Discussion for the The Chronicle of Legoland thread

[ZargonX]

Hmm... all of this new information certainly does make that isthmus a vitally strategic spot. While I agree that we need to put a city there soon, I think that for the moment, we should assign a military unit to blocking it about 1 or 2 tiles up.

I say this because I think the city site near Howard Hills needs to be set up as a production center quickly, so that it can be up to full speed all the sooner. I don't think GoW would start a war simply to get through the isthmus, so a blocking unit would be effective enough until we can get our second settler ready to go.

[ZargonX]

By the by, did the RPers just give us the GoW minimap voluntarily? I guess they really are becoming a minimap repository.

[Nimitz]

The did not give the mini map they told me where the GoW is.

[Sharpe]

Hmm our turn again already and we really haven't made any decisions for this turn yet.

My worry about NOT trading minimaps with GoW is that they will be ticked off when they find out that they are right beside us. However, it is very likely that RP may have told them where we are already....

I may be naive in this, but I see only 2 possibilities:

a) GoW will try to attack us immediately hoping to get to us before our Numidian Mercs are up.

b) That they realize that any attack would likely lead to a stalemate that would benefit neither of our teams and benefit everyone else.

Our completely opposite strategies make us the perfect allies - they concentrate on military techs and trade them to us, we concentrate on peaceful techs mostly and trade to them.

So I say trade the maps and try to get as friendly as we can with them, pointing out (if necessary) how we can help each other greatly. We should trade minimaps before the 2nd city (we REALLY need to name this!) is established so that GoW wouldn't initially know where it is.

As far as the movement for this turn goes, the land discovery by Howard just reinforces the need to move up the ithmus soon.

Right now, Conan would reach the ithmus in 4 turns, Howard in 8 turns. Currently, I don't see why we can't wait another 4 turns for Howard to reach it.

Another question is: Do we keep our plan for the 2nd city? My view is yes. If GoW do declare war immediately, a western city will fall quickly while the eastern city wouldn't.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Sharpe
My worry about NOT trading minimaps with GoW is that they will be ticked off when they find out that they are right beside us. However, it is very likely that RP may have told them where we are already....

I may be naive in this, but I see only 2 possibilities:

a) GoW will try to attack us immediately hoping to get to us before our Numidian Mercs are up.

b) That they realize that any attack would likely lead to a stalemate that would benefit neither of our teams and benefit everyone else.

I believe GoW is unlikely to attack us this early. They would have a very hard time against our defenses and they know it. Also, it is unlikely that they would have already been hired by someone to make our life more difficult - and attacking on their own, without being paid for, is kinda not in line with their merc strategy... I think they will be friendly and until we set up a solid defense, we shall be friendly, too. I would trade the minimap with them just before founding our second city (or even after that, if we opt to go for the West Hill City), the reason being that we need to move at least one unit into the isthmus area to prevent any GoW scouts penetrate into our part of the world.

Originally posted by Sharpe
As far as the movement for this turn goes, the land discovery by Howard just reinforces the need to move up the ithmus soon.

Right now, Conan would reach the ithmus in 4 turns, Howard in 8 turns. Currently, I don't see why we can't wait another 4 turns for Howard to reach it.

I agree. Conan shall keep heading southwards, Howard shall follow the west coast to the isthmus (right now, he should move SW). Anything else and we would be seriously lagging behind in the jungle exploration.

Originally posted by Sharpe
Another question is: Do we keep our plan for the 2nd city? My view is yes. If GoW do declare war immediately, a western city will fall quickly while the eastern city wouldn't.

Yesterday, I did quite extensive calculations, examining various scenarios combining different build orders and city placement orders until 2000BC. The results weren't very conclusive, so I didn't post them immediately... but here is what I found out.

Scenario A1:
Legopolis finishes the settler, builds a merc then, another settler, and yet another merc. We first found a city on the east coast and only later another city close to the isthmus.



Scenario A2:
Same as A1, but our second and third cities found in reversed order - first the one in the west, the east coast city later.



The interesting thing is, that by reversing the city placement order, we increase our total production quite a lot - we manage to build the same four mercs, but for A1, we would be 5+5+12=22 shields into anything else we decide to build later, while for A2, we would be 5+10+24=39 shields into future builds. That is a difference of 17 shields! Not mentioning the fact that we seal a strategic point very early, securing the isthmus entrance into our lands and that we get two mercs built exactly where we went them to be - guarding the isthmus.

I think the key to this is the forest game tile combined with the coastal forest tile. These two are actually like a mined bonus grassland plus mined plains - and they are already there, we would not need to waste our worker on any improvements (that could be destroyed in a war conflict) - he could focus on preparing the third city site so that it runs full speed once founded.

Thinking this over several times, I now believe we should send our first settler, escorted by the Legopolis National Guard, to the West Hill site, establishing a stronghold there - even with no improvements, this city will be able to produce 3 shields immediately and 5 shields 10 turns later, when it jumps to pop 2.

I also tried the Merc-Settler-Merc-Settler and Settler-Merc-Merc-Settler builds, but they do not seem to bring any advantage in. If you wish to have a look, here is the XLS spreadsheet I used. I would be grateful for any corrections - I am almost sure I do not have everything correct...

Oh... and I have discovered, that we produced 6 (six!) shields between 3400BC and 3350BC, even though the production capacity of Legopolis was only 5! Any idea??

[Kloreep]

Wow... nice calculations, vondrack.

But did you factor in corruption? With despotism's horrible waste, I but we'll lose at least one of West Hill's shields. (BTW, I think we have to name it that; it's such a nice, catchy name. )

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Kloreep
But did you factor in corruption? With despotism's horrible waste, I but we'll lose at least one of West Hill's shields. (BTW, I think we have to name it that; it's such a nice, catchy name. )

Actually, no, I did not factor in the corruption and waste - someone else would have to run a sim to check it (I am on friendly terms with Excel, not with the civ editor... ). However, as the cities will be at approximately the same distance from Legopolis, the waste will probably be 1 shield - and that, IMHO, further favours West Hill city, since losing 1 out of 3 shields is way better than losing 1 out of 2 shields, which would, for some time, be the case with East Coast city.

EDIT: As for the city, an idea crossed my mind... what About Panama or Panama Hill? The city will actually be like Panama Channel, joining the two oceans... would be easy to remeber...

[vondrack]

Ok, sorry for the delayed update, I have had a tough day today. Just played our turn in a haste after waking up (moving the scouts and cutting the research budget down a notch) and then, I had to focus on my business RL.

BTW, Jack, can you explain why you did NOT play the turn when you appeared to be online? We almost missed our 24 hour window - on such a trivial turn...!

We have a crucial decision to make now. On the next turn, our settler will be ready to leave Legopolis. Based upon my earlier calculations, I would - should I happen to play this turn - move him (escorted by the Legopolis National Guard) north and then continue NW along the hill range to the West Hill (Panama) site. Conan would turn SE, heading for that mountain over there, and Howard would go southwards (his ultimate target being the isthmus). Legopolis would be ordered to start building a Numidian Mercenary.

Well, that's it... be so kind and leave at least brief comments, so that whoever happens to play the next turn, has some idea what the team will/desire is.

G'night!

[Kloreep]

I just ran a sim to see what the corruption and waste (for shields) would be in each city. (As it turns out, they're identical.)

Time for another table.

Shields Gathered (before corruption)	Shields Produced (after corruption)
1	1
2	2
3	2
4	3
5	4

So... tough choice here. East coast makes the best size 1 city (2 shields and 3 excess food as opposed to 2 shields and 2 excess food) and has better food in general. But West blocks the isthmus territorially (though only by borders; it doesn't sit on the gap itself) and can break into producing 3 shields/turn at size two. However, at that size, it will go down to 1 excess food/turn until a plain is irrigated.

So, I say East Coast city. Cows are nice, and will allow us to expand faster. West coast should be saved for the next settler.

[Sharpe]

Some observations:

Our friends the Roleplayers beat us in building a settler as Madrid dropped from 3 to 1 this last turn. It is also interesting that their Madrid reached size 3 at 3250bc while the rest haven't yet. Definitely means that they have a food special (probably in their outer ring) and probably irrigated it as they grew from size 2 to 3 faster than we did.

A question about both the eastern and western cities is what they would look like at size 2 and 3...

The western city would, unless the plains is irrigated, lose 1 of its excess food at size 2, and would definitely lose 1 of its excess food once it reaches size 3 (would have to use the other forest) - as far as terraforming goes, it would absolutely require irrigation of the plains square and the game and forest would take much longer to road.

The eastern city would be less productive initially at size 1 but would have more food but less shields (unless they are mined) than the western city at size 2 and 3. As far as terraforming goes, the grassland would be faster than the forest to terraform, but the eastern city would also require more terraforming to make it better.

The thing that worries me is that it looks as though we couldn't build another settler until 2450bc from Vondrack's analysis - that is 16 turns away! A lot can happen during that time. It seems certain that Glory of War is beyond that ithmus, though from their comments about being on an island it is possible that they haven't found the ithmus yet....

The western city would have to build mercs immediately - and given its decent shield production it would be able to do that in just over 10 turns. It also seems that there might be land to the southwest of the western city's location.

The best position for the eastern city appears to be the square directly east of the middle grassland shield square. That would give us the cattle and perhaps 1 of the dyes. The food problem with the western city as it grows would hurt us in using the 2nd city to build settlers eventually while the eastern city wouldn't have that problem.

The eastern city is a better position long term to settle, but we can't afford the risk of Glory of War settling in the western city's location.

I totally agree with Kloreep , it is a very tough decision.
Perhaps the best option is for the eastern city to be built but to use Howard to block the ithmus until our 2nd settler is nearly ready...

[ZargonX]

That was my suggestion. I don't think that GoW would attack a military unit blocking the isthmus, and that would give us a blockade to keep things clear while we ready the next settler. I support the settlement of the Eastern shore (heh, there is a local Maryland joke in that sentence, but it's really only funny to me ).

I will set up a quick poll so we can have a decision ASAP.

[Spiffor]

I also support settling East Coast first. It has much more growth potential, and I wouldn't like it to be even spotted while empty (we can force other teams not to explore within our territory)

EDIT : Sharpe, I think the Roleplayers didn't want to lose any turn before building their settler. We had some lag between Legopolis reaching pop 3 and the settler being produced. They didn't.
I think they simply have a cattle in the extended radius of Madrid (as they didn't get to pop 3 as fast as us). They might have irrigated it, but we must keep in mind that we chose not to produce the settler as fast as we could, by producing 3rd warrior.

[vondrack]

Seeing others are mostly in favour of the East Coast scenario, I focused on improving it a bit. I have realized that even though I used to think of the northernmost jungle tile, Sharpe thought about the grassland tile... That is, we are not even sure what place exactly we should build the east coast city on.

Now, what about the northernmost tip of the Howard's Range, just SW of the sea cow? According to my updated calculations, that would be optimal! Great growth due to the sea cow, great production potential, and defense bonus! Plus, such a city would cover a good deal of The Sandbox. We would need just one more "lost/hopeless" city on that hill just south of where Howard currently stands to completely cover our barren lands on the North.

Here is the spreadsheet, updated with the Kloreep's waste and adjusted for the east coast HILL location:



And just to be able to see the difference, here is the same done for the reversed order city placement:



The east coast hill option is almost equal shield-wise to the west hill first scenario (loses by 1 shield only)! Here is the updated XLS file.

[Sharpe]

Nice continuing analyses guys!

Actually Vondrack, I was originally thinking like you that the 2nd city site should be on the most northern jungle square; however, with the lack of sites available in the north - it looks like that we should include the cattle in the 2nd city site.

Admittedly I just noticed that my suggested city site would not have the cattle in the original 9 squares, making it useless.

However, Vondrack's hill suggestion would. The only thing I am worried about for that location would be the number of good food sites as a lot of the city would be desert and hills. We would also overlap Legopolis by 2 squares.

Another problem is that only the jungle site would include the dyes in our boundries immediately. However, now that we have a garrison unit in Legopolis, the dyes aren't immediately needed as much, and they will eventually be included in our boundries eventually anyway (baring any unforeseen circumstances)

Despite some weaknesses, I think that probably Vondrack's hill site would be the best location for our eastern city site.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Sharpe
Admittedly I just noticed that my suggested city site would not have the cattle in the original 9 squares, making it useless.

That was my main problem with your suggestion, exactly.

Originally posted by Sharpe
However, Vondrack's hill suggestion would. The only thing I am worried about for that location would be the number of good food sites as a lot of the city would be desert and hills. We would also overlap Legopolis by 2 squares.

Well, for the foreseeable future, the city will be using the sea cow plus the tiles south of the hill range (currently four self-sustained/2-food tiles, one more after we clear the jungle), maybe occasionally using one hill. When the time comes and we need more workable tiles... there is almost one high-food (grassland) tile per one low-food (desert/hill) tile. That should help us have a very finely balanced city. The overlap covers one hill and one desert - that should not be a problem, as these tiles get usually worked last.

Originally posted by Sharpe
Another problem is that only the jungle site would include the dyes in our boundries immediately. However, now that we have a garrison unit in Legopolis, the dyes aren't immediately needed as much, and they will eventually be included in our boundries eventually anyway (baring any unforeseen circumstances)

I agree - since we are going for expansion right now, the military police should be all we'll need to keep our population content. Having the sea cow inside the inner ring of our second city seems to be crucial (I was not realizing this very well before... but it really is very important, as we will effectively have two high-growth high-production cities).

Originally posted by Sharpe
Despite some weaknesses, I think that probably Vondrack's hill site would be the best location for our eastern city site.

Unless Jack appears and plays our turn in a different way, I will start moving our escorted settler to the hill location below the sea cow. This is a major change to what I previously announced I would do - but my tables show (at least I believe they do) it is the right thing to do. The warriors will move as described, Howard SW, Conan SE.