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Thanks for the encouragement! 
In the meantime, let me try to serve some more food for thought, this time about plans related to our capital...
There are 5 tiles within reach of our capital that can be improved at a reasonable cost: 1 plain vanilla grassland, 2 grasslands next to river, 1 bonus grassland, and one grassland with cattle. The only other type of tile we can use in the foreseeable future is the hills (probably only one of them) next to the river. As a side note: next time we should put the city on that hill to the North East -- it's still next to the river, it would give an extra grassland to work on (the one currently under our capital), and it gives extra deffensive value -- but let's not ponder about the past, let's look at the future, shall we!?
In terms of tile improvement, we have only one fundamental choice to make: shall we irrigate or mine the cattle?
Let's investigate this question with our medium-long term strategy in mind: expanding Legoland. The basic assumption here is that in the capital we want to build settlers and some escort for them until we are close to satisfied with the shape of our Homeland. We will, of course, build a few warriors for basic protection and scouting at the beginning -- the focus of this investigation is what should happen afterwards. We will also most certainly need more workers -- those will be produced by other cities, not the capital.
So let's cut to the catt^H^H^H^H, khm, cheese: if we irrigate the cattle tile, we can easily have a city that produces 4 extra food and 5 shields with 3 population. I would certainly advise us to take this path if we could build spearman. In that case, we could have a city producing a 1 spearman/1 settler combo every 10 turns while growing up from pop 3 to pop 5 and then consuming 2 pop for the settler -- very convenient and very effective.
But, alas, we can't build spearmen, we can only build a Num.Merch. for 30 shields or 2 warriors for 20 shields total. At this point, it becomes clear that further decision making requires input from other Ministers, specifically the Military Architect and perhaps The Enlightened. The three Ministers should decide what is the more favorable solution: having 2 warriors or 1 Num.Merch. as an escort for every outgoing settler. The following analysis is to help to make an informed decision in this regard.
Should the High Council find that the 2-warrior version is favorable, we proceed as outlined above: irrigate the cattle, mine the bonus grassland and one of the other grasslands next to the river. And of course we build a road on all the tiles.
The advantages of this solution are that:
- it doesn't waste any shields nor food
- it is easy to maintain -- once set up, will work without intervention
- doesn't require any extra science or city improvement and can be made available in as little as 12 turns
Should the High Council find that the 1-Num.Merch. version is favorable, we have quite a challenge in front of us in terms of city planning. The ideal setup for producing 1 settler/1 num.merch. combos in this early age is a city that produces 6 shields, grows every 5 turns, and can maintain these qualities across a range of 2 sizes (e.g from size 3 to size 5).
One simple (although not cheap) solution to the above problem is this:
- mine the cattle and the bonus grassland
- build a granary
- maintain a minimum population of 3 in the capital and assign these people to the above mentioned two improved tiles and (surprise!) to one of the (unimproved) hills
This way the city produces 2 extra food and 6 shields -- with a granary, we can pump out a settler/num.merch. combo every 10 turns till the end of times. The extra population that grows into the capitol while the num.merch is built will be assigned to one of the grasslands next to the river. The advantages of this solution are that
- it doesn't waste any shields nor food
- it is easy to maintain -- once set up, will work without intervention
- it requires minimal tile improvement: mining the cattle and the bonus grassland (plus of course the roads, which are implied in any solution anyway)
- we make use of one of the hills (generally not easy to do this early)
Also note that the arrival of the new Num.Merch. cleverly coincides with the population growth from 3 to 4, thus unhappiness is automatically taken care of by means of military policing.
The disadvantage is that we will need a granary, and consequently Pottery, thus it will take at least 20-25 turns to finilize this setup (largely depending on how fast our Science Department can deliver Pottery -- maybe next time we should start with Pottery instead of Bronze Working?
).
I suspect that every other, significantly different, ie. "mine the cattle but don't build granary" type of solution would result in wasted shields and/or food, and it most certainly would result in unnecessary micro-management as the build and growth cycle of the capital wouldn't be synchronized and would be difficult to predict. We will leave it as an exercise to the reader to (dis)prove this...
After all these details, allow me to make a few general observations about our starting position:
- There are two promising directions to explore for sites of our next cities: to the West along the river, and to the East in the direction of that bonus grassland that is so unfortunately outside of the reach of our capitol. We should request our Military Architect to send troops into these directions.
- We have lots of jungle. Fortunately we are industrious people, therefore it is only half the pain it could be. Nonetheless we better get used to clearing the jungle as part of our regular activities. While assigning workers to this unpleasant activity, we should pay attention to assign at least 2, but possibly 3 or 4 workers to the same tile so that we can enjoy the fruits of our work early. Assigning 5 workers would be a waste of their effort (base cost of jungle cleaning being 12), and assign 6 or more would be probably an overkill. And, we have to make sure, of course, that cities are placed on a jungle tile whenever possible, for automatic clearing.
- There seems to be a river starting at the foot of the mountain with the gold in it. We should request our Military Architect to investigate that area as well, it might be a suitable place for a city.
- Care must be taken while moving units and especially our first worker around the capital. We should try not to lose any moving points by unnecessarily crossing the river.
Well, this is what I would do if I was the Master Build... now, how about you, guys?
Delmar!
In the meantime, let me try to serve some more food for thought, this time about plans related to our capital...
There are 5 tiles within reach of our capital that can be improved at a reasonable cost: 1 plain vanilla grassland, 2 grasslands next to river, 1 bonus grassland, and one grassland with cattle. The only other type of tile we can use in the foreseeable future is the hills (probably only one of them) next to the river. As a side note: next time we should put the city on that hill to the North East -- it's still next to the river, it would give an extra grassland to work on (the one currently under our capital), and it gives extra deffensive value -- but let's not ponder about the past, let's look at the future, shall we!?
In terms of tile improvement, we have only one fundamental choice to make: shall we irrigate or mine the cattle?
Let's investigate this question with our medium-long term strategy in mind: expanding Legoland. The basic assumption here is that in the capital we want to build settlers and some escort for them until we are close to satisfied with the shape of our Homeland. We will, of course, build a few warriors for basic protection and scouting at the beginning -- the focus of this investigation is what should happen afterwards. We will also most certainly need more workers -- those will be produced by other cities, not the capital.
So let's cut to the catt^H^H^H^H, khm, cheese: if we irrigate the cattle tile, we can easily have a city that produces 4 extra food and 5 shields with 3 population. I would certainly advise us to take this path if we could build spearman. In that case, we could have a city producing a 1 spearman/1 settler combo every 10 turns while growing up from pop 3 to pop 5 and then consuming 2 pop for the settler -- very convenient and very effective.
But, alas, we can't build spearmen, we can only build a Num.Merch. for 30 shields or 2 warriors for 20 shields total. At this point, it becomes clear that further decision making requires input from other Ministers, specifically the Military Architect and perhaps The Enlightened. The three Ministers should decide what is the more favorable solution: having 2 warriors or 1 Num.Merch. as an escort for every outgoing settler. The following analysis is to help to make an informed decision in this regard.
Should the High Council find that the 2-warrior version is favorable, we proceed as outlined above: irrigate the cattle, mine the bonus grassland and one of the other grasslands next to the river. And of course we build a road on all the tiles.
The advantages of this solution are that:
- it doesn't waste any shields nor food
- it is easy to maintain -- once set up, will work without intervention
- doesn't require any extra science or city improvement and can be made available in as little as 12 turns
Should the High Council find that the 1-Num.Merch. version is favorable, we have quite a challenge in front of us in terms of city planning. The ideal setup for producing 1 settler/1 num.merch. combos in this early age is a city that produces 6 shields, grows every 5 turns, and can maintain these qualities across a range of 2 sizes (e.g from size 3 to size 5).
One simple (although not cheap) solution to the above problem is this:
- mine the cattle and the bonus grassland
- build a granary
- maintain a minimum population of 3 in the capital and assign these people to the above mentioned two improved tiles and (surprise!) to one of the (unimproved) hills
This way the city produces 2 extra food and 6 shields -- with a granary, we can pump out a settler/num.merch. combo every 10 turns till the end of times. The extra population that grows into the capitol while the num.merch is built will be assigned to one of the grasslands next to the river. The advantages of this solution are that
- it doesn't waste any shields nor food
- it is easy to maintain -- once set up, will work without intervention
- it requires minimal tile improvement: mining the cattle and the bonus grassland (plus of course the roads, which are implied in any solution anyway)
- we make use of one of the hills (generally not easy to do this early)
Also note that the arrival of the new Num.Merch. cleverly coincides with the population growth from 3 to 4, thus unhappiness is automatically taken care of by means of military policing.
The disadvantage is that we will need a granary, and consequently Pottery, thus it will take at least 20-25 turns to finilize this setup (largely depending on how fast our Science Department can deliver Pottery -- maybe next time we should start with Pottery instead of Bronze Working?
).I suspect that every other, significantly different, ie. "mine the cattle but don't build granary" type of solution would result in wasted shields and/or food, and it most certainly would result in unnecessary micro-management as the build and growth cycle of the capital wouldn't be synchronized and would be difficult to predict. We will leave it as an exercise to the reader to (dis)prove this...
After all these details, allow me to make a few general observations about our starting position:
- There are two promising directions to explore for sites of our next cities: to the West along the river, and to the East in the direction of that bonus grassland that is so unfortunately outside of the reach of our capitol. We should request our Military Architect to send troops into these directions.
- We have lots of jungle. Fortunately we are industrious people, therefore it is only half the pain it could be. Nonetheless we better get used to clearing the jungle as part of our regular activities. While assigning workers to this unpleasant activity, we should pay attention to assign at least 2, but possibly 3 or 4 workers to the same tile so that we can enjoy the fruits of our work early. Assigning 5 workers would be a waste of their effort (base cost of jungle cleaning being 12), and assign 6 or more would be probably an overkill. And, we have to make sure, of course, that cities are placed on a jungle tile whenever possible, for automatic clearing.
- There seems to be a river starting at the foot of the mountain with the gold in it. We should request our Military Architect to investigate that area as well, it might be a suitable place for a city.
- Care must be taken while moving units and especially our first worker around the capital. We should try not to lose any moving points by unnecessarily crossing the river.
Well, this is what I would do if I was the Master Build... now, how about you, guys?
Delmar!
). That might be worth more than 3 Merc/city.
(Don't worry, I don't take it as seriously as it sounds.
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