The Spartan Academy

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Dominae


The best way to clear the ring around the capitol is send the first Warrior to the mountain, then North, and the second Warrior South then West.


Dominae

What about the coast though? That will not reveal the coast.

If we send the first down the river to the coast, and then arcing over the capitol to the North... and we send the second to the mountain and then arcing under the capitol to the South... we will reveal the first ring and then the warriors can move further off.

Thinking about it, it would be best to reverse those movements. From the mountain North, and to the coast then South will have the warriors finished the arcs and pointed in useful directions, North and West.

[Dominae]

Coast then South makes sense, although I'm not sure how much information we're expecting to get from the coast (Fish?). Regardless, I think Mountain then North is the best bet for the first dude.


Dominae

[Shiber]

Originally posted by Dominae
Here's a new idea to discuss while we wait to see more of the map: should we use Barbarian encampments as training centers for our troops, or should we just swoop in for the easy 25 gold?

In SP I've often used an accessible Barb camp as a sort of "Monolith" (remember SMAC?) that trains units. Since we're not Militaristic, this may help out quite a bit. Getting a few Spearmen to Elite status would really help in an early skirmish.

Thoughts?


Dominae

Excellent idea!!
I can't wait to see the looks on GhengisFarb's stupid face when he sees our elite warriors.

[Theseus]

This is a gut call, without having done the turn forecasting discussed elsewhere, but I tend to think we are going to want 4 Warriors ASAP...

1st goes to the mountain, and then north... the early visisibility is a no-brainer, and then I want to see what's along the river and whether there are hills up there.

2nd goes south... tempted to go west, but don;t forget this guy gets built on turn 7... I'd rather wait for the road to be completed on the fur tile, and I also am dying to see a) whether there's a coast immediately below us and b) if there's any shielded grassland and / or other luxuries.

3rd is a question mark. Do we need an MP at pop 2, or is the fur enough? Either the 3rd or 4th to the west.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Theseus
3rd is a question mark. Do we need an MP at pop 2, or is the fur enough? Either the 3rd or 4th to the west.

With the Fur connected, we can go up to size 3 without unhappiness. I don't think we'll need any MP anytime soon. Note that this isn't an argument against keeping a unit inside the capital, which may be a good idea for safety purposes.


Dominae

[Arrian]

We won't be connecting the fur for a bit. Alexman explained that roading fur next to river isn't optimal for the time being, because despotism eats the 3rd commerce from the tile. We save worker turns too.

The current plan is to chop, irrigate, move, chop, irrigate, move to floodplain and irrigation & road those. Then I want to chop a 3rd fur tile that is off the river, and road that one.

We can use luxury spending for a couple of turns if necessary, and keep in mind that the third warrior will be sticking close to home anyway to offer some defense.

-Arrian

[Theseus]

Understood.

I still advocate sending the 3rd Warrior to the west... 66984 and then home.

[alva]

As we get a good bonus against barbs, I'm inclined to be in favour of using them as target practise.

Should we do a poll on where to send the first warrior?

[nbarclay]

Question: how mutually exclusive are raiding camps for gold and getting target practice? If new camps pop up fairly quickly to replace old ones, we might be able to get some decent target practice and still gain a fair amount of gold.

Also note that every two camps raided for gold can eventually pay for one and a quarter warrior-to-swordsman upgrades. Would the training really be worth more than that?

Nathan

[Dominae]

You would only need to "set aside" one Barb camp for training since the rate at which camps generates units is pretty good. The others would all be used for gold. I'm not thinking of sending all our units to train, maybe just a few Spearmen to give ourselves an edge. Hopefully the 25 gold will not be missed.


Dominae

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Dominae
You would only need to "set aside" one Barb camp for training since the rate at which camps generates units is pretty good. The others would all be used for gold. I'm not thinking of sending all our units to train, maybe just a few Spearmen to give ourselves an edge. Hopefully the 25 gold will not be missed.

It's not so much the 25 gold itself as it is the question of how leaving that camp would affect generation of other camps in the area. I don't know what the formula for camp generation is, but if leaving a camp intact slows down the generation of other camps, that could cost considerably more than 25 gold.

Nathan

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by nbarclay


It's not so much the 25 gold itself as it is the question of how leaving that camp would affect generation of other camps in the area. I don't know what the formula for camp generation is, but if leaving a camp intact slows down the generation of other camps, that could cost considerably more than 25 gold.

Nathan

That said, and giving it a little more thought, leaving one camp for training is probably still worthwhile, especially as long as we have regular units around.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by nbarclay
It's not so much the 25 gold itself as it is the question of how leaving that camp would affect generation of other camps in the area. I don't know what the formula for camp generation is, but if leaving a camp intact slows down the generation of other camps, that could cost considerably more than 25 gold.

Just an assumption, but Barb camp generation is probably linear in the number of pre-existing camps. So, always having 1 around would decrease the chances that others show up. However, given that it is a probability that camps appear, I'm not sure this would cost us all that much gold. Plus, we would be denying camps to others as well! If this is all correct, it would be interesting to see one civ have a monopoly on all the camps, which it could use to train units until the end of the game!


Dominae

[Theseus]

Ideally, we'll have one barb camp in a remote corner (remote to the other civs that is), with a hill or mountain next to it... that's the one we use for training, and we grab the gold from all others we find, ASAP.

Dominae, why do you refer to Spearmen for this? I usually do it with Warriors or Archers.

[nbarclay]

I would expect that camps don't show up near other camps. I've played games where I'd destroy a camp and have it regenerate a few turns later in the same area over and over, but I don't remember ever seeing two camps especially close to each other. Do you have any particular reason to think that leaving camps in our area would affect their rate of appearance elsewhere, or is that just a wild guess?