Turn 87, 850 BC

[nbarclay]

Correct. 14 total with one of them wasted now, or 17 total with two of them wasted using the mountain. And my math matches yours. So we can keep where we are and get a little extra gold. Edit: Crossposted.

[Aeson]

Yah, and a few more food to run at a deficit later.

[nbarclay]

Is there any reason we need to irrigate so early? If we'd work the mountain one turn early and time the grassland irrigation to complete anywhere from the turn before we finish the Pyramids to the turn after, we'll be on schedule and have the benefit of the irrigation for our whole GA.

[Aeson]

It looks to me like if we're going to go for the Collosus, our next available Worker can irrigate the grassland 21 of Hurricane. That will give us a few more food, and the Collosus will still take 7 turns if we add a Worker to bump it up to size 12 on turn 3 of the build to give us:

3(28) + 4(29) = 200

Pop 12 uses a Mountain to get to 32-3 per turn, doesn't even need a mine at that point, but at least a road would be best. By the end of the build, having the mine done would put us at 30 shields per turn for best unit (or Temple/Cathedral) production.

[Aeson]

We end up with 400 shields on the Pyramids build if we were to finish irrigating the grassland in 2 more turns. (we don't have the worker for it anyways)

That would put us at 26 food + 7 turns of + 1. Giving us 33 turns of deficit food to use. That means 13 turns of 20 shields per turn once our GA ends. Every food counts. After we run out of food, we drop down to 17 shields per turn. 17 per turn is pretty good for Knight production (4 turn), but not so good for most other things.

[nbarclay]

Without a mine, we gain no production and lose a food switching a mine to irrigation in order to support a twelfth laborer on a mountain. Irrigating and adding that twelfth citizen only makes sense once we have the mine. So we may want to time both of those events to happen about the time we finish the Colossus. Does that make sense? Edit: another crosspost.

[Aeson]

You're right. I was thinking we'd only be getting 1 shield from the grassland (visualization problems), but we get 2. I think it's still best to irrigate it now, just not necessary like I was thinking.

Irrigating it, we'd get to 36 food stored up before we'd lose 1 food for 17 turns in our GA. Not irrigating it until 3 turns left on the Collosus (when we'd be able to keep to the 7 turn schedual), we'd get only 29, and lose 1 food for 13 turns of our GA.

So at the end of our GA we'd have 19 food by irrigating it ASAP, and 16 food by waiting. Thats 3 extra turns at 20 shields per turn compared to 17 shields per turn.

(edited for clarity's sake)

[nbarclay]

Do we want to keep pressing on with research or suspend it to get more gold?

[nbarclay]

The grassland Hurricane is working is one shield with a mine and no shields with irrigation.

If we have a mine ready when we add our twelfth citizen, we could delay adding the citizen a little longer than if we don't.

[nbarclay]

Screenshots sent. (They reflect if we keep research going the way it is now.)

[Aeson]

Well it's 2 shields in the GA, which was when I was trying to visualize.

With the mine we get to 34-3 shields per turn. We could wait until the 5th turn of the build by then.

5(28) + 2(31) = 202

That would get us another 2 food.

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I'd like us to pull back on the research now, but we probably need more discussion on that point before making changes.

[Aeson]

If we get our next EotS Worker to do the Irrigation it can work out just about perfect.

1: Irrigate
3: cross river
4: move onto mountain
5: start road
9: Pyramids finished
10: start mine, 2 workers join in (these might be hard to come by though)
13: finish mine
14: a worker added to Hurricane.

If we can't find the 2 workers, then we can probably figure something out, skip the road maybe? We lose a few commerce per turn (until we can get the road built), but it's probably worth it.

[nbarclay]

News flash, compared with Vox, our military is weak! I'm tempted to go ahead and upgrade the vet warrior in Hurricane to avoid letting Vox get ideas. (Well, once we get our iron roaded in a couple turns.)

[Aeson]

It's been weak for a few turns now hasn't it? Turn 1025AD was when Sir Ralph first noted it.

[Aeson]

We should have all available Warriors head to Hurricane though. That includes the W Desert ones, our Spear in Arashi can cover Monsoon (and Monsoon gives more warning than that Warrior anyways). Our WC in Bolderberg can move out to the W Desert and move up and down the coast to give us a better view of the potential crossing zone too.

The Warrior 99 from Arashi can move too, we have the Desert of tears covered well enough (and if we're lucky a barb camp will pop up and gives us something to do with the WC in EotS). The Spear 6 from Sandstorm should move into Sandstorm to give it more movement potential. We have enough warning that it can always get back up on that mountain if we need it to.