we were maximizing production. This can happen very fast, and after that it will pay off tremendously throughout the game.

Three is that growth doesn't need to be curtailed in non-corrupt cities to avoid using the luxury slider. To make a Laborer content we only need 1 commerce, so as long as the tile the Laborer is working produces that commerce, we don't lose commerce and can gain food/production by growing faster. Especially important to remember is that we get a free production tile use the turn of growth. So the more often we grow, the better.

To illustrate how these points affect gameplay, and how quickly the investment in growth pays itself off, I ran through to 3150BC on the scenario file maximizing growth (within reason, using a Desert instead of second FP). As you can see, the Warrior was actually out a turn earlier. Hill Mine is finished. We are a turn behind (6 vs 5) on the Gem road. We are a couple turns behind on research because of not having used the Gems at all. Higher population will lead to faster overall research at some point though.

Given our insanely high food start, these are points on where we can make great gains in the early going.

The 3150BC screenshot:

[MrWhereItsAt]

Interesting idea, Aeson.

I did favour growth over most of the time, but when we were about to reach pop 2 the first time I switched from floodplains to the gems to build the worker at the same time. Then I just maxed food again until we got the warrior. I really did want that worker as early as possible, and saw no reason in wasting a food when we could have delayed growth by a turn and gained a worker + loads of trade.

Can you remember in what order your workers improved things? I got that second worker as soon as possible, and I don't know how you could have managed more already. If you could remember or recreate ALL of your worker/workforce moves I would be interested in comparing it to my own.

Yes we DID suffer disease already. As soon as the city reached pop 2 again we did so. Very annoying.

As for the other things - there were no more tiles roaded (except the hills, which would only benefit us with shields), so moving onto the desert (and many other unroaded tiles from now on) was kinda necessary, I thought! I have to say I've never quite understood the reticence to move onto unroaded terrain when it seems the best place to improve! As a further explanation, using the mined hill would have slowed our growth, but we did need an extra shield wherever we could get it, so I reasoned and irrigated roaded desert was the best thing around, as it is as good as roaded bonus grassland. I have so far not started any odd-turn improvement with both workers - once the desert road was done, only one of the two of them stayed to irrigate, the other went to the hills, IIRC.

[Aeson]

I did favour growth over most of the time, but when we were about to reach pop 2 the first time I switched from floodplains to the gems to build the worker at the same time. Then I just maxed food again until we got the warrior. I really did want that worker as early as possible, and saw no reason in wasting a food when we could have delayed growth by a turn and gained a worker + loads of trade.

This was one of the things I was addressing. The Worker is out the same turn either way. When the city grows, it gets to use the Hill for free that turn. Also, you get to use the Hill one turn (+2 food) because of the +3 food per turn. That means the build for the Worker is:

(turn: food: production)

0:0:0 Use FP
1:3:1
2:6:2
3:9:3
4:12:4
5:15:5 Use Hill
6:17:7 Use FP
7:0:9 Growth, Use FP+FP
8:3:0 Worker finished

The tradeoff is that we are gaining food (+3) at the expense of commerce (-6). Those Gems give a lot of commerce when they are used, so it can be argued either way. It isn't a question of production though, as both ways get you the same in that regard.

The second pop point confuses things even further. This is because at +3 food, with +4 being available next turn (so you eventually would hit 19/20 food), you get to use the Gems for a turn. Using 2x Gems for first pop growth means you delay growth, but will have +4 food ready for 5 turn growth the second pop. So you catch up in food, but not production.

9:7:1
10:11:2
11:15:3 Use Gems
12:16:5 Use FP
13:0:7 Use FP+D
14:4:0 Warrior completes.

The disease would have screwed with this. Was it turn 13? That would have caused the Warrior to complete on turn 16 maxing food. That would mean the tradeoff up to that point was +4 food -12 commerce, -1 production.

The extra food will eventually cover (and then surpass) that commerce and production, but it's not a big deal. Would take something like ~80 turns to do so. So I think the 2x Gem start is basically even with the 1(+1)x Hill. Timing of the disease can screw up one over the other, but can't be planned for.

Can you remember in what order your workers improved things?

0:W1 Move to Hill.
1:W1 Road the Hill.
5:W1 Move to FP
6:W1 Irrigate
8:W2 Move to Hill and Mine
9:W1 Road FP
11:W1 Move to Desert
12:W1 Irrigate
16:W2 Move to Gems (to match up to the end result)

I have to say I've never quite understood the reticence to move onto unroaded terrain when it seems the best place to improve!

It's moving onto an unroaded tile with more than one Worker that wastes the turn. Instead of 1 Worker losing a turn to move onto a tile, both Workers do. Compare that to moving W2 onto the already roaded Hill, and being able to start mining at the same time.

Because of the setup (Desert being 3 tiles from the Hill), moving back to the Hill from the Desert uses a full turn. In all this resulted in 3 lost Worker turns:

1. Moving W2 onto FP.
2. Moving W2 onto Desert.
3. Moving W(?) onto Hill to mine.

The 3 Worker turns and 'transfering' a turn from the Gem road (I was at 6 turns to finish instead of 5) to Hill Mine accounts for the Mine done 4 turns earlier. That Mine would matter on growth as the growth shields will be +2 instead of +1.