What about Hurricane?

[nbarclay]

If my calculations are correct, if we switch Hurricane to building a spearman in our upcoming turn, the spearman would be finished the following turn with no wasted shields. That means that if we don't switch immediately, we're pretty much committed to trying for a wonder unless we're willing to throw away shields.

There are three basic approaches we can take with Hurricane:

1) Build a wonder now.

2) Build one or more military units, and then start on a wonder.

3) Don't try for a wonder in the near future, but focus on our military instead with an eye toward either invading the mainland or taking out Vox, whichever makes more sense when the time comes.

If we don't build a spearman now, we're pretty much locked into the first option. If we do, we can still choose which of the other two options we prefer.

Please take some time for thought and discussion before your vote, but this does need to be decided by the time we play our next turn. Sorry about the short notice; I hadn't caught the fact that growth in Hurricane would cause us to get a spearman quite so quickly.

Nathan

[Aeson]

I really think we should consider the Settler from Hurricane first if building the Pyramids. The Settler should be definite if we are going for units.

Our estimate as to when we can be in a Republic is about 40 turns, and pumping the city up to size 10 allows us to build the Pyramids in 42 turns from now (650AD) without having to touch EotS' Fur Plain.

I've run the timeline, and it works. All the tiles are improved before we need them, even mining the Iron. We get our next city founded 5 turns earlier, and our city after that gets founded 5 turns earlier as well. This is a pretty big jump this early in the game.

We don't want to build the Pyramids much before 650AD anyways, so the slightly slower production shouldn't matter. The date without the Settler would be 4 turns earlier, 730AD.

[DeepO]

No vote from me yet, but in theory I'm all for going for a wonder in Hurricane. Aeson's build-settler-before-adding-workers strat seems strange, maybe promising, but I have reservations on creating one city 5 turns earlier if we don't have the military to defend it. Also, the risk gets higher on losing the pyarmids (or any other 400 shield wonder) with every delay, when we first planned on doing this, we were anticipating 1000 BC for the GL, now this date has already slipped to 730(?) or 650 BC. The longer we wait, the more chance there is that 2 other civs build a wonder before that, and maybe the GL will be the first to be built, but the Pyramids will most likely be second.

So, in theory I vote for continuing the prebuild, but I'll give it a few hours more time to see if someone has some other valid arguments to make. From the first results of nye's test, one thing seems obvious: we have enough growth-cities to not worry about Hurricane's production, so there are many advantages to let one city grow to decent size early in the game. Only the amount of commerce Hurricane is going to produce will be an asset, so why not build a wonder there.

DeepO

[nbarclay]

Aeson, I still don't get the logic of building a settler in Hurricane and then pumping workers into it. We'd be losing 30 shields - about two turns on the Pyramids - for only half a point of population in EotS. Is there something I'm missing, or do you just consider the half-point of population a lot more important than I do?

[zeit]

I say no for the spearmean- we can't delay anymore, and i fear losing the Pyramids (we are thinking in that direction, right?) more than an invasion one more spear could save. Although i would support a certain buildup of force, but not in Hurricane.

[nbarclay]

If you'll look at my experiment with NYE's test scenario, I think our military will be far too weak if we focus Hurricane on a wonder at this time. We might be able to do just a little better than I did there, but not much. The problem is that EotS and Cyclone can't produce troops because they're focused on settlers and workers, Bolderberg doesn't have much production, and the other cities take long enough to get up to speed that they can't make up for the lack of military production in our first three cities.

At a minimum, even if we want to build a wonder in Hurricane, I think we should build a spearman, then four vet warriors, and then probably another spearman first. That would avoid cutting our defenses quite as thin, although even that would leave them a good bit thinner than I prefer.

Nathan

[Dominae]

Keep going with the Wonder. If we focus on military and REX with our other cities, Hurricane will be the "ace up our sleeve". We do everything the other teams are doing, plus a Wonder. Now that's a way to break the game open.


Dominae

[Dominae]

We will not be needing those defenses in the timeframe that Hurricane can produce them. Since the other teams are a non-issue so early, are we expecting an attack from Vox?


Dominae

[nbarclay]

I know we don't need the extra forces now, but if we go for the Pyramids, we're looking at almost 50 turns before we could get Hurricane back as a troop producer. By that point, our defenses would be spread very thin. We'd probably be okay due to distance and our good relationship with Vox, but if Vox and someone from the other continent would decide to ally against us, we'd be in huge trouble.

That leaves two choices if we want to go for a wonder without seriously compromising our defenses. We can go for the Colossus with the idea that we'll get Hurricane back as a unit producer not too terribly long after the earliest galleys might reasonably be expected to reach us. Or we can build some extra units before we start on bigger wonder; we don't need the extra forces now, but we'll have them when we do need them.

Nathan

[Theseus]

Look, I get how great the Pyramids would be.

But, please, someone explain to me how missing this or any other GW ruins our game?

Balanced play. Military strength. A great GA. Taking out Vox.

The basics.

Anybody watch the Superbowl?

(damn, that was a good one)

[nbarclay]

Based on my latest run with the test scenario, the only way I see it making any sense to take out Vox in the ancient era is if they build up practically no military. Otherwise, we'll be too busy REXing to build up the kind of numerical superiority needed to fight without taking heavy casualties (and thereby costing us more economic strength than conquering Vox would give us). This isn't my ethical reservations talking; it's my cold economic cost/benefit analysis of whether an early war is worth the price.

It's starting to look to me like our best bet is going to be to make Leonardo's a high priority. At that point, our options would be:

1) Go after Vox with massive knight upgrades.

2) Partner with Vox to go after someone on the main continent who is threatening to get out of hand.

3) Keep working with Vox on an economic effort to get cavalry as quickly as possible and make our move then.

So I think it makes sense to plan our military forces around deterring a war and being able to handle one if one comes rather than around actually starting a war ourselves any time soon.

Nathan

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Dominae
We will not be needing those defenses in the timeframe that Hurricane can produce them. Since the other teams are a non-issue so early, are we expecting an attack from Vox?

Did ND expect an attack from Lux? Good for them, that they were prepared.

[Dominae]

Did Lux attack ND?! Sheesh, I'm so out of the diplomatic scene right now...In any case, attacking a neighbor is quite different from attacking overseas. Quite different.

I'm all for being prepared, but there's being prepared and there's being paranoid. We know Vox does not even match our pathetic military. What threat do they pose?

I can see that, in the event of an attack down the road, we may not be as capable of defense as we could be (because of Hurricane's focus). But that's a gamble, plain and simple. I believe it's a gamble we can afford: the worst-case scenario leaves us fighting for our survival; the average-case scenario puts us ahead of the game. That's good enough for me (especially considering that we can work hard diplomatically to prevent a strike from the mainland...).


Dominae

[Harovan]

Gambling on high stakes (survival or not) in a MP game?

[notyoueither]

I'm not sure it is a gamble anymore Sir Ralph.

In playing through the 1675 scenario we can have 2 or 3 barracks cities producing before Vox comes out of REX. In the meantime we can monitor the MilAdvisor and switch EotS out of REXing mode if Vox comes back to average. EotS could build worker-unit-worker-unit-worker-unit or go full out on units if the situation warrants.